letter from beijing enemy of the

The complicated life of an idealist. by jianying zha

eijing Second Prison is on the out- my purse and cell phone in a locker, pre- test-launched, which was supposed to be skirts of the city for which it is sent my documents, and wait to be called. able to hit Alaska; in the last paragraph, named,B and you can drive past the drab The guards recognize me but maintain a Jianguo’s trial was reported. I was aston- compound without ever noticing it. It’s professional remoteness. I’m visiting my ished and outraged, and, as his little sis- set about a tenth of a mile off the high- brother, Zha Jianguo, a democracy activ- ter, I was fiercely proud as well: Jianguo’s way, and when I visit I usually have to tell ist serving a nine-year sentence for “sub- act of subversion was to have helped start the cabdriver about the exit on the left, verting the state.” an opposition party, the China Democ- because it’s easy to miss. The first thing Jianguo was arrested and tried in the racy Party (C.D.P.). It was the first time you see, after the turnoff, is a heavy, dun- summer of 1999, and I remember with in the history of the People’s Republic of colored metal gate framed by a white perfect clarity the moment I learned what China that anyone had dared to form tiled arch, and then the guards standing had happened. I was standing in the and register an independent party. Jian- in front with long-barrelled automatic kitchen of a friend’s country house, out- guo and his fellow-activists had done so weapons. Electrified wires are stretched side Montreal, drinking a cup of freshly openly, peacefully. Now they were going taut along the top of the outer wall; it’s a made coffee, and glancing at a story on to prison for it. maximum-security facility. Inside the the front page of the local newspaper. It My first visits, seven years ago, were waiting room, adjoining the gate, I stow was about a missile that China had just particularly arduous. I had to obtain spe- jianying xu wenli zha;courtesy courtesy

Above, Jianguo (age thirteen), with Jianying (age five), a younger brother, Jianming, and their mother. Opposite, Jianguo on a Hong Kong magazine cover from 1999: “Zha Jianguo and Gao Hongming”—a fellow-organizer—“are sentenced heavily.”

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TNY—2007_04_23—PAGE 47—133SC..—live art r16136_RD cial permits each time, and during our single file, from those buildings to the might be able to leave China on medical thirty-minute meetings Jianguo and I interview room. parole, and I asked him many times if he were flanked by two or three guards, in- These days, I’m just another visiting would consider it. He wouldn’t. “I will cluding an officer in charge of “special” relative, and, though the phones are mon- not leave China unless my freedom of re- prisoners. I was shocked by how changed itored, the guards have long ago lost in- turn is guaranteed,” he insisted. I have Jianguo was from when I’d last seen him, terest in watching my brother and me. stopped asking. Jianguo repeatedly men- two years earlier. It wasn’t just his pris- Time passes quickly. Jianguo and I often tions the predicament of exiled Chinese oner’s crewcut and uniform of coarse chat like two old friends who haven’t in the West, who, in the post- cotton, vertical white stripes on gray; his seen each other in a while. I start by in- Tiananmen era, have lost their political eyes were rheumy and infected, his quiring after his health and general con- effectiveness. “Once they leave Chinese hands and face were swollen, and his dition, then report some news about rel- soil, their role is very limited,” Jianguo fingernails were purple, evidently from atives or friends. After that, we might says. But how politically effective is it to poor circulation and nutrition. We sat talk about the books he’s read recently or sit in a tiny cell for nine years—especially on opposite sides of a thick Plexiglas discuss something in the news, such as when most of your countrymen don’t panel and spoke through handsets— the war in Iraq or Beijing’s preparation even know of your existence? they were an incongruous Day-Glo yel- for the 2008 Olympics. Sometimes we That’s something I’ve never had the low, like a toy phone you’d give a child. even exchange carefully phrased opin- heart to bring up. The mainland Chinese Our exchanges, in those days, seemed ions on China’s political situation. Fi- press didn’t report the 1999 C.D.P. fraught with urgency and significance. nally, I make a shopping list. Each roundup, so few people in China ever After the first few visits, I also met with month, a prisoner is allowed about eighty knew what had happened. Outside the warden, who turned out to be a yuan in spending money (about ten dol- China, there was some media coverage surprisingly cordial young man. (“You lars) and a hundred and fifty yuan of at the time, and some protests from expected a green-faced, long-toothed extra food if a visiting relative buys it at human-rights groups, but the incident monster, didn’t you?” he said to me, smil- the prison shop; this is for security rea- was soon eclipsed by the Falun Gong ing.) We discussed various issues re- sons, but it also provides a source of in- story. After almost eight years of incar- garding Jianguo’s health. Within weeks, come for the prison. Jianguo often asks ceration, Jianguo is unrepentant, reso- he granted my two main requests. Jian- me to buy a box of cookies. Another pris- lute, and forgotten. guo was taken out of the prison in a van oner, who is serving a ten-year sentence with armed guards to a good city hospi- for being a “Taiwanese spy,” has been ianguo is the older of two sons my fa- tal, where he received a medical check- teaching him English. The man’s wife ther had from his first marriage. He up, and he was moved from a noisy cell left him, and no one comes to visit. Ap- wasJ seven when my father divorced his with eleven murderers to a less crowded, parently, he really likes the cookies. mother and married mine. Although my quieter cell. In the first couple of years, I kept ask- father had custody of Jianguo, the eight Four years ago, I moved back to Bei- ing Jianguo whether he was ever beaten years that separated us meant that my jing, where I write for Chinese maga- or hurt in any way. “I’m on pretty good childhood memories of him are mostly zines and work for an academic insti- terms with all the officers,” he would tell dim. As was the fashion at the time, he tute; the monthly trip to Beijing Second me. “They are just following orders, but went to a boarding school and came Prison has become a routine. I try to they all know why I got here, and they’ve home only on Sundays. He remained a make conversation with the officer at the never touched me. My cellmates have gangly, reticent figure hovering at the “book desk,” where you can leave read- fights among themselves but never with edge of our family life. ing material for the prisoner you’re visit- me. They all kind of respect me.” He told Divorce was uncommon in China at ing; he excludes whatever he deems “in- me that the jailers let it drop when he re- the time, and no doubt it cast a shadow appropriate.” Anything political is likely fused to answer if he was addressed as fan on Jianguo’s childhood. My mother re- to be rejected, although a collection of ren (or “convict”) So-and-So; he objects calls that, when Jianguo slept in the essays by Václav Havel got through: the to the title because he doesn’t believe that house, she sometimes heard him sobbing officer peered at the head shot of the he committed a . He has also re- under his quilt. In letters written from gloomy foreigner, but didn’t know who fused to take part in the manual work prison, he described those weekends as he was. that all prisoners in his unit are supposed “visiting someone else’s home” and said The so-called “interview room” is a to do: packing disposable chopsticks and that he “felt like a Lin Daiyu”—referring bland, tidy space, with rows of sky-blue similar chores. to the tragic heroine in the Chinese clas- plastic chairs along the Plexiglas divider; A family friend told me that Jianguo sic “The Dream of the Red Chamber,” you can see a well-tended garden out- who, orphaned at a young age, has to live side, with two heart-shaped flower beds. in her uncle’s house and compete with Farther away, there’s a row of buildings, her cousins for love and attention. But gray concrete boxes, where the inmates his mother, whom I call Aunt Zhong, live and work. (They’re allowed out- says that Jianguo was ambitious from a doors twice a week, for two-hour peri- very young age. When she first told him ods of open-air exercise.) You can even the story of Yue Fei, a legendary general see the unit captain lead the prisoners, in of the Song dynasty who was betrayed

