Looking for tank man, p.5
Looking for Tank Man, page 5
Gary, the blond kid, asked, “Did you see a lot of dead bodies at the hospital?”
Fang Zheng answered, “I couldn’t count. My rescuers placed me on the floor. While I was waiting for treatment, I saw dozens of wounded people lying around.”
“They didn’t treat you immediately?” Rachel asked.
“No, they had to save those more seriously wounded first.”
His answer struck us dumb. For a long while the whole room remained in dead silence.
Then he told us about his life after the loss of his legs. The Communist authorities wanted him to tell the public that he’d lost his legs in a traffic accident, that they hadn’t been crushed by a tank, but he refused to change his story and kept sharing the truth with others. Because of his refusal to cooperate, he couldn’t find a job after graduation.
Rachel raised her hand, then asked, “You must have had many eyewitnesses, didn’t you? Didn’t the girl you saved stick up for you?”
He said, “No, she refused to get involved in my case. She just wanted to stay silent and keep a low profile. All of a sudden people were terrified into obedience and silence. Many even began to express their support for the government’s suppression. It was so depressing to see a reversal of their attitude.”
“What a bitch,” Rachel said under her breath.
In 1992 Fang Zheng participated in the National Games of Disabled Persons and won a championship in both discus and javelin. There again, because of his non-cooperation, the government banned him from taking part in any international sport tournaments. That was why he had to leave China, where he could no longer survive.
“See, I am another Tank Man,” he said calmly, indicating that the soldiers had been ruthless in using brute force and hadn’t hesitated to crush him with a tank.
Jerek asked him what he thought of Wang Weilin, because we had just discussed the defiant hero in the previous class: how he was perceived and created by the public. We shared Loana’s misgivings about the authenticity of the confrontation caught on camera between Wang and a column of tanks. Even the man’s name might be fiction. We all knew that President Jiang Zemin had told ABC and 60 Minutes that he didn’t know who Tank Man was or his whereabouts. But he assured the West that the man hadn’t been executed at all and that the Chinese government hadn’t been able to find him afterward.
Fang Zheng smiled and said, “Actually I admire the man. He embodies the brave and defiant spirit of the demonstrators. It’s good that he has gathered so much public attention. But we still don’t know his real name. The truth is that after the confrontation, the Chinese government widely publicized the footage made by their cameramen to show the world how lenient and restrained the People’s Army had been to the civilians—even if a man blocked a whole column of tanks, they wouldn’t harm him. This indicates that the scene might have been staged. In reality, those tanks didn’t hesitate to run over people. So many were killed by them. There was a graduate student at the Northern Aviation University named Wang Kuanbao. His pelvis had been crushed by a tank. He stayed in the hospital for years and the doctors couldn’t repair the damage. I went to see him once. He had to go through one operation after another. So I believe Tank Man Wang Weilin may have been created for propaganda’s sake, though later the image transformed into something beyond official control. Still, I am able to accept him as a hero, or as an embodiment of the Tiananmen spirit.”
There was no bitterness in his voice, and I was impressed by his intelligent, nuanced answer. After class, Rachel and I chatted about Tank Man, who had become an icon in the West. We felt uneasy about this, of course, but we didn’t see eye to eye on it. I thought there was no harm in the public embracing this iconic image, but as a historian, I didn’t necessarily view the man as a hero because the creation of his public identity was ambiguous, to say the least. Rachel was more radical, believing the image should be suppressed, because it might be a lie. Indeed, numerous sources indicated that the Chinese propaganda cadres had intended to stage the confrontation. The man’s name, Wang Weilin, was first mentioned by a small newspaper in England that had no connection with China whatsoever. In other words, the name could have been fabricated by Western media. More unusually, the man had worn a formal outfit, the standard mufti worn by plainclothesmen and soldiers (in contrast, most local men in the summertime wore shorts, T-shirts, and slippers). And he also knew semaphore, which he used to communicate with the tank operators. Most likely the scene was planned ahead of time, so his image, heroic though it later became, should be stopped from being disseminated further—that was Rachel’s conclusion.
Equipped with the information we got from Loana’s seminar, Rachel and I discussed Tank Man in the presence of her boyfriend, Joe. He was much more aggressive in his opinions and argument. He viewed Tank Man as a scar on China’s face. If the man were a real hero, he should have stepped forward by now, because a number of former student leaders and preeminent exiles had been allowed to return to China, and no harm had been done to them. With the kind of international publicity Tank Man had garnered, he should have been safe if he had come forward, but to date, there’d been no trace of him. Joe had once attended a gathering in a local high school at which a traditional Chinese painter and calligrapher demonstrated his arts. Before the man wielded his brush, he asked the youngsters what they knew about China. A girl stood up and declared, “I know Tank Man.” The artist had no clue whom she was referring to, and their teacher had to explain it to him. The man shook his head and couldn’t say anything.
Joe felt outraged and believed that the Chinese government must intervene to counter the misperceptions generated by the icon of Tank Man, because the whole thing was based on a deception manufactured by stupid propaganda officials. It was further distorted by the Western media. The three of us were lounging on sofas in Rachel’s living room and drinking coffee. I disagreed with Joe and argued that the iconic image should be left alone for the public, but in academia we must view it with a grain of salt, from a more rational perspective.
