Ma Jian - Beijing Coma

‘We printed 300,000 copies of the News Herald today, which is far more copies than any student newspaper printed during the May Fourth Movement,’ Shu Tong said proudly, raising his chin.

‘The News Herald has become the students’ spiritual food,’ Chen Di said. ‘They go to sleep with copies draped over their faces.’ He’d just run back to the Square after buying himself a pair of shorts in Qianmen market. His lips were dark purple and he was gasping for breath. Old Fu had told him to take a break from reading out announcements, and to go and lie down in the hunger strike camp. His girlfriend had passed out and was receiving emergency care in hospital.

‘I have some good news,’ Shu Tong said. ‘Beijing University’s chancellor has agreed to supply you with free food and transport while you’re in the Square. Over a thousand students from the provinces have turned up at our campus since the hunger strike began. We’ve had to give them food and accommodation. They’re sleeping in your bunks. There are two students in your bed, Dai Wei.’

‘But I took the mattress off,’ I said.

Realising that I hadn’t seen Tian Yi for some time, I grabbed a bottle of glucose solution and went outside. In the hot sunlight, the Square looked like a sandy beach. It made me long for a sea breeze. As I stood in the centre of that vast arid space, I had an unsettling feeling that a heavy rain was about to fall.

I found Tian Yi lying next to Mimi. ‘Look at that,’ she said, pointing to a cut rose she’d placed in a plastic bottle of water. ‘A local resident gave it to me. It will die in a couple of days. What a shame… Professor Xing visited us this morning.’

‘What department is he from?’ I sat down behind her and looked at her pale, thin face, and wondered how my brother was doing in Sichuan.

‘He’s from the Chinese Academy of Sciences. Very influential.’ Tian Yi’s forehead was covered in sweat.

‘Did he say, “I’m sorry, I’ve come too late,” like all the others?’

‘He’s eighty-seven years old. He said that the government was wrong to denounce our protests as “counter-revolutionary turmoil”.’

‘He only dared come here once he knew the government wasn’t going to launch a crackdown.’

‘They’ve just given me a 1000cc glucose transfusion,’ Tian Yi said, stretching out her arm. ‘If I’d refused to have it, they would have taken me to hospital. I feel as feeble as a piece of straw.’

I stared at her brown, hairless arm and the red bloodstain around her injection wound. Then I looked at her stomach and watched the folds of her shirt rise and fall as she breathed in and out.

The marshals guarding the lifeline began passing on a rumour that the director of the United Front Department had arrived in the Square. A few hunger strikers stood up in excitement. A voice cried, ‘Sit down everyone! Stay calm!’

Other students yelled, ‘Tell him to get lost. Chase him off the Square!’

Just as I’d managed to help Tian Yi onto her feet, everyone sat down again.

I suddenly remembered that Han Dan had asked me to ensure the broadcast station was cordoned off in time for the visit. It had completely slipped my mind.

Once the crowd had calmed down, I could hear Ke Xi’s voice blaring through the loudspeakers. ‘I’d like to start off by saying that Director Yan Mingfu of the United Front Department is an upstanding, reform-minded Party member…’ Then I heard Han Dan give an update on the number of hunger strikers who’d passed out.

Buses rumbled past in the distance. The voices broadcast through the loudspeakers quietened the crowds, but from where I was sitting, I could only catch fragments of Director Yan’s speech.

‘… You must give up now, not for your sakes, or even your families’ sakes, but for the sake of the country… Leave now, and I assure you there will be no political backlash… If you don’t believe me, take me hostage… You shouldn’t harm yourselves like this. The future belongs to you… The reformers in the Party are working hard to…’

Everyone seemed moved by the sincerity in his faltering voice.

‘But we can’t give up now!’ Tian Yi yelled out. I was amazed. I’d never heard her shout like that before.

The Square fell silent. Tian Yi’s eyes filled with tears. I watched her grubby fingers rub the leaves of her rose. The other hunger strikers around her began to cry too. A humid breeze moved through the Square.

‘All we’re asking for is an open dialogue, but the government leaders are too terrified to speak to us,’ Chen Di shouted through a megaphone. ‘They just send their lackeys from the United Front Department.’

‘Don’t tell us what to do, Director Yan!’ Wang Fei shouted through his megaphone. ‘We’re not children!’

‘Look at this!’ Dong Rong called out to me, lifting his left arm. ‘I was put on a drip for half an hour and it’s swollen to double its size!’

The crowd became restless. Someone nearby shouted, ‘What’s the point of a United Front Department? We’re all Chinese, aren’t we? Who are we supposed to be uniting against?’

‘Fuck it!’ another voice shouted. ‘I’m going to refuse all fluids from now on!’

Mimi was distraught. ‘We’re putting our lives on the line here, but the so-called people’s government won’t even bother to talk to us. They’re a band of criminals!’ She too had had an allergic reaction to the transfusion, and her arm was as red and swollen as Dong Rong’s.

The atmosphere was tense. Finally, Lin Lu announced over the loudspeakers that Ke Xi had fainted again, and that Director Yan’s speech would have to be cut short. He asked the university representatives to gather at the Monument for an emergency meeting.

Tian Yi’s face was dripping with sweat. ‘I’m not feeling good,’ she moaned. I pressed her wrist. Her pulse was racing. She was trembling all over.

By the time Director Yan had left the Square, she’d calmed down a little, but she still looked very weak. I felt powerless. There was nothing I could do to help her. Zhang Jie and I cleared a space in front of the Monument for the meeting. After a long debate over whether to withdraw from the Square, Lin Lu announced that the Headquarters had conducted a survey and found that 2,699 hunger strikers were in favour of continuing the occupation, while only 54 were against.

The Dialogue Delegation and the Beijing Students’ Federation had no choice but to follow the wishes of the hunger strikers, so the motion to leave the Square was rejected.

Sister Gao said despairingly, ‘Of course the hunger strikers want to persevere until the end. But what about the other students? Who’s representing them? They are the majority, after all.’

Shu Tong and Yu Jin set off to canvass opinion among the rest of the students in the Square. Then Yang Tao stood up, wiped the lenses of his glasses and declared loudly: ‘Our only option now is to adopt the last of Sun Tzu’s Thirty-Six Strategies: retreat. The situation in the Square is out of control. If we stay, our movement will be doomed. The only way to avoid defeat is to withdraw our troops immediately.’ Yang Tao was an expert on Sun Tzu’s Art of War . Since working in the Organising Committee’s political theory office, he’d acquired a reputation as a modern-day Zhu Geliang, the brilliant military strategist of the Han Dynasty.

Your body is a trap, a square with no escape routes.

Tiananmen Square was the heart of our nation, a vast open space where millions of tiny cells could gather together and forget themselves and, more importantly, forget the thick, oppressive walls that enclosed them…

‘Is this young comrade a friend of yours?’ asks Granny Pang from the doorway. She must be seventy by now, but she’s followed our visitor all the way up from the ground floor.