The Corpse Walker: Real Life Stories: China From the Bottom Up (27 page)

During that whole week, we were told the crematorium was abnormally busy. Bodies were being sent in nonstop. One guy working there said he had to work three shifts. When we got there, there was a long line. But the guy told us we didn't have to wait in line because there was a special order from the Party, saying that the bodies of college students were on the priority list. I guess the government didn't want the bodies of innocent students lying around. They could easily arouse sympathy from the public and contradict its statement that no students had been killed. So we were moved out of the line and through a back door. At the registration desk, an older man behind the window was busy writing. When I handed him Guofeng's papers, he didn't even raise his head and began to copy information. I was worried that he might make a mistake. So I said: Sir, Sir! Do you have any questions? He waved his hands impatiently and said: Just stop pestering me, OK? I haven't slept for two days. I don't even have time to take a shit. Don't worry. I won't mess up. After the registration, we went to buy a wooden box to hold Guofeng's ashes. Guess what? The boxes were gone pretty fast. As my wife and I were discussing whether to pick a dragon design, a couple more were snatched by eager customers. Seeing that, we stopped our discussion and grabbed one right away and paid for it. Just to show you how weird it was.

LIAO:
Despite the hectic situation at the crematorium, the government media still blasted out announcements denying that there had been any killings.

WU:
Anyhow, we waited for several hours before we got the ashes. On June 16, we got on the train and returned to Xinjing on June 18. We set up a wake at our house, with Guofeng's picture and ash box on an altar. We also set up a memorial tent on the street. Relatives and friends came from all over to offer their condolences. On the fourth day, the township government sent an official over, asking me to stop the wake and disassemble everything. When I refused, he said to me: In the next two days, many village officials will be in town to hear important announcements by Deng Xiaoping and the Central Party Committee on the crackdown. Those hicks don't know shit about what's going on in Beijing. But when they are in town I don't want them to see the memorial tent. Your son's death contradicts what is contained in the official announcement. It could be a bad influence on those hicks. I know you are quite stubborn. It will get you into more trouble if you disobey the order. I thought about his words for a few minutes and then offered a compromise. I decided to dismantle the tent on the street, but insisted on keeping the memorial stuff intact at my own house. I knew many of Guofeng's high school friends were returning home for the summer holidays and would want to come visit. The township government agreed.

After the wake, I didn't bury his ashes. I kept the box at my own house. I believed that unless the verdict on June 4 was reversed, his spirit wouldn't rest in peace. But in 2002, Guofeng's little brother also died. Out of despair, I buried them together on the top of a mountain nearby.

LIAO:
How did his younger brother die?

WU:
His brother, the youngest in the family, was very considerate and thoughtful. After his elder brother, the future pillar of the family, died, he began to shoulder the responsibility of taking care of the whole family. He rose early and worked long hours to make money. He thought that if the family's financial situation was improved, the pain of losing his elder brother could be eased. Who could have known that the God in heaven was not on his side? Long hours of working damaged his health. Soon, he was diagnosed with uremia. I cobbled together all our savings and the money collected by Professor Ding from people in the U.S. to pay for his hospital bills. In the end, we still couldn't save him.

Guofeng was the hope of several generations in the family. He was gone. So was his brother. It was just too devastating. Guofeng's grandma had high blood pressure. When she heard about Guofeng's death, she had a stroke and was paralyzed. She lay in bed for many years and died in 2002. His grandpa used to be very healthy. He was nine months shy of his ninetieth birthday when he heard about Guofeng's death. He couldn't pull himself out of the pain. He tried to commit suicide twice. The second time, he cut an artery on his neck and there was blood everywhere. Luckily, I discovered it and called the doctor. He was saved. While in the hospital, he deliberately fell to the floor and broke his collarbones. Two weeks later, he died.

In 2002 alone, my family held three funerals. At the moment, my daughter has been laid off from a state-run factory. She has to raise two kids. Life is very hard. After my youngest son died, his wife, who is from a village nearby, went back to her parents and dumped her four-year-old daughter on us. Guofeng's mother hurt her head and suffered a serious concussion after she passed out at Guofeng's funeral in 1989. She can only do some simple house chores now.

LIAO:
You are the only healthy person in the family.