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TNY—2007_04_23—PAGE 48—133SC.—live spot art r16152C, pls inspect and report on quality and died tragically, Jianguo looked up at her with tears in his eyes, and said, “But I’m still too young to be a Yue Fei!” She was startled. “I didn’t expect him to be- come a Yue Fei!” she told me. She probably expected him to be- come a scholar. After all, the boy was surrounded not by military men but by academics and artists. My father was a philosopher. Aunt Zhong is an opera scholar and librettist from a distinguished intellectual family; her father was a uni- versity vice-president, her mother a painter who studied with the famous master Qi Baishi. In another letter from prison, Jianguo described those primary- school years as “uneventful,” aside from a vivid memory he has of a great sum- mer storm that struck while he walked “How dare you—in a straitjacket, no less—psychoanalyze me.” back to school one Sunday afternoon. In heated language, he recalled how he fought the wind and the downpour all •• the way, how he was drenched, alone in the deserted streets, but, oh, the awe- rocks at me and even left human excre- told me. “He just kept yelling ‘Goodbye, some beauty of the thunder and light- ment on our balcony. But Jianguo thrived Chairman Mao!’ The Cultural Revolu- ning and the ecstasy he felt when he amid the social turmoil, and became a tion really poisoned his mind.” finally reached the school gate, the feel- leader of a Red Guard faction at his Millions of urban youngsters went to ing he had of having beaten the mon- school. He seldom came home. When the countryside in those days, but not all strous storm all by himself! he did, he dressed in full Red Guard of them were true believers: some felt Jianguo was also a voracious reader fashion: the faded green Army jacket pressure to show proper “revolutionary and a brilliant Go player. At the age of and cap, the Mao button on the shirt enthusiasm,” while others went because fourteen, he was accepted to an élite pocket, the bright-red armband. He was there were no jobs in the cities. Most of boarding middle school in Beijing, tall and broad-shouldered, and, with his them, shocked by the poverty and back- receiving the top score in his class in manly good looks, he seemed to me wardness of rural life, became disillu- the entrance exam. Yet he felt restless. larger than life. I was shy and tongue- sioned. And as the fever of the Cultural School life was confining, and he dis- tied in his presence. Revolution waned, in the mid-nineteen- liked the petty authorities he had to con- Two years later, in 1968, Jianguo left seventies, many returned home, getting tend with. During this period, he began for Inner Mongolia with a group of other factory jobs or going to university, which to worship Mao Zedong. He read Mao’s Red Guards. He was answering Chair- in those days depended not on your exam biography closely and tried to imitate his man Mao’s call for the educated city results but on your connections and po- example: taking cold showers in win- youth to transform China’s poor coun- litical record. ter, reading philosophy, and pondering tryside. My parents held a going-away Jianguo wasn’t among them. Dur- the big questions of politics and soci- party for him: I remember the din of a ing the seven years he spent on a farm in ety, which he debated with a group of houseful of Red Guards talking, laugh- Inner Mongolia, he had served as the vil- friends. His first political act was to write ing, and eating, my mother boiling pot lage head and was popular among peas- a letter to the school administration at- after pot of noodles, my father sitting si- ants. He was a good farmhand. He could tacking the rigidity of the curriculum lently in his study watching the teen- drink as much baijiu, the hard northern and certain “bourgeois sentiments” it en- agers as though in someone else’s house, liquor, as the locals could. He had mar- shrined. This was something that Jian- and Jianguo, seventeen years old, hold- ried a former Beijing schoolmate and guo is still proud of: even before the Cul- ing court like a young commander on the Red Guard, who stayed on because of tural Revolution, he had challenged the eve of battle. He invited his friends to him, and they were making a life for system, alone. take whatever they liked from my father’s themselves in the countryside. The vil- My own sheltered childhood ended library; many books were “borrowed,” in- lagers ignored whatever “revolutionary with the Cultural Revolution. My par- cluding my mother’s favorite novel, “Ma- initiatives” Jianguo tried to introduce, ents were denounced as “stinking intel- dame Bovary,” never to be returned. but his personality—honest, warm, gen- lectuals” and “counter-revolutionaries.” Aunt Zhong went to the railway erous—won him their affection. Our house was ransacked. Under the station to see him off. When the train In 1976, Mao died, the Cultural Rev- new policy, I went to a nearby school of started leaving, she waved at her son. olution ended, and Jianguo’s daughter was workers’ children, some of whom threw “But he acted as if I wasn’t there,” she born. Jianguo named her Jihong (“Inher-

