The Corpse Walker: Real Life Stories: China From the Bottom Up (28 page)

For over ten days, I couldn't move. I couldn't even use the toilet on my own. After they finally removed the shackles, my neck, wrist, and ankles were abscessed. The lower part of my body was all swollen. It took another four months for the wounds to heal.

On April 25, 2002, while visiting a Falun Gong practitioner at a village near Chengdu, I was once again arrested by public security. After two months of detention, they put me on trial and sentenced me to two years in jail. On July 3 of that year, they transferred me from the detention center to an all-women prison outside Chengdu. Each prisoner was supposed to have a health checkup before being admitted. Because of the many beatings I had suffered at the hands of the police, I was in terrible shape. The prison refused to accept me. They worried that I could die during my incarceration. They didn't want to take any responsibility. So I was sent back to Hesheng Township, my hometown.

LIAO:
All those beatings and tortures didn't do much to change your mind.

CHEN:
When local police and township government officials heard about my return, they treated me as if I were a devil who was out to ruin their careers. They spent a whole night figuring out ways to control me. Finally, they reached a collective decision: Ms. Chen's obsession with Falun Gong has caused her to lose her mind. She is suffering from grave mental illnesses. On July 5, they tied me up with ropes, put me on a truck, and sent me to the Wanchun Mental Hospital.

LIAO:
Did the doctor offer a diagnosis before your forced hospitalization?

CHEN:
The township Party secretary said, The decision of the Communist Party serves as the most authentic diagnosis. Under pressure from local officials, the doctors put me inside a mental ward with thick iron doors. When the door clanked shut, I found myself in Ward A, which was specifically furnished for mental patients—iron bed, iron chairs, and an iron desk. The window was fitted with iron bars. I was surrounded by mentally ill patients, some staring blankly at the ceiling or shaking uncontrollably. Others were drooling or making weird noises, laughing or crying. I was so scared, and I begged the police chief who escorted me there to let me go home. He gave me the brush-off with a cold laugh: You are our VIP. We put you in this “resort” so you can relax and enjoy life. Do you know that it cost us 3,700 yuan [US$462] to put you up here? But it's worth it.

I knelt down, grabbed his leg, and begged: There is nothing wrong with my mind. He kicked me away and said: That's what they all say. All the people you see over here think they are normal. Oh well, go practice Falun Gong if you want. I heard there is another crazy Falun Gong member in this ward. She is a former government employee and her name is Yang. Maybe you and Yang can keep each other company.

After the police chief left, the nurses tied me up in bed for a whole night. The next morning, when the doctor saw that I was pretty obedient, they untied me and allowed me to walk around freely. I began to ask about Yang. On the second night, when the nurses were chatting after supper, I snuck out of my room and located Yang. She was thin as a stick, almost like a shadow. I struck up a conversation with her, and found out that she had been locked up in the hospital for over a year. She said she had long since given up Falun Gong. All day long, she simply imitated the behavior of those mentally ill patients. She had to act out crazily and aggressively, because if she didn't, some patients would come grab her hair, choke her, ride on top of her, and pee over her body. I reproached her: If you act like this all the time, it becomes part of you and you could become crazy like those people. She told me that she had tried to practice Falun Gong when she was thrown in there, but the nurses would stop her, and force her to watch the government propaganda video that condemned Falun Gong.

I felt so sorry for her, and told her about the stuff that friends had got from the Falun Gong Web sites overseas. I told her that thousands of people practice Falun Gong freely in Western countries and that the international community had condemned China for the crackdown. We chatted for a long time, and before I left we made a pact to resume our practice.

The next day, we got together inside my room and began to do the slow Falun Gong movements. One nurse found out and notified Dr. Deng, head of the psychiatric ward. He immediately ordered the guards to carry us to the treatment room for electric shock. They tied Yang onto the bed first, and then turned on the switch. Her body began to twitch violently, and she was screaming, “Save me, Teacher Li.” Her loud screams were like something coming out of a tortured animal. I couldn't bear to watch her suffer. So I bent my head and closed my eyes. Dr. Deng grabbed my hair and poked his knee against my back, forcing me to watch and receive what he called “education.” After more violent spasms, Yang's body weakened, her screaming became inaudible, and her skin turned from pale to blue. I lost control, and my body began to shake. I cried, How can you treat people like this? You should be condemned to hell. Dr. Deng dragged me out of the treatment room by the hair and said: If you continue to practice, you'll be next.

