Chinese have protested here for a long time, over a hundred years at least. Everything from mass demonstrations such as what happened in 1989 to individuals lighting themselves on fire. Seems like the government doesn’t want to see anything like that ever happen here again.
Which is why, if I were already in deep shit and planning on doing some kind of political performance piece that was apt to get me in deeper, this would be one of the last places I’d think about staging it.
I get to the Monument to the People’s Heroes at about ten minutes to noon. It’s this giant… obelisk? I guess that’s what you call it, on top of a platform of stairs, like a shorter, thicker Washington Monument sitting on a lopped-off Mayan temple. When the mass demonstrations happened in 1976 and 1989, this was the focal point, where people came to lay wreaths for Zhou Enlai and Hu Yaobang. They weren’t just mourning those men, they were pissed as hell-about the rule of the Gang of Four, about corruption and their lack of say in how things were run-and tired of being silent about it.
They wanted different lives.
“Ellie.”
I turn. There’s Harrison Wang. He’s wearing a white silk T-shirt and lightweight black pants. I think this might be the first time that I’ve seen him actually sweat.
“Hey.”
“You got my email?”
I nod. “Crazy couple of days.”
“You’ll have to tell me about that.”
He stares north, toward the Forbidden City.
I look around. I spot Sloppy and Francesca, on the west side of the monument. Francesca has a big camera, with a long lens. Nothing weird about that-this is a huge tourist attraction after all.
“We have other people with cameras and cell phones,” Harrison murmurs.
“What’s he going to do?”
“I don’t know. But I thought we should be prepared to document it.”
We stand there, waiting.
“Hey! Dude!”
There’s only one person who calls me “dude.” That would be Liu Chaoke, Chuckie, my former roommate, the hacker and gamer who introduced me to Lao Zhang.
He’s wearing an oversize Green Lantern T-shirt and baggy shorts, and he’s still thin and knobby kneed, though he’s switched his old heavy-framed glasses to some rimless models.
“Dude,” I say. I haven’t seen him in over a year. And I can’t help it-I give him a quick hug. He pats me on the back, as awkward as I am.
“How are you recently?” he asks.
“Oh, you know. Pretty good. You?”
“Same thing.”
“What have you been doing?”
“Hacking for PLA.”
This is kind of a surprise on the one hand, given Chuckie’s problems with authority. On the other, I guess he’s pretty good at hacking.
“Oh. So. How is that?”
He shrugs. “Boring. I quit.”
Which doesn’t surprise me at all.
It’s almost noon.
Now I see a man approaching from the east side of the square. He’s wearing shorts and a plain T-shirt and a scarlet baseball cap like he’s a Chinese tourist on a group tour. He’s carrying something, some kind of long, bright bundle, tucked under one arm.
Lao Zhang.
For a minute or two, I just stand there while he takes up a position slightly to the north of the monument.
I shake myself, and I limp toward him.
“Hey,” I say.
He looks up. “Yili.”
We stare at each other. I haven’t seen him in over a year. All this time, everything that’s happened, it’s like he’s turned into a symbol of something rather than a man.
Now we’re standing in front of each other, and I really see him. He’s thinner than he was. His hair’s retreated above his temples, and he’s shaved it close to his head, shaved off his goatee, too.
Mostly he just looks tired.
“What are you doing?” I ask.
“A performance.” He indicates the bundle under his arm. “It’s just a kite. I want to fly it for a while.”
“Don’t do it,” I say. “Don’t. You don’t have to. You can still leave.”
“I don’t want to.” He closes the distance between us. Rests his hands on my shoulders for a moment. “I never should have left you the way I did. It was selfish.”
I want to hug him, but I’m afraid to. I don’t know who’s watching.
Besides, I’m pissed off. He comes home just to get himself arrested?
To leave again?
I step back. “Okay. Maybe you shouldn’t have. How’s this going to help?”
“It’s just time, that’s all.” He starts to unroll the kite. “Time to step away from the computers. To act.”
“You and what army? This isn’t 1989. You see anybody out here marching with you? They don’t care. They’re too busy trying to make down payments on their fucking Audis.”
“I care. Let me do this.” He unfolds the kite. It’s a big kite, white with red trim, and I catch a glimpse of black characters and a fragment of English-deleted, it says.
“You really think doing some kind of art piece is going to change things? Jesus. Your ego’s bigger than I thought.”
He pauses with his kite and smiles. “Maybe so.”
It’s making me nervous just standing here next to him. I glance to my right. Those two guys over there, are they plainclothes? Are they watching us?
I glance around the square, and there are other people flying kites: kids and their parents mostly, and a few older men with fancy kites, like this is their big hobby. A unit of uniformed soldiers march by in cadence, and no one seems to notice. They’re just part of the landscape.
“I’m going to move to the side a little,” Lao Zhang says. “Wind is better there.”
“Please don’t do this.”
“Take good care of yourself,” he says. “I’m sorry for all the trouble I make for you.”
He turns and walks away, holding the big kite under his arm.
You can’t go after him, I tell myself. You can’t. It wouldn’t do any good.
He’ll do what he wants to do, and it’s not up to me to stop him.
I let him go.
When I get back to where Harrison is standing, Chuckie’s gone. “Your friend said he wanted a better view,” Harrison tells me.
I nod, throat too tight to let me speak.
Lao Zhang has taken a position about twenty yards in front of the Monument to the People’s Heroes. I get what he’s doing. You frame the shot right, you’ll get him with the monument in the background. I’m guessing some of Harrison’s videographers know that, too, and are positioned accordingly.
I stay where I am. I don’t need the perfect shot. I don’t even want to watch this.
But here I am.
Lao Zhang puts his kite on the ground. Squats down and fiddles with it-he’s tying the line onto the crossbar, I think. Stands, holding the kite in one hand, a reel for the string in the other. Stretches.
He holds the kite out in front of him, slightly above his head. Waits for a gust of wind and lets it go.
It takes him a few tries to get the thing up in the air, but when it does rise, it’s as easy and gentle as anything that’s going back to where it really belongs.
Up in the air.
I watch it rise. Lao Zhang reels in the string to keep it from going too high too fast. So we can all see what’s written on it.
对不起，原文已经被删除
It’s the message you get when you’re surfing the web here or following links on Weibo, and whatever you were looking for got harmonized. Censored.
And in English:
sorry, the original text has been deleted.
We all stand there watching. The kite bobs and weaves. It takes at least five minutes before a couple of those obvious plainclothes guys start pointing at the kite and yapping at each other about it. Like, What do we do? Is this subversive? It must be, but we aren’t exactly sure why it is. One of them makes a call on his cell phone.
Then they march over to Lao Zhang and start asking him questions.