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TNY—2007_04_23—PAGE 49—133SC..—live opi art a11984. iting Red”). The next few years were crit- shine to the bright young Beijinger. Then for me there looked like all the other ical in China: Deng Xiaoping began to Jianguo criticized one of Batu’s policy di- local peasants hawking melons and po- steer the country toward reform and rectives, which he saw as disastrous for tatoes from the back of their oxcarts. He greater openness. The university entrance the peasants, and even took Batu to task was dressed like a peasant, spoke with a exam, which had been suspended for in front of a crowded cadre assembly. Ji- local accent, and had even developed more than a decade, was reinstated; I was anguo lost his post and was placed under a habit of squatting. His torpid move- among those who took the exam and investigation. Condemned as a “running ments suggested years of living in a re- went to university, a welcome change dog of the Gang of Four,” he was locked mote backwater where nothing much from the farmwork to which I’d been con- up in solitary confinement, allowed to ever happened. signed. But Jianguo seemed stuck in the read only books by Marx, Lenin, and It was early 1989 when Jianguo’s wife earlier era. He framed a large portrait of Mao. Two years later, Batu left the county finally prevailed on him to move back to Mao with black gauze and hung it on a for a higher position, and Jianguo was re- Beijing. She was a practical woman, and wall of his home; he would sit in front of leased. He was given various low-level she wasn’t reconciled to a life of rural it for hours, lost in thought. His wife later posts, and was never promoted. squalor. She was the one who, driven by told me that Jianguo spent two years In 1985, when I was a graduate stu- poverty, sewed Jianguo’s last piece of Red grieving for Mao. dent in comparative literature at Colum- Guard memorabilia, a faded red flag Jianguo eventually took a job with the bia University, I went to visit him. After bearing the guards’ logo, into a quilt county government of his rural outpost, an eighteen-hour ride on a hard-seated cover. Now she was determined not to let working for the local party secretary, a train from Beijing, I arrived at a dusty their daughter grow up a peasant. For Ji- Mongolian named Batu, who took a little county station. The man waiting anguo, however, their return marked a humiliating end of a twenty-year mis- sion. The idea of bringing revolution to the countryside had turned out to be a fantasy. He changed nothing there. It changed him. Four months after Jianguo’s return to Beijing, students started marching on Tiananmen Square. Going to the square each day, listening to the speeches and the songs, watching a new generation of student rebels in action—for Jianguo, it was a profoundly moving experience. Twenty years earlier, the Red Guards’ god was Mao. Now the idealistic kids in blue jeans and T-shirts had erected a new statue: the Goddess of Democracy. I was living in Beijing at the time and visited the square daily. Jianguo said lit- tle when we met, though he was evi- dently in turmoil. One afternoon, I asked him to join me while I visited a friend who was active in the protests. Outside on the square, my friend greeted me warmly and invited me to come inside the tent where a group of student leaders were meeting, but when Jianguo fol- lowed me he frowned and barred him: “No, not you!” I explained that the man was my brother. My friend looked in- credulous. Here, in his native city, Jian- guo stood out as a country bumpkin. And, in 1989, the democracy activists were members of an urban élite. My friend’s snobbery must have driven home the message to Jianguo: Stand aside. This is not your revolution. Soon, it was nobody’s revolution. What happened to the Tiananmen pro- testers on June 4th showed what awaited