After that scary electric shock episode, the nurses put us in segregated areas, with twenty-four-hour supervision. We were locked up in a storage room next to the toilet. All night long, we were covered with mosquitoes. The next day, we were not given our food. Instead, the nurses put us on IV. Since our arms and legs were tied to the bed and couldn't move, the IV drops dripped very fast. One morning, the nurses injected several bottles of unknown liquid into our veins. I whispered to Yang: I don't know what kind of IV drips they are giving us! Yang replied: Don't you think they are injecting us with meds that will damage our brain? These people are animals and they can do anything to destroy us. Her words made me really nervous. It reminded me of a Japanese movie I had seen. The hero in the movie was fed drugs that damaged his brain. He became a zombie and jumped from a high building without knowing it. Then his enemies claimed that he had committed suicide.

The thought of that movie gave me the creeps. I began to scream, struggling to break free from the IV tubes. One nurse rushed in, pinned me down, and tightened the ropes around my legs and arms. The next day, they started to shove pills down our throats, saying that the medicine would cure us of our disobedience. I had no idea what those pills were. During the first several days, I refused to open my mouth. The doctor simply asked several guards and male patients to force my mouth open with a metal clamp, and wash down the pills with hot water. I choked and would begin to cough and vomit. After I stopped coughing, they would force my mouth open and do it again. My tongue and throat were seriously burned while my head and my face had scratches all over. A week after I took the pills, I became sleepy all day long. I couldn't stop drooling and had no appetite for food. Then I became too feeble to resist. When it was time for medicine, I would simply open my mouth voluntarily, swallow the pills like other patients did, and then doze off.

LIAO:
So they finally subdued you and turned you into a mentally ill patient.

CHEN:
All I could feel was exhaustion; my eyelids were so heavy that I couldn't keep them open. A month later, when the doctor reduced the dosage of my meds, I became easily irritable. Then the nurses transferred us to a new place to make room for the real mental patients. They put me and Yang in a room, where the windows had been nailed shut and covered with wooden boards. The nurses even unhooked the electric bulb. Later on, we found out that we were actually next door to the morgue.

I ended up staying in the mental hospital for 110 days. Yang actually stayed there for one year longer. One day, the director of the local Woman's Federation, a pseudo-government agency, came to visit me in the hospital. I was brought to a meeting room where visitors and patients were separated by an iron fence. She first inquired about my living conditions and then tried to persuade me to abandon my belief in the “cult.” She said, Falun Gong has led to broken families, disgrace, and mental illness. I simply interrupted her by saying: I'm not mentally ill. I'm a normal person. I told her about how I was forced to take medicine. The director asked me to promise her that I would change. In return, she would tell the doctor to stop the medicine. But I refused to make any promises.

After the director of the Woman's Federation left, the doctor didn't stop the medicine, but he did reduce the dosage. At the same time, the director told the hospital to prohibit any visits from my relatives or friends.

LIAO:
Why?

CHEN:
Because they were worried that my relatives would find out about how I was being treated, and share it with the public. One day, my sister rode her bike for many miles to see me but she wasn't allowed to come in. So she started to shout my name as loudly as she could. A patient heard her and came to get me. By the time I rushed to the door, the guard had already chased her away.

LIAO:
When did they discharge you from the hospital?

CHEN:
At the end of 2002. A police car came to pick me up at the hospital and then sent me directly to a women's reeducation camp. I had to go through another health checkup and didn't pass. Again, the camp authority didn't want to accept me. The police told them: If she dies, nobody is responsible. Finally, the camp reluctantly admitted me.

LIAO:
What happened later?

CHEN:
One day, while we were out working in the wheat field, I escaped. After the camp authorities found out about it, they didn't even bother to send anyone to catch me. I figured they were just happy to get rid of me so they didn't have to bear any responsibility if I died.

