After the Sitong Bridge incident, those who talked about it

one

"Did you see yesterday's news?

"bj"

"I can't say more, I will be banned if I say more."

On October 14th, I was in bed with a cold when I suddenly received news from an old classmate in China, three short sentences bombarded one after another. My nose was sore, and my drowsy brain reacted for a long time before I realized that "bj" turned out to be "Beijing". After a long chat with the people inside the wall, I suddenly found that the Latinization of Chinese has progressed to the point of occupying the capital. I laughed, snot sprayed half of my face, my eyes were sore, and I almost burst into tears. If someone was beside me, I would probably think I was moved. I wiped my eyes and made sure that I wasn't moved - it's been a long time since I was moved by people inside the wall: after the 2019 Hong Kong National Security Law incident and the 70th anniversary of the CCP's 70th anniversary, my domestic friends and I have basically stopped discussing complex events Now, the only thing that remains is the safety topics that don’t need to be bothered, eating and drinking, health, the repeated outbreak of the new crown epidemic, and moaning a few words during the period when returning to China, or the polite words of the other party going abroad to meet each other. Impossible. Political views have been deeply divided, and they tacitly maintain the most polite contact with each other, so as not to tear each other at a distance, and their posture is also ugly. But this day, she suddenly asked something unspeakable, which surprised me.

This well-off middle-class classmate was an active member of the party and group activities when she was young. In 2019, she was still singing Long Live the Motherland and Long Live the Party in the circle of friends. The "unsettled elements" of the prosperous dream. She should have learned about the "Sitong Bridge" incident in Beijing from a group of friends, saw the photos of the scene, and saw the demands of the strong men.

"Warrior," she messaged me, "hope not to suffer." And one more.

"You know what? I'm praying every day now who will die! I hope every day! I hope every month! If I have a dog in the future, I'll call him by his name! When he steps down, I'll buy a bunch of firecrackers and make them bigger!" She He also decided to add a few words, although he didn't even dare to mention the name of "then who". In the message she sent me, she scolded the person who couldn't name her "idiot", and apologized for her vulgar language, because there was no other word to describe her anger.

This series of messages from old classmates and the obscure pinyin abbreviations turned too fast. I couldn't keep up with them for a while, and I couldn't help but wonder if I had hallucinations due to fever. I hurriedly asked, "When did you change, and why did you suddenly look forward to Xi's death?"

"It started with the closure of Shanghai this year."

When Shanghai was closed, she was in Xuhui District, and she went through the panic of two months of food shortages. She used to have a family of five with only a plate of vegetables and rice left, and she didn't even know where the next meal was. In addition to eating only for children and the elderly, she and her husband are hungry and eat only one meal every day. That is, from then on, hunger and fear finally opened her eyes. "Shanghai! People are going to starve to death in Shanghai!"

My classmate is a foreigner. After many years of hard work, I finally realized the Shanghai dream: I found a stable and good job, married a Shanghainese, had a Shanghai child, and bought two apartments. Living well is a direct result of the city’s economic prosperity. beneficiaries. Shanghai is almost a belief in her heart, as unshakable as her belief in the future. But in the spring of 2022, her dream of a stable Shanghai in this world was shattered. "That's Shanghai! Shanghai!" Her voice trembled in the voice message, repeating this sentence.

"That's when I woke up," she said. "When I was young, it was a waste of life. I ate and slept foolishly. I didn't have any ambitions. In preparation for the closure of the city, the nucleic acids kept coming, and the leaders of the unit were still asking them to submit homework to study the powerful software every day. "My mentality has completely changed. Now I want to go abroad, but where should I go? What about my parents?" she added.

two

After the Sitong Bridge incident, I contacted my domestic friends more than usual. An old friend who was almost disconnected in the past also appeared, and even the chat was avoided, and he just said: "Have you seen the news of si tong qiao?", Sitongqiao is still Chinese pinyin. I don’t know if she contacted me because she thought I should have more inside information when I was overseas, or if I could be regarded as her safest confidant: since she already knew my attitude (the handle), talk to me Come, it's safer than coming with relatives and friends who are silent and unclear, don't worry about being reported or betrayed.

I wonder how she in Beijing learned about the Sitong Bridge incident and whether she had witnessed it.

She said no, she only found out when she accidentally saw someone posted a photo of the Sitong Bridge incident in a group chat, but she couldn't say it, she didn't dare to say it.

