Beijing Coma (28 page)

Shu Tong placed his handkerchief on the ground, then sat on it and said, ‘Good! At last we know what we’re doing.’

‘I saw you having a nap on the steps of the Monument just now,’ Shao Jian said, lying flat down on the ground, too exhausted to sit up any longer.

‘I hate going a night without sleep,’ Shu Tong answered. ‘Liu Gang, tell Old Fu to come over. We need to revise the petition and get more students to come to the Square. Tell him we’re going to submit the petition to the government on the steps of the Great Hall of the People.’

Fortunately, a few tourists and local residents began trickling into the Square, making our crowd appear a little larger. Zhuzi and Chen Di said that everyone sitting on the ground should be in neat rows. I asked Yu Jin to help shout out the orders.

More and more onlookers gathered around us. Wang Fei suggested that we inform them of our goals. Having an audience cheered us up. They applauded us. Some even tossed us the dough sticks and buns they’d bought themselves for breakfast; others handed us cigarettes and money. Shu Tong told the students not to snatch the food, but everyone was so hungry they ignored him. Bai Ling caught a bread roll that was tossed in her direction and shared it with the rest of our gang.

A man who looked like a worker sat down next to us. He claimed to be volunteer teacher, and said that we were behaving irrationally.

Wang Fei lost his temper, and said, ‘Do you know what the average teacher’s salary is?’

‘Do you imagine we’re doing this for the fun of it?’ said Nuwa. ‘Last week the papers reported that China’s investment in education is the second lowest in the world!’

‘But things are changing now. Investment in education is going up, not down. And, look – you were able to march all the way from your campuses to the Square without getting arrested.’ The man looked as though he’d just finished his morning jog. His hair was damp with sweat.

Wang Fei flung his half-eaten bun at the man and said, ‘Whose bloody mouthpiece are you? I’ve had enough of hearing people say that things are getting better. It’s bullshit!’

Ke Xi and Hai Feng persuaded the man to leave. Nuwa criticised Wang Fei for being too hot-headed.

When the rays of the morning sun reached the Monument’s obelisk, we decided that Han Dan and Hai Feng should visit the reception office of the Great Hall of the People to discuss submitting our petition to Premier Li Peng.

Ten minutes later, they came out of the office and announced that the petition would be received by the deputy head of the State Bureau of Letters and Visits.

Wang Fei and Shu Tong said that this wasn’t good enough. Cao Ming agreed that we shouldn’t deliver the petition to such a petty official.

‘It must be received by a member of the National People’s Congress Standing Committee, at the very least,’ Shao Jian said.

But Liu Gang and Yang Tao argued that the official’s rank was unimportant. They said that if we managed to submit the petition publicly, in front of all the students gathered in the Square, we would have achieved our goal and could return to our campus in triumph.

I was handed a fountain pen and a poster-sized sheet of paper and told to start writing the seven demands we’d agreed on.

I glanced at Tian Yi’s face. Her lips were pursed, but her eyes were calm. She didn’t appear to object to what I was doing.

I turned off my alarm clock and went back to sleep. I’d been up very late the night before, keeping watch over the posters in the Triangle. When I woke up again it was already six thirty in the evening.

On the table in the middle of the dorm were the strips of cloth Wang Fei had ripped from his bed sheet and daubed with the words
DOWN WITH OFFICIAL PROFITEERING
. His zeal seemed a little excessive. Tian Yi thought so too. She said that he was a narcissist and lacked the dignified air of a scholar.

I jumped out of bed and went to brush my teeth. Although the canteen would have already finished serving supper, I knew that Tian Yi would still be waiting for me there.

The entrance to our dorm block was splattered with muddy footprints. I guessed that it had been raining outside.

I took the short cut along a dirt track that passed through a patch of thick undergrowth. Overlapping male footprints marked the way. Girls instinctively avoided this patch of male territory, preferring the cement path that turned at a right angle. I was annoyed to see how tattered my shoes were. But at least I knew I could afford to buy a new pair, unlike Xiao Li who was so poor he had to play football in his bare feet.

The voice of the rock star He Yong blared out from a cassette player in one of the dorms: ‘
God bless the people who’ve eaten their fill. God bless the workers, the peasants, and the people’s militia. Let those who want a promotion be promoted, and those who want a divorce get divorced . . .
’

Tian Yi was sitting alone in the canteen. ‘I wish you wouldn’t take the short cut,’ she said as I walked up to her. ‘Your shoes always get covered in mud.’

‘I can’t help it. I hate walking the long way round.’

‘Hey, let’s go and have a look at the posters in the Triangle.’ Her white woollen scarf reflected a pale light onto her chin as she spoke. ‘The politics students have put up lots of new ones today.’

‘I don’t like being a bystander,’ I said, yawning. ‘And anyway, I’ve only just got up and I haven’t had a thing to eat yet.’

‘I only want to read them. I won’t write them down.’ Although her tone was quite casual, I could sense that she’d had a change of heart and was now eager to get involved in the student movement. She leaned over and pressed a peanut sweet into my hand and asked, ‘So which poster did you put up?’ A draught blew in through the open door. The evening air felt clean and cold.

‘I haven’t put any up. You told me not to get involved, didn’t you?’ Remembering Tian Yi’s dislike of sarcasm, I added softly, ‘Let’s go and take a look then, if you want. Just keep an eye out for any undercover agents.’

She glanced at me disdainfully and strode outside. I followed her out and looked beyond her at the large crowd of students in the Triangle. They were shining torches and candles onto the red-and-white handwritten posters pasted to the noticeboards.

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.