Snow Visit I: The mourning and sadness of those who are no longer free under the country

1

This is clear. In the north, it rains mixed with snow, and the heating stops. It turns warm and cold at first. At night, on the cross streets of the city, people draw circles and burn paper money. In this seemingly crude way, they communicate with the dead, kneeling in the light of the fire, letting a pile of ashes warm the ground, and wishing the dead to live a prosperous life underground. Peaceful life.

This spring has been eventful, and I shed countless tears, mostly for Wuhan, and for those people and things that I have never met in person, but it makes my heart hurt to talk about them. In March, because my mother was ill, I rushed back from outside the country. Fortunately, I arrived at my mother's bedside to wait on her before the country was closed. For the past few days, I have kept my eyes closed and my ears shut. In a small town where the tension of the epidemic has not yet completely passed, I wear a mask and run between the hospital and my home.

Suddenly I heard that there is a national day of mourning for Qingming Festival. April 4th, what a coincidence, happened to be the common deletion and account deletion sign "404" that fills the screen.

When I heard the news, I happened to have a copy of the official media at hand, with a huge title, "Live Broadcast of the Fight against the Epidemic" and "Sharing China's Plan with the World." There are more news, mostly about "the world is copying China's work", how Western countries have fallen into dire straits of the epidemic, etc. China, on the other hand, has become a model for epidemic control. First, it is a big country that takes responsibility, and then it is a "big party that takes responsibility." In fact, it has only been two months since Dr. Li Wenliang passed away on February 6, and people's tears show no sign of breaking through the cage. Now, the official celebration meeting is about to take place.

After Dr. Li Wenliang passed away, some intellectuals called for the establishment of February 6 as a national day of mourning. As a result, the letter calling for signatures did not even have a chance to appear on the network behind the wall. Two days ago, I saw the news that there was a long queue of people outside the Wuhan funeral home to collect the ashes of their loved ones. People were silent, quiet and silent. That scene made many people cry. Later I learned that every person who goes to collect the ashes of a relative must be "accompanied" by two government staff.

Then I saw the news again. A female lawyer from Henan reposted "Long queues at Wuhan funeral parlors" and was punished by the Lawyers Association.

So far, there is no news about citizen journalists Chen Qiushi and Li Zehua who went to Wuhan to report on the epidemic...

Qingming is a day of memorial service. In fact, there are not only those who died in this man-made disaster but also many hearts, many words, a lot of sorrow, a lot of pain, a lot of reflection, and a lot of appeals for the truth that are still alive in this man-made disaster. Those words of expression were almost doomed to be "404" after they were published on the Internet by chance.

Those words flash across the Internet and you can’t catch them. They were cut in half and deleted instantly. Sometimes, after reading half of a post, I find that I can no longer open it. And those who are banned and locked up in a dark room for speaking are like being locked up in a glass room. They can see outside the glass room, but cannot say a word. I have also experienced that suffocating feeling.

Just like that, suddenly, on April 4th, people could grieve and mourn. A friend teaches at a university, and the school requires that he must mourn on April 4 and take photos to upload to the office. A friend’s child is in kindergarten, and the teacher requires that parents accompany their child to grieve at home and upload photos to “complete their homework.”

This is a country where people are powerless to speak. You have always known that you are not free to speak and speak out. But you don’t know that today, the sadness and mourning are not your own. This sense of absurdity is so real today.

What’s even more ridiculous is that due to various concealments and information control, the epidemic broke out on a large scale and eventually ravaged the world, but it became a model of “responsibility” and “anti-epidemic” and became a “homework” that all countries should copy. ".

What happened in the middle? Ridiculous joke, who can understand it?

"Wash your body with dirty water, go to the banquet with a dirty cup. If you want to argue, you forget to speak, but if you forget to speak, you want to argue. Actors and policemen sing poems." Song Dongye sang in "Airport Song", but it is very appropriate.

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At ten o'clock in the morning, the siren sounded outside the hospital ward. I looked out the window and remembered another national day of mourning, that was 12 years ago in 2008, when the Wenchuan earthquake occurred.

That year, my colleagues and I also went to Sichuan for interviews. I remember that on the seventh day after the earthquake, we encountered the National Day of Mourning during the aftershocks in Qingchuan.