“Give me a break,” he spit out. “The West means to utilize Tank Man to demonize China.”
“That’s a stretch,” I said. “To many people, he symbolizes a defiant spirit against oppressive state power.”
“More than that,” Joe pressed on. “His image eclipses all the positive aspects of China.”
“So what are the positive aspects, then?” His excessive patriotism made me angry. “You must have some demonic qualities for others to demonize you. You know what life is like in our homeland, where lies are so ubiquitous that every day is April Fool’s.”
Joe lost it. “Pei Lulu, you’re speaking out of turn. You ought to remember who you are!”
“So go to the officials and squeal on me. You’re pathetic enough to lapse into being an informer. You love Red China so much, you see red everywhere. You’ve got so high on patriotic propaganda that you eat China’s shit like pastry.”
“Damn it, you’ve done your best to trash China! If our country collapsed, who would benefit from it?”
“You’re a national savior, huh?” I mocked.
“Cool it, both of you!” Rachel intervened.
“I can’t stand this bitch!” He pointed at me. “She’s too full of herself.”
“I despise you too,” I said and stood to leave, surprised that our exchange had exploded into such a fiery confrontation.
Rachel didn’t stop me. She seemed eager to see me go away and to avoid more quarreling.
* * *
—
It was snowing sporadically, cars passing with their headlights blurred by snowflakes and with their wipers scraping their windshields. The street was still scattered with pedestrians. Turning a corner, I stepped on a patch of ice, slipped, and fell on my butt. An older man rushed over and asked, “Are you all right, Miss?” I said I was fine and thanked him while dusting the snow off my behind. I felt sad, breathing heavily, and continued toward my dorm. I wondered why Rachel hadn’t stepped in to defend me. Maybe she shared Joe’s view. She might also be a patriotic freak, a little red flag waver.
Later she told me that Joe had gone ballistic and demanded she terminate our friendship. He even declared, “You must choose between that bitch and me.”
I was surprised, but didn’t press her for an answer. I could see that she was reluctant to spend time with me, avoiding sharing my table in the cafeteria. In class we stopped sitting together. I could tell that Rachel must have caved to Joe and turned her back on me. The loss of her friendship hurt me, and for weeks I was downcast, but I managed to make it seem like everything was normal, especially when Rachel was around.
Though in pain, I was not disappointed. If someone could abandon you just because of another person’s opinion, then you didn’t need that friend. Loana sensed my low spirits and wondered whether it was because her class was too depressing. I told her in her office that I had quarreled with a Chinese student over Tank Man and for that I had lost a friend. She nodded, her tapered eyes flashing as if she was hurting herself. She told me, “This kind of hostility is unavoidable if you want to tell the truth. Nearly every time I presented the results of my research at a conference, some Chinese students yelled at me. Some even called me ‘American Running Dog,’ or ‘Moron.’ I’m used to being cursed and spat at. Once, at a conference in Chicago, a young man came over, about to attack me, but security intervened and took him away. He couldn’t stop calling me ‘stupid cunt.’ Keep in mind, some Chinese students are spies and will report you to the officials if you say something against the government. Nationalism has clouded many of their eyes, and they view their country as God. God must always be right and beyond criticism and must never commit blunders or crimes. They can’t see that a country is just a secular construct and can be mended and rebuilt like a house.”
I nodded, my eyes hot, and realized that even though we were on the other side of the world, China still cast its long shadow over our lives, its dark, invisible hands still attempting to manipulate our behavior. I wondered if Joe was an assigned informer for the Chinese consulate. Perhaps he was. I had seen him rubbing elbows with some officials as if he were eager to become one of them.
I grew fond of Loana. Even though I was not taking her class in the spring semester, I still dropped by her office. From time to time we also had coffee together. I once revealed to her that my mother had participated in the hunger strike in Tiananmen Square. Loana asked in astonishment, “What did she tell you about her experience?”
“Nothing. Whenever I mentioned the massacre, she’d say it was too complicated and I mustn’t touch on such a subject. I didn’t tell her I was taking your seminar last fall.”
“Oh, but at some point, you ought to ask your mother about her experience. Any firsthand witness is invaluable.”
“True, I just don’t want to disturb her for now—she’s a worrywart.”
“There’re things we must preserve. To remember is the most efficient way to fight the authoritarian power that makes people forget. A historian’s business is remembrance.”
“I can see why the Chinese government always urges people to look forward,” I said. “They want to erase the traces of their crimes from public memory.”
“Exactly. That’s their way of reshaping history, making people avoid looking into the past.”
“They want people’s minds to be clouded with propaganda. That is their way of keeping the population ignorant and incapable of thinking clearly and independently.”
Her eyes lit up. “That’s right. Oblivion and stupidity always go hand in hand. A historian’s job is to present the past truthfully and make others see it clearly. So if you want to be a good historian, you must look truth in the eye and reveal it. In China there is only one truth, which is what’s provided by the government. Any deviation from the official view is regarded as a crime.”
“So to tell the actual truth can be a crime?”
