Will the Boat Sink the Water?: The Life of China's Peasants (20 page)

the “antitax uprisin g”

was beaten until he started moaning, “You didn’t hit me . . .” This being unsatisfactory, Ma Li slapped the young fellow hard and ordered, “Louder!” Finally realizing what was required of him Little Five answered, “You did not hit me.”

Having softened up the subject to his satisfaction, Ma Li, see-ing that it was long past midnight, began the day’s real business. He asked Little Five, “Since we didn’t hit you or hurt you in any way, then let us be friends. Tell us the truth. Is your father still in league with the white-bearded old man Gao Zongpeng? Is he helping Gao to write letters of accusations?”

Only then did the young fellow realize that, like dogs worry-ing a bone, they were still chewing over the Gao Village incident—they were still fearful that all the details of the affair would come out one way or another. They did not even dare to hold an interrogation on their own turf but had to sneak into a neighboring township to carry on a surreptitious interrogation. Little Five was left wondering: The Gao Village incident had taken place in broad daylight and had been witnessed by hundreds of people. How can people’s mouths be sealed by threats and arrests? The young fellow could not find an answer to the

question: Can you lie to all the people all of the time?

4

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The Cold Shoulder

October 1 is National Day, the celebration of the founding of the People’s Republic of China. October 1, 1994, was the forty-fifth anniversary of that glorious event, but for Wang Junbin, a native of Anhui Province holed up in neighboring Henan, it was not a day of celebration. His heart was chilled to the core. Home was just a stone’s throw away, but he could not cross the border to return. There was a warrant out for his arrest.

Two months earlier, on July 30, the Public Security Bureau of Linquan County, Anhui Province, had distributed a public notice warning Wang Junbin and his “criminal associates” to give themselves up. Even though Wang’s name was spelled incorrectly on the warning, he knew that with the distribution of this public document it was hopeless for him to try to defend himself. Returning to his native Linquan County would be akin to diving into a net spread out to catch him. Making things worse was the fact that following that public warning, the

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Linquan County Party Committee announced its decision to expel him from the Party.

His misdemeanor, Wang Jungbin thought to himself, had been to appeal to the Party leadership to implement the Party’s own stated policy of relieving the peasants of their excessive burdens. It made no sense that he should be kicked out of the Party. Wang had never imagined that things could come to this pass. Not enough that the peasants were oppressed by poverty; even worse was the psychological pressure they were under. There was so much they wanted to say, to let the world know, but there was no channel for them to express themselves; they had no voice. It was no surprise that in many places the peasants, who are supposed to have “risen to their feet” with the Communist Liberation, were now falling down on their knees to plead for justice. Others, resorting to the ancient desperate practice of “stopping the official’s carriage at the risk of death,” now threw themselves in front of the cars of Party officials, who are supposed to “cherish them as their own offspring.”

Wang Jungbin was only six years old in 1976, when the Cultural Revolution ended, and thus he grew up in an atmosphere where the talk was mostly of reform and opening up, democracy and the rule of law. At the age of eighteen he answered the call of the Party and signed up for the army; while in the army he joined the Party. He grew into a young man who was simultaneously imbued with the spirit of serving the people and acutely conscious of his own rights as an individual. Wang Junbin would never get down on his knees to anyone, nor try to stop an official’s car to get his attention. Whatever he had lost, he always had his democratic rights—or so he thought.

He decided to appeal against the public warning issued by the county Party Committee. He was not sure where to direct his appeal. He was aware that a Party organization would usually retain a legal representative in case of lawsuits. When he filled out the form, in the space reserved for “the accused” Wang

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Junbin went ahead and wrote the name of the Party secretary of Linquan County, Zhang Xide. He felt he must put down Zhang Xide’s name as the accused because the man had played a critical and shameful role in the crackdown that became known as the “Baimiao Township incident” of April 2, 1993. The Baimiao Township incident was not one event but a series of disputes in Wang Village, Baimiao Township, which ultimately led to Wang’s name being put on the wanted list. It hardened the ex–army man’s resolve to put up a fight.

Linquan County was under the jurisdiction of Fuyang Prefecture, proverbially known as the “Siberia of Anhui Province” for the barrenness of its soil. Situated between two tributaries of the Yangtze River, the area was repeatedly devastated by flood and famine, and still had not experienced a turnaround, in spite of the people’s hard work. The tiny flatland county of Linquan must support almost two million people, and is known far and wide as the most populous county in the country. The poverty of the soil and the lack of transportation made this county far and away the poorest. Wang Junbin was born in Baimiao Township, the poorest township in Linquan County.

In the winter of 2001, more than seven years after the events mentioned at the beginning of this narrative, we headed for Baimiao Township. As we made our way through the township, the stark poverty that we saw was absolutely shocking. There were no township enterprises or businesses in sight, and the fields were uniformly planted with scallions and cabbages, the mainstay of the peasants’ livelihood. By the time we visited, a road had been paved leading straight to the neighboring province. Huge piles of cabbages and scallions lined the sides of

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the road, waiting for vegetable dealers to pick up and take to the city to sell. We were shocked by the prices. At 8 yuan to the dollar, and 100 fen to the yuan, a
jin
(slightly over a pound) of scallions was selling for 3 fen, or less than 1 cent. A cartload of fresh scallions would sell for 2 to 3 yuan, or about 31 cents. Cabbages fared slightly better, selling for 10 fen per
jin
. And yet the peasants could not afford to eat their own vegetables. In the village, we saw a man in his thirties squatting in the door of his house and eating a plain bowl of rice, with nothing on it. We asked him why he didn’t cook some of his own cabbages to go with his rice. We were heartbroken by his answer: “If I use one
jin
of cabbage, won’t I be ten fen short?”

If the township was this poor in 2001, it’s hard to imagine what it must have been like more than seven years earlier, in 1993, when the Baimiao Township incident took place. We were told that at the time, the annual per capita income of the peasants was 274 yuan, or a daily income of 80 fen. Yet in spite of the abject poverty, taxes and demands for payments kept pil-ing in from the county, the township, and the village. The peasants were reduced to the proverbial state: “boiling with anger, but afraid to speak.”

The Baimiao Township incident was first ignited over an unrelated case of bullying by the Party boss of Wang Village in the fall of 1993. Wang Junbin had a friend, Wang Hongchao, and Wang Hongchao, being a shrewd young fellow, realized that it was impossible to make a living by farming alone, so he joined his father-in-law selling rat poison in the area. Between the two of them they made a tolerable income, by local standards. One day, just as young Wang Hongchao was out on one of his rounds, the village Party boss, Gao Jianjun, heading a so-called tax-enforcement shock team, came to his house and demanded

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a payment of 6 yuan toward work on the school building. There was nothing wrong with the school building at the time, and Wang’s mother didn’t have 6 yuan handy. She said to Gao, “My son is not at home. Come by some other day.” Hardly were the words were out of her mouth than Party Boss Gao and his gang made off with the family’s TV set. Wang’s mother was completely shocked and could only stutter, “How can you do this? How— How—?” The two families were slightly related, and the old woman never imagined that Gao could abuse his relatives like that. But Gao, totally unmoved, walked away with the TV set.