Reality (Shame and Reconciliation after Twenty-five Years Part 2)｜2014 Commemoration of June 4th

(This article was published on June 15, 2014)

Who were those who survived and learned to live with the shame? Lin Yizi, president of Chinese University, experienced the scene of the June 4th massacre. In his "Journey to Beijing" (collected in "We Are in Beijing at the Turn of Spring and Summer 1989"), there is such a testimony:

"Ride a three-wheeled scooter at the entrance of a restaurant near X University, 40 yuan per person to the train station, and 45 yuan if you can get reimbursed. The master said that all the cars will not leave, and Chang'an Street is blocked. To go to Beijing Railway Station, you have to go through Chang'an Street. The master said that he is familiar with the small alleys and go around. The master asked his colleagues how to get to Beijing Railway Station along the way, and talked to us, and the words were similar to those of the citizens on the street last night. , but he also talked about his personal experience last night....The fiercest battle was at the Jianguomen Bridge... Dozens of ordinary people rushed towards the military vehicles, and the soldiers shot at them, and they fell. He rushed forward and was shot down again.... He said that hundreds of people died".

The key point is Lin Yizi's thoughts on the description of the master: "The tone of the master's telling us these words is not angry, just like adults telling war stories when I was a child. Only then did I realize that I used to read those war stories as myths, treating them as myths. How panicked I was when it became reality, and I wanted to escape from reality and make it a myth again. However, the master was talking about things in real life, he couldn't escape, maybe he didn't think of escaping, he was talking about familiar things in life After the massacre, he still has to work and live, he will not panic like me, he will not go back to his own place to find his own life like me.”

They are such people, a tricycle driver, a small civil servant, a white-collar worker, a housewife, a cleaner, and all Beijing citizens and ordinary Chinese people who witnessed that June. They can't panic, life has to go on as usual. They have nowhere to go because that's where they are. Even on the morning of June 4th, they had to go out to work and even remember to bargain with customers. History, for them, can only become a mythical legend, like the Three Massacres in Jiading, like the Ten Days in Yangzhou; last night was the previous dynasty. Because that's the way to survive. Otherwise, how do you face this strange reality that every June 4th, the word "today" disappears from the Internet?

I never dare to judge these silent survivors lightly, just as I never dare to accept the praise from my friends in the mainland-"You Hong Kong people are really amazing and brave, and you still remember to stand up at this time of year." Because I can never fully appreciate their situation, because untested courage is no real courage; and they are being tested every day, and have been for twenty-five years.

So when everyone is reprimanding Chai Ling's sleepy open letters, I can still try to understand her psychology sympathetically, because she also has her reality. Since 1989, almost every year there have been people predicting that this regime is about to fall, speculating that it will soon face the doomed crisis, and some friends always proclaim like a prophet, this government "will have "Big move", June 4th is about to be rehabilitated, political reform is about to start, just wait and see. However, all this is like the last judgment that never seems to come, it has always been just a prophecy. Chai Ling, who cannot live without the word "June Fourth" in her life, how will she face this reality? How should I face myself? Like other people who still want to live, we also see her "reconciliation" method. That is to convert to Christ, and then take the teachings she understands as a relief from a difficult situation: I really can't do anything with you, but I forgive you; I can't force you to admit your mistakes, but I will still sigh like Jesus: "Father Yeah, they don't know what they've done." How ridiculous and how sad.

Not being able to bear demanding demands does not mean that you do not know right from wrong; sympathizing with understanding does not mean that the person being sympathized is naturally correct. There are always many people in this world who cannot force themselves to reconcile with reality, such as Liu Suli, whom I respect very much.

In "June 4th Little Crossing the Sea" by "Further" Publishing House, I was very happy to find that someone still remembered the white banner of "Chinese Soul" and wrote a special entry to explain it. The curtain erected in memory of Hu Yaobang was hung on the Monument to the People's Heroes, and it was the visual core of the entire square at that time. And Liu Suli was one of the promoters who contributed to the production of this flag, and he was also the "key criminal" that the authorities wanted to hunt down later. However, in the first two years when I first met him, I didn’t know his past. I only knew that he was the boss of the “Wansheng Book Garden” that I had to report to when I went to Beijing. I knew that he was the favorite of many young activists. The senior is the second "boss"; although we used to sit in the coffee shop of the bookstore at that time, smoking and chatting about current events, I seldom heard him take the initiative to mention the experiences of those years. Was that because he also accepted the humiliation of silence? No, it seems to me that it was because he was too serious, never for twenty-five years to stop thinking about all the implications of the matter, and never speak lightly until it was clear. His reticence on this matter is different from the silence of ordinary people; once you get to know him deeply, you will know his uprightness and seriousness.

Besides, it's also possible that he just doesn't want people to think of him too simply as a hero; although I think he is. After that day, he fled to Beijing with Chen Xiaoping, Wu Renhua and several other friends, and went south to Wenzhou. He had the opportunity to board the "Yellow Bird" clipper to leave the country. However, on June 10th, he and Chen Xiaoping got on the bus back in Wenzhou and voluntarily ran to the police station to "surrender" in order to fight the Communist Party again in court and have a fair and just showdown. Twenty-two years later, his old friend Wu Renhua still remembered the early morning of June 4th: "Hundreds of officers and soldiers of the 27th Army, wearing camouflage uniforms and fully armed, rushed to the base of the monument. At that time, Su Li held my hand and calmed down. Said: "After decades, we have finally had a vigorous fight with the Communist Party. Today, the two brothers are worth dying here." Fortunately, he did not die; but the Communist Party will not argue with him in court He Lilai had a vigorous fight; on the contrary, they threw him into Qincheng quickly and directly.

Later Liu Suli, another friend of mine, Xu Zhiyuan, once described him in an article as a "French-style literati" who insisted on ideals, but was unable to "enter the public discourse space" and "incapable of participating in actual political behavior" because of reality. In this kind of "a small group of self-consolation" "between the political power and the public", Xu Zhiyuan believes that Liu Suli's "only compensation becomes non-stop talking and speculation, and the ideas you hold will inevitably become more and more complicated." It becomes more and more abstract, and at the same time it lacks inner independence, inevitably becoming a vassal of the changes of current events".

I don’t quite agree with Xu Zhiyuan’s observation. He may not be familiar with Liu Suli enough to see what he is doing, and the effect of his bookstore and “non-stop talking”. But I don’t intend to argue with him about the actual role that literati like Liu Suli can play in today’s China; Under the situation of "behavior", a person who cannot bear the humiliation of reality, how he bravely and preciously preserved himself. In the most extreme sense, even a brave man like Pu Zhiqiang who was arrested for participating in the June 4th symposium can be regarded as a person who has actually lost his influence. Because his name will eventually be sensitive, or will be cruelly forgotten by the public; and the June 4th seminar held by a few of them, not many people in China have heard of it. However, living in this humiliating reality where we are forced to shut up and lose our memory, instead of reconciling with the reality, and not wronging ourselves, instead of preserving ourselves unrealistically, isn’t it an extraordinary event? I agree with what Xu Zhiyuan said about the "dilemma" of literati, but in an age when everyone is trying to reconcile with reality, this kind of dilemma may be the only choice, because you don't want to reconcile, at least you can't reconcile too much.