WU:
Not really. I'm suffering from kidney cancer. Not long after my youngest son became sick with uremia in 2002, I noticed a small growth on my waist. I didn't do anything about it because all of our attention was on my younger son. A year later, the growth was getting bigger. I began to see blood in my urine. The doctors recommended surgery. My right kidney was removed. I feel much better now. I just can't lift heavy stuff. I can't afford expensive Western medicine. So I simply take some cheap herbs. The surgery cost my family a fortune. Unless we are really desperate, I seldom call Professor Ding because she's very busy. Each time she gets a call from us, she knows that we need help. It's kind of embarrassing.

LIAO:
How did you get in touch with Professor Ding and the Tiananmen Mothers?

WU:
After Guofeng's death, I bought a shortwave radio so we could listen to overseas radio broadcasts. One day, I heard on the radio that Ding Zilin, a professor at Guofeng's university, had lost her son. She was trying to contact all the victims' families and seek justice for those who were killed on June 4. I tried but wasn't able to establish contact. Several years ago, Professor Ding's husband met a student at a party. The student grew up in Xinjing and told him about my son. So Professor Ding wrote us a letter, but misspelled my name. Luckily, with help from heaven, a friend working at the post office got hold of the letter. He delivered it to us. It was such a blessing for us to be finally in touch with Professor Ding. She said she had been trying to track us down for eight years.

LIAO:
Does Professor Ding know what's going on with your family now?

WU:
Our life is too hard right now. We live on two hundred yuan a month. We have to raise our granddaughter and support her education. She is our only hope. She is the only thing left after the loss of my two sons. Despite this, we don't want to bother Professor Ding. It doesn't matter if we live or die. Professor Ding has to live. She is the one who helps keep the issue alive. It's been sixteen years since the June 4 massacre happened. Sooner or later, justice will be done. We probably won't live long enough to see the day. Whatever happens, we can't let the Communist Party get away with the bloody debt owed to families like mine.

THE FALUN GONG PRACTITIONER

One morning in December 2004, two neatly dressed women showed up at my door. Both of them seemed to be in their late fifties and looked like peasants from the nearby suburbs. One woman glanced around and whispered, We are not beggars. We are Falun Gong practitioners. The words “Falun Gong” stunned me. In the summer of 1999, after thousands of practitioners had staged a silent protest in Beijing against unfair treatment, the Party leadership saw the group as a threat to Communist rule, declared it an evil cult, and launched a massive campaign to eliminate Falun Gong in China.

Right at that moment, two “evil cult” members seemed to have arrived from another world. Each woman was carrying a bag that I found out later on contained stacks of Falun Gong literature. It took me a few seconds to compose myself.
I had a daring idea. I invited them in, fumbled around for a notebook, and decided to interview Chen, one of the two women.

A week later, I heard another knock on the door. I looked through the peephole and saw two policemen outside. Worrying that the police were coming to get me for interviewing those Falun Gong members, I grabbed my stuff and jumped out my third-floor apartment window. Miraculously, I suffered only a few minor bruises. After that incident, I was on the run for four months and then moved to a small southwestern city.

LIAO YIWU:
Before I let you in, could you check to see if anyone is tailing you?

CHEN:
I think we are safe. I can normally sense it when I'm tailed.

LIAO:
Good. Have a seat.

CHEN:
Thanks for being open-minded enough to let us in. Nowadays, the government's brainwashing campaign and the threat tactics have made many people scared of being associated with Falun Gong. They become very nervous when they see a practitioner outside their door. Some even dial 110 to call the police. I don't blame them. Thousands of practitioners have been locked up and tortured to death. Who wouldn't be afraid? But people need to find out the truth about us. We are not a cult. The Communist Party is a true cult. No matter how the government tries to distort the truth by slandering and persecuting us, we believe truth will eventually prevail.

LIAO:
How did you get started in Falun Gong?

CHEN:
I'm a retired worker from a state enterprise in Hesheng Township, Wenjiang County. I was a Communist Party member for thirty years. After I retired, I lived on a meager pension, most of which was spent on medicine. I became ill very easily. I took so much medicine that my body became resistant to treatment. Each time I was hospitalized, the doctor would simply prescribe stronger and stronger medicine. I felt so helpless, thinking that I was going to die any minute.

On a sunny April day in 1999, I bumped into Liu, a former acquaintance of mine, on the street. I hadn't seen Liu for a long time and hardly recognized him. He used to be as sick and feeble as I was, with a hunchback. That day, he looked so different, healthy and younger. I was intrigued and stopped to chat with him. Liu told me he was practicing Falun Gong. I had read about it in a health magazine. He told me that Falun Gong combines Buddhist and Taoist meditation and exercises and was founded by Li Hongzhi. Practitioners referred to Li as Li
Laoshi
or Teacher Li. Liu also said that there were hundreds and thousands of followers inside China.

