Ninety Kilometres in Distance
“When the night's chill hit me through the iron window, I seemed to see a row of iron bars between us – the father and son, weeping toward each other; I seemed to see my boy who had lost his father’s guidance turning evil under gangsters’ control and fooling around on the streets all days... ” Du Daobin, a government official, writer, and freelancer, was arrested in 2003 for Internet writings and sentenced to imprisonment for “inciting subversion of state power”.
Photo: Aden Lao/Unsplash
Between my child and me, there is just ninety kilometres. These mere ninety kilometres, however, appear to us to be insurmountable, like a natural moat.
1
The most uncomfortable part about jail was loneliness. To get rid of it, the inmates in the same cell often chatted. We talked about everything. Once talking about my behaviour when I was a newcomer, they said, “It was all right on the first two days, when you fell down snoring. After the third night, you slept much less. You went to bed late, turned over and over constantly, but also woke up early.”
What they told had been true! On the first two days, I had felt no weakness in myself, and my mind had been very strong. On the third day, remembering my child, I had suddenly realized a huge loophole in my presumption. What I had thought about before did not take him into account. The trial had proceeded to a sentence around ten years in prison: for inciting subversion of the State power, it would be five years; for a ringleader, over five years; for conspiracy with those abroad, more severe; for stealing the state secrets for a foreign institution, organization or element, an additional five years. All of these crimes, of course, are non-existent. However, I am aware that our Party has been well known as being capable to create any miracle. To make injustice, therefore, is a piece of cake. Since 1949, too many miscarriages of justice have been created, as small as the misfortune of my whole family during the Cultural Revolution, and as great as the aggrieved death of “President of the State”. When the night's chill hit me through the iron window, I seemed to see a row of iron bars between us – the father and son, weeping toward each other; I seemed to see my boy who had lost his father’s guidance turning evil under gangsters’ control and fooling around on the streets all days...
About the sixth day of my detention, when the interrogation was to end, my opponent asked: “Any thought in your mind?” “Missing my kid!” Before my detention, I had studied the interrogation psychology and thought that I could easily face the persecution. But at that time I could no longer suppress my yearning for my boy, so that the three words jumped out of my mouth before the secret policemen.
In my memory, there had never been so long a separation between my boy and me as a week. Every day when the wheeling sound of the food cart was heard from the corridor outside my cell, it was at the time in the past when I had waited for my boy to return home safely. The food had been ready on the table waiting for him. The sound of every step from the staircase, even on the first floor, would have automatically been identified for a while. “Thump, thump, thump!” – the sound of his rushing 2-3 stairs at a time. If there had been no such sound over half an hour, I would have put on my shoes, and gone to the courtyard gate to look around eagerly. If he had not appeared as expected, I would have to look for him along his way home. The return journey from his primary school is one kilometre through four streets in a way of ”W”, three of which were main trunk roads with heavy traffic.
The boy became my weak spot, my frailty. When I found my frailty, my opponent certainly realized it. The fellow suspects in my call were changed and replaced with juvenile offenders, aged 14 or 15, just similar to my kid, after my old inmates were sent away. It was said that I could look after them to avoid them getting injured in other cells. Getting along with these juvenile offenders day and night enhanced my worry for my own boy. One day, a guard took me out and in a friendly way handed me a rectangular paper packet.
“Knowing about your longing to see the kid,” he said, “I specially let your wife bring two photos. This is violating the regulation! So take good care of them, we don’t want to be found out.”
When I opened the packet, there were two photographs of my boy. In a flash, the tear glands did not follow my command but let tears break through the line of defence.