When I chatted with Sitongqiao, her circle of friends that day was the live video of Xi Jinping's speech at the 20th National Congress of the Communist Party of China. I took a look at her chats, and then at her circle of friends. I deeply suspected that I had schizophrenia and hallucinations because of the aggravation of the cold. I wanted to confirm again and again that she was an old friend I was familiar with, and that it wasn't some Internet police deliberately fishing, so I asked a few questions about her work in Beijing.

"Now our unit tests nucleic acid every three days, and everyone has to be tested. In order to prevent the nucleic acid from expiring next week, sometimes we will be called up to the unit to test on weekends."

"Do I have to pay for nucleic acid?"

"Free."

Thinking of the nature of her work, although it has nothing to do with politics, it belongs to the system.

"Then your unit organized to watch the 20th National Congress?" I asked her.

"The unit does not have it, but today my husband and I have to watch the speeches at the 20th National Congress of the Communist Party of China at home, and take pictures and send them to the unit."

"The unit still cares about this?"

"The Party Member's Request"

She wrote these words quickly, without even a single punctuation mark, as if her party membership was self-evident to me, and my heart sank slightly, as if a stone had fallen into a lake. I haven't talked deeply in these years, and I don't know when she joined the party. My impression of her is still at the seriousness of her 20-year-old when she was talking about current affairs and introducing "The Second Sex" to me on a long-distance phone call. But then the ripples brought by the news quickly calmed down: her ideal was not to stay in Beijing, but now it has come true: her status as a Communist Party member, her job within the system, and the living benefits that that job brings, such as Beijing Hukou and Welfare Housing. But joining the party has benefits and costs, of course, at least one must swear under the party banner, "fight for communism for life" and "never betray the party", then pay party dues, participate in large and small party organization activities, and continue to do so. Study the speeches of the party leader, write down your experience, and report your thoughts to the organization... If the times are unfortunate, the party leader happens to be a pig, and you are sane, then you will suffer mentally.

This friend has been complaining in the message: "The ideological control is too serious now!"

But what shall I say? Seeking kindness? But as a member of the Communist Party of China, what she hopes for is not the China it is now, right? Otherwise, why did she ask me so excitedly about the Sitong Bridge incident, just like when she introduced "The Second Sex" to me.

three

On the first weekend after the Sitong Bridge incident, my cold was a little bit easier, and the weather turned hot, so a friend invited me to go to the riverside to bask in the sun.

A swan swims lightly and gracefully on the autumn waters of October, from one bridge to another. Under the bridge, where the water flow gathers, the water and grass are lush, and the swans stay under the bridge, their necks stretched into the water to eat.

My friend and I were chatting about trivial matters. She glanced at the bridge and the topic suddenly changed: "Do you know about the recent Sitong Bridge?"

I nodded, this was the nth person to mention to me after the Sitongqiao incident. Before that, our topic had never been about politics.

"The man at Sitong Bridge is really a warrior! How did he come up with those words, he wrote it so accurately! And he did it so skillfully and prepared so carefully beforehand! The place at Sitong Bridge was also well found!"

Friends praised the warriors of Sitong Bridge, and the sun jumped on her face.

"How did you find out about this?" I asked.

"I saw a group of our overseas Chinese, and they shared it. There are no domestic people in this group, so it has not been deleted or blocked."

The friend is self-employed, and now she is hesitating to change her French citizenship. If you change your nationality, you can find any job and enjoy the generous social benefits, unemployment benefits, and subsidies for low-income people in the French society. From then on, you will have a stable life and you don’t have to limit yourself to a specific freelance residence. In the face of economic pressure and rising prices Struggling to find customers.

"The only reason I used to want to keep my Chinese nationality was my parents. If something happened to them, I could go back directly. But now..." She smiled bitterly. "Now even if I have a Chinese passport, I can't go back!"

She is an only daughter. At the end of 2018, her mother in Chongqing suffered a sudden cerebral hemorrhage. Fortunately, her father was by her side and she was sent to the doctor in time to save her. However, after the cerebral hemorrhage, her mother also suffered from a lame leg. From time to time, due to despair and illness, she would fall into depression that she would never see her daughter again. The father told his friends about this after the mother was discharged from the hospital, and she cried "wow" to the screen at that time. At that time, she was in France, and she had just changed her freelance residence visa. She had no money to go home. She worried day and night about finding clients, working hard for performance, and living a long life. The news of her parents made her mentally devastated, followed by several years of insomnia. and panic attacks. In these years of hard work, she has also met a lot of Chinese, including old overseas Chinese who have lived in France for 50 or 60 years, and new Chinese who have recently arrived. She often participates in the activities of some Chinese associations to comfort her. own homesickness.

