Ma Jian - Beijing Coma

‘What do you mean, do nothing?’ Dr Li said. ‘We’ve given them mattresses and blankets. We’ve moved the weakest ones into those shelters. We’ve cooled the ground with water and blocks of ice, and we’ve got medics on hand to keep watch over them day and night.’

‘This is the hunger strike camp,’ I said. ‘Unless there’s an emergency, no outsiders are allowed in.’

‘We’ve come here to help the students,’ the man said loudly.

Big Chan stepped forward. ‘If you want to get involved with the emergency care work, go to the Monument and discuss it with the commander-in-chief of the Hunger Strike Headquarters.’

‘We can’t gain access to the Monument! You need a pass to get onto the lower terrace, but they’re only issued on the upper terrace,’ the man grumbled, then walked off in a huff.

I realised I’d forgotten to tell the student marshals that although Wang Fei had issued new passes giving members of the Hunger Strike Headquarters access to the Monument, the original passes Ke Xi had produced for the Beijing Students’ Federation were still valid. I decided to go to the broadcast station and make an announcement.

When I entered the tent, I heard Han Dan say that the guys in orange vests were in fact medical researchers from the Ministry of Health, and not government agents as we’d assumed. Apparently everyone in their office had wanted to come to the Square to help care for the hunger strikers, so in the end they were forced to draw lots. They’d spoken with Lin Lu and advised him to bring public buses into the Square to protect the hunger strikers from the rainstorm forecast for the afternoon. But Old Fu had opposed the idea. He was afraid that if we moved the hunger strikers into the buses, someone might drive them away. I said it was a good proposal, and pointed out that if we wanted to stop the buses being driven away, we just had to deflate the tyres.

While you vegetate, your neurons race around, removing clots and dead cells, trying to clean the rusty networks of your brain.

A couple of hours later, Wang Fei and I went to a Beijing duck restaurant in the Qianmen district just south of the Square. Sun Chunlin, who was only in Beijing for three days, was hosting a lunch for our Southern University gang. He’d made a fortune from the road construction company in Shenzhen. Now he’d started a trading company and bought a villa by the sea in Shekou, next to the holiday mansion of the film actress Liu Xiaoqing.

Next to me was Ge You, a scrawny little guy who was always the last to get a joke. At Southern University he struck me as gauche, but he seemed a bit more confident now. He’d moved to Shenzhen after graduation and found a well-paid job in a tea company.

Sun Chunlin was talking to him. ‘My uncle has just been appointed director of the Shenzhen Transport Bureau,’ he said. ‘I can use my connection with him to win a contract to build a twenty-kilometre stretch of road. If you join forces with me, I guarantee you’ll be a millionaire within two years.’

‘Really?’ Ge You said, his eyes lighting up.

Tang Guoxian arrived with Wu Bin and helped himself to a duck pancake.

‘I thought you were still on hunger strike,’ I said.

‘I’m the group leader,’ he answered. ‘If I carry on with the fast any longer, I won’t have the energy to look after everyone.’ He’d brought a group of five hundred students from Guangdong Province to join the hunger strike in Beijing.

Wang Fei took off his glasses and glared at Ge You and Sun Chunlin. ‘You Shenzhen crooks!’ he shouted. ‘The whole reason we’ve been starving ourselves to death is to sweep away corrupt scum like you!’

‘Don’t pretend you’ve been on hunger strike!’ Tang Guoxian sneered. ‘I bet you couldn’t even give up fags for an hour.’

Wu Bin had aged a lot since I’d last seen him. He had a goatee now, and his triangular eyes were less bright. He was halfway through his research fellowship at Wuhan College of Engineering. He’d arrived in Beijing that morning after Wang Fei had sent him a telegram urging him to join our movement.

The restaurant was full. The waitresses poured out tea for everyone. As soon as they heard I was a Beijing University student, they asked for my autograph. After I told them that Wang Fei was head of the Square’s propaganda office, a crowd gathered round, offering him cigarettes and shaking his hand. In this new job, he was being pestered day and night by students wanting to make suggestions about the direction our movement should take.

‘I have a great idea!’ said Wang Fei, enjoying the attention he was receiving. ‘I think our little gang here should establish a national student association.’

‘I hear you’ve hooked up with a girl who’s studying English,’ Sun Chunlin said to him. ‘What’s she thinking of, going out with a peasant like you?’

‘Fuck off!’ Wang Fei spat. He’d asked Nuwa to join us for lunch, but she’d refused. They hadn’t spoken for several days.

‘Some Shanghai students talked to our group yesterday about forming a national association,’ said Tang Guoxian. He grabbed a chicken wing from the dish that had just arrived. ‘God, I’m starving! I’m not going on another fucking hunger strike for as long as I live.’ He punched the table excitedly, just as he used to punch the walls of our dorm.

‘Yes, if we want to seize power, we must do it now,’ Wu Bin said, taking three long gulps from a beer glass.

‘You haven’t changed — still drinking from other people’s glasses!’ said Ge You, snatching his glass back.

‘You’ve been going out with that girl for a year now, and I still haven’t met her,’ Sun Chunlin said to me. ‘I hear she looks like A-Mei. How could you allow her to join the hunger strike?’

‘She looks nothing like A-Mei,’ I said, then wondered to myself whether they did in fact look alike. It had never occurred to me before.

‘I bumped into an old dorm mate of A-Mei’s on a student march in Guangzhou,’ Tang Guoxian said. ‘Shi Ye, I think her name was. She’s studying at Guangzhou Teachers’ College now. She’s planning to come up to Beijing soon.’

‘What, that short girl with glasses?’ I said. After A-Mei broke up with me, I visited Shi Ye several times to see if there was news from her. A-Mei had asked her to post her belongings back to Hong Kong and forward the refund of her university fees.

‘The Beijing Students’ Federation wants to set up a national association as well,’ Wang Fei said. ‘We must keep our distance from them, and do our own thing.’

A young man walked over and asked Wang Fei to recommend some books to read, explaining that although he hadn’t managed to get into university, he still wanted to improve himself. Wang Fei thought for a while, then wrote on a paper napkin Jean-Christophe by Romain Rolland and The Confessions by Jean-Jacques Rousseau.

Sun Chunlin tapped his cigarette on the rim of the glass ashtray, and everyone’s eyes were immediately drawn to the gold Rolex on his wrist.

‘If you’d had that watch when we were dorm mates, I would have nicked it and never given it back,’ Wu Bin muttered. I remembered him blabbering on about Nazi gas chambers when we were at Southern University.

‘It’s not a fake,’ I said, examining the watch more closely. ‘It’s a real Rolex.’

‘How long has Mou Sen been on hunger strike?’ Ge You asked, turning to me.

Suddenly the voice of a female newsreader rose above the hubbub in the restaurant. A waitress had turned up the volume of the television in the corner. ‘Today, in the Great Hall of the People, Premier Li Peng and other top leaders met with representatives of the student hunger strikers: Ke Xi, Han Dan, Shao Jian…’