The photographs became a spring of tears. Each time they were uncovered, the tears would pour out. Eventually I realized that everything must have been arranged on purpose. Otherwise, nobody would have broken the regulation to give me the photos. After waking up, I tried hard not to look at them. The photos were inserted into a book placed on the floor in the corner, about a step away after getting down from our big common bed. When missing my boy, I tried not to get down from the bed but to cast a glance at that pile of books. Without my looking at a photograph, the boy could still emerge lively before my eyes. When he was born, the boy had looked very ugly, a clot of red flesh with a wrinkled face. Because an extractor had been used for his birth, his head had been particularly long. In the beginning, he had been almost a rubbish producer, into which the soups of carp or chicken had been fed at one end and soon the faeces or urine had come out at another. During the day, he had been all right as there had been someone to help with the care. The night had been hard on me. While sleeping well, I had suddenly got a kick on my waist. “Hurry up, hurry up, get him pissing!” After this, just closing my eyes, “wah…wah…wah…” His crying had again awakened me.
I do not know when that clot of flesh that knew nothing suddenly got my fondness. For something or nothing, we were going around together. First, he was held to my chest, and then riding on my shoulders, afterwards holding big hands with small hands, and finally walking shoulder to shoulder. First when wilfully crossing the street, he had been stopped by me. Then sometimes I would like to make a short cut but was pulled back, “Walk across the zebra lines! A good kid is always across the zebra lines!” I had become a no-good kid.
After June 4th, 1989, I could not see this world clearly and so simply concentrated my energies on my boy. The investment may naturally give its return. Unlike the relationship between my father and me who hardly spoke, my boy and I had a lot to talk about. The boy got good grades, and was pleasant looking. In his fourth grade, one early morning on our way to his school, we walked side by side, talking as usual.
“There is a girl classmate,” said the child to me. ”She asked me through another, ‘whether or not are you fond of someone or so?’ Dad, tell me how can I answer her? “
“Do you like her?”
“Yes, I do. She looks very pretty, and her grades are also good.”
“Is it not enough? Simply tell her that you like her!”
“It is ... rather embarrassing.”
“Liking her, and telling her about it, and she will surely be pleased. Something to make someone pleased, why not do it? Only if you do not like her, then do not tell her because she will be displeased. Something to make someone displeased, one should not do.”
The boy nodded and agreed with me. A few days later he told me, “I told her as you had said.”
"Good boy! You are brave! You both are the classmates, but just classmates. Between the classmates, whether boys or girls, mutual fondness is a good thing. This is capability to learn how to get along with people. At your age, a boy student feels for the girls, or a girl student for the boys, this mutual curiosity is normal. It shows that your psychological and physiological developments are sound. Generating no curiosity would not be normal. Your father has been your age, and experienced it. However, your major focus now is to study. Do you understand?” “Yes!”
The more the boy chatted to me, the more pleased I was. My boy was influenced by my spiritual power, and so was automatically drawn away from people and things that might mislead him.
2
My opponents have taken my weakness as my weak spot. On one hand, they have tried to persuade me: "Already so grown up. What is the point to keep worrying? The future will not be so bad if only the boy has been brought up." On the other hand, they have propagated to other people: "Only minding his wife and kid, what big deal can be made? If really a big fish, how come can be let out? "
When one has been fallen into the hands of a group of professional kidnappers and cheaters, one cannot get out unless you promise what they request. Particularly, those professional kidnappers have nothing to fear, and do not have to worry about any consequences. It is impossible to get away without paying a price. No matter what price it is, or how valuable the payment can be, one has to pay, by oneself. When the payment is very precious, there is naturally a great pain in one’s heart. Thinking about his healthy growth, I am clear that the boy is most important to me. To be a “Big Fish” is no part of my duty but a matter of fate, while taking the responsibility for the boy is a duty of mine as a father. For time being, what I have done are actually my duties, writing, criticizing the reality and “being the first to show concerns” are only what a citizen should do, but also are my duties. For our children will be no longer subjected to the hardship of our generation, and for the freedom, these things need to be done, while some others may have to be given up temporarily. “Refrain from doing something to be able for other things” – only if temporarily give up certain things, some of more essential things can be upheld. In a short, I came out.