"Before the epidemic, I was still a patriotic pink. The National Day activities organized by the consulate and Chinese associations, such as exhibitions, parades with the national flag and cheongsam, I still participated in all of them, and I was still there to help." She said to me.

With the arrival of the new crown epidemic in 2020, the long lockdown of the city and the interruption of flights made her return to China to see her parents completely put on hold. In the summer of 2022, France's public health emergency has ended, but China has intensified nucleic acid testing and closed the city.

"40 degrees, 40 degrees in Chongqing! Those idiots, they just want to tell my parents to test nucleic acid under the sun! People in their 60s and 70s are tested every day! My mother waits in line there every day and waits for more than one. When I was young, I was worried every day that she had high blood pressure. What should I do if she had a cerebral hemorrhage?! There were wildfires in Chongqing at that time..." My friend's tone rose, "This epidemic has completely changed me, stupid epidemic prevention policy, stupid Xi Jinping I want to be an emperor!...When Wuhan was closed, other people were still chasing Wuhan people everywhere. When they arrived in Shanghai, they chased Shanghai people. Now, where in the country has no nucleic acid test and no closure? The economy is like this! The image of the Chinese has been ruined like this, and he still thinks it is his merit, so shameless, shameless!"

The friend was excited. After saying this, he suddenly panicked. He turned his head down in his handbag and took out his mobile phone: "I want to change to airplane mode, otherwise they will listen to what we say!"

"What about the monitoring, shoot us both remotely?" I laughed, a hint of sadness.

The newly converted friends seem to be particularly afraid and alert. The shock of a person suddenly discovering that he has been living a scam before, and that good people are bullies, can be accompanied by extreme anger and extreme fear.

Reminds me of the question that young French people ask me every year: "Why don't the Chinese resist the tyranny of the government?"

At that time, I could not wait to film this scene and show it to them: Look at the Chinese who have just awakened in your free country, this ordinary overseas Chinese who does not agree with the reset policy and the re-election of Emperor Xi, why at this moment, Put your phone on airplane mode with trembling hands, and you know how much courage it takes for a man to say "no" on Chinese soil, while a man on a bridge in Beijing to say no to an entire regime has to resist How much fear and what price to pay.

Four

My cold finally subsided a week after the Sitongqiao incident. Although I had a slight cough, it did not affect my work. This October, the traditional French strike season is back since the Covid-19 era stopped. In this country, spring work, summer vacations, autumn strikes, and winter festivals are all social customs. This year, trade unions organized a cross-industry strike in response to soaring prices and shortages of gasoline. Buses are therefore often stopped, cancelled or delayed.

On the way to work, I happened to meet an old acquaintance.

"It seems like there's a strike," she complained. "France, the country, is really screwed up by them! Macron is a clown."

I was surprised how she had such an idea, so I hurriedly asked, "How can you see that?"

"What are they doing? After the epidemic, they didn't want to do a good job of the economy, and they went on strike everywhere! Now you look at Germany, Tesla, they have put their car production lines in China! Western capitalists are not stupid, they put factories Go to Xinjiang! Why are so many people in the West attacking China because of the Xinjiang issue? It is because the construction of factories in Xinjiang has allowed China to win in international competition and touched the interests of other Western capitalists. The general trend of the world depends on where the money flows. Even if China is locked down, the money will still flow to China. China is the future! Europe is definitely in decline. They need a strong man like Putin and Xi Jinping. Strong man."

"Isn't China testing nucleic acid and closing the city? What will happen if the country does not open?"

"The Chinese are good! The Chinese don't have so many things, they endure hardships, and they can endure it. It's going to be put in France. If you go on strikes and engage in sports, how can you set up factories to do economic work?" She laughed, "Those big capitalists are not fools. ."

Seeing that I was lost in thought, she added: "I have been studying the reports of the 20th National Congress of the Communist Party of China recently, and I have read a lot of analysis articles."

"Do you know about the Sitong Bridge?" I couldn't help asking.