TNY—2007_04_23—PAGE 50—133SC.—live opi art A11786. those who openly challenged the system. “Good thing you’re still here,” I said can you beat the Communist Party? After the massacre, all government min- as I got into the car, “or I’d have had a Only by armed struggle!” isters were required to demonstrate loy- long walk to the bus stop.” “That’s an interesting idea,” I said, alty to the Party by visiting the few hospi- “I was waiting for you,” he said sim- taken aback and trying to hide it. “But talized soldiers—“heroes in suppressing ply, and started the engine. then China would be in a war. It would the counter-revolutionary riot.” The nov- I told him my city address. “Thirty make for bloody chaos.” elist Wang Meng, who was then the yuan,” he said. I agreed, and we were on “That would be great!” the driver Minister of Culture, got out of it by claim- our way. At the end of the long asphalt said. ing ill health and checking into a hospital road, the car turned right, onto a wider I was appalled. “If that happened, himself. He was promptly removed from street, passing enormous mounds of don’t you worry that the biggest victims office. construction material. In the distance, a would be ordinary people?” During the spring demonstrations, line of silos was silhouetted against the “The ordinary people are the biggest reporters for the People’s Daily had held horizon. Though we were just a forty- victims already!” the driver replied, his up a famous banner on the street: “We minute drive from the city, everywhere face mottled with fury. “You look at this don’t want to lie anymore!” It was a rare you looked there were old factories, low city—at what kind of life the officials moment of collective courage. Two piles of rubble, industrial-waste dumps, and the rich people have, and what kind months later, they were forced to lie half-deserted farm villages on the brink of shitty life we have.” again. A journalist at the newspaper de- of being bulldozed and “developed.” The During the next ten minutes, while scribed to me how the campaign to purge farm I’d been sent to work on when I navigating traffic on Chang’an Avenue, was conducted there: meetings was in my late teens was just a few miles the driver told me about himself. He were held at every section, and everybody away. had worked in the same state plant for had to attend. Each employee was re- I was in my usual post-visit mood: more than twenty years, first as a ma- quired to give a day-by-day account of tired and unsociable. I closed my eyes, chine operator, later as a truck driver. his activities during the Tiananmen pe- and drowsed until a sharp horn woke Then, a few years ago, the plant went riod, and then to express his attitude to- me. When I opened my eyes, there were bankrupt and shut down. All the work- ward the official verdict. “Every one of us cars everywhere: we had got off the ex- ers were let go with only meagre sever- did this—no one dared to say no,” he pressway and had entered the maw of ance pay. said, recalling the scene seventeen years downtown traffic. We were hardly mov- “But they must give you partial med- later. “Can you imagine how humiliating ing. It was about four o’clock, the begin- ical insurance,” I said. I was thinking it was? We were crushed, instantly and ning of rush hour. about three high-school friends with completely.” “You were visiting your brother, whom I’ve stayed in touch over the Among journalists and intellectuals, a weren’t you?” the driver asked. years: all three women were state factory brief interval of exhilaration had given My eyes met the driver’s in the rear- workers now in their forties, all were way to depression and fear. Many with- view mirror. “How did you know?” laid off, but all have since found new drew from public life and turned to pri- “Oh, we know the Second Prison jobs, and are making more money than vate pursuits. (A few, like me, moved to folks pretty well. My father used to before. Two of them even own their the United States or Europe.) Scholars work there. Your brother is a Democ- homes. embarked on esoteric research—hence racy Party guy, right?” “The insurance is a piece of shit!” the the Guoxue Re, the early-nineties craze “You know about them?” driver replied. “It doesn’t cover any- for studying the Chinese classics. A “Oh, yes, they want a multiparty sys- thing. I’m scared of getting sick. If I’m friend of mine, the editor of a magazine tem. How many years did he get?” sick, I’m done for. For twenty years we that had been an influential forum for “Nine. He’s halfway through.” worked for them, and this is how they critical reporting, turned his attention to “Getting any sentence reduction?” got rid of us!” He spat again. “You look cuisine and classical music. Meanwhile, “Nope, because he doesn’t admit to at this city, all these fancy buildings and Jianguo, whose residual faith in the any crime.” restaurants. All for the rich people! Peo- Communist Party and in Mao had per- The driver spat out the window. ple like us can’t afford anything!” ished on June 4th, was adrift, both polit- “What they did is no crime! But it’s use- On both sides of Chang’an Avenue, ically and personally. less to sit in a prison. Is he in touch with new skyscrapers and giant billboards Wuer Kaixi?” stood under a murky sky. When it comes he driver of the gypsy cab was a This gave me a start. Wuer Kaixi was to architecture and design, most of this stocky man with a rugged, weather- a charismatic student leader of Tianan- new Beijing looks like some provincial beatenT face, and wore a cheap, oily- men Square, who, after years of in official’s dream of modernization. It’s looking blazer. He was leaning on a the United States, now lives in Taiwan. clear that there is a lot of money in Bei- Jetta, smoking a cigarette, when I got “No! How could he be?” jing and a great many people are living out of the prison snack shop. On this “But you know some foreigners, better than before. But the gap between particular afternoon, three years ago, I don’t you? You should tell your brother the rich and the poor has widened. I was the last visitor to leave. As soon as to get out, and get together with the wondered whether Jianguo, or someone he saw me, he took one hard draw on folks in America and Taiwan. Most im- like him, could be the kind of leader that the cigarette and flicked it away. portant thing is: get some guns! How people like this aggrieved cabdriver were

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TNY—2007_04_23—PAGE 51—133SC. waiting for. Under the banner of social justice, they could vent their rage against China’s new order. mercury dressing

espite the emotions that the Ti- To steal a glance and, anxious, see ananmen massacre had awakened Him slipping into transparency— inD Jianguo, he had a more pressing mat- The feathered helmet already in place, ter to deal with that year: he had to make Its shadow fallen across his face a living. Legally, Jianguo and his wife (His hooded sex its counterpart)— were “black” persons: they had no resi- Unsteadies the routines of the heart. dential papers, no apartment, no job. If I reach out and touch his wing, Worse still, they had no marketable What harm, what help might he then bring? skills. So for a period they stayed with relatives and took temporary jobs at an But suddenly he disappears, adult-education school that Jianguo’s As so much else has down the years . . . younger brother, Jianyi, had started. Ji- Until I feel him deep inside anguo worked as a janitor, his wife as a The emptiness, preoccupied. bookkeeper. The school was a success, His nerve electrifes the air. mainly because it offered prep courses for His message is his being there. the Test of English as a Foreign Lan- guage. During the chill that followed Ti- —J. D. McClatchy ananmen, studying English was becom- ing ever more popular, and TOEFL was crucial for applying to foreign schools. Ji- ways ended up either quitting the job or gently,” Jianguo wrote. “Yesterday was anyi was growing rich, fast. It was an closing the shop. By the summer of my forty-seventh birthday. Will my re- awkward reversal of roles. The two 1997, the last time I saw him before he maining twenty or thirty years also slip brothers had very different personalities: was arrested, he had filed for bankruptcy away in the blink of an eye?” Now he next to his serious, ambitious, and hard- several times. His personal life was in looked back on his existence: working big brother, Jianyi was always disarray as well. He had divorced his wife My whole life I have had a strong mind but my fate has not been good. Over the past viewed as a baby-faced “hooligan”: he of nearly twenty years and married a few decades I have been fighting this fate, goofed off at school, chased girls, and young, pretty girl from Inner Mongolia clenching my teeth and not crying. I am an squandered his money on dining out and who worked in the soda factory. This idealist. For the ideal of democracy, I quit the Party; for the ideal of freedom, I quit my job, having a good time. But in the new second marriage lasted less than a year, over and again; for the ideal of love, I di- China the free-spending playboy was collapsing as soon as the business did, vorced, over and again. To this day I am, intel- thriving. At first, he’d wanted Jianguo to and Jianguo ended up moving in with his lectually, professionally, financially and emo- tionally, a “vagabond.” . . . The Chinese help him manage the business, but Jian- daughter. market is now in a slump, and the majority of guo declined; he preferred to have more By then, Jihong (“Inheriting Red”) businesses are not doing well. China, too, is time to read and think, and being a jan- had been renamed Huiyi (“Wisdom and floating in wind and storm, not knowing where it is heading. When will there be an op- itor allowed for that. “He is always inter- Pleasure”). The girl attended a commu- portunity for people like me to rise up with ested in saving China, but he can’t even nity college, and spent her time reading the flagpole of ? save himself !” Jianyi once said to me pulp romances and chatting with her about Jianguo. I wondered how Jianguo girlfriends. But she was devoted to her Jianguo hadn’t changed, I remember felt about pushing a mop around for his father. When she graduated, in 1998, thinking with a vague sense of foreboding. little brother. she got a job as a front-desk reception- Within the striving, clueless businessman Jianguo didn’t stay on the job long. In ist at the upscale Jinglun Hotel, and was a rebel waiting for a new cause. the following decade, he moved fre- turned over half her salary to him. It was What I did not know was that Jian- quently, from apartment to apartment, clear to both of them, by now, that he guo had already found it. A couple of and from job to job, mainly low-level wasn’t cut out for business. Then, in years earlier, he had met a man named office work. But he seemed to have de- 1998, Jianyi died, of a brain tumor, and Xu Wenli, a former railway electrician cided that he’d spent enough time read- Jianguo inherited his Beijing apartment. and a veteran from the De- ing and thinking; he was eager to try Finally, Jianguo had a place that he mocracy Wall period. That was a brief something bigger. After 1992, when the could call his own. With a home, and political thaw in the late nineteen-seven- society was seized by an entrepreneurial the help of his daughter, he was free to ties, when, on a wall at a busy intersec- fever, Jianguo tried a number of ventures. do what he wanted. tion in the heart of Beijing, people put He got involved in a scheme to buy coal That August, I received a long, wist- up posters, essays, poems, and mimeo- in the north and sell it in the south. He ful letter from Jianguo. Jianyi’s death, at graphed articles, attracting huge crowds set up a factory producing a new licorice the age of forty-four, was obviously a who read and discussed what had been soda. (It tasted like cough syrup.) He ran shock. “He’s gone, and the sense of life’s posted. (In late 1979, the government business-training programs. But he al- bitter shortness presses on me more ur- cracked down, and cleaned it up.) When

