Execution Day in Zhengzhou Lucky eyes under Deng Xiaoping.
Da, Liu Fong & Creger, John
"Execution Day in Zhengzhou Lucky eyes under Deng Xiaoping." Since Mao's death in 1976, Deng Xiaoping's relatively moderate policies of steady modernization, relaxed state control over production, and individual initiative have brought China to the...
...The following day everywhere in the city the city court posted announcements, with pictures of the executed's mutilated upper bodies...
...It was necessary to draw a clear line between an executed relative and oneself...
...Some were standing with heads down...
...It wasn't only that the bodies were badly mutilated...
...Then they looked at their watches, walked up to their cars, and drove back to the city...
...no one really knew what kind of people had been killed...
...Today, under socialism, the area around Zhengzhou is mainly agricultural, producing much of the nation's wheat and some of its corn...
...Another, more slender rope was draped around each condemned man's neck...
...During those two months every provincial capital and county seat in China produced such shows...
...The sky was deep blue and the warm air hung with the sweet smell of cut wheat...
...People stood on tiptoe and small children sat on shoulders...
...Like all Chinese, Deng Xiaoping is very proud of five thousand years of civilization...
...The white-gloved policemen with the clipboards filed into two of the remaining trucks...
...But we Chinese know that there are many faces to what is happening in China under Deng Xiaoping...
...For two thousand years we have been conditioned to feel we are fortunate to see such things...
...For almost three thousand years, from perhaps 1500 B.c...
...The ring of policemen below the banks held the staring crowd back...
...to A.D...
...The prisoners seemed to be wearing their own tattered clothes...
...Wuhan, sixty-eight...
...As visitors in Zhengzhou, we had heard nothing before about a parade...
...The thought crossed my mind that the parade was moving so slowly to give the people lucky eyes...
...But this is only guesswork...
...Their job was finished...
...The two policemen could then hold the body up all the way through the parade and execution...
...If he continued, the other policeman had a small dagger...
...Down the ramp came fifteen or sixteen white-gloved policemen with clipboards and pistols...
...Several seconds after the last policeman reached his place, three yellow flares went up...
...Some put it at 80,000...
...But I could see by the number of expectant people pouring onto the streets that for some time the peasants and workers, the cadres and students and small children of Zhengzhou had known: an execution day was coming...
...As the trucks rolled past, some of the condemned turned their heads from side to side, staring wide-eyed— as if the whole scene were unreal and they were already on the way to the West Heaven of the common people's traditions...
...A shout went up the four-lane main street: "It's coming...
...city's main street to analyze soil samples for my students' thesis work...
...Driven in the back and left undisturbed, the dagger would let no blood escape...
...But the pressure behind them was too great...
...The front rows broke through the police line to where the bodies lay, and stopped short in horror as they got near enough to make out details...
...About six feet in front of each stake a hole had been dug, roughly a foot in diameter and six-inches deep...
...The cadres got out of their cars, walked down the ramp, and stood in a group, looking over the preparations...
...1200, the city was the center of China's cultural and political life...
...And just before dying they break into the Internationale...
...If every county executed only five, the tally would come to 10,000...
...On the top half of each sign was an accusation: "Thief," "Murderer," "Rapist...
...And if the play was produced three times, how many...
...The morning of September 23, 1983 was clear and warm in North China...
...At the front of each truck bed, just behind the cab, stood a condemned man bound with heavy rope...
...Three miles outside the city a dry creekbed widens out in a cornfield...
...Some had lost the use of their legs from fear...
...Very slowly the parade wound through the main streets of Zhengzhou, attracting followers at every turn...
...In unison, the green-uniformed policemen stepped forward and put rifle barrels within ten inches of the backs of the accused's heads...
...Unless it is deemed politically necessary to publicize them, executions in China are kept secret and carried out under tight security...
...many were pushed ahead and forced to trample the bodies...
...They took positions behind each prisoner...
...Together, the bodies jerked forward and splayed out in different ways on the grass, bloody pieces landing to both sides of the holes, and some actually in the holes...
...Fields of the light brown wheat stubble stretched in from the countryside to the outskirts of Zhengzhou...
