A Beauty Condemned To Death
“Living in the dormitory without any privacy will inevitably create contradiction and hostility, which constrain human nature and twist human character. Anyone who has ever lived in a dormitory has an intimate knowledge about this. Half a dozen people living together in a room less than 10 square meters over the years is incredible to those who live in a free world. However, in China, you have to bear this for a long time.” Zhang Lin, a dissident writer and social activist, was arrested in 1994 and then sentenced to three years of Reeducation-Through-Labor after contacting foreign journalists about human rights violations near his home village.
Photo: Stephen Tafra/Unsplash
Wang Guocui was a beauty who attracted people at first sight. People often talked about her in Bengbu Detention Centre. She was detained in our neighbouring cell. Those who met her once often talked about her with sparkles in their eyes. Every time the neighbouring iron door clicked, following the tinkling of the leg-irons, prisoners would madly rush to the door. The luckiest guy might catch a glance of her through the peephole. Guocui always brushed her hair with fingers when looking around with a coquettish smile, and then followed the guard toward the interrogation room. Many of those who had seen her highly praised her beauty, especially for her slender figure and tender eyes.
Unfortunately, I’ve never seen her. However, I’ve heard her singing beyond the partition wall during exercise time every day. There were wire fence above the dividing wall, but we could toss crumpled paper over it. We asked her to sing songs for us, and her singing had never been interrupted. Her voice sounded a bit like Cheng Lin, a famous singer, and Guocui especially liked to sing Lin’s songs like Any Empty Wine Bottles to Sell and Travelling through Wind and Rain.
Sometimes, she would dance while singing, using leg-irons as her accompaniment. The tinkles were supposed to be made by a pair of leg-irons weighing 3 kilograms. They sounded pleasant. Sometimes when the jail guard on duty got drunk, he would sigh pitifully for such a beautiful beauty. Every night, the armed policemen on guard leaned over the skylight watching Guocui, talking and flirting with her.
Guocui had been a student of Foodstuff Workers Training School at Bengbu. She was only 19 at that time. She was good at singing and dancing, and was regarded as a campus star. She was chased by many boy students. Finally, her heart was taken by one of them. One day, they hugged together wildly when alone in the dormitory where 10 girls usually lived.
All beauties seem to have unfortunate destiny. A pair of cold eyes belonging to one of Guocui’s roommates had watched them sneaking into the domitory. A long time living together in such an over-crowded place had inevitably brought lots of resentments among the girls. Now it was the roommate’s chance to get revenge.
While Guocui and her boyfriend were carried away in love, the door was kicked open roughly. No knocking or the sound of unlocking was heard when more than a dozen people rushed into the room. They were the principal, vice-principal, chief and vice-chief of the security section, a bunch of security workers, and, last, the informer. These people were staring at Guocui’s body wolfishly. They had finally caught the couple red-handed. The general office immediately decided to expel them from school.
Guocui’s parents were both farmers who had suffered hunger and cold during their several decades of hard working in the fields. Their only wish was that their pretty and smart daughter would not live such a life as theirs, but get rid of the rural household registration and live in the city. Guocui did not let them down. She was admitted into the Foodstuff Workers Training School, and would be regarded as a government official after graduation. When that happened, she would get her own salary every month.
However, after being expelled, the only path for her was to return to the rural area and lead the same life as her parents. She would struggle her whole life under the brutal rule of the rural party members and cadres in her exceptionally poor village, with face down to the earth and back up to the sky, and nobody would ever answer her appeal. The moment she heard the bad news of expulsion, she burst out crying and fell in a fit. After waking up, she became a totally different person with totally dull eyes. She had no appetite for food or drink, and kept talking to herself.
She fell to her knees in front of the principal’s office, crying and begging them not to expel her. She also lay on the floor of the security section, swearing to God that they had no sexual relationship but had only been hugging each other without clothes on, and begged them to check of her body. Still, everybody ignored her. The school only sent a telegram to her parents, urging them to take her away immediately.
It appeared as if Guocui had understood that her fate had been settled with no hope. Her parents would come the next day without knowing what exactly happened. This would be the last day in this school, and the last night sleeping in this dormitory.
Her tears ran dry. Guocui was too ashamed to face her wretched parents who would be heartbroken after knowing the whole story. She gazed at the informer who had fallen asleep soundly. Brandishing a small axe that she had stolen from the carpentry yard, she cried within her heart, “Why did you set me up like this? How did I offend you that made you ruin my whole life like this?”