Since I got out, I've been able to come to Chengdu and reconnect with more Falun Gong members here. Whenever I have the opportunity, I will secretly distribute Falun Gong pamphlets to as many households as I can. This morning, I walked for about twelve kilometers and dropped several hundred pamphlets inside residential buildings in the area. I still have some left and will finish these by the end of the day.

LIAO:
How long did you stay inside the reeducation camp?

CHEN:
I was sentenced to two years. I had two more months left before I escaped.

LIAO:
Why did you bother to run away?

CHEN:
I was worried they might change their mind and not let me go on my release date, on the grounds that I hadn't given up on my faith.

LIAO:
I used to think that if every Chinese followed the principles of truth, benevolence, and tolerance, as preached by Teacher Li, we would totally resign ourselves to oppression. The Communist Party could rule this country unopposed forever. I guess I'm wrong.

THE ILLEGAL BORDER CROSSER

Unlike thousands of Chinese who hire smugglers to help them escape to the West, the forty-four-year-old Li Yifeng takes a different route. In the past several years, he has made several failed attempts to sneak across the border on his own, first to Myanmar and then to Hong Kong. He said he was a born border crosser.

Our interview took place recently at a teahouse near the Fu River in Mianyang city, Sichuan. Li had just been released from a detention center in the southern city of Shenzhen.

LIAO YIWU:
Where did you get this adventurous spirit?

LI YIFENG:
I inherited the adventurous spirit from my father. My father was born in the late 1940s. He grew up in a small river town in the eastern part of Sichuan. As a kid, he used to sit alone by the side of the river and watch boats come and go. My mother told me that he would constantly ask himself questions such as: What's it like to be at the other end of the river? What's it like at the other end of the earth?

My father did very well in school and went to college. After graduation, he was assigned a job at the provincial cultural department. That was the place where educated folks worked. But when those educated folks got together, they began to talk about strange and subversive ideas, such as democracy or escaping to a foreign land. No wonder Chairman Mao never trusted intellectuals and initiated one campaign after another to purge them from the Communist ranks. Anyhow, the idea of traveling to foreign countries stayed with my father. Since Chinese were not allowed to move freely at that time, he began to explore the possibilities of illegal border crossing. His first experience was in 1962, when my mother was still pregnant with me. He left for the northwestern province of Xinjiang, home to the Uyghur and Kazakh ethnic groups. You probably would say that people were desperate to leave China in 1962 because of the famine. I don't think my father did it solely for that reason; he did it to satisfy his curiosity. After he arrived in Xinjiang, he picked up some odd jobs and waited for his opportunity. Eventually he moved to a small town which bordered the then Soviet Union, and started his cross-border adventure there. But luck wasn't on his side. He was caught. When the Chinese border police interrogated him, he pretended to be deaf and mute. The police mistakenly thought he was a member of the ethnic Kazakhs. They didn't shoot him for fear of exacerbating ethnic tensions. Instead, they detained him for several months. Upon his release, he moved back to Sichuan.

He then stayed with my mom for a few weeks until he became restless again. So one day he just disappeared. After he left, my mom moved in with her parents. Later on, my mom received a letter from him, saying that he was heading south to Shenzhen. In those days, Shenzhen was only a small fishing village bordering Hong Kong. Since the land border was heavily guarded, a local guide told him to sneak across via water. So my dad hid in the tall grass near the beach for a whole day. When night fell, he came out of the hiding place, jumped into the water and swam as fast as he could to the free world of Hong Kong. That crazy old man! After he had swum in the water for over a hundred meters, the guards detected him with the patrol lights. They began shooting at him. He got so scared he made his way back to the beach, where a group of border guards were waiting for him. They beat him and tied him up with a rope. Then he was arrested and sentenced to twenty years in jail.

In the Mao era, China was isolated from the rest of the world. Sneaking out to a foreign country was considered a cardinal sin, a crime so serious most ordinary people would not even dare think about it. My dad was quite unusual.

LIAO:
What were the charges against him?