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TNY—2007_04_23—PAGE 52—133SC. a friend introduced Jianguo to Xu Wenli, born out by the tenor of post-Tianan- States in the nineties. Yet their book was he had just emerged from a dozen years men Beijing. Over time, a semblance of a scathing critique of the radicals and the in prison. The two men had passionate normalcy returned. Throughout the revolutionaries. Looking back upon the discussions about Chinese politics, but nineteen-nineties, while new market re- past century of Chinese history, Li and at first they also planned to go into busi- forms were launched and people’s ener- Liu observed that attempts to bring ness together. One idea was to start a gies were directed toward the pursuit of about radical change had always resulted car-rental company. They did some wealth, the Party established clear guide- either in disaster or in tyranny. China market surveys, and decided on their lines about which topics could be pub- was too big, its problems too numerous own business titles: Xu would be the licly discussed and which topics could and complex, for any quick fix. Incre- chairman of the board, Jianguo the vice- not (such as the infamous “three Ts”: mental reform, not revolution, was the chairman. In the end, the venture didn’t Tiananmen, Taiwan, and Tibet). As the right approach. In a separate article, Li work out; a loan that Xu was counting economy boomed, the ranks of the edu- also laid out four successive phases of de- on never materialized. cated élite splintered: some plunged into velopment—economic progress, per- In early 1998, the atmosphere in commerce, some—notably the econo- sonal freedom, social justice, political de- China was unusually relaxed—the gov- mists and the applied scientists—built mocracy—that stood between China and ernment was negotiating for member- careers selling their expertise to the full modernity. In other words, achieving ship in the World Trade Organization; government and to corporations. Artists real democracy wasn’t a matter of throw- President Clinton was coming to visit— and scholars scrambled to adapt to the ing a switch. and small groups of dissidents in different marketplace. These were the arguments of two cities decided to take advantage of the Gradually, a tacit consensus emerged, smart, reasonable Chinese with liberal- new mood, moving to form an opposi- which was captured in the title of a book democratic sympathies. And they struck tion party. They settled on the name published in the late nineteen-nineties: a chord with other smart, reasonable Chi- China Democracy Party. Xu assumed “Gaobie Geming” (“Farewell, Revolu- nese who were equally sympathetic to- the title of the chairman of the C.D.P.’s tion”). The book was written by two of ward liberalism but increasingly uncom- Beijing branch, Jianguo that of the vice- the star intellectuals of the previous de- fortable with the idea of radical change. chairman, the two reclaiming their busi- cade, Li Zehou, a philosopher and his- Though the book was published in Hong ness titles for a loftier cause. With pecu- torian, and Liu Zaifu, a literary critic. Kong, it gave voice to a subtle reconfig- liar daring, or naïveté, the officers of the Both men had been hugely influential uration in the attitude of mainland élites C.D.P. decided to do everything openly: figures during the movements that led during the nineties. they tried to register the party at the civil- up to Tiananmen. Both became in- The new consensus was shaped by a affairs bureau, they posted statements volved with the Tiananmen demonstra- curious combination of trends. Outside and articles on the Internet, they talked tions, and ended up living in the United China, the exiled pro-democracy move- to foreign reporters. For a few months, the government allowed these activities, but, shortly after Clinton’s visit, in June, a crackdown began, and a first wave of arrests and trials took place. Xu Wenli, among others, received a thirteen-year sentence. Jianguo remained free but was followed by four security agents every day. He assumed the title of the party’s executive chairman and carried on: he called meetings and urged the few C.D.P. members who came to stand firm; he posted new statements on the Internet, expressing his political views and demanding the release of Xu Wenli and his other jailed comrades. When the police finally arrested Jianguo, in June of 1999, he had long been ready for them. He had even taken to carrying around a toothbrush.

“ eroic deeds are not appropriate to everyday life,” the Czech dissi- dentH Ludvík Vaculík wrote, in the nine- teen-seventies. “Heroism is acceptable in exceptional situations, but these must not last too long.” Those words were “Oh no, not dinner again!”

