practically at the same time. In those days, nobody much understood the function of a prosecutor. Our judicial unit assigned two people of the lowest secretarial rank-a retired army officer who was politically reliable but who had had no legal training and me, someone who had just graduated from law school and who was also a young woman. In this way, the chief and deputy chief of the local Public Security Bureau basically controlled everything.
I was ready to fall apart by the end of the very first day. In every case, big or small, the accused was given the death sentence, and not one of the crimes involved murder. Robbery received a death sentence, petty theft received a death sentence, swindling received a death sentence, and no one paid any attention at all when the accused produced solid exculpatory evidence.
There was one case in which a young man had sexual relations with a young woman, her family came after him, the two sides had a fight, and they all received minor injuries. The girl’s family went to the Public Security Bureau and had the boy arrested. The boy’s family knew that this was potentially a very serious situation for him during this crackdown period. The whole family went over and knelt down in front of the girl’s house to beg them to withdraw the charge, but the girl’s family refused. When the case came to our six-person group, the Public Security chief asked us, “What is the sentence for the crime of hooliganism?” “This crime does not merit the death penalty!” I exclaimed as soon as I could. The other five group members stared at me in silent rebuke. In the end the boy was given an indefinite sentence of labor reform in far-off Xinjiang Province.
After court that day, the deputy chief of Public Security came over to us clutching a report and said, “Other places are all executing ten or more people by firing squad… Just look at Henan Province. Zhengzhou, Kaifeng, and Luoyang all executed forty or fifty people at the same time. Even a place like Jiaozuo executed thirty at the same time. But we haven’t even reached double figures. What do you say we should do about it?” Everybody felt under great pressure.
At that point the retired army officer who had been assigned with me said, “The hooligan intentionally injured others. His sentence was too light and out of step with the spirit of Party Central.”
“Then we’ll just change the sentence to execution and say he made it onto the list.” Turning to me the deputy chief added, “Female comrade, you should not be so kindhearted.” His reprimand really knocked me back-that’s how weak I was.
That weekend we shot ten people in the back of the head. I was ashamed of my cowardice and felt so angry about my compromise. What good is the law? Is this a society that practices the rule of law? I debated with myself. When I returned from the execution grounds that day, I set out on a path from which there could be no return.
In the next round, the court secretaries went together with the district police officers to various locations to investigate cases and arrest people. Then we took the accused to the Public Security Bureau in the county seat for trial. I had already made up my mind: for any crime that didn’t deserve capital punishment, I would say so outright. Since there would be a record that one of the two judicial representatives was opposed to the death sentence, the others in the group would be unable to insist on it and would have to change the sentence. But in this way there would be fewer death sentences, and everybody would be afraid of criticism from higher up. Members of my work unit phoned me and tried to dissuade me from acting the way I was, but I just ignored them.
Later on, I came to know that even if I had not had an “accident,” my work unit was already planning to transfer me. One night in the county seat, an army vehicle ran into me. This was a common occurrence. In rural areas, army vehicles sped around like crazy and often ran into people. If civilians were killed or injured, they just had to accept their fate. But even though it was a common occurrence, usually if an army vehicle ran into a member of the Public Security authorities, there would be endless wranglings back and forth between these and the military. In my case, however, the army took me straight to Number 301 Hospital, and afterward my work unit didn’t inquire further into the incident.
After leaving the hospital, I handed in my resignation and became a person without a work unit. And my mother didn’t have a bad thing to say about it.
I became a privately self-employed person by opening a small restaurant with my mother. We mostly served her Guizhou-style goose. In the 1980s, Beijing was a fascinating place, the heart of an era full of promise. Our first regular customers were natives of Guizhou, especially scholars and writers who had moved to Beijing. They brought other Beijing writers, artists, and scientists and foreigners to eat and to talk. My mother loved to entertain guests and I loved the excitement. Everybody called me Little Xi. We expanded our restaurant and renamed it The Five Flavors. In the autumn of 1988, I met Shi Ping and fell in love.
