Will the Boat Sink the Water?: The Life of China's Peasants (26 page)

Life dragged on through 1994 into 1995, when the peasants of Wang Village were afflicted with another punitive disaster. On September 1, 1995, Linquan County sent down another “shock team,” this time with three hundred members, to check on the implementation of the one-child policy. These low-life creatures swaggered about the village, invented excuses to impose fines and taxes, and dragged away your pig or your sheep, dug up your grain storage, removed your furniture, broke down your door or wrecked the walls of your house in pursuit of fines and payments that would go into their own pockets. Again, the peasants were made to bear the burden of the shock team’s expenses.

The residents of Wang Village were outraged. Yet again they held a meeting and yet again they decided to launch a march to Beijing to seek justice, their fifth march. There was no turning back, and they did not care to leave any room for maneuvering.

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It was do or die. Leading this march was none other than the well-tested village representative, the former peddler of rat poi-son Wang Hongchao.

The group’s arrival in Beijing did not take place in a vacuum. To the contrary, the atmosphere was already changed. Just a few weeks before, Li Xinwen, a peasant from another village of Linquan County had come to Beijing to petition for justice. Li’s house had been forcibly demolished so that the county security bureau could build a fancy new office building on the site. Li had received no suitable compensation and in addition had been deprived of his livelihood. Now homeless, Li came to Beijing to look for justice, but was robbed of his money in the big city. On October 4, 1995—right after the forty-sixth anniversary of the founding of the People’s Republic—Li, in complete despair, tried to throw himself under a car at a busy downtown intersection in the Qianmen district, but he did not succeed. At dawn the next morning, October 5, he went to the top of the Petitions and Appeals Office building and leaped to his death.

The city was shocked. The scandal of such a tragedy born of a peasant’s hopelessness was followed on October 27 by the arrival in the capital of the seventy-four villagers from a village in Linquan County. It was the fifth desperate attempt of peasants from Wang Village of Baimiao Township, Linquan County, Anhui Province to get the attention of the Party and the government. Two days later, on October 29, a Sunday, they found themselves in Tiananmen Square.

The five-star national flag fluttered at the center of the square, and families were relaxing and enjoying themselves in the vicinity. The peasants of Wang Village eluded Appeals Office staff, who were keeping an eye on them. They managed to congregate at the foot of the pole that bore the national flag;

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by prearranged signal, all fell down on their knees in mute accusation. The peasants of Wang Village had come to Beijing to beg the Party to redress their grievances: they had decided to take this action at the risk of their lives. They knew the implications of such an act—the negative effect it could have on the country’s image. Making the country look bad could be construed as trying to smear the Party in a public arena exposed to the view of foreign reporters. They could be arrested, jailed—even shot. But they could think of no other way to move the Beijing leaders, whose hearts seemed deaf to the cries of the people.

The peasants of Linquan County—one who had jumped to his death in despair, and seventy-four who had traveled across the county to fall down on their knees in Tiananmen Square— finally had the nation’s attention, and the nation was shaken to its core. The Party Central Committee finally sat up and took notice. Orders were sent off to the provincial leaders of Anhui to come to the capital immediately. They were to attend an emergency meeting with representatives from the Ministry of Agriculture, the Ministry of Public Security, the High Procurator’s Court, the Judicial High Court, the Disciplinary Committee of the Central Committee, the National Birth Planning Committee, and other concerned offices and institutions.

Wang Hongchao and two other peasants were invited to attend and put their case before the august gathering.

At the meeting, leaders from the Ministry of Agriculture confirmed the Party Central Committee’s policy of relieving the peasants’ burdens and ordered reimbursement for any excessive fines and taxes imposed on them. It was also made clear that peasants should not be punished for going to the upper tiers of leadership to lay out their grievances.

