Ma Jian - Beijing Coma

Nuwa and another girl were about to stick their handwritten poster to a board. Nuwa’s yellow down jacket looked very bright.

‘Put it on top of that one!’ someone shouted. ‘What idiot wrote that?’

The poster said I’VE LOST MY UMBRELLA. WHOEVER SNATCHED IT FROM ME CAN KEEP IT. I DON’T CARE. THE CHEAP BASTARD!

I pointed to another that read AN HONEST MAN HAS DIED. THOSE WHO REMAIN ARE SWINDLERS AND LIARS! ‘That’s the one I put up,’ I told Tian Yi.

‘I thought you’d written an essay.’ Tian Yi sounded a little disappointed.

‘I’m not very good with words,’ I confessed, looking her in the eye.

Another poster gave an account of our previous day’s activities:… STUDENTS FROM OTHER BEIJING UNIVERSITIES JOINED US IN THE SQUARE THROUGHOUT THE MORNING. WE STAGED A SITIN, REQUESTING A DIRECT DIALOGUE WITH THE GOVERNMENT LEADERS…

‘Why did they write it on a sheet of newspaper?’ Tian Yi said. ‘It looks so stingy.’

‘Many departments have set up donation boxes,’ I said. ‘The tourism students have collected more than a thousand yuan already. They’ve bought an electric megaphone and a typewriter.’

‘Put it up a little higher,’ Nuwa said to her friend.

‘My hands are shaking!’ the girl said. ‘We’ve only been here a few minutes, and I’m already scared out of my wits. Look, there’s a surveillance camera pointing towards us. Hey, Dai Wei, will you come and help me put it up?’

I went over. As I helped the girl lift the poster, I caught a whiff of Nuwa’s fragrance. It was a foreign perfume. I’d smelled it before in the lobbies of the luxury hotels in Guangzhou.

‘How come you didn’t get Wang Fei to help you?’ I asked Nuwa.

‘Why would I need him?’ Nuwa said, turning the other way.

‘Look at this one,’ Tian Yi said, pulling me over. ‘It says, “The Democracy Salon is staging a poetry reading in memory of Hu Yaobang. Everyone welcome.”’

‘Looks like Han Dan is getting busy again.’

‘He seems very methodical.’ Tian Yi glanced around her and said, ‘Why isn’t the lamp working tonight? Come on, let’s go over there — it’s lighter.’

‘Someone must have smashed the bulb.’ I didn’t tell her about the fight I’d got into the night before. She hated violence. The university authorities had broadcast a series of announcements reminding students that they must return to their dorms by 11 p.m. Wang Fei suspected them of having some plan up their sleeves, so he and I slipped out and kept watch over the Triangle. Once all the students had left the area, four or five guys, who looked like security officers, turned up and ripped down all the posters. One of them smashed the Triangle’s only lamp. We decided to follow him. When he realised we were trailing him, he tried to run, but I caught up with him, grabbed hold of his jacket and punched him in the face. Wang Fei swore, ‘I’ll kill you, you son of a bitch!’ The guy confessed at once that the university’s Youth League committee had told him to smash the lamp.

The university had already forbidden the small shops inside the campus from selling batteries or candles to the students. It was no longer possible to buy even a sheet of paper on the campus.

‘Look how they’ve written “Emergency Meeting”,’ Tian Yi complained. ‘The characters are a mess. Don’t they know anything about calligraphy?’

My eyes fell upon another notice that read LOOKING FOR FRIENDS: I LIVE ON THE THIRD FLOOR OF THE ECONOMICS STUDENTS’ MALE DORM. I’M A LITTLE INTROVERTED, WITH NO PARTICULAR HOBBIES APART FROM READING. I WOULD LIKE TO MAKE FRIENDS WITH SOME MEMBERS OF THE OPPOSITE SEX, SO THAT I WON’T HAVE TO SPEND THESE PRECIOUS UNIVERSITY YEARS ON MY OWN… On the bottom right-hand corner someone else had scribbled FUCK OFF!

‘It’s too dark here. Look, someone’s turned on a torch over there, let’s go back,’ Tian Yi said, dragging me away.

We squeezed our way into the crowd. Students at the front were reading out the posters to the students at the back. But there were so many people shouting that you couldn’t grasp much. Students who were taking notes asked them to speak more slowly. Only a few fragments were audible to me, for everyone, male and female, was speaking at once, in different accents and at different speeds: ‘Lost the hearts of the people… to the afterworld… boycott classes… resisted the police… from their filthy mouths… journalists should speak the truth… who shouldn’t have died… let the wind carry him away… if we follow these suggestions… consign to the flames…’

I could hear Bai Ling’s voice cutting through the din. It was clearer and faster than the others. She read out a poster that urged students to boycott classes. But she spoke so fast that the students at the back asked her to repeat it. She shouted back to them that her candle had gone out now and that she couldn’t see a thing.

Tian Yi grabbed a torch from someone and asked the students in front of her to pass it forward to Bai Ling. While it was moving from hand to hand, someone switched it on. The beam of light shuddered above the crowd, until at last the torch was placed in Bai Ling’s hands.

A girl next to her was reading a poster by candlelight. Her hand took on the orange of the flickering flame.

I remembered a fire breaking out while Tian Yi and I were queuing for tickets at Kunming railway station. I was holding Tian Yi’s hand and she was so terrified that she dug her middle finger deep into my palm. When the fire was extinguished, she looked at my purple bruise and asked blankly, ‘Does it hurt?’

As we squeezed our way out of the crowd, Tian Yi said, ‘Did you hear that one? A law student wrote it. It was very cogent.’

Sister Gao and Old Fu were approaching us. Sister Gao hadn’t brought her notebook this time. ‘What are the students hoping to achieve with all these posters criticising the government hardliners?’ she asked.

‘They’re just frustrated,’ Tian Yi said. ‘They need to let off some steam.’

‘The posters are getting too personal,’ Old Fu said. ‘We can’t start pointing our fingers at Premier Li Peng. How are we to know whether he’s a bad guy or not?’

‘You’re right,’ Sister Gao said. ‘Li Peng has only been in his post for a year. Besides, he’s only Premier. Zhao Ziyang is General Secretary, so he ’s the man in charge. If we want to crack down on corruption, we should start looking at his record first. I’ve heard rumours that his son has been involved in profiteering.’

Liu Gang joined us. ‘The student movement has really taken off,’ he exclaimed. ‘We’ll have to set up some kind of organisation, or there’ll be chaos.’ Then he turned to Sister Gao and said, ‘You know lots of students in the Creative Writing Programme. It’s important that we get them involved.’

‘Most of them are government officials,’ Sister Gao said. ‘They’re part of the elite. They won’t want to risk their necks for us.’

‘But they’ve produced the best posters,’ Old Fu said.

‘Zheng He wrote them all. The other writers stood by and watched.’

Liu Gang lit a cigarette and said, ‘We need input from people like you in the Philosophy Department, Sister Gao. Once the movement gains momentum, you’ll be our intellectual backbone. It will be like a second Boxer Rebellion.’

Tian Yi became bored with the discussion and muttered to me, ‘Han Dan’s giving a speech. Let’s go and listen to it.’ Raindrops fell on her fringe. She swept the hair away, exposing her broad forehead. ‘Hurry up! If you don’t want to come, I’ll go on my own.’ She was buzzing with energy that night.

All I wanted to do was find a street stall and have a bowl of wonton soup and a meat pie. So I said, ‘I’m starving. Go on your own, and I’ll join you once I’ve had something to eat.’