TNY—2007_04_23—PAGE 53—133SC.—live opi art A12268 said, and blinked as though I were speak- ing in tongues. “I didn’t know our coun- try still had political prisoners. I thought everyone here got in trouble because of something to do with money.” The last time I saw the C.D.P. men- tioned in a major publication was in March, 2002, in a profile in the New York Times Magazine. The subject of the article was my friend John Kamm, a former American businessman who be- came a full-time campaigner for Chinese prisoners of conscience. The article dis- missed the C.D.P. as “a toothless group of a few hundred members writing es- says mainly for one another.” The line made me wince. The C.D.P. men could take pride in their status as “subverters” of a totalitarian state. And they could “The first thing you need to do is update your résumé.” forgive their countrymen for not rising up with them: they are heroic precisely because most other people are not. But •• how could they face this verdict—of laughable irrelevance—from the Times, ment had foundered, beset by factional- because of their former prison records a symbol of the freedom and democracy ism. Inside China, the tone for public life and their continued refusal to recant or for which they’d sacrificed everything? was Deng Xiaoping’s mantra “No de- compromise. They had the courage of Toothless men writing for one another: bate”—that is, forget ideological deliber- their convictions, and not much else. the words were heartless. They were also ation and focus on economic develop- Some, like Jianguo, had tried to do some- true. And perhaps it didn’t much matter ment. While the technocrats moved to thing “constructive,” and join the entre- that these men were toothless because the politburo and pushed market re- preneurial ferment, but got nowhere. their powerful opponent had rendered forms, the ideologues stayed in the pro- They had, in short, lost their way in the them so; that they were writing only for paganda ministry and tried to muffle new era. each other because in China a message voices of criticism. Meanwhile, the econ- When I first started visiting Jianguo like theirs was not allowed to spread fur- omy kept growing, at breakneck speed. in jail, I could tell, despite his disavowals, ther. I felt like weeping. But I wasn’t sure As China integrated into the interna- how much he cared about the outside whether it was because I was sorry for Ji- tional marketplace, four hundred million world’s response to what he’d done, and anguo or angry at him—for being such a Chinese were lifted out of poverty. A to what had been done to him. So I tried fool. While he sits in his tiny cell, day new affluent class began to emerge in the to tell him every piece of “positive news” after day, year after year, the world has cities and coastal areas, where the younger I could fnd. His eyes would light up, or moved on. generation, reared on the pop culture of he’d assume a look of solemn resolve. consumerism, shied away from politics. My task got harder as the C.D.P. faded “ ou can’t say the world has forgotten As beneficiaries of the boom, they were from the news. In late 2002, Xu Wenli, about him,” John Kamm insisted, generally “pro-China”; nationalist senti- the star dissident, was released on medi- whenY we spoke not long ago. “I haven’t! ments were growing. But “pro-democ- cal parole and was flown to the United I care about what happens to your racy”? It’s unclear whether these young States on Christmas Eve. Afterward, cov- brother!” We were drinking coffee in the people cared enough to give it much erage of the other jailed C.D.P. members lobby café of a Beijing hotel where John thought. largely ceased. was staying during one of his trips to So when Jianguo and his comrades Once, I had a sobering conversation China. formed the China Democracy Party, in with a woman while waiting for the John is, by his own description, “a 1998, they not only failed to grasp the prison interview. She was visiting her human-rights salesman.” Formerly the limits of the government’s tolerance; they younger brother, who had killed another chairman of the American Chamber of failed to take the measure of the national man in a quarrel and had been sentenced Commerce in Hong Kong, he had a lu- mood. For the most part, they lacked to twenty years. “He was in the restau- crative business career, with a chauffeured deep roots in any particular community; rant business and the guy owed him Mercedes, maids, and a condo in a prime they weren’t well educated or connected money,” she explained. “He was young, location. Then, in the mid-nineteen- to the country’s élites; and they had little too rash.” She asked me what my brother nineties, he gave all that up to become an contact with other liberals and reformers. had done. When I told her, she was advocate for political prisoners in China. A few, like Xu Wenli, were marginalized flabbergasted. “Organizing a party?” she Shuttling frequently between Beijing and

