A Death in China - Carl Hiaasen [27]
This morning, at the former Democracy Wall, I struck up a conversation with a young man whose father had once been prominent in the Communist Party. Perhaps because the man could see by my clothing that I was an overseas Chinese, a huh chiao, he spoke with surprising candor.
He told me that his father had once enjoyed a promising career, that he had risen in the bureaucracy from a street cadre to being a Party officer of some standing. One night, while dining with several comrades at a restaurant here in Peking, the Party man recited a poem that he had written to celebrate the Cultural Revolution. It was an amateurish but lively verse that extolled Mao and glorified the progress of the Party. The last lines of his father’s poem, the young man told me, said:
And in the radiant future, all China’s children
Will sing in freedom and dance in universal happiness.
Several weeks passed, the young man recounted, and then his father was suddenly arrested by the army. He was stripped of his Party membership and charged with counterrevolutionary behavior. At his trial, the prosecutors charged that the man’s poetry encouraged laziness and immorality. Why? Because good, strong Party workers would never have the time, or desire, for song and dance. Such frivolous things, the prosecutors said, belong only in the theater.
The man, whose name was Cheng Hua, was never given a chance to speak in his own defense. He was not even permitted to introduce the complete poem into evidence to demonstrate his loyalty and love for the government.
Cheng was sentenced to eight years in a prison camp. His son told me he is not allowed any visitors, but letters are delivered once every two months. One of his father’s closest friends is the man who turned him in, the young man told me. This story made me profoundly depressed.
At lunchtime I met my niece, Kangmei. She is a beautiful girl of twenty-three, slender, with a luminous smile and a very quick mind. Unlike most Chinese women, she likes jeans and silky shirts—from Hong Kong, she told me. She was fascinated by my descriptions of the United States, so much so that I could scarcely get her to tell me anything about life in China. Of her father—my brother—she said little. “He is a man of power and achievement,” Kangmei said—but, of course, this I already know.
She described her studies at the Foreign Languages Institute and impressed me with her flawless English. In a few months, she will graduate and assume a prestigious job as a government translator. Kangmei said she is looking forward greatly to the travel opportunities, and to meeting more European and American visitors.
Finally, near the end of our lunch, I asked my niece about the young man whom I had met at Democracy Wall. I told her his sad story.
“Such events were not uncommon,” she remarked. “The boy’s father was very unwise to reveal his poem, even to friends. Within the Party, many cadres rise and prosper by informing on fellow workers. Everyone should be cautious.”
“But it seems so wrong,” I replied.
“Your outlook is different,” Kangmei said. “We who live here understand. There is freedom only for the old men who exploit the Chinese people.”
As we talked more, I learned that my niece is a woman of firm opinions. She possesses a keen, questioning intellect—and I am heartened by it. We promised to meet again after I had seen Wang Bin.
AUGUST 12.
Today I walked down the Avenue of Eternal Tranquillity, toward the western wall of the Forbidden City. I had a notion to visit the palaces, but first I stopped to buy a knitted hat from a vendor named Hong.
I noticed that one of his legs had been removed at the hip. Because of his youthfulness—he appeared about thirty—such a handicap seemed unusual. I asked him if he had been in a bicycle accident, which is common in the city.
Hong smiled and said no, he had lost the leg as a teenager. The year was 1966. His father was a prominent scientist. One of his colleagues, a Party member, was very jealous. He accused Hong’s father of secretly