Will the Boat Sink the Water?: The Life of China's Peasants (23 page)

By the spring of 1994, the peasants of Wang village found themselves in a situation where small amounts of repayment for excessive taxation was merely symbolic. Meanwhile they were made to feel the full weight of retaliation for making accusations and trying to get repayment. Something had to be done about it. In desperation the peasants of Wang village again gathered, all three hundred strong, and went to the county headquarters demanding repayment according to Zhang Xide’s own note.

In taking this step the peasants once again showed their ignorance—or perhaps it was naïveté—if they expected an official to keep his word. Zhang Xide flew into a temper the minute he saw the crowd. Without a word about his handwritten note promising repayment, he announced, “Go ahead and raise hell. I am not lifting a finger to solve your problems!”

The peasants asked, “Is this the spirit of the Party’s policies?” This further provoked Zhang, who shouted, “Well, go to

Beijing, if you can!”

But they had already been to Beijing. Now, the peasants fig—

will the boat sink the water
?

ured, it was up to the county to implement the policies handed down from Beijing, especially as there were letters of instructions concerning their case. Why go again? It was now up to the county Party boss to take action.

But Zhang had totally lost his cool. “Go ahead and raise hell,” he shouted. “The more chaos the better! Just wait till I deal with you!”

The peasants, at a loss, turned to the county’s Party Disciplinary Committee, the entity that originally had sent out investigative groups of its own and had uncovered many problems in the “village cash reserve.” Now, on hearing the peasants’ complaints, the head of the Disciplinary Committee shrugged. “I told them to pay back the excessive charges. But they just won’t. What do you want me to do?” The county Party boss would not implement policy and the Disciplinary Committee could not, or would not, enforce discipline to make the county boss act.

Things were again at an impasse. As the villagers seethed in anger, Wang Junbin, Wang Hongchao, and Wang Xiangdong decided that they would see the struggle through to the bitter end. To them the problem was implementing Party policy and relieving the peasants’ burden pure and simple. They never imagined that things could be twisted by the county bosses to fit their own political agenda.

After that fruitless call on Zhang Xide, back at the village things took a downward turn for the peasants. Wang Hongchao got hold of an astounding piece of news. He had a relative, Shi Canzhou, who was the political director of the Baimiao Township Security Station. Shi took him aside one day and said, “Don’t get involved in making any more accusations to the higher-ups. Arrests are being planned. Be on guard.” It was the thirtieth of March, 1994, roughly two months after County Party boss Zhang Xide had written his note. Wang Hongchao was shocked at Shi’s tip-off. He quickly rushed to tell his pals

the long road

Wang Junbin and Wang Xiangdong, and soon the whole village was alerted. Terror seized the villagers. They organized a night patrol, and Wang Hongchao actually succeeded in getting his hands on the village broadcasting set and spiriting it away into his own house, so that he could alert the rest of the village if anything happened. The villagers felt themselves prepared for the worst, but they were still shocked at how quickly the worst happened.

Heaven Above and the Emperor Beyond

It was April 2, 1994, and past eleven o’clock at night—nothing special for city folk, but late for the people in Wang Village, who were all tucked in their bedrolls, fast asleep. At this unearthly hour, a van crept stealthily into the village. The van parked at the west end of the village, and five men alighted. Later on it was disclosed that they were from the Baimiao township security station: Shi Canzhou, the security officer who had dropped the warning; two policemen, Wang and Zhang; and two security hirelings, Wang and Liu. They crept noiselessly into the village. But the night patrol man saw their approach and followed them undetected. He saw the five men poke around the houses of those who had stuck their necks out to make petitions, and even push against their doors to see if they were secured. The patrol ran toward Wang Hongchao’s place, shouting, “There are strange men in the village!” Wang Hongchao’s sister-in-law happened to be visiting with them. A light sleeper, she jumped up from her bed, rushed to the room where the broadcasting set was stored, turned it on, and shouted at the top of her lungs, “Thief! Thief! Good neighbors, out with your rakes, out with your poles. Don’t let them escape!” In the silence of the night, the call went out clearly over the whole village. Men, women, and children were all alerted.

will the boat sink the water
?

The sudden commotion shocked the interlopers. Now that they had been discovered, the two security guys were frightened and took flight. These hirelings were especially hated by the villagers: the regular policemen could in some sense be said to be doing their jobs, but these irregulars were considered outright collaborators and mercenaries and would be soundly beaten if caught. Political Director Shi Canzhou, finding himself exposed, turned and stumbled away in the dark, leaving the van behind. The two policemen, Wang and Zhang, and the driver, did not move quickly enough, were separated in the dark, and were taken by the villagers.

The villagers asked each man in isolation from the others: “Where are you from? What are you doing here?”

One policeman said, “We are from Tile-Roof Inn Village . . . ”

The other policeman said, “We are from Yellow Ridge Village.”

The driver said, “We are from the silk factory in town. Our boss is here to discuss some business.”

The three contradictory answers gave rise to more suspicions. The fact was, Wang Village, Linquan County, was situated on the border of Anhui and Henan provinces. A footpath by the house of the village schoolmaster was actually the border between the two provinces. There is a saying that when the schoolmaster’s little son peed on the path, he was actually irrigating the lands of two provinces. Situated in such a precarious position, with three men in police uniforms prowling in the village in the dark of night, the villagers were naturally alarmed. They asked the men to produce their IDs. They refused and broke away, but they were on unfamiliar terrain. Seeing the villagers hard on their heels, one of the policemen stopped running and took out his gun. “Stop, or I’ll fire!” he hollered. The villagers, having the advantage of number, were not intimidated. It just confirmed their suspicion that the three, with their

the long road

contradictory stories, were up to no good. Why not show their IDs? Why run away, leaving their van behind?

