The Corpse Walker: Real Life Stories: China From the Bottom Up (29 page)

LIAO:
Was it in Chinese?

LI:
Yes, it was in standard Mandarin. I felt my head exploding. My poor legs suddenly lost control and flopped. I knelt on the ground. My body was trembling. About five minutes had passed, and I still hadn't seen anybody coming to get me. So I slowly raised my head and tried to see what was going on. Then, I heard the same voice again: Raise your hands above your shoulders. Bend your head. Toss out your weapons.

LIAO:
You ran into the border police.

LI:
In a way, they acted like the border police, except their uniforms looked kind of shabby. Four guys stepped out from behind the trees. But don't laugh when I tell you this—I was so scared that I had peed in my pants. For the next several hours, my pants reeked strongly of urine. My captors covered my eyes with a black scarf, tied both of my hands in the front, and then dragged me along with a rope. One guy pushed a gun against my waist. I don't know how far or how long I walked. When they finally removed the black scarf from my eyes, I found myself inside a mountain cave and surrounded by a group of men dressed in the Chinese military uniforms of the seventies. They stripped me and pushed me to the side of a table. A kerosene lamp was hanging from the ceiling, and you could hardly see anything beyond the interrogator who was sitting opposite me at the table. Everything was pitch-dark, very mysterious. Gradually, my eyes began to adjust to the darkness. The interrogator asked me: Your name? Age? Occupation? What are you doing here? Are you here to smuggle goods or for political reasons? How many partners do you have on this trip? I answered his questions one by one.

LIAO:
Were you captured by the Chinese border police?

LI:
No. They were called the People's Army, a guerrilla group affiliated with the Myanmar Communist Party. That group was very powerful in the 1960s and '70s. I heard they were divided into several military regions, with over ten thousand troops. The group occupied a large area in the China-Myanmar border region. The People's Army is in decline now because the world has changed. The fate of the Khmer Rouge in the neighboring area had had a devastating impact on the Communist forces in Myanmar.

LIAO:
You got caught by the People's Army? You poor thing!

LI:
I had strayed and ended up in the guerrilla territories without even knowing it. Damn, such bad luck. The strangest thing was that the bearded interrogator was from my hometown, the city of Chongqing. Remember what I told you about the Red Guards early in the conversation? That guy was a former Red Guard who had been sent down to work on a collective farm in Yunnan Province. In 1969, he escaped and crossed the border to Myanmar and joined the guerrilla forces. When he realized that he and I grew up in the same city, he began to loosen up and chat with me. He wanted to know about the changes happening in Chongqing. He told me that he had been away for over twenty years, but still missed his hometown. I secretly felt relieved at this unexpected turn of events and started to shoot the breeze with him. I told him about China's economic reforms, the students' democracy movement, and the popularity of cars. I said: Nobody believes in Communism anymore. Everyone talks about money, money, and money. We both talked in Sichuan dialect, swapping stories and jokes about Chongqing. Sometimes, we laughed so hard that tears came down. Other soldiers in the cave looked at us, puzzled and confused. Then my interrogator ordered his soldiers to prepare dinner for us—four dishes and a jug of liquor. I soon became tipsy. The interrogator reminisced about his younger days in China, about his passion for the Communistic ideals, and about his goal of spreading Communism around the world. He told me that the majority of his former comrades had been killed in guerrilla wars against the Myanmar government. I was truly touched by his stories and asked if he was planning to return home someday. He answered: Everyone, including you, is running away from home. What's the point of going back? To a certain degree, I said he and I shared something in common. We both were idealists, and were pursuing adventure in a foreign country. He strongly disagreed: Your ideals are different from mine. You are doing it for yourself, but I'm pursuing a goal to help mankind. My comrades and I are the only true Chinese Communists who are shedding blood in a foreign land, with the hope of establishing another Communist society. You probably call us rare specimens, but we are fighting for a noble cause.

As our conversation became more and more intimate, I began to broach the subject of having him release me. He sighed: We are fellow city men. Under normal circumstances, I would let you pass. Unfortunately, it's too late. My commander has been informed of your arrest. He has notified the Chinese border police. His words jolted me wide awake. Like a snake falling into an icy river, I was shaking all over, struggling for my life.