I was in a pretty desperate situation at that time. I would try anything that promised a cure for my illnesses. So when he told me about it, I said to myself: I will try it. What do I have to lose? So I borrowed a book of Teacher Li's teachings and joined a practicing group in a neighborhood not far from me. Every morning or evening, a large group of retired folks like me would gather in the courtyard, meditating and practicing Falun Gong. The movements are a little like those of tai chi. After the exercises, we sat together and read Teacher Li's book, which tells us how to cultivate our mind and be a good person.

Soon, I was so into it. I practiced many hours a day, and after three months, I began to feel the difference. So I went to the doctor and did some testing. The result showed dramatic improvement in my kidney and uremia. My arthritis was also getting better. As time went by, many of my illnesses disappeared.

LIAO:
That was very dramatic and miraculous.

CHEN:
Well, it's true. The only illness left was my asthma.

LIAO:
Personally, I don't care whether it's scientifically proven or not. But when people practice together, it's like joining a therapy group. They can socialize, exercise, and talk about their problems. Depression and family spats will all be gone. The government can save lots of money on health-care costs. It's much better than sitting around a table playing mah-jongg and gambling, which seems to be the national pastime.

CHEN:
You are absolutely right. After I benefited from Falun Gong, I also persuaded more of my neighbors to join our group. Everybody was happy—I mean the kind of happiness arising from our hearts, free of worries about trivial stuff.

On July 22, 1999, my neighbors and I were suddenly told to attend a meeting. At the meeting, a local official read an editorial from the Party newspaper,
People's Daily.
The editorial declared Falun Gong a cult and illegal organization, and urged all Party members to give it up. Believe it or not, I wasn't too shocked. My generation went through many big and small political campaigns. We all knew that the Party was capricious as a moody bitch. So we simply rolled our eyes and ignored the ban. Since we were not allowed to practice as a group in public, we simply did it at home.

Then the local government rounded up many people who refused to comply and put them in an auditorium. They were forced to read government propaganda materials and denounce Falun Gong publicly. The provincial government assigned a quota to each local public security bureau or government agency, ordering them to reform Falun Gong members. If a certain official exceeded the quota, he or she would be awarded a cash prize.

But later on, as more and more people refused to give it up, the actions of the government became frenetic. Local police began to search our homes for Falun Gong materials and treated each practitioner like a criminal. If one person was caught practicing, his or her whole family would be blamed and punished. After going through the Cultural Revolution, I couldn't believe a similar political campaign could be happening in China again. I decided to do something about it.

On January 15, 2000, a fellow practitioner and I traveled to Beijing to petition the government to stop the insanity. On the train, I was going through the petition in my mind again and again. I simply wanted to use my experience to tell the senior leaders in Beijing that banning Falun Gong was a mistake. That was it. I wasn't going to make trouble. After about twenty hours on the train, we finally arrived. Instead of getting food and finding a hotel, we simply walked directly to Tiananmen Square, which was about thirty minutes away from the train station. I was just eager to find the Citizens' Petition Office and tell my story. Before I reached the square, two policemen stopped us: Are you from out of town? When we said yes, they became suspicious and asked another question: Are you members of the Falun Gong group? We nodded our heads. Before we knew it, the two policemen swooped down on us, forced our hands behind our back, and dragged us into a police car. A couple of people had already been tied up there. We were taken to a branch of the Beijing Municipal Public Security Department near the Temple of Heaven. After two rounds of interrogation, police contacted authorities in Sichuan. Two days later, I was sent back home. Before my release, they confiscated six hundred yuan in cash from me. I overheard a certain Mr. Feng at the police station talking to an official who came to pick me up from Sichuan: Take this money as compensation for traveling all the way up here to get this idiot. When I reached home, the local police detained me in a small dark room for seventeen days.

LIAO:
I heard people jokingly say that the Party had posted plainclothes policemen every five feet in Tiananmen Square because many Falun Gong petitioners like you displayed banners and practiced there in defiance of the government ban. Couldn't you have been a little more wary and told a little lie when police questioned you?

CHEN:
Practitioners don't tell lies because it's a sin.

LIAO:
I see.