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TNY—2007_04_23—PAGE 54—133SC.—live opi art—a12021 Washington, D.C., and meeting with ist” in 1957, she lost her job and labored don’t have anything nice to say about the high-ranking officials on both sides, John in a camp for years. She is now a little lot.” He believed that many Chinese dis- uses everything in his power—hard data, white-haired woman in her seventies, sidents were afflicted with an inflated personal connections, cajoling, name- with a kind smile and swollen, aching self-regard. “It’s a sickness so many of us dropping, bargaining—to make sure that legs. She has no illusions about the Com- are not aware of,” he said. But, Han said, the issue of Chinese political prisoners munist Party, but thinks that change can one should not discuss these things with doesn’t go away. occur only slowly. In her view, the C.D.P. a dissident in prison. “Because to get He’s a big man with a sonorous voice, was “banging an egg against a rock.” She through prison you need to mobilize all earthy humor, and gregarious charm. had tried to talk Jianguo out of his in- your strength, to be self-righteous and He’s also a devout Catholic with a mis- volvement in the C.D.P., by reminding believe that you are a hero,” he said. “You sionary fervor, and his conversation glis- him of his responsibilities to his own fam- need that kind of mental arrogance to tens with Biblical cadences. (“Justice will ily. Jianguo had replied with a classical prop up your spirit. You cannot afford flow down like a river and righteousness saying: “Zhong xiao bu neng liang quan”— self-doubt.” a mighty stream.”) He has been my main “One must choose between loyalty and Aunt Zhong listened to what Han adviser on all questions concerning Jian- filial devotion.” Upset by Jianguo’s obsti- had told me, and accepted the point. She guo and my prison visits, and if Jianguo nacy, she did not visit him for two years promised not to discuss politics again has been treated better than some politi- after his arrest. with Jianguo. “I just hope he will get cal detainees it’s probably because of Her exasperation is reciprocated. Aunt through his term and come out in good John’s efforts. But he acknowledges that Zhong and I once went to visit Jianguo health,” she said, shaking her head. Jianguo’s name has fallen off the annual together. During the interview, we took “After that, maybe we can all have a list of political prisoners compiled by var- turns speaking with him by phone. At one good talk with him. I hope he will ious Western governments and watchdog point, Aunt Zhong started talking about change his way of thinking and not get groups. I once asked John what he would how China was too big a country to back in jail again.” do if he were in Jianguo’s position. John change quickly, how the situation was thought for a moment and told me a story gradually improving and many things he political landscape in China has about what had happened in the late were getting better. I watched Jianguo’s grown more complex since the days nineteen-forties when Bertolt Brecht, face darken steadily, until he said some- ofT the C.D.P. crackdown. After years of then living in the United States, was sub- thing and Aunt Zhong handed the phone rapid growth, China is now the fourth- poenaed by the House Committee on to me. As soon as I got on, Jianguo said in largest economy in the world, poised to Un-American Activities. He agreed to a voice shaking with emotion, “I don’t surpass Germany and Japan before long, testify, assured the committee that he had want to listen to her! She only makes me and widely expected to catch up with the no sympathy for Communism, and was angry!” United States around 2050. It has the thanked for coöperating. Then he flew to After the visit, I told Aunt Zhong highest foreign-currency reserve in the Europe, and ended up in East Berlin, about a conversation I’d had with Han world. The transformation, however, where he doesn’t seem to have given a Dongfang, a workers’-union activist who has been accompanied by endemic cor- second thought to anything he might had been jailed after Tiananmen. When ruption, environmental destruction, a have professed on the stand. “If I was ar- we met, Han had been living in Hong widening income gap, and unravelling rested, I’d do exactly what Brecht did,” Kong for many years, hosting a radio call- social services. The policies of President John told me. “I’d lie to save my ass. Then in show on Chinese labor problems. His Hu Jintao and Premier Wen Jiabao have I’d have a life!” credentials as a dissident were impecca- tempered some of these problems, by I sighed. I consider John, who aban- ble: during his two years in jail, he was eliminating the agricultural tax, paying doned his career to devote himself to the tortured, got violently sick, and nearly more attention to the “weaker commu- plight of strangers in someone else’s died. Refusing to yield, he staged a hun- nities,” and taking measures to curb country, to be an American hero. So, if ger strike. Unlike many Chinese dissi- graft. But there’s a growing sense that even a man like him would do what was dents, though, Han is decidedly urbane deeper accommodations must be made: necessary to stay out of jail, why must my (stylish clothes, fluent English, polite on the one side is a swelling mass of dis- brother be so stubborn? Doesn’t it make manners) and reflective about his past advantaged people who bear the brunt more sense to chip at a wall, little by lit- and his personal weaknesses. He was crit- of social inequity and want more reform tle, than to bash your head against it? ical of Chinese dissidents on the whole, and fairness; on the other is a large body The harshest comments I have heard including himself. “Please don’t get me of mid-level bureaucrats who are in a about Jianguo come from his own mother. started on that topic,” Han told me. “I mercenary alliance with business inter- “It’s not bravery,” she once told me. “It’s ests and resist any structural change. Ev- arrogance and stupidity. He’s had a hero eryone knows that, in the political realm, complex from childhood. The problem is, something will eventually have to give. he’s not a hero. He is a foot soldier who Agitation for political reform has, in wants to be a general, but without the tal- the past four or five years, grown more ent and the skills of a general.” assertive, while taking on more varied Aunt Zhong was a beautiful woman and artful forms: instead of using the when she was young. Purged as a “right- fraught term ren quan (“human rights”),

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TNY—2007_04_23—PAGE 55—133SC.—live spot art r16152D, pls inspect and report on quality for example, people talk about fa zhi whole, the political atmosphere in China ing any action. “Perhaps they were eager (“the rule of law”) and wei quan (“de- really has eased, and people are a little to set a record—to be the first to openly fending civil rights”) to discuss consumer less afraid. In private and in public, Chi- form an opposition party in Communist rights or migrant-labor rights or private- nese discussions of political reform are China,” Xu said. “If that’s what moti- property rights. Each year, there are getting louder. vated them, it’s the sort of human weak- more cases in which journalists expose So Aunt Zhong had a point when she ness I could forgive.” Like Jianguo, Xu corruption, lawyers take up civil-rights told Jianguo that the situation in China had been a Red Guard, and he has writ- suits in court, scholars investigate the is improving. And not everyone has for- ten a candid and moving memoir about “blank spots” of history (the Sino-Japa- gotten the C.D.P. incident. Several of the Cultural Revolution, with soul- nese War, the great famine of 1959-62, my liberal Chinese friends have told me searching reflections on his own youth- the Cultural Revolution), publishers defy that, thanks to men like Jianguo, who ful delusions. He signed a copy for Jian- taboos and print “sensitive” books. From tested “the baseline” with their lives, oth- guo and asked me to bring it to him. Not time to time, a statement or a petition is ers now know exactly how far they can surprisingly, the censor at the prison signed by a group of people, though they push. As one of them, Cui Weiping, put book desk rejected it. usually take pains to present themselves it, “The officials think of us as moderates But Jianguo isn’t an educator, like as an assortment of individuals, rather because of them. They are the reason we Xu. He’s a man of action. The C.D.P. than as an organization. Acts of this na- are not in prison. For this alone we are founders are all men of action, and his- ture tend to be sporadic and spontane- grateful.” Cui, a literary and film critic, tory has not been kind to them. I re- ous, although, with the rapid expansion has translated Havel’s essays into Chi- member something I heard a Chinese of the Internet and international com- nese. She writes publicly about the need C.E.O. once say: “The person who munication, news travels fast, and the to build civil society in order to battle to- takes one step ahead of others is a leader. task of controlling information becomes talitarian culture. She respects men like The person who takes three steps ahead more daunting. On the Chinese Inter- Jianguo but says that “real change will of others is a martyr.” The C.D.P. men net, the voices of criticism are so diverse come from small, ignoble places. Social are martyrs. I used to console myself that censors face the equivalent of a guer- movements, not the élite or lone heroes, with the old Chinese saying “Bu yi rilla war with a thousand fronts. For are going to make history.” chengbai lun yingxiong”—“Do not judge every offender who gets caught and pun- Another prominent liberal figure, Xu a hero by victory or defeat.” Yet Jianguo ished, a hundred get away. These critics Youyu, a philosopher at the Chinese also seems a mulish simpleton, a man can’t be easily located, isolated, and de- Academy of Social Sciences and a force- with a black-and-white vision of poli- stroyed, the way the C.D.P. was. ful advocate of political reform, told me tics, oblivious of all shades of gray, not Meanwhile, globalization has made that he would never make “foolish deci- to mention the rainbow of hues that the government and the leaders more sions” such as those made by the C.D.P. you’d need to paint a semblance of Chi- mindful of their own image. The official founders. “It was stupid in terms of po- nese life today. In other moods, I would talk of “peaceful rising” and “building litical strategy,” he said. Xu, who is well- think of Confucius’ remark about one of a harmonious society” in recent years versed in Western analytical philosophy his disciples, Zilu: “He has daring, but reflects a softer approach in both inter- and liberal theory, emphasizes the im- little else.” national and domestic politics. On the portance of “rational analysis” before tak- Neither attitude seems quite right to me now. I recall a conversation I had with Perry Link, a distinguished China scholar at Princeton, about Wei Jing- sheng. Wei is Jianguo’s personal hero, a legendary figure in the Chinese democ- racy movement. Back in 1978, when he was a twenty-eight-year-old electrician, Wei had the audacity to post essays on the Democracy Wall demanding de- mocratization; Deng Xiaoping, he said, was a dictator. Wei was charged, ab- surdly, with “leaking state secrets,” and sentenced to fifteen years in prison. During his time behind bars, through sickness and periods of solitary con- finement, he never backed away from his views. Once he had been released, he immediately resumed his pro-de- mocracy writing and activities, and was sent back to prison. After serving two years of a fourteen-year sentence, he was “It wasn’t a lie, Senator, it was a larger truth.” freed, ostensibly for “medical reasons,”