Convinced that their uniforms were fake, they villagers gave the three interlopers a sound beating.

Under this assault, the driver blurted out the truth: “They really are policemen from the township police station. They have given me 10 yuan for the use of my van, and a pack of cigarettes, and they are here to arrest people.” He took out the 10-yuan note and the pack of cigarettes, hoping to be let go. The villagers turned to the two policemen, Zhang and Wang, who finally confessed that they were indeed from Baimiao Township, and were here to make arrests.

This information merely led to more questions: “Arresting our representatives?”

“Why not do it openly?”

“Why pretend to be from Tile-Roof Inn and Yellow Ridge villages and the silk factory in town?”

“Why try to run away?”

The villagers insisted on getting answers.

One of the policemen said, in a small voice, “We are here to check on gambling . . . ”

The other said, “We are here on patrol . . . ”

This was really far-fetched. For the previous forty-five years—since the Communist Liberation—the township police force had never once done any patrolling in the villages. Why now, just when the villagers had been repaid some of the excessive taxes, should they suddenly show up on patrol? And why, in particular, were they conducting their so-called patrolling right at the doorsteps of the village representatives? The villagers soon discovered that one of the policemen had been drinking. Knowing that their sort was capable of anything and were no better than street thugs when under the influence of alcohol, the villagers took away the gun and the four sets of handcuffs that the men had with them. It was now clear that

will the boat sink the water
?

they were indeed here to make four secret arrests, and that their targets were none other than Wang Junbin, Wang Xiangdong, Wang Hongchao, and another young man, Wang Hongqin.

The villagers were furious, shouting at the policemen: “When we were beaten, you looked the other way. Now that we have appealed to the central leadership, you try secretly to arrest us! Aren’t you ashamed of yourselves?” They were so angry that they smashed the van. The policeman Wang and the driver soon made off. As for the drunken policeman Zhang, he was quickly sobered by the turn of events and fled. As far as the villagers were concerned, that was the end of the matter.

That’s what transpired during the night of April 2, 1994. It was a molehill of a local fracas that the county Party bosses later tried to turn into a mountain, an insurrection in which township policemen were attacked and guns were stolen. The drunken policeman Zhang later claimed that he had been seriously injured in the fight.

Following the flight of the three intruders, one villager gathered together the gun, cartridges, and the handcuffs that had been taken from the two policemen and handed them over to the head of the township militia, Wang Dongliang, who happened to be a resident of Wang Village. By this time it was already into the small hours of the morning, and the villagers trouped home to catch some sleep.

No one could have imagined that by the next morning, when the county Party Secretary Zhang Xide learned what had happened, the story of the night’s event would be totally distorted. Despite the fact that the two policemen, two security guards (who had fled at the first sign of trouble), and the conscripted driver had all gone free and the gun, cartridges, and handcuffs had all been safely returned to official custody, the Linquan County Party Committee, headed by its boss, Zhang Xide, made a false report to his superiors at the prefecture level and launched an unprecedentedly bloody campaign against the vil—

the long road

lagers, putatively to “rescue kidnapped policemen and search for guns in Wang Village.”

The following morning, April 3, 1994, a police detail numbering more than a hundred armed men started off from the county seat in eight police vans, with sirens heralding their approach. The cars were fitted with machine guns and the men were armed with helmets and bullet-proof vests and sported police batons and shields in their hands. As the convoy entered Wang village, its loudspeaker blared the order “No one is to leave!” But these policemen had forgotten, or never knew, that the village straddled the border between Anhui and Henan. All the residents had to do was to walk to the edge of the village to find themselves in Henan Province, out of the reach of the Anhui police, and this is just what many of them did. Of course there were many who stayed put: old people, or those who had never joined in making petitions, or outsiders visiting relatives—all felt safe and saw no need to join the crowd now streaming into Henan Province. Much to their surprise, however, the invading armed police made no distinction between men, women, and children, residents and outsiders, and gave a vicious beating to everyone they could lay their hands on. The village echoed to the sounds of curses, kicks and blows, the shattering of household utensils, the screams of children, the protests of adults, as well as the screeches of roosters flying up to the rooftops, the barking of dogs jumping over the wall, and the thud of pigs battering against their pens in panic.

Obviously, the targets of this surprise attack were the people who had gone to the higher authorities to make appeals. These people’s homes were ransacked, pots and pans were smashed, and even chimneys were knocked over. A collection of twenty silver dollars that Wang Hongqin had treasured, 700 yuan that Wang Xiangdong had saved, and a gramophone of Wang Hongchao’s—all disappeared in the raid. The invaders took eight thousand tubes of rat poison, Wang Hongchao’s whole

will the boat sink the water
?

inventory, and emptied the contents into his wheat storage. After stirring the poison in vigorously with a spade, they left in triumph. The twelve people who were arrested in the raid of April 3, 1994, were mostly people who had had nothing to do with making petitions: old men, young women on visits with relatives, and even students who had crossed over from neighboring Henan province.