LI:
They charged him with the crimes of betraying the motherland and engaging in counterrevolutionary activities. At the time of his arrest, I was still in my mother's womb. She carried me to visit my dad in prison and brought divorce papers for him to sign. Sadly, that was the kind of family I was born into. Do you remember an American movie called
Paris, Texas
? It tells the story of a guy who was unable to remember his past. He decided to find Paris, a city in the state of Texas, where his parents had supposedly met and made love. Since he was probably conceived during that encounter, the man was under the illusion that locating Paris, Texas, would bring back the memories of his past. To him, the city symbolized the perfect place where good things happened. So he abandoned his family and wandered around the country in search of that city. His journey was a precondition, a basic instinct and desire born from his blood. My father had such desires. So do I. The difference is that he paid a much heftier price. I'm lucky because things have changed. Nowadays, there are so many illegal border crossers. The government has problems stemming the trend. Penalties against us are not as harsh.

LIAO:
The motives you just listed aren't too convincing. As far as I know, most Chinese attempt to leave China for economic reasons. They want to go to countries like America to make money. A few of them do it for political reasons. I don't know anyone who escapes China out of the basic instinct of a wanderer. Do you realize you are betraying your homeland?

LI:
I always carry memories of my homeland in a bag: a couple of Chinese books, including a collection of Chinese poems, a Chinese dictionary, and pictures of some beautiful Chinese women. I understand the fact that if you have money, you can emigrate or travel to a foreign country via proper legal channels. But, sadly, I don't have money. Even if I did, I wouldn't want to go through various complicated channels or fill out all sorts of forms. I want to go wherever I want, and whenever I want. Writer Ai Wu's
Journey to the South
serves as my textbook. In the book, he describes how he impulsively left China in the 1940s and journeyed to Myanmar. He didn't tell anyone or go through any authorities. He just went like that. In my view, Ai Wu is the Jack Kerouac of China.

LIAO:
Are you saying that you went to Myanmar to follow the steps of Ai Wu?

LI:
Damn right. I picked Myanmar because of that book by Ai Wu. Since Myanmar is a Buddhist country, I figured that people would be nicer than the Chinese. Most important, going to Myanmar is not that difficult. If you follow the China–Myanmar highway, which starts in a small town called Ruli in the southwestern province of Yunnan, you can easily reach the border town of Mangshi. So, on that particular trip, there were three of us: me posing as a journalist, another guy claiming to be an official from Wulong County, and the third one, a former monk. So we put our money together and decided to go as a group. Through the former monk, we found a one-armed guide from Myanmar. His name was Yeshan. He was a monk. His job was to help those who wanted to enter Myanmar for a fee. At over 1.8 meters, he stood tall among us, and his yellow
kasaya
glimmered in the hot sun. We followed him for three days and covered over a hundred kilometers of mountain road. Since we could only walk at night, we were exhausted.

LIAO:
When did this happen?

LI:
That was in the summer of 1989.

LIAO:
That was right after the government crackdown on the pro-democracy movement in Beijing. Many student leaders were on the run. You didn't do it for political reasons, did you?

LI:
Not me. I'm not sure about the other two. But I doubt it. I was planning to find a job in Myanmar's capital city of Yangon and then look for some business opportunities there. If that didn't work out, my plan B was to join the triad in the Golden Triangle area. I wouldn't have minded smuggling opium. The profit was huge. So I was really motivated. The first part of the trip went smoothly. We didn't encounter any soldiers on the way. Then, on the morning of the fourth day, Yeshan patted me on my shoulder and said in his broken Chinese: You already inside Myanmar now. My job done. Goodbye. We were stunned. You can't leave us like this, screamed the “county official” who reacted faster than the others. He grabbed the monk's sleeve and said: All we see is this mountain. Heaven knows if this is Myanmar or not.

The “official” was right. It was so quiet. We were standing on the edge of a horseshoe-shaped ridge. We could vaguely see a river in the distance through the waist-deep bushes and grass. There was no way to tell whether we had entered Myanmar or not.