I slumped to the ground and knelt in front of him: I beg you to have mercy on me. If you can't set me free, why don't you shoot me now? The government will do the same if you send me home.

The interrogator pulled me up from the ground, and said: Cheer up, buddy! If they find out that you don't have other political motives for crossing the border, you probably will get two years in jail. To tell you the truth, I'm now the head of the regiment here. I have to set a good example in carrying out orders from above. Otherwise, I would lose my credibility among my soldiers.

LIAO:
With words like that, I don't think you can argue much.

LI:
Damn it. It was like a bad dream. After I woke up, I ended up in jail for two years. Look at my face now and you will notice that one side is more out of shape than the other. My chin is a little tilted. Those are souvenirs from my various border-crossing adventures. I got smacked and beaten up so many times. The pain and the excitement made me feel alive. Once, I was tied by a long rope to the back of a small tractor. My captors dragged me for many kilometers on a small mountain path. My clothes were shredded into strips, like a mop. While I was being pulled forward by the tractor, I thought of an American movie, in which the black slaves were tied to a wooden pole, waiting to be sold to another white owner.

The pursuit of freedom is the hardest thing in this world. In China, if you are dying of hunger, nobody gives a damn. But when you try to move to a new place to find food for yourself and look for a change of lifestyle, someone will immediately pounce and arrest you. In places such as Europe, the U.S., and Australia, people claim they have democracy and freedom. But the governments there will not grant entry to you if you don't have money or if you don't qualify as a political refugee. No matter how many times you tell them that you love democracy and freedom, they still don't give a damn. It's so damn hypocritical.

LIAO:
Personally, I think Myanmar is a much worse country than China. Even if you had succeeded in crossing over there and had reached Yangon, you would have faced poverty just like you do here. It could be worse, don't you think?

LI:
I have never been successful in getting over there. How would I know which is worse? A poet friend of mine once took the same path as I did. He got caught inside Myanmar because a local resident reported on him. He ended up in a Myanmar jail. Believe it or not, he was locked up in the same cell with a former leader of the Myanmar Communist Party. Within a year, he learned to speak English and Burmese, and obtained quite a lot of secrets of the Myanmar Communist Party. Those secrets were quite useless though.

Anyhow, he became friends with that Communist leader. Then he was forgotten. The government never put him on trial and they just left him in jail forever. One day, he began to scream nonstop. Thank heavens he did that. Otherwise, he could be rotting in there. He cursed and screamed in Chinese, English, and Burmese. That screaming really changed his fate. Later on, both he and the Communist leader were released. The Communist guy helped him get a visa. He was exported to Europe as a laborer. The last thing I heard was that he became a resident of Denmark. He is the luckiest border crosser I have ever heard of.

LIAO:
His story is like a chapter in the
Arabian Nights.

LI:
My own story is like a chapter from the
Arabian Nightmares.
But let me tell you, during peacetime, sneaking across the border is the most adventurous and stimulating thing to do.

LIAO:
Does it mean you are addicted to border crossing?

LI:
I have done it four or five times. The most dramatic experience was the one I just told you. All the others were pretty ordinary and they all ended in failure. Penalty for border crossing has been reduced a lot in recent years. As long as you don't mess around with officials during interrogation, they will normally force you to pay a fine. That's it. Since I didn't have money to pay a fine, they would detain me for several months and then release me.

There is one more trip that's worth mentioning. It was in 1997. Since Hong Kong was about to be returned to China, I assumed that the Hong Kong–China border wouldn't be as tightly patrolled as before. I paid some money to buy a fake ID, and went to Shenzhen, like my dad did. Instead of swimming across, I decided to check out the land route. I took a stroll on the famous commercial boulevard that divides Hong Kong and mainland China. I looked at the Hong Kong side. The tall buildings and busy shopping areas were so mesmerizing, drawing me like a huge magnet. Like a complete idiot, I began to walk toward the barbed wire that was put up in the middle of the street to separate Hong Kong from the mainland. Two guards spotted me right away. They moved toward me with guns pointing. Without further thinking, I tossed my bag across to the other side of the street. The bag contained my fake ID and wallet. I thought the other side was Hong Kong territory and the mainland guard wouldn't dare to cross over to pick it up. They came over and one pointed his gun at me, ordering me to stand still. Then the other guard walked over to the Hong Kong side through a small entrance, and picked up my bag as evidence of my crime.