"I know! There must be power behind that person. He can't do that kind of thing by himself. Someone was talking about this on Twitter before he took office. Let me tell you, this kind of thing must be supported by the party. Yes, I want to keep Xi Jinping down. His proposal is justified in terms of "don't need nucleic acid to eat", but the rest is nonsense, what about freedom, elections, and what if we keep Xi Jinping down? One person, one vote. It's Xi Jinping who comes out!"

This friend with a high French education talked about the Sitong Bridge incident with such confidence and confidence, as if this incident was like a dead grass in the backyard, no big deal at all. She immediately changed the subject and talked about future travel plans, when to see her family scattered around the world, and when to plan her next trip around the world.

"I don't want to change my Chinese nationality, and Beijing's household registration is difficult. If I want to change my American and Canadian nationality, it's a matter of minutes." She also said. She is a child of Beijing Grand Courtyard, and her family members are all in the "system", and my friend who is a party member who has obtained Beijing household registration should be able to be regarded as scum in a second compared with her family's position in the system.

five

The 20th National Congress of the Communist Party of China is over, and my cold is finally cured. The aftermath of the Sitong Bridge incident is spreading, or it can be said that it is gradually expanding and disappearing layer by layer. Friends in Shanghai who were fervently praying for Xi’s death began to forward the short video to me again, “Thousands of people marched in France to smash treasure shops.” At the end of the video, a line of subtitles popped up: “What ignited the anger of the French.”

At this moment, her anger, who was on the verge of closing the city again, seemed to be all transferred to France, and I couldn't help but wonder if talking to her about Sitong Bridge when I had a cold was an hallucination when I was sick. Old friends of party members in Beijing continue to share the video of the 20th victory in the circle of friends, while the weather here in France is still warm, the leaves are yellow and red, the autumn water is blue, and there are a few swans on it. under another bridge. Those who want to change their nationality, and those who don't want to change their nationality, should go out for a walk on such a good day, and breathe the autumn air with sunshine.

At this moment, China on the other side of the world has officially entered the era of Xi Jinping's imperial power.

What will this era bring?

Years later, perhaps people will look back at history and look back on the consequences of Emperor Xi's ascension to the throne at the 20th National Congress of the Communist Party of China, and they will mention that there was a man on the Sitong Bridge in Beijing before the meeting. The loudest cry of personal anti-Xi anti-dictatorship. There will be more infighting within the CCP, such as "Xi under Li Shang", "Hu Jintao was taken away from the closing ceremony", "The old man is playing a big game of chess", the truth behind these swirling rumors. But at this moment, when people are deep in history, when events that are enough to change the course of the world flow through thousands of individuals who are closely related to their destiny, more people are in a kind of mood. , I can't see clearly, I want to do something, but I don't know where to start, what is the use of doing it, but it seems that it can be useful again, in a state of half-dreaming and half-awake. At this time, the only thing that ordinary people know is that they will be, or have been, in the whirlpool of the times.

When did the torrent of the times coerce one person after another, and how it coerced in, that is another matter.

In 2018, someone told me that he found books burning in the library on campus. Cars were pulled away, and cars were burning. His tone of consternation and fear spread from the other end of the phone.

At that moment, I don't know what happened to him.

In 2022, when I was talking about Hong Kong that year with my classmates of Qi Cui Day and Night.

"In 2019, don't know what's going on there," she said.

Conversations like ours used to happen endlessly to ordinary Chinese who didn't know what happened in 1958, 1960, 1966, 1989, 2008 and other years.

When the heavy punch of the times falls on others, sometimes I really can't see it, or because I just don't want to see it. If you saw it, you may still have luck, thinking that this heavy punch just fell on others, and if you don't look for trouble, you can't break it on yourself. I even think that if it falls on someone else, it is someone else's fault. So, the disaster of the times fell like this. After cleaning up others, you are the next one. From the establishment of the Communist Party of China to the era of Xi Jinping, from the labor reform farms, to the May 7 cadre schools, from Tibet, Xinjiang, Hong Kong, Wuhan, Shanghai, to China's large and small cities, mountains and plateaus, from China to overseas, the CCP's one-party dictatorship political belt The disaster to come is spreading to everyone in this world in a more subtle, subtle and extensive way.

"I can't hit myself, I really don't know how painful it is," the friend who changed nationality said leisurely, looking at the blue bridge over the autumn water in Yichuan.