I returned home after being away for seven and a half months. After a little cleaning up, it was nearly the time to be home from school. I hid behind the door and quietly waited for “thump, thump, thump…” the sound of rushing 2-3 stairs at a time from the first floor to the third. Time passed second by second, minute by minute. Finally, the sound came, straight to the third floor! At the door opened, he asked: "Has Daddy returned?" Father and son hugged tightly.
During childhood, one should not be left alone without a thoughtful guidance from a father. In the teenage years, a strongly spiritual support from one’s father is also indispensable. I told my boy: your father is different from your father's father; your father’s decision is solid like a piece of steel bar to reinforce your waist straight and keep your chin up and chest out to face anyone beyond our home. Soon after I got out from the detention centre, the boy entered a middle school. For three years, at noon and at the time to come home from school in the afternoon, I went to the courtyard gate to look around, just as when the boy had been at his primary school. Sometimes waiting is a kind of anxiety, but what I have experienced more has been happiness. In my view, the goodness between us, the father and son, is not my grace by raising him but his warmth and happiness offered to me!
The boy has not disappointed me. After middle school, he was admitted to one of the model high schools in Hubei Province. Although it was not so good as to get him into an ace class in his school, the result was enough to make me happy. A decade’s association between a father and his son appears to have not wasted. I am so pleased to have seen that some of what I have valued has taken the root in his internal world. Of course, whether the boy will grown up to become a successful man, it will be up to him to go forward on the path of life. I, as a father, was just his pathfinder in the beginning of his life. I have taken my responsibilities.
3
The provincial model high school is in Wuhan City, 90 km away from our home city of Yingcheng, and it has a system of full boarding. Since beginning of school term, I do not have to worry about his fussy taste, nor to look around at the courtyard gate, which has spared me a lot. For a few days, however, not seeing the movement of this fellow's figure at home has always made me feel empty. I would like to go and see him, but it is not up to me whether or not I am able to go to Wuhan. The “State” has taken a dissident like me as a potential enemy. The “State”, like the Monkey King in fiction, has drawn a circle around me so that the range of my movement has been strictly limited within an area of a little more than 1000 square kilometres, or a radii about 20 km. My friends outside cannot get in, and I cannot get out, even to see my own child.
Between my boy and me, there is just ninety kilometres. These mere ninety kilometres, however, appear to us to be insurmountable, like a natural moat.
Fortunately, there is the telephone. “Don’t worry about me. I am here, happy, joyful,” from another end of the line came the cheerful optimism, just the gene of our Du family! Du's Yes, I am optimistic. Although I am living in a miscarriage of justice, although my body is held under the control of power, although my freedom is limited within a tiny area drawn by the “State” with its Monkey King Bar, there is no fundamental damage to this optimism. We, the father and son, agreed that I would be responsible for giving him a happy childhood, and that he would have to return me as a responsible teenager and a capable youth. The boy has gone away to have an independent life. In the beginning, there was a bit worry. Would this kid who had done little housework leave a pile of dirty socks? Unexpectedly, a message was brought back that his white T-shirts, white socks and white shoes are washed even cleaner than at home. I relaxed a little bit.
Following the message that relaxed me, there comes also some news to make me worry. According to the class teacher, the boy’s spirit in the class has not been so good; sometimes he has even fallen asleep. It was also said that the boy got only a grade of 50+ out of 100 on his midterm examination for his English course. There must be something that has become an obstacle in the boy's study or his life. What is it? The problems of which a child has not become aware cannot be realized through telephone. Only the experiences of an adult to feel, to perceive and analyse can reach the crux. I should go and see him to learn more about what are the problems he has encountered. I would like to see him, my boy who has encountered the problems! The “State” does not let me go! Because it is said that if I would see my boy, the national security would be likely endangered.
(November 2007, in Yingcheng)
Original texts in Chinese can be found here.
(Translated by Yu Zhang)
Photo: Joey Huang/Unsplash