Reviewed by John Cairns
Ma Jian's remarkable work of fiction, Beijing Coma (2009, Vintage Books, London, 666 pages), holds huge helpings of truth and serves them relentlessly. What better epic story to strip away propaganda and to reveal modern China's grim realities?
Once an artist who painted propaganda signs and later a photo-journalist for a state-run magazine, the author, born in Qingdao, China, resigned from full-time employment and devoted three years to traveling. After reaching Hong Kong in 1987, he returned two years later to watch the idealistic pro-democracy student-protesters who occupied Beijing's Tiananmen Square. When Hong Kong fell under Chinese sovereignty in 1997, Ma moved to Europe. Living in London, he writes honestly and powerfully.
Beijing Coma tells of those student protests and the aftermath. That protest movement might have changed the nation and improved lives, but instead it prompted a brutal crackdown by People's Liberation Army (PLA) soldiers who massacred thousands of innocent people.
Remarkably, the protagonist, Dai Wei, a former Beijing University PhD student in microbiology, seldom leaves his bedroom and remains motionless from the first page to the last. Shot in the head during the massacre, he lies in bed, comatose, for more than a decade. Cared for by an aging mother, he remembers his fellow students, how they protested and hoped for a better country.
The most-detailed memories recall protest scenes in the Square. “I sat up and looked out over the tens of thousands of students and the red-and-white flags and banners surrounding the Monument.... I felt a sudden panic, the fear that grips you when you wake up in a place that feels unsafe. The foreign and Chinese television crews that had filmed us when we'd arrived in the Square the previous night were nowhere to be seen.”
Dai Wei recalls almost everything about his two decades of “normal” life. “A bundle of neurons sparkles with light. Perhaps they are disintegrating. Memories flash by like the lighted windows of a passing train.”
Silent and motionless, he hears and understands what happens around him, absorbing important details and trivial ones. “In the sitting room, the news presenter prattles on. ‘...China has become infatuated with football. This game is more than just a sport. It can lift the spirit of a nation. But the continual failure of our teams to make any significant mark in the international arena has been a great humiliation to our race.....’ ”
Much of what people say should distress him. “ ‘Technically speaking, he's a vegetable,’ says a nurse to my right. ‘But at least the IV fluid is still entering his vein. That's a good sign.’... The noises vibrate through me.”
For years, Dai Wei's mother defended and believed in the Communist Party. “ ‘Why am I the only one in this family to have a political consciousness? From now on the four of us must study the newspaper every night and bring our thoughts in line with the Party.”
Her less-than-logical faith sounds unshakeable. “The government pays me a salary and has given us this flat. What more could I want? Do you know how many counter-revolutionaries they've had to execute in order to achieve the stable society we enjoy today? Do you really imagine that you and your little band of classmates are going to be able to turn the country upside down?"
Seeing her faith constantly betrayed, she turns more bitter and disillusioned even than her frail son. “Since my mother began to devote her life to caring for me, her view of the world has changed. I often hear her grumbling complaints about the government or the police.”
Eventually, Dai Wei's mother develops a defiance to rival any student-protester: “Arrest me, if you want! I don't care. What difference will it make? China is one huge prison. Whether we're in a jail or in our homes, every one of us is a prisoner.”
Necessity forces brutal decisions. For example, must Dai Wei's mother sell one of his kidneys to afford his medicines?
A small bird flies in through a window and stays, often resting on Dai Wei's chest or sheltering near his armpit. Could this tiny creature be a guide to take his soul into the clouds – or even a messenger sent to revive him? “You knew the grimy windowpanes were caked with dead ants and dust, and smelt as sour as the curtains. But the sparrow wasn't put off. It jumped inside the covered balcony and ruffled its feathers, releasing a sweet smell of tree bark into the air. Then it flew into your bedroom, landed on your chest and stayed there like a cold egg.”
This long story drags a little as Dai Wei focuses on the student protesters, their efforts to create democratic structures and their bickering about how. The more they tried to organize, the more disorganized they became. “Shu Tong turned to Han Dan, who was walking beside him, and said, ‘What are we going to do when we get to the Square?’
‘I don't know,’ he answered. ‘It was your idea to march there.’
‘Well, we must get a speech ready, and draft the petition. Old Fu, borrow a bike from someone and go back to the dorm to work on it. We'll wait for you in the Square.’ ”
The students made big mistakes, but none that justified the government's brutal retaliation, meting out death, injuries, long prison terms or exile for so many promising young people. Although living in his mother's home, Dai Wei becomes a prisoner of conscience too. For years, the police visit often, ready to arrest him if he revives. “I've just been buried alive inside my body....” In that peculiar limbo, “You wander back and forth through the space between your flesh and your memories.”
A comatose man finds little happiness. “I wish the fever would shoot up and kill me. But as I listen to my blood circulate through my body, I know I have no control over my fate. If I could, I'd jump into a volcano. My existence brings only trouble to those around me.”
Yet Dai Wei isn’t entirely bitter. “...I'm not angry. If I were going to attack anyone after I woke up..., it would be those lousy government leaders in the Zhongnanhai compound. But if I do wake up, I doubt if I would attack anyone. I'd probably want to forget about politics and concentrate on living a happy life.”
He takes satisfaction in tiny victories. “The plain-clothes officer who shot me destroyed my body, but he didn’t destroy my mind. I'm probably the only citizen still alive in this country who hasn't yet signed a statement supporting the government crackdown.”
Readers must concentrate because Dai Wei can't remember in sensible sequences. “My memories seem as muddled and random as the contents of a rubbish bin.”
Above all, Ma stresses the tragedy of needless destruction. Even in a coma, the hero senses national change, but not political freedom. Long after the Beijing Massacre, his mother endures another senseless persecution -- this time of the Falun Gong spiritual sect. More indignity comes from another destructive force, a property developer intent on tearing down buildings and erecting new ones. Yet while glimmers of life remain, whether in a comatose man or the China democracy movement, then hope survives too.
Ma Jian's other books include The Noodle Maker, Stick Out Your Tongue and Red Dust, all translated into English by Flora Drew, the author's partner and mother of his children. She studied Chinese at London's School of Oriental and African studies.
On the Chinese mainland, Ma's works are banned. Naturally!
In a sense, most of China's people live in a deep coma about the 1989 student protests and the ongoing lack of freedoms and human rights. On political issues, they're forbidden by “laws” and the threat of another massacre from thinking independently or even remembering “the Tiananmen Square incident”.
With the Chinese government perpetually trying to rewrite history in its favor, the world needs Ma Jian and his novels to highlight what really happened. Beijing Coma uses fiction to defend truth. There's no higher calling.
Approval rating: 85 per cent.
For more information: www.beijingcoma.com
(September 27, 2011)
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