The Party Central’s Disciplinary Committee and the government’s law enforcement expressed their disapproval of the pro-crastination and delays that had exacerbated the tensions

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between the peasants and the leadership. They announced that disciplinary measures would be meted out wherever necessary, including punishment by law. The representative from the Ministry of Public Security also clarified the issues related to the so-called Baimiao Township incident of April 2, 1994, and the crackdown that followed—which was the tipping point that pushed the peasants over the edge. The peasants also got answers to their questions about policemen going on patrols in villages: One, the public security’s patrolling was conducted only in densely populated urban areas. Two, it was against the law for public security personnel to refuse to show their IDs. Three, the villagers were justified in smashing the van of strangers who sniffed around the village under cover of night and refused to show their IDs. And, finally, Four, those who had been arrested in the crackdown must be immediately released.

So much for the so-called “Baimiao Township incident” of April 2, 1994, which started when Village Chief Gao robbed Wang Hongchao of his TV and bike for nonpayment of a 6 yuan tax, an act of bullying that spiraled out of control, sparked the villagers’ five trips to Beijing, and ended with the public spectacle of seventy-four peasants kneeling in supplica-tion to the Party in the heart of Beijing.

A month later, in November 1995, the Anhui provincial government fielded a new investigation team made up of twelve comrades from the provincial and the prefecture levels and sent it down to Baimiao Township and Wang Village to do on-the- spot investigation. After a stay of twenty days the team was able to confirm that there had been excessive taxation, excessive use of force in implementing the one-child policy, and excessive measures in dealing with the so-called “Baimiao Township incident” of April 2, 1994. A fair summary. Sort of.

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December 6, 1995, was a happy day in Wang Village.

Wang Xiangdong, one of the handful of young local men with some education and one of the three young men who had led the first expedition to Beijing in the winter of 1993, was released from prison after being illegally detained for one and a half years. After the crackdown following the Baimiao Township incident of April 2, 1994, he joined in leading the second trip to Beijing, together with Wang Hongchao and Wang Hongqin, then was dragged back from Beijing, thrown into jail in Taihe County, and later secretly sentenced to two years in prison.

Wang Junbin, the army veteran who had been on the wanted list, had gone into hiding after taking part in the first trip to Beijing. He led the third, unsuccessful, trip to Beijing in company with the newcomer on the scene, Wang Hongling; he was also the man whose brother had been wrongfully arrested for sending that mysterious telegram. He had been in hiding ever since. Now both returned triumphantly, and Wang Junbin was rein-stated in the Party.

Wang Hongchao, the rat poison peddler, had taken an active role throughout the fight for justice. In addition to leading the first and second trips, after which he had been dragged back and thrown into jail, he led the fourth expedition, of seventy-three people, to Beijing. That expedition led to a joint investigation team, but it included the accused themselves—the county leadership—and thus came to nothing. Wang Hongchao was also the mind behind the fifth and last expedition to Beijing, when seventy-four peasants of Wang Village finally got the attention of the Party and the government.

Now all these men—Wang Junbin, Wang Hongchao, Wang Xiangdong, Wang Hongqin and others—were welcomed back like heroes, with a great banging of gongs and setting off of fire-crackers and waving of red flags bearing accolades such as “Champions of the People.”

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Wang Xiangdong was elected the new village chief, and Wang Junbin was Party secretary.

The beginning of the year 1996 brought a thrill throughout the village community: Linquan County Party Boss Zhang Xide was being transferred! The news spread like wildfire. On the day that he was to leave, hundreds if not thousands from all the surrounding villages poured into the county seat and massed directly in front of the county Party headquarters, laying siege to Zhang Xide in his office. People shouted unceremoniously, “Zhang, come out and show your face!” County officials were among the spectators, but none stepped forward to defuse the situation.

Zhang Xide finally appeared shamefacedly. As he tried to express some words of apology, the crowd surged toward him, swept him up and pushed him down and tossed him about, some cursing, others surreptitiously using their fists. The once-formidable Party secretary of Linquan County flailed his hands about helplessly. How the mighty are fallen. The county public security force came to his rescue, their arrival preceded by the wail of police sirens, but the once-all-powerful Zhang Xide beseeched them, “Please, please don’t make arrests! Please, don’t hurt anybody!” It seemed that Zhang Xide had finally learned a lesson.