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A Ripple of Protest
From Socialism Is Great, A Worker’s Memoir of the New China, by Zhang Lijia
“The students have taken to the streets!” Life lit up Big Zhang’s sleepy eyes as he walked into our workshop one morning in mid-December. Blazing with excitement, Zhang described the demonstrations that had spread to our city from nearby Hefei in Anhui province.
There had been growing signs of activism. Fang Lizhi, one of the university’s vice presidents, was both a renowned astrophysicist and a passionate advocate of democracy. “Democracy is not granted from the top, but won by individuals,” he famously urged. Professor Fang had been touring universities around the country, captivating audiences with shocking statements such as “The socialist movement, from Marx, to Lenin, to Stalin and Mao Zedong, failed.” Free from the authorities’ censorship, his daring lectures roused waves of excitement among students, who swarmed to him like moths drawn out of the darkness by a bright light.
In the wake of the Hefei protest, university students had responded in seventeen other cities across the country. How exciting! Too exciting to sit still. I asked leave from Boss Lan, using my flexitime.
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He was still asleep when I came out. I nudged him, tickled, and kissed him. “Hey, sleepyhead, wake up and talk to me.”
Turning his body, he dragged me into the bed.
“Did you go see the demonstration yesterday?” I asked. “I heard there was a clash with the police. What happened, do you know?” Only a few days remained of 1986. Just the day before, another protest had erupted, drawing large crowds and police onto Nanjing’s streets. The government seemed unsure about what to do, particularly since Hu Yaobang, the liberal-minded General Secretary of the Communist Party, appeared sympathetic toward the students.
“What? What demonstration?” He half-opened his eyes, squinting at me.
“What demonstration? The student demonstration, of course.”
Suddenly fully awake, he brushed my arm off his chest. “How annoying! You woke me up just for the damned demonstration!”
My face turned from pink to red, irritated by the harsh tone. “I woke you up because I wanted to talk to you. I haven’t seen you for weeks.”
“Okay, talk about something sweet, not goddamned politics!”
“But aren’t you amazed by the demonstration?”
“You silly melon! Why do you bother your little brain with such matters?” He turned his back to me and was about to fall asleep again. Was this the same man who recently had complained so bitterly about censorship?
Only after I threatened to leave and never return did he try to wake up and face me.
“I did hear the noises from the hotel. But I didn’t have time to go out.” He sat up in the bed without his glasses on, which made him look very different and somehow distant.
“You sound disinterested.”
“This system does not allow me to be that interested. What can I do? Join in the demonstration, write a letter in support? I’d lose my job in no time.”
I reminded him that, for centuries, China’s intellectuals and scholars had been responsible for telling the ruler what his people needed, and advising him on the right course. I borrowed the sentence from an article by Fang Lizhi, the outspoken scientist, in which he criticized Chinese intellectuals for their weakness and lack of independence.
“Social responsibility? Sure,” Miao agreed, “those who have a noble vision for making China better may be ready to make sacrifices, to try to do something. But not me.”
He put on his glasses, as if they would help him think straight. “Once, when I was still down in the countryside, we were summoned to attend a meeting. It was all about learning from some hero – I can’t remember his name now – anyway, some stupid egg who didn’t deserve to be remembered. Supposedly, he was swept away by floods for trying to save a log. Yes, a log! A goddamn log. And I thought to myself, ‘Why? Is my life worth less than a log?’This is a government that didn’t and still doesn’t know how to respect its people. You just wait and see, there will be a crackdown,” he promised, chopping the air with his hand as he warmed to the theme.
The student protest, he continued, was like “cracking a stone with an egg” – destined to fail, he predicted, because the Party would not tolerate anything that threatened their power. The students would suffer. If they weren’t locked up, they would at least be kicked out of their universities, with a permanent black mark on their files. And the worst thing was that nothing would change.
“I have wasted enough time ‘repairing the earth.’ If anything, I am now more determined to get out of this f-king country!” He slipped down in the bed. Soon his snoring grated on my ears.
I couldn’t reach him.
I started to call him Chilly.
As the real winter chill set in, China’s political atmosphere also turned cold. Party Secretary Hu Yaobang was ousted by hard-liners for condoning the student protests. The only result of the students’ brave efforts was a harsh crackdown on bourgeois liberalism that punished intellectuals such as Fang Lizhi and my hero, journalist Liu Binyan, just as Miao had predicted.
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No matter the Government is Liberal or Democrats, where ever people do not get their rights they will fight and protest for their righteous.