Ma Jian - Beijing Coma

At this, Shan Bo angrily rolled up his letter, threw it over to Lin Lu and stuttered, ‘You will, re-re-regret not listening to me!’ then stormed back to his tent.

Lin Lu grabbed a microphone and said, ‘Fellow students, in this final hour, let us gather round the Monument to the People’s Heroes and allow history to pass its judgement on us. When the army comes to attack us, we will remain peaceful and non-violent…’

In the distance, Ke Xi was moving through a crowd on the shoulders of his bodyguard, shouting, ‘Fellow students and Beijing citizens! This is our bleakest moment. We can’t give up now! In perseverance lies victory!’ The crowd roared in support. An hour before, he’d been advocating a mass withdrawal.

The student marshals who’d been guarding the base of the Monument began to disperse. Some went to stand in a protective circle around the hunger strike tent. Apart from the broadcast station and the Taiwanese rock star, Hou Dejian, there wasn’t much else left in the Square that needed to be cordoned off.

Wang Fei suggested we hold one final press conference urging the foreign media to stay in the Square to witness the crackdown. Old Fu walked over with some students from his finance office. He agreed to stay, but said we should persuade the girls to leave.

As I set off to go and find Mou Sen, Yanyan walked up to me and said that Ge You, our old friend from Southern University, had travelled up from Shenzhen to give us another big donation.

‘That’s good news,’ I said. ‘Mou Sen will need more money for his Democracy University.’

She forced a smile then walked away and disappeared down the pedestrian underpass. I wondered if Mou Sen had spoken to her about Nuwa yet. She’d probably seen the photograph of their Tiananmen Square wedding. It had been printed in all the newspapers.

The broadcast station played a tape of the Internationale. The sound was louder and cracklier than usual. Everyone in the Square sang along. The announcements blaring from the government speakers on the lamp posts had become louder too, and the echoes added to the din.

‘Where can I get my batteries recharged?’ Wang Fei asked, walking into the tent. ‘My walkie-talkie isn’t working.’

‘Don’t use it, then!’ I said. ‘And keep it in your pocket. If the soldiers see you carrying it, they’ll shoot you!’

‘They can shoot me if they like. I don’t care! My body is made of steel.’ The black paint of his megaphone was badly chipped.

Bai Ling sat down and spoke into the microphone. ‘This is commander-in-chief Bai Ling speaking. On behalf of the Defend Tiananmen Square Headquarters, I would like to ask everyone who is committed to defending the Square to stand up now.’

Everyone fell silent. The students sitting in the plastic shelters stepped outside to see what was going on. The atmosphere was very tense.

‘… Please raise your right hands, face the Monument to the People’s Heroes and say after me: “They may cut off our heads and make us bleed to death, but we will never give up our fight for democracy!” ’ Although surrounded by residents, tourists and even plain-clothes policemen, the students who raised their right hands ignored all distractions and focused on the solemn oath.

In the last glow before dark, I watched the crowds rush frantically back and forth between Chairman Mao’s portrait and the white Goddess of Democracy. They looked like swarms of nervous ants sensing the impending approach of a tidal wave.

West of the Beast With Nine Heads is a tree that never dies. If a man eats it, he will live a long life. There is another sacred tree that, when eaten, can bestow wisdom.

When dusk falls, the noises outside drift towards my iron bed, then everything goes dark.

My mother drags herself like an old cloth bag from the sitting room into the bedroom and slumps onto her bed. There’s a lot of phlegm in her throat. I can hear it move when she breathes. She’s fallen asleep now. Apart from an occasional crinkling of a plastic bag in the kitchen, the flat is deathly silent.

It’s the same kind of silence that pervaded the flat when we returned home from the cemetery after my father was cremated. Dusk had fallen, just like now. I hadn’t heard any noise from my mother for a long time, so I quietly opened her door and peeped inside. She was sitting on the chair, fast asleep, her hands hanging limply on either side. A slanting beam of light from the lamp beside her illuminated the wrinkles around her eyes. Her brightly patterned shirt didn’t match the look of despair on her face. She was perfectly still. For a moment I thought she’d followed my father into the netherworld.

The room is pitch black now. The last gleams of light have left the windows.

Nights without birdsong feel empty… Tian Yi often talked about the red-breasted cuckoo we saw flitting through the rainforest in Yunnan. ‘Why didn’t I take a photo of it,’ she would say to me. ‘I had my camera in my hand…’

Today is 1 October 1999 — the fiftieth anniversary of the founding of the People’s Republic of China. So as to ensure the celebrations are clean and orderly, the police have arrested thousands of illegal migrant workers and scruffy-looking peasants who’ve travelled to the capital to lodge complaints, and have locked them in detention centres in the suburbs. The restaurants in this street were raided, and they have now lost half their staff. Every flat in the compound has been inundated with leaflets from the National Day Organising Committee telling the occupants not to accommodate guests from other provinces during the week of the celebrations.

When the parade passed through the city today, no one in the flats, restaurants or shops lining the route was allowed to look out of their windows. If anyone was spotted even standing by a window, they were arrested immediately. So that the government leaders can view tonight’s Tiananmen Square pageant in safety, all residents have been asked to stay at home and watch the event on television.

This morning, the municipal government sent a team of workers to spray green paint over any bare patches in the grassed areas along the route. The only people in the yard outside now are the policemen guarding the entrances to the apartment buildings. Our phone was cut off three days ago. My mother visited the caretaker countless times asking for it be reconnected, but he told her there was nothing he could do. I presume it won’t get reconnected until after midnight, when the fireworks have been let off and the celebrations have come to an end.

‘His armpits are completely rotten,’ my mother mutters in her sleep. ‘I’ve run out of alcohol swabs.’

In the two months since my mother was released from the detention centre, her voice seems to have aged a lot. Instead of offering her a path to salvation, Falun Gong has sucked her life force away. She hardly says a word to me any more. Occasionally I’m able to glean some information from her telephone conversations. I know that, in order to be allowed to return home to look after me, she wrote a statement renouncing Falun Gong and gave the police the names of her Falun Gong friends. I also know that while she was in detention, she was unable to sleep, and that her left arm broke when the police attacked her with electric batons. She’s still unable to lift it up.

When she turned on the radio yesterday and heard the sentences that have been issued to a group of key Falun Gong practitioners following a trial at the Beijing Intermediate People’s Court, my mother’s opera-trained voice howled with despair. Among the names listed was Master Yao. He’s been sentenced to a fixed term of eighteen years’ imprisonment, with deprivation of political rights for a subsequent ten years.