“Yes, keep that in mind. That also makes our scholarship more meaningful.”
I enjoyed spending time with Loana and gradually viewed myself as a budding historian. Hanging around her became a kind of education for me, my most valuable experience at Harvard.
6
I SPENT A lot of time in the library, reading for my classes. Though I didn’t have an assigned place in there for myself, I’d find a quiet spot to hide away from others. I envied the graduate students, who could apply for a carrel at which they could store the books they’d been reading and also work on their theses. The cubicles were so small, consisting of just a desk and a cabinet, both made of brown wood. At times, when taking a break from reading, I would pass Mark Stone’s carrel on purpose. If he was there, we would chat for a while. On the door of his cabinet, opposite his desk, was Scotch-taped a poster of Tank Man. Obviously that skinny Chinese guy was his hero. I felt uneasy about that, since Mark was a PhD student in East Asian studies, writing a dissertation on the kung fu novels of Jin Yong (Louis Cha). I had read many of his novels—Legends of the Condor Heroes, The Book and the Sword, Fox Volant of the Snowy Mountain, and more. So Mark and I had a lot to talk about. He seemed amazed that I knew so much about the subject of his dissertation, which was a kind of outlier in Chinese literary studies. Even in China, Jin Yong is not regarded as very literary, though he might be its most popular writer, with hundreds of millions of readers in the world. He’s similar to J. R. R. Tolkien but has a larger readership; his fiction is full of knightly adventures, sorcery, romances, spectacular kung fu feats, and they are mostly set in exotic spaces. They’re entertaining and uplifting.
Another reason I often stopped by Mark’s carrel was because it had a narrow window that looked out on a lawn. His was a bright spot on the cavernous ground floor of the massive building, from which, through the high window, you could catch a glimpse of the traffic on Massachusetts Avenue. He and I would chat for a long time, sometimes for a whole hour. I once asked him why he had picked a topic like that for his dissertation, he said, “I like it. There’s a lot of fun in Jin Yong’s fiction.” I was amazed. I wouldn’t build my scholarship that way, on a lightweight subject that was just for fun, but I made no comment.
I liked him, a lot. He was handsome, in his late twenties, and strapping, with deep-set eyes and with a high hairline that gave him a full forehead. His mullet gave him a carefree air. He reminded me of my American English teacher in high school, a man in his mid-forties, lively and kind and humorous in the classroom, whom I’d had a crush on. Mark spoke good Mandarin, a little stiff and accented, but we used English most of the time. I had noticed lots of girls hanging around him, though I wasn’t sure who his girlfriend was. One day he invited me to dinner, and I accepted.
We went to a small French restaurant on Plympton Street, next to Harvard Book Store. I ordered duck and he ordered lamb shank. He also wanted a glass of red wine, and I just had sparkling water. I could see that this was an expensive place, the tables covered with checked cloth and wineglasses stuffed with white napkins folded like birdwings. I enjoyed the dish very much. Back home, my father had taken me to a restaurant called Dadong Roast Duck every time he came to Beijing, but my mother had never joined us. I had to say I liked the confit de canard better than Beijing duck, because it was tender, less greasy, and less spiced, preserving the original flavor of the meat. Mark talked a lot about Hong Kong movies, another passion of his. From Hong Kong we moved to Taiwan, whose snacks and street foods he loved. Somehow he mentioned some Taiwanese girls we both knew. He said they were different from girls from mainland China. I felt odd, unable to see much difference, since we all spoke Mandarin and had similar cultural heritage and even shared some values, so I asked him how he compared the two groups.
He smiled with some embarrassment and said, “Well, with Taiwanese girls you can do anything except get them to be seriously committed.”
“What do you mean by ‘committed’?” I was puzzled.
“Taiwanese girls are more open to dating, but they rarely keep a long-term relationship.”
“What do you mean by ‘a long-term relationship’?”
“A step further than merely being boyfriend and girlfriend.”
“Like an engagement?”
“Not that serious, but moving toward that stage.”
I wondered how often he had dated Taiwanese girls if he had formed that strong an opinion of them. He must have been quite experienced, but he sounded pretty bitter. Perhaps one of them had just broken up with him.
When we were done with the entrées, he encourage me to have some dessert, which I didn’t want. I said, “Thanks, I’m full. We Chinese don’t eat dessert at dinner.”
“Is that so?” he mused aloud.
“Have you ever seen a dessert menu in a Chinese restaurant? Some upscale places have fruit plates as a kind of dessert.”
“That’s true. Too bad they don’t have a fortune cookie for you here.” He laughed out loud.
I was a tad embarrassed, unsure whether he had meant to mock me. But he seemed amicable and was easily amused by his own wisecracks. He ordered a chocolate mousse and I got a decaf coffee, mainly to keep him company while he was eating his dessert. I put in a tiny cube of brown sugar and began drinking the coffee slowly. I did try a forkful of the mousse, which was delicious, but I was too full to eat any more.
I offered to split the bill, but he stopped me, saying “This is on me.” He picked up the check and handed his credit card to the slender waitress, who was wearing a pair of French braids. She looked Vietnamese and may also have been a Harvard student.
