By MURONG XUECUN July 21, 2014
Chinese writers like me often face difficult choices. What should we do when friends are arrested for no good reason? Keep our mouths closed? Should we speak out in protest and risk being dragged away to prison? Is it fair to our families and friends to risk rotting away in jail because we refuse to shut up?
After several months away from China for an academic residency and vacation, I returned to my home in Beijing on July 2 prepared to be arrested. While abroad I had announced in a blog post and in this newspaper that I would turn myself in to the authorities for contributing an essay to a private commemoration of the 1989 Tiananmen crackdown. Several of the participants in the Beijing gathering had been arrested.
On July 6, I posted a message online saying that I was home and ready to be picked up. My girlfriend never said it, but I knew she was uncomfortable with my stance. Two days later, I received a phone call from a police officer at the Wanshou Temple station near where I live asking me to come in to “have a chat.” I walked into the station at about 5:30 p.m. and was ushered straight up to the second floor.
I had to wait for officers from the guobao, which is part of China’s secret police force. The guobao is rarely mentioned in news reports, and few people know the details of its budget and structure. It is everywhere, it is all-powerful, and it can make people suffer at any time. For Chinese dissidents, guobao means nightmare.
While waiting, I picked up a copy of “Readings Selected From Important Speeches by Xi Jinping,” lying on a desk. One chapter was about building “a China ruled by law.” I might have been encouraged by our president’s words had I been sitting somewhere else.
After about 40 minutes, two plain-clothed guobao officers showed up and took me into a small room. Shoe prints covered the walls, and cigarette butts were scattered on the floor. In the middle of the room was a desk with a computer and a printer. My chair was in front of the desk.
One officer presented his ID and the other gave me a bottle of water. They advised me to “answer truthfully, otherwise there will be legal consequences.”