He was a poet. There is nothing at all poetic about me, but we both cherished genuine sentiment. Shi Ping said that someday he would certainly receive the Nobel Prize for literature, and I said I would certainly accompany him to Sweden to attend the award ceremony. That was the happiest time in my entire life.
We didn’t really have too much time alone together, though, because Shi Ping liked to spend time with his poet and artist mates. There were quite a few women around him, but, surprisingly, I didn’t mind.
Every night The Five Flavors was full of our intellectual and artistic friends debating issues, drafting and signing manifestos, competing jealously for each other’s affections, getting drunk and throwing up. The police visited us frequently, but my mother was very adept at getting rid of them.
In the spring of 1989 Shi Ping and a group of his friends went to Lake Baiyangdian and stayed a few days-they had been “sent down” there during the Cultural Revolution. I came back to Beijing early. I had the feeling Shi Ping was seeing one of the other women, so I found an excuse to leave. I guess I didn’t want a direct confrontation. That night the authorities closed our restaurant down. They said a group of academics had issued some sort of political statement there a few days earlier, with foreigners present.
I don’t know what I was thinking at the time, but I actually went to see Ban Cuntou. He was in my class at university. He grew up in this big courtyard and could be considered a member of China’s Red aristocracy. His whole demeanor implied that this world had been created through his force of arms and therefore it all belonged to him. There were many people like him living in Beijing’s big, old-fashioned courtyards. I’d heard that he was the highest- ranking official among my former classmates, so I went over to ask his advice. When we were in school, he often hinted that I ought to become his girlfriend. He thought that every woman should like him, but I couldn’t stomach his attitude. This time I was really stupid to think that I could take advantage of my “old flame” status to see if he could save my restaurant.
I was in a rotten mood in the first place, and I was overconfident about the drinking capacity I thought I’d built up at the restaurant. That night we didn’t drink Chinese rice wine, but we had something called Remy Martin. I drank too fast, wasn’t used to foreign liquor, and before I knew it I was plastered… I remember Ban Cuntou pointing at the TV reporting on Mikhail Gorbachev’s visit and asking me, “What do you think about Gorbachev?”
When I woke up, I was in bed and he was sitting on the sofa in his underwear reading the paper. I realized I had slept with him. To get even with Shi Ping? I don’t think I’d have done it for that. Ban Cuntou had deliberately got me drunk. “Well, this time you finally got to me,” he said when he saw I was awake.
“Ban Cuntou, you’ve gone too far this time!” I said angrily.
“Well, you’re no St. Joan the virgin martyr either,” he retorted.
Ever since college, I’d always known that guys like him were smooth-talking and insincere, so I shut up. With a terrible headache, I went to the bathroom, had a quick shower, got dressed, and left without saying another word.
In the days after that, everybody was busy going to Tiananmen Square. Shi Ping wrote a new poem in support of the students. I was still furious with Shi Ping, and we were both busy with our own activities on the Square.
Then they started shooting at us, and Shi Ping and I were separated.
A couple of weeks later, I was arrested, but they let me go when they found out I was pregnant.
Actually, I was already three months pregnant. I was so caught up in the June 4 events that I didn’t even notice. At the time I believed it was Shi Ping’s child, but later on I didn’t dare say for certain.
I lived with my mother and waited for the baby. The big courtyard was full of people from political and legal circles, who all knew of my situation; we had to put up with a lot of tongues wagging and fingers pointing behind our backs. Fortunately, after June 4 everyone felt they had just survived a calamity and they didn’t want to be too nosy and attract attention.
I didn’t hear anything from Shi Ping for a long time. He escaped to Hong Kong in secret. Later on, he went to France and married a Frenchwoman. He never even sent me a single letter to let me know he was safe.
When my son was born, I named him Wei Min, giving him my last name. When Wei Min was twenty years old, he changed his name to Wei Guo, exchanging the word “people”-Min-for “nation”-Guo.
Our restaurant was closed for a year and a half, but the following autumn, we received a notice that we could