LIAO:
At least your bag managed to cross the border.

LI:
I told the guards: Hong Kong will be returned to China soon. It should be easier for Chinese to travel to Hong Kong. Why are you in such a rush to get me? They slapped me and told me to shut up. I was locked up in a detention center for two months. Luckily, they didn't find out about my real identity. Otherwise, they could have sentenced me for fabricating an ID card.

LIAO:
You have just been released from a detention center in Shenzhen. Was it for another illegal border-crossing?

LI:
Yes. I did odd jobs in Shenzhen for several years and then tried to enter Hong Kong on a train not long ago. I was caught because of my fake passport.

LIAO:
You are hopeless. It must be in your genes.

THE GRAVE ROBBER

I met Tian Zhiguang on a cold November evening in 2002, near the front entrance to the Sichuan Provincial People's Supreme Court on Wenwu Road. He was in Chengdu to file a petition with the court against the local Public Security Bureau for “ruining his life through illegal detention.” Tian had run out of money and was begging on the street. I took him to a restaurant nearby and bought him a bowl of noodles.

Over the meal, Tian told me he had just turned thirty-three. He was known among his fellow villagers as the “grave robber,” even though he had never put his foot inside a grave.

TIAN ZHIGUANG:
I remember a fortune-teller once telling me: “You come from a family that includes generations of peasants. You are predestined to be tied to the soil and to earn your money through hard labor. But should your calloused hand touch anything valuable, you are bound to get in trouble.” As you can see, fortune is not in my destiny. It's not like I don't want to make lots of money. I'm just not smart enough to handle wealth.

LIAO YIWU:
Tell me about your life.

TIAN:
My family lives in the Xijiashan No. 2 Village, which is under the jurisdiction of Jiangan County, near the city of Yibin. My village is pretty famous. During the Qing dynasty [1644–1911], a local scholar, named Xi, successfully passed the imperial examination and was promoted to be a mandarin. He bought a plot of land in an auspicious location and built a large mansion. A century later, the mansion remains well preserved. Because of the Xi mansion, the village has acquired a new name, the Xijiashan Rural Residence, and has attracted tourists from all over the country. Our village is also well-known for the cranes. Each year, thousands of white cranes migrate to the area and roam around.

My family has a house in the northwestern corner of the village, near the foot of a mountain. Both my parents are still alive and I have three siblings. My elder brother is already married with kids. My younger brother and I now live at home.

My bad luck started in 1993 after I had turned twenty-four. According to the local tradition, it should have been the time for me to get married. My girlfriend and I had been dating for over a year. She wanted to marry me because my family was quite well off. We earned pretty good money by collecting and selling crane eggs. So, at the urging of my girlfriend, I started preparing for our wedding. In the fall of that year, my family managed to raise five thousand yuan [US$625], and invited a local contractor and some craftsmen to add a new wing to our house. On the first day, my younger brother and I were assigned to work on the foundation by digging a hole in the ground and pouring concrete into it. Not long after we started, my brother accidentally hit something hard. We dug around carefully and discovered two big pottery containers. They were so heavy and hard to lift. My brother and I carried them into our house. We unsealed the covers and found shiny gold coins, in both of them!

I couldn't believe my eyes. I called all my family together. We emptied the pots, dumped all of the gold coins onto the floor, washed off the dirt, and then piled them up on the table. We counted and counted—there were one hundred of them. My goodness, my whole family was in a total blissful daze. Everything just felt so unreal. We truly believed that we wouldn't have to worry about money for the rest of our lives.

