Ma Jian - Beijing Coma

‘Haven’t you read the newspapers? Falun Gong is a deceitful, dangerous organisation. 1, 400 practitioners have died as a result of refusing medical treatment. Some followers have become so unhinged that they’ve committed suicide. One woman even strangled her own daughter.’

‘Falun Gong fosters the cultivation of truth, compassion and tolerance. What’s evil about that? If it opposed the Party, I wouldn’t have joined it. I’m stuck at home all day with this mute son of mine. As soon as I step outside, my every move is monitored by the police. When I fall ill, there’s no one to help me. Why shouldn’t I do a little meditation to help release my tension? And I’m not just doing it for myself, I’m doing it for my son as well. I can’t afford to buy him any more medication. If I continue to practise the exercises, my energy field is bound to have a beneficial effect on his health.’

‘You think your meditation can heal him?’ says a female officer. ‘If you’re not careful, you’ll end up a vegetable yourself.’ She walks in and rifles through the drawers, then frisks my mother’s mattress. The police always bring a female officer with them. This one has been here twice before.

‘You went to the People’s University to speak to Ding Zilin.’

‘Of course I did. She asked the international community to provide humanitarian assistance to the relatives of the 4 June victims. I wanted to thank her. But that was three years ago now.’

‘You know that you’re strictly forbidden to have contact with such people. And what about those other women from the Tiananmen Mothers group? They come here every week. What have you been plotting?’ This policeman speaking is the officer who interrogated me when I was fifteen. He is now the head of our local public security bureau.

‘They only come here for a chat. Aren’t we allowed to have a bit of companionship? Do you really think that a few old ladies like us could bring down the government?’

‘Just a chat, you say? You can’t fool us.’

‘I wrote a statement supporting the government crackdown nine years ago. What more do you want?’

‘We want to know why you joined the siege of Zhongnanhai. Tell us who sent you there.’

‘No one sent us. I was practising my routines in the yard with my neighbours that morning. We were upset about the arrests of those Tianjin practitioners. After our session, we decided to go to Zhongnanhai to appeal for their release. We didn’t know that so many other practitioners would have the same idea. It wasn’t a siege. All we did was stand on the street meditating. No one is giving us orders. You must believe me. Falun Gong practitioners never lie.’

‘We are high-ranking officers, so you’d better watch how you speak to us.’

‘We were afraid the government would accuse us of staging a demonstration. That’s why none of us sat down, apart from Granny Pang. After standing up for a few hours, her legs began to shake, so she had to rest on her knees for a while.’

‘Don’t give us any more lies. We’re treating this matter very seriously. Pack your bags now. We’re taking you and your son away from Beijing for a few days. We don’t want you causing any trouble during the 4 June anniversary.’ I remember this officer shouting to me in exactly the same way when he kicked me in the shins nearly twenty years ago.

‘I’m a law-abiding citizen. You have no right to take me away.’

‘If you’re so law-abiding, what were you doing demonstrating outside Zhongnanhai?’

‘This is my home. You don’t have an arrest warrant. I refuse to leave.’

‘I warn you, things are going to turn nasty. The government will pronounce its official verdict on Falun Gong soon. If a religion that causes the death of 1, 400 people isn’t an evil cult, I don’t know what is.’

‘You can knock me to the ground, but I will crawl back up again, and the Falun wheel will still be spinning inside me. Arrest me, if you want! I don’t care. What difference will it make? China is one huge prison. Whether we’re in a jail or in our homes, every one of us is a prisoner!’ She turns abruptly and storms off to her bedroom.

I’ve never heard her so enraged before. She certainly didn’t react so angrily the last two times the police came to take us away for 4 June. Six weeks ago, she stood outside the Zhongnanhai government compound with 10,000 fellow practitioners for six hours, and returned a different person. She probably feels just like we did at the beginning of the student movement. When people become part of a group, they find a courage they never knew they possessed before.

‘In fact, the clampdown on Falun Gong has already begun,’ the female officer says, following my mother into the bedroom. ‘The police have begun scouring the city’s hotels, rounding up Falun Gong members who’ve travelled up from the provinces. We’ll be turning on the Beijing practitioners soon. We’ve placed you under surveillance all these years because of your son’s involvement in the student movement. But this time it’s your membership of the cult that worries us… We’ve heard that Falun Gong members are planning to stage a mass suicide in the Fragrant Hills on the birthday of your leader, Li Hongzhi. You can’t expect the government to sit back and do nothing.’

‘A mass suicide? That’s absurd! All we Falun Gong practitioners want is to cultivate our energies so that one day we’ll achieve immortality and fly into the sky. None of us wants to kill ourselves.’ My mother moves closer to the woman and asks, ‘Who are those two male officers? I haven’t seen them before.’

‘They’ve been sent by the municipal public security bureau. They’re dealing with your files now…’

‘A nurse comes twice a week to look after my son. I’ve already paid her fees upfront. You can’t expect us to leave like this at the drop of a hat…’

While I listen to the commotion, I see Nuwa standing at the foot of the national flagpole on Tiananmen Square, commanding us all to sing along with her: ‘ Don’t be sad! The flag of the Republic will be stained with our blood …’ She was wearing a thin white T-shirt. You could see her red bra underneath. It was dawn, and a crowd had gathered round the pole to watch the daily flag-raising ceremony. We didn’t feel the cold of the morning air. During those last few days in the Square, we always seemed to be singing ‘The Bloodstained Spirit’. There was a large vat of egg soup on the back of a tricycle cart beside me. A woman was ladling out bowls to a long queue of students. She’d come to the Square with the motorcyclists of the Flying Tigers brigade. At first glance, I thought she was Lulu. She had the same short, permed hair and flowery nylon shirt. Perhaps that’s why the smell of her egg soup remains so vivid in my mind.

The sparrow suddenly plops onto my chest, digs its claws into my skin and lets out a shrill cry.

‘… The army’s about to roll in and you’re still worrying about your stupid opening ceremony. It’s too late for that now.’ This was Big Chan speaking. His feminine mouth was rosy and his eyes were sparkling. He was wearing a cotton glove on his left hand to protect his long nails. He would only remove the glove when he went into his tent to strum a few tunes on his guitar. He was very popular. Even when he was asleep, there was always a cluster of friends around him. He and I were walking towards the Goddess of Democracy. If we’d known the dawn that was breaking was the last one we’d ever see, perhaps we would have looked a little longer at the beautiful grey glow in the distance.

The officers have carried me downstairs and put me in the back of their van. My mother jumps up and says, ‘Wait a minute. His bedpan! I forgot it last time, and had to put him in nappies every day.’