“Since we are already enemies, let us go to hell together!” Guocui lift the axe and chopped down hysterically. With one hack after another, she altogether chopped 19 times.
Guocui was sentenced to death not long after. On the morning of the execution, Shi Dalai woke me up quietly. He thought there would be 6 people being executed on that day. All the jail guards had a kind of special capability: they were able to open the iron-lock without a sound and pull the door suddenly. Two armed policemen would jump into the cell and pull the prisoner backwards by catching his or her arms. At the same time, two armed policemen with guns would suddenly show up above the skylight, with their guns pointing down. The yard would be filled with armed policemen as well.
After the prisoner was dragged out, the armed policemen would smash the leg-irons after stepping on the prisoner’s body, and then bind their hands and feet until the prisoner could barely breathe or shout. Two buns, put beside the prisoner’s mouth, are the so-called the last dinner.
While being dragged outside the door, Guocui reproached the policemen with a smile, “My high heels, my high heels fell off when you dragged me.” We all knew that her last request to her family and the whole world was to buy her a pair of high heels that she had been wanting for years, at the cheapest price.
She had been worrying being looked down on as a countrywoman, so she hoped that she could go to another world with high heels. She wore the pair of shoes for the whole night before execution. The armed policemen knew about this. They put her down violently, and went back for her shoes.
It was said that she died peacefully, but not like the other condemned prisoners with pale faces and shaking bodies. Several days before her death, she tossed us a piece of crumpled paper, saying:
“I would rather die than live my whole life as my parents, suffering as a peasant, living in hunger and cold. I never had my stomach full until the age of 10. It is extremely horrible living in the countryside. I don't think the hell would be that miserable and awful. I’m leaving. Hope you lucky city residents obtain your freedom very soon, and lead a happy life ever after. Wang Guocui.”
We felt sorry for her for a long time. She was forced to death. The informer was responsible for this, so were those seemingly respectable school leaders, so were the education ministry officials who set so many people in such a tiny dormitory, and so were the Party and government leaders who converted peasants into serfs and brought them poverty and hardship.
Living in the dormitory without any privacy will inevitably create contradiction and hostility, which constrain human nature and twist human character. Anyone who has ever lived in a dormitory has an intimate knowledge about this. Half a dozen people living together in a room less than 10 square meters over the years is incredible to those who live in a free world. However, in China, you have to bear this for a long time.
In Mao Zedong’s time, the cadres in the government and the Party had the power to order the females working for them, because their power was unbounded. They could even control their time of going to the toilet. Every detail of life, including eating, sleeping, seeing a doctor or having a rest, had to be arranged by the leaders. That cannot be counted as violation. However, dating had to be approved by the leaders, or it would be considered as having “bourgeois ideas” and liable for punishment.
After reform and opening up, the cadres in the government and the Party gradually have plenty of money to burn. Ninety per cent of the guests going to the exclusive clubs, restaurants, bathing centres, luxury estates, and hotel penthouses are cadres from the government, the Party and the army. General civilians have been hard-up with no spare money for such entertainments. Even the businessmen who always have strict budgets would not spend money like this, unless they have to socialize with the cadres.
The cadres have been eating the Chinese young women’s youth, but not allowing the young couples to date, otherwise the couple’s whole life of happiness will be ruined, like Wang Guocui. This is the same as the way magistrates are allowed to burn down houses while the common people are forbidden even to light lamps.
It reminds me of the related policy in past dynasties: singles, soldiers and businessmen who were away from home were allowed to seek fun from prostitutes. However, it was strictly forbidden for the officials, because the imperial understood that this would be a bottomless pit as there were so many beauties in the world. Indulging in the beauties would inevitably rapidly lead to corruption.
Even if in the United States, ordinary people’s sex life earns respect. Earvin Johnson (Magic Johnson) admits in his autobiography that he has had sexual relationship with more than 3000 women, but American people still like him even though he suffered with AIDS from it. However, this didn’t work for President Clinton.
The Community Party goes to the opposite extreme. Everything goes contrary to normal society.
Wang Guocui was dead. Another delicate and charming flower was smashed by the giant wheel of Communism.
Original texts in Chinese can be found here
(Translated by Angela Hu)
Photo: John Salvino/Unsplash