Oh well, as the saying goes: walls have ears. Apparently, our screaming caught the attention of the contractors. They had seen everything through the window. Those three bastards were consumed with jealousy. They immediately contacted the police. Half an hour later, several police cars arrived and surrounded our house from every direction. Of course, we didn't know that. At that moment, my whole family was still caught up in the excitement of our newly gained wealth. We were literally shaking with ecstasy. Suddenly, the door burst open.We saw fully armed police everywhere, as if they had just descended from heaven. Without any explanation, they shoved us aside and snatched the two pots of gold. Then, they tied up my whole family with one long rope, me, my parents, my younger brother, and my nephew, and herded us into a police truck.

At the Public Security Bureau, police interrogated us for a whole night. The next morning, they decided that my parents and my nephew were not directly linked to the case, so the police released them. My younger brother and I were transferred to a detention center in Yibing. Special detectives were called in to interrogate us in three shifts for several days. Police charged that we had stolen the gold coins from the grave of the Qing official. A Mr. Bai, who was the chief interrogator, put a gold coin on my palm and asked me to examine the head of the coin carefully. I looked at it closely and noticed several characters: “Minted in the sixth year of Qing Emperor Tongzhi's reign by the Xi family.” I didn't realize those gold pieces were minted in 1867. My family members were so carried away with the discovery that none of us saw those characters on the coins.

I told the police repeatedly that my brother and I had found those gold pieces under our own house. On hearing that, Mr. Bai gave out a cold laugh: These gold pieces are clearly part of the treasures inside Mr. Xi's tomb. How could those gold pieces end up buried under your house? They didn't have legs, did they? He also said that there were many Ming [1368–1644] and Qing tombs in the vicinity of the village. About 70 to 80 percent had been looted by an organized group of robbers. He said my case was only the beginning of a large-scale investigation. The government was determined to protect cultural relics as well as to wipe out the crime syndicate. Police hoped to piece together all the clues from my case and capture the ringleader. They suspected that my brother and I were both grave robbers.

I was dumbfounded. I had no clue as to what Mr. Bai was talking about. He said sternly: Don't attempt to put on a show. 'Fess up. Cooperation will lead to leniency. We know that you and your brother are not the ringleaders. Who is behind all these lootings? Are you hoarding any other precious cultural relics, such as porcelain, jade, or pottery? How many have you sold on the market? My mind was completely fogged up; I couldn't have cooked up stories even if I had wanted to. I just kept saying: I don't belong to any group and I haven't stolen anything. Then, Mr. Bai became really nasty: I initially thought you guys were just a bunch of hicks. Didn't realize you are pretty experienced in coping with interrogations. If you refuse to cooperate, we can keep you here forever. Don't blame me if you get the tougher punishment.

LIAO:
How did the gold pieces end up under your house?

TIAN:
From the unexpected discovery of fortune to our sudden arrest, everything happened so fast. We didn't even have time to think about things such as who had buried those gold pieces under our house. We still don't know.

Anyway, since the interrogation didn't yield much of a result, the local police refused to release us and detained my brother and me for three and a half months.

The days were long and miserable. Initially, the guards thought I was some kind of a big shot—the head of a triad specializing in robbing graves. They were a little fearful of me and treated me nicely. One guy even offered me a quilt when it became chilly in the evenings. Several weeks later, they found out that I was only a country bumpkin. Then things started to get nasty. The guards secretly instructed my fellow inmates to straighten me out. Under the guards' prodding, the “big boss”—a tall burly guy in my cell—began to orchestrate the initiation ritual that I hadn't gone through in my first week of detention. They stripped me, forcing me to lie down on my stomach. Then about twenty inmates walked over, spat on my ass, and then stomped on it. They called this “granting the knighthood.” I was later told that prisoners had gotten the idea from a Hong Kong kung fu movie about a fictional kingdom of beggars. After I was “knighted,” two prisoners placed a big plastic chamber pot on top of me. They called that “tortoise carrying the shitload.” Both of my hands were pressed under the container. Each time I tried to move my hands or my body, the toilet container would tilt and urine would spill over onto my body. One guy, who had been assigned to be my torturer, would kick my head if the container tilted. He kicked it so hard that my hair was soaked in blood.

LIAO:
How could they be so brutal?