TNY—2007_04_23—PAGE 56—133SC—live opi art A12292. and flown to the United States, where he kept up his personal campaign against the Chinese government. The West must not be fooled by its reforms, he warns, for the Communist Party will never change its true nature. What’s cer- tain is that Wei will never change. Over time, many of his early admirers have come to see him as a man with a sim- plistic, static vision of China and the Chinese Communist Party. In fact, the Party appears to be far more agile and adaptive than Wei Jingsheng. I told Perry about my ambivalence to- ward people like my brother and Wei. I admired their courage, their deep sense of justice, but felt uncomfortable with their almost religious sense of self-certainty. “People like Wei Jingsheng are like the North Pole,” he told me. “They are fro- zen, but they define a pole.” Yes, I thought, my brother is frozen, with his unchanging, unchangeable vi- sion of what is to be done. He reduces a •• vast, complicated tangle of problems to a single point source of evil: the Commu- flawed but admirable human being, with Just remember this: your brother is a sim- nist Party. End one-party rule, and the perhaps one striking oddity—his un- ple, old-fashioned, outdated, and stub- evil is eradicated. Even as he is locked up, compromising insistence on upholding born man. Once I make up my mind, I he has locked the world out, refusing to his idealism at any cost. A novelist friend stick to it.” In the past few years, he has listen to anything that disturbs his con- of mine who has listened to me talk lost much of his hair, and a recent attack victions, closing his eyes to a reality rid- about Jianguo over the years once com- of shingles had left some scabs on his den with contradictions, ambiguities, pared him to the creatures she’d seen in forehead, but his face was as serene as I’d and possibilities. For all this, Perry is the 2005 documentary “March of the ever seen it. right: people like Jianguo define a pole. Penguins.” “The penguins are silly, laugh- With a year and a half to go, Jianguo And, of course, those who locked him able creatures—they are fat, they waddle, has started talking about how many up are on the wrong side of history. Liu they fall on their belly, and they are sin- books he’d like to finish reading. “Re- Ge, a friend who is a partner at an illus- gle-minded,” she said. “But when they ally, it’s not bad here,” he assured me re- trious Beijing law firm, likes to remind are in the water they are beautiful! What cently. “I’ll get out in 2008, and if you me of this. “All the countries that have your brother does politically is absurd, are in Beijing then we’ll watch the succeeded in modernization have a mul- but his idealism and his courage in their Olympics together.” We spoke about tiparty system, while those sticking to purity are beautiful.” several of our Shanghai cousins, all suc- one-party rule are losers,” Liu said. “De- Maybe the question of whether Jian- cessful businessmen and lawyers. “I’m mocracy makes a country win and dicta- guo is a hero or a fool is beside the point. very happy they do well in their busi- torship makes a country lose. The rulers Above and beyond the consequences of ness,” Jianguo said. “But each person has today want to make China better, and his action is the moral meaning of his ac- his own goal. To achieve democracy in they have done a lot of things well, but tion. By keeping his promise to himself, a country, some people must offer their they cannot face their ugly past, how he has fulfilled his own vision of a righ- blood and lives in the struggle. Look at they turned China into a place with a teous life, his own sense of purpose. Dur- South Korea, or Taiwan: there had been hundred holes and a thousand wounds, ing one of my prison visits, I mentioned so many crackdowns, so many prisoners. the Cultural Revolution, the Great Leap that a former classmate of Jianguo’s, an But, wave after wave, individuals rose Forward, and so on. So they are not expert on rural issues, had just won a pres- up. They gave their lives to pave the way confident enough to take radical critics tigious official award. “That’s good,” Jian- to their democracy.” like your brother.” guo replied. “He helps the reform from His eyes were intent, his gestures ex- Gradually, though, I have come to within the system. I’m outside the system. pansive; for a moment, you could tell, he feel a certain degree of impatience with There are a lot of big intellectuals who can had even forgotten that he was in prison. the impulse to see Jianguo mainly help reform with their knowledge. I don’t “China is a huge country,” he went on. through the lens of Chinese politics. I’d have enough systematic education to do “We have 1.3 billion people. We ought rather see my brother not as an integer in that. But people like us have a role to play, to have at least a few men who are will- the realm of political calculation but as a too.” He smiled at me. “Character is fate. ing to do this.” 

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