The three of us grabbed Yeshan and begged him not to leave us there. When the pleading didn't work, I took out a pocketknife to threaten him. Yeshan became very angry with us. He swung that arm of his at me and pushed me to the ground. The knife flew right out of my hand. That guy knew martial arts and none of us was his match. After he kicked our butts, Yeshan tossed the water bottles and the raw rice to us, pointed at a river down the mountain, and said in that broken Chinese again, Follow river and you no get lost. Make sure stay away from the Maoist guerrillas.

With those words, Yeshan walked away in big strides, his
kasaya
flying in the morning breeze like a sail. A couple of minutes later, he disappeared in the bushes. Things became so quiet. We got up and brushed the dirt from our pants. The “official” recommended that we go down the mountain at night, but both the former monk and I protested. Since we had already seen some rice paddies and houses in the distance, I figured that we were far away from the border and should be safe from the Chinese border police. There was really no need to do the night walk again.

After debating back and forth, I won. The three of us decided to walk on. We would go down the mountain at twenty meters apart. In this way, if one got into trouble, the others would have time to escape. I volunteered to go at the front. At the beginning, I could hear the footsteps of my friends behind me. Gradually, I could only hear the sound of my own footsteps. So I turned around and called out softly: Hey, hey, are you there? There was no answer. I then crouched down and walked back a little bit, hoping to find my fellow team members. I looked around and couldn't see anybody. Soon, exhaustion started to catch up with me. It was still early in the morning and not too hot. I lay down in the bushes. At first, I tried to stay awake. But soon I was sound asleep. At about noontime, I was awakened by the ants, which were huge in Myanmar. I jumped up and was sweating all over. The ants stuck to my neck like a bracelet. I smashed them with my palms, while continuing my way down. I was hoping to find a local who could help me out.

LIAO:
Do you know the local language? How would you communicate with the locals if you ran into one?

LI:
People living in the border areas can normally speak a little Chinese because there were lots of cross-border trading activities going on. Also, in the late 1960s, during the Cultural Revolution, many Red Guards crossed the border to support the rebel forces in Myanmar, with the intent of exporting Mao's ideas and engaging in a worldwide Communist revolution. In other words, the locals were used to the presence of Chinese. I was told that locals wouldn't feel alarmed and call the border police if they saw a Chinese. Since the Chinese currency was accepted in the area, one could easily move around without problems.

LIAO:
Sounds like you had done some thorough research before the trip. Didn't you tell me that you took these risky adventures simply because you preferred the lifestyle of a wanderer? But now you say you snuck across to be an opium smuggler.

LI:
Well, I think it's a combination of both. On the other hand, what's wrong with leaving China for economic reasons? If a large number left China now, the Chinese population would be reduced and the government wouldn't have to shoulder a heavy burden of feeding that many people. If I were to make a policy recommendation to the central government, I would suggest we cut a swath of land through Mongolia and Russia, and build a highway directly to Europe. After the highway is completed, there is no need to advertise it. People would leave the country in droves.

LIAO:
OK, OK, stop your grand ideas for a moment. Where were we just now?

LI:
We were talking about walking in a jungle in Myanmar. Damn it, it was so scary because I couldn't find a regular mountain path. So I crawled and stumbled around in the bushes. I then checked my watch and realized that six hours had already passed. If things had gone right, I should have been close to the foot of the mountain. But I looked around and couldn't see anything, not even the Myanmar River, which I was supposed to follow. I fumbled forward and found a hidden path among the thick bushes. I was overjoyed. So I took the path and kept walking. A few minutes later, I noticed that the surroundings looked very familiar. I soon realized that I had somehow walked a circle and came to the spot where I had started six hours earlier.

As I was stuck there in the middle of the jungle, can you guess what I was thinking? The jungle reminded me of an old Chinese movie,
Bells Ringing Inside the Mountain.
The movie was about how the Chinese army fought gangsters and robbers in that region. I wish I could meet some gangsters on horses. I couldn't see shit. Looking back, it was kind of strange for me to be thinking of an old movie that I had seen twenty years before. Oh well. I sat down and pondered my next move. Then I heard a deep human voice: “Freeze.” The sound sent cold shudders down my spine. My hair stood on end.