TIAN:
That was just the beginning. Each time the inmates walked over to relieve themselves, they would sit on the container and step on my body. The nicer ones would only put their feet on my shoulder or back. Those evil ones deliberately put their feet on my head. I began to scream with pain, begging for mercy. But the big boss wouldn't let me go. With the help of two guys, he managed to sit on the container with both of his feet up in the air. By then, he had moved all his body weight onto me. I yelled loudly: You are killing me. You are killing me.

My loud screaming startled the big boss. He jumped off and asked his lackeys to cover my mouth. But it was too late. One guard on duty heard me. He opened the cell door and pulled me out of there. My whole body was soaked with urine. Luckily, the guard was a new graduate from the local police academy. He was young and still had a strong sense of justice and sympathy. He ordered other inmates to fetch me some hot water so I could wash and change. The guard then called the big boss to his office for interrogation. The big boss was all smiles and said I was having stomach pains and accidentally knocked over the urine container. The guard turned to me, and asked if it was true. I immediately nodded my head. The guard was skeptical but had to believe his story. He called the clinic and asked the nurse to give me some pain medicine and then issued a warning to the big boss: Next time, if there are horrible screams from your cell, I won't hear a word of explanation. I will just tie you up and put you in solitary confinement.

LIAO:
You were lucky to have met a sympathetic guard.

TIAN:
When the big boss and I were sent back to the cell, he tossed me a cigarette butt and said: You were quite a guy. You didn't betray me. Go rest up for a couple of days. I will give you a new assignment. Why don't you clean the floor?

LIAO:
How did it work?

TIAN:
The big boss assigned the chores to all inmates in my cell. If he didn't like someone, he would assign the person to dump and clean the chamber pot. Two people were needed for the job. Those two had to stand at attention by the container all day, one on each side. When the big boss or his friends needed to take a dump, the two guys had to help him take off his pants, and then stand in front of him to shield the big boss from public view. If the big boss wanted to spit while sitting on the pot, he would grab one of the guys by the collar and spit into his shirt. Compared with those two toilet helpers, I was really lucky. At least I was promoted to be the floor cleaner and didn't have to serve as a human spittoon.

LIAO:
I've been in jail once and know something about initiation rituals. But I've never heard about the ceremony you told me. I guess prisoners are getting more creative when it comes to torturing people.

TIAN:
For a while I thought I was doing OK. Two weeks later, the detention center launched a large-scale “Confession Leads to Leniency” campaign, which encouraged us to confess our own crimes and report on others. One day, about three hundred detainees from nine cells were called to the courtyard for a meeting. Leaders from the local Communist Party, the Public Security Bureau, and the People's Court showed up. We lined up in neat horizontal and vertical rows and sat on the floor, both legs crossed and back straight, just like soldiers in training. One by one, the leaders gave their speeches. All of them were saying the same thing: You should seize opportunities to confess. Confessions will lead to reduced sentences. If alleged murderers voluntarily confess their crimes and if the details they provide can be confirmed by authorities, they will get life imprisonment instead of the death penalty. At the end, the prison chief reminded everyone that the new policy would last for only two weeks. Once the campaign was over, no matter what kind of confession a detainee made, no leniency would be granted.

I sat there quietly, listening very attentively. I didn't even dare cough or fart. The courtyard was surrounded by fully armed guards, and two machine guns were aiming at us from the window of a building nearby. At the end of the meeting, I suddenly heard my name called by the head of the Public Security Bureau. “Yes, sir!” I immediately got up and stood at attention. He looked at me with a fake smile, and said: Tian Zhiguang, I want you to think hard and take advantage of this opportunity, understand?

Overnight, the chief's remarks turned me into a top celebrity thief. Once again, everyone began to think I was a big criminal. After we were back in the cell, a guard whispered something to the big boss, and then delivered some pens and notepads. Every inmate was supposed to put his confession in writing. The big boss pulled me aside and whispered: You are a lucky guy. Even the head of the Public Security Bureau knows you. If you confess, he will probably let you go home tomorrow. I shook my head and answered: I don't have anything to confess. The big boss slapped my head: You dumb ass. This type of campaign only happens once a year. If you don't take advantage of it, you will end up in jail forever.