CHEN:
Not long after I was released from the detention center, three other practitioners in my neighborhood followed my example and traveled to Beijing to petition the government. Local public security officials suspected that I was the instigator. They came to my house, handcuffed me, and sent me to the detention center for the second time. I was locked up for another fifteen days. When I got home, I found a government seal on my apartment door. They forced me to move to a small, damp, and stinky shack. I was under their constant watch. Soon, the government stopped issuing my monthly retirement money. Instead, I was only given 120 yuan [US$15] a month to cover my basic necessities. They made my life very difficult, but I wasn't afraid. I still refused to denounce Falun Gong. Then, the government reduced my monthly pension from 120 yuan to 50 yuan, which was not even enough to buy a monthly supply of plain rice.

The more defiant I was, the more brutal and desperate the public security officials became. On July 1, 2000, I was ordered to show up at the township Party secretary's office for interrogation. The moment I walked in, Deputy Party Secretary Huang grabbed my coat and slapped me in the face again and again. That was still not enough to release his anger. He took a breath, balled his fist, and started to punch my face. In a few minutes, my face puffed up, covered with blood. My head was spinning and I fell to the floor. He then kicked my head with his pointed leather shoes. After that, I was dragged out of his office into the courtyard. Soon, a crowd gathered around me, with people kicking me like a soccer ball. I instinctively rolled around, covering my head, but had no place to escape.

LIAO:
What prompted those officials to engage in such brutality?

CHEN:
First, they were angry because I went to Beijing. It was a loss of face for local officials. Second, President Jiang and other senior officials had pressured local governments to brainwash and convert Falun Gong members. Failure to convert Falun Gong members could result in the loss of jobs for local officials.

LIAO:
Did anyone step forward to stop the beating?

CHEN:
No. Someone in the crowd even shouted: Come on and look! Another Falun Gong is getting beaten up. Hey, kick her some more.

LIAO:
It's unimaginable. It was a lawless mob.

CHEN:
I slipped in and out of consciousness, and could hardly see or feel anything. The buildings seemed to be swirling around me. I don't know how long the beating lasted. Then I heard an official say that it would give the township government a bad image if I was beaten to death in front of the government building. So a couple of guys pulled me by the legs and dragged me inside a meeting room. I gradually regained consciousness. I saw many people were peeping through the window. Someone shouted: Beat her, beat her. Emboldened by the shouts of the crowd, Deputy Party Secretary Huang, Deputy Mayors Zhang and Huang [no relation to the deputy Party secretary] began to take turns beating me. They forced me into a kneeling position, with my hands tied behind my back. They whipped me on the back and on my bare feet with copper wire.

LIAO:
Were you still conscious during those beatings inside the meeting room?

CHEN:
I was in and out. Deputy Party Secretary Huang threatened me by saying: You are the enemy of the people. I will not take responsibility if I beat you to death.

At seven o'clock that night, I awoke and found myself lying on the floor of my house. I had bruises all over my body. It was even painful to move my arms. Then I heard my seventy-year-old mother sobbing in another room.

A couple of days later, police ransacked my mother's house and took away all her valuable possessions, including a TV set, some antique coins, her clothes and bedding. Then they put us, Mother and me, on a truck, and drove us to a remote village to receive reeducation. In the words of government officials, sending me to a faraway place would prevent me from ruining the image of the township government.

LIAO:
How could they be so ruthless?

CHEN:
That was just the beginning. My mother and I lived in that village for about five months. I gradually recovered from the beatings. In the fall of 2001, before the moon festival, I teamed up with two Falun Gong practitioners in the village and painted a slogan, “Falun Gong Is Good,” on the wall of a Buddhist temple. We were caught by a monk. Worrying that he could get blamed for the slogan, he called the police. Once again, we were detained inside a police station near the village. During the interrogation, I refused to tell the police my name and address because I was afraid of implicating my mother again. So the police locked me up in a jail with a bunch of criminals. To kill time there, I put two hands together, palm to palm, and began to do meditation. Two fellow prisoners, who had been instructed by the guards to keep an eye on me, immediately grabbed my hair. They yelled: Help, help, the crazy Falun Gong woman is conducting illegal activities again. Soon, one guard showed up and whipped me with a leather belt. He then ordered my hands and feet shackled. After that, he brought a two-piece wooden board with a hole in the middle, put my head through the hole, and locked the wooden board around my neck. Those shackles and the wooden board were specifically designed for prisoners who are suicidal or who were on death row.