I still remember that it was a temporary concentration point in the countryside of Qingchuan. The children are preparing a program to express condolences to those who come to support disaster relief. The audience has not yet arrived, and the children are rehearsing on a crude stage. In fact, at that time, the bones were still cold and the people were still in shock. At Muyu Middle School in Qingchuan County, the collapsed school building trapped hundreds of students. More than 400 children were injured or killed, and more than 200 children were recognized as dead by official media.

The flag was raised and the children were saluting. At that moment, I burst into tears when I saw the children's childish faces and the red scarves around their necks.

"Child, you salute the flag, but this country does not provide you with a safe classroom." Later, I wrote this sentence in my reporter's notes, but it was deleted when it was published.

That year, several media outlets were purged for reporting on the collapse of school buildings.

On May 12, 2009, I went to Sichuan again and lived in a board house in Yingxiu Town. I witnessed the filming of a gala for a local television station. Like many scenes we are familiar with, the theme of that party was "Come on Sichuan, Come on China", but there was not a single word of condolence for the victims. I remember that in the warm firelight deliberately created by the director, there was a pregnant mother standing quietly without saying a word, as if she had forgotten everything around her and was just staring at the photo of a family of three in her hand. On it, there was her dead child.

The number of students who died in the Wenchuan earthquake has not been calculated after all. Only the artist Ai Weiwei has been keeping statistics on the children who died. He collected schoolbags left by children in the rubble and collected more than 5,000 of them. He has been collecting the names of every child who died. I met a volunteer who helped him in Yingxiu Town. I provided the names of several children, one of whom was named Feng Yuyan. Before her death, the child wrote a letter to the principal, saying that she saw cracks in the roof of the classroom and was worried about quality problems.

The parents of the students who died in the Sichuan earthquake have been complaining for 10 years. On the 10th anniversary of the Wenchuan Earthquake in 2018, a few friends and I participated in a "voice" writing project. A young writer made a special trip to visit Tan Zuoren in Chengdu and wrote "Children of the Country". After a lot of evasion, it was finally published. Of course, there is no way to escape the fate of deletion of posts within the wall.

12 years later, it’s another round. The names and number of children who died in the Sichuan earthquake, the truth behind the collapsed school building, and accountability are still unclear to this day. All I know is that the parents of the students who died in the accident have always been the targets of local stability maintenance.

For many years, we expressed our condolences this way. Forgetting the truth, blurring the truth, how can our condolences comfort those who have died who can no longer speak?

True condolences is to give the truth, let the truth be remembered in people's hearts, and prevent the tragedy from happening again. Shouldn't this be basic common sense? But Song Dongye sang in "Airport Song", "Faith means there is no truth." This is an era when even lamentations have to take twists and turns.

In an age when all true expressions of emotion are forbidden, is this condolences honest?

I refuse such condolences.

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I remembered the night when Dr. Li Wenliang died. I was in a foreign country and burst into tears. I saw many people change their avatar to him, until today. That night, everyone I saw in WeChat Moments was crying. I wrote that night: "Can the tears tonight break through the prison of 1984?"

I remember that after Dr. Li passed away, someone used their body to write big characters in the snow by the Tonghui River in Beijing, "Farewell Li Wenliang." Many people went there to mourn Dr. Li. Later, the snow melted, but would everything be okay?

I think real mourning happens in people's hearts.

Li Wenliang's last Weibo was published on February 1, 2020. After his death, he stopped updating Weibo, but he continues to live on to this day. On April 4, there were hundreds of messages on his Weibo.

Someone said: Thank you for your bravery. Some people also said: "Why do we miss the doctor Li Wenliang? Because the shield of protection has become the target of criticism, the warning of criticism has become the fate of the prophet, and the life of the prophet has become the evidence of the warning."

His Weibo has become a miracle on the Internet. Every day, countless people visit him and talk to him on Weibo. If there are young people who are going on a blind date or falling in love, go and tell them. If you have any troubles, tell him. People remember him and tell him what happened today. Tell him that he should live a good life.

In this way, real condolences truly live under Dr. Li Wenliang’s Weibo.

True condolences do not need to be arranged by a country that bans accounts, deletes posts, and suppresses all critical voices. It happens naturally. In people's hearts, everywhere they can express themselves.

Today I mourn the loss and vow to never forget. But I will always refuse to join the loud, orchestrated chorus.

(Author Jiang Xue, independent journalist)