...People crowded into every available place—along the sidewalks, on steps, jammed in doorways...
...A loose ring of poUcemen in white jackets and blue pants stood around the edges of the creekbed to keep the people from spiUing from the banks down into the grass...
...On the bottom half was the accused's name, marked through with a large red "X...
...Others carried their heads upright, defiantly...
...My students and I had not gone to the field as usual that day, but had stayed in our dormitory on the Liu Fong Da (a pseudonym) is a visiting professor at the University of California, Berkeley...
...Enthusiastic about China's opening, Westerners often mistake the reports of increased economic freedom inside China for signs of incipient democracy...
...These the policemen dragged to their places...
...Behind the trucks came about twenty-five small black cars, carrying fifty or sixty party or police cadres...
...T he cadres stood briefly at the bottom of the ramp discussing something...
...No mitigating circumstances of any kind were mentioned...
...This too is a face of what is happening in China...
...These were shot again...
...But I heard that at midnight, under a bright moon, several thousand people remained staring at the bodies, and that through the night others continued coming...
...The only officials remaining were the twenty or thirty policemen who now were ringing the bodies...
...Most of the executed's families did not come to claim the bodies, although they would have had to pay just the minimal "bullet fee" to take possession...
...Shanghai sent a hundred and one purported criminals on to West Heaven...
...Some blood got on my shoe...
...First it was the sound of motorcycle engines...
...It means to give them lucky eyes . . . I n a city of two million it seemed all work and school had come to a stop...
...Then fifteen or sixteen armed policemen on two- and three-wheelers came slowly into sight...
...At once everyone froze still and silent...
...Each was flanked by two policemen...
...Some at 150,000...
...Long live Marxism...
...Stopping at every body they jotted quick notes on the clipboards...
...One man beside me was pushed out of his shoes...
...They described the criminals, their backgrounds, and their various crimes...
...But this day in Zhengzhou, if any of the forty-five had something to say to the people, no one heard it...
...But the people knew there were Party activists circulating among them dressed as peasants, listening for inappropriate opinions...
...Parading criminals this way is a practice going back deep into Chinese feudalism...
...Peking, maybe seventy-nine...
...Three red flares suddenly shot high into the sky from the road somewhere behind the prisoners...
...By the time it reached the outskirts of the city, perhaps a hundred thousand of the million onlookers in the city were actively following...
...No announcements had been posted or printed in the newspapers...
...Suddenly, as the cadres' cars went out of sight down the highway, the people surged down from the banks and closed in, shouting...
...One man, though, knows...
...An hour or so later, along with most of the crowd, I left...
...So they gathered in front of the announcements and chattered about the misfortune of the executed's families...
...Curious, I gave permission and we all went down to the street...
...This time, though, the news must have come quietly down from the city's highest cadres and through Party branches to schools, factories, shops, and hospitals...
...Others wept openly, seeming full of remorse at their crimes, or perhaps despairing of clearing their names...
...So the bodies remained displayed until the third day, when they were taken somewhere and disposed of...
...And China has thirty provincial capitals...
...Out in the center was a row of wooden stakes with circular signs numbered one to forty-five...
...The accused already had been brought down from the truckbeds and were being kept in waiting beside the trucks...
...No official holiday had been declared...
...Around 10:30 one of the students came up to my room where we were working to ask permission to go to a parade which he had just heard was about to begin...
...Kids screamed at the sight of blood and pieces of skull...
...The parade vehicles sat in formation on the road, stopping all other traffic...
...The only sound above the low-throttled engines was the crackle of a police radio...
...The forty-five carried themselves in various ways...
...Since the police department had very few of its own, the trucks had been borrowed from factories, all different makes and colors...
...And below, a fine green grass covers the creekbed...
...or "Long live the Communist Party...
...A hundred and thirty-five policemen—two escorts and one executioner for each prisoner—made a single line, marched quickly back to the trucks, and were driven away...
...Nowhere was there any discussion of the justice of the sentences...
...The people must receive some education...
...He ordered all the fresh clipboard reports sent to his office...
...The lower end of the widening is bounded by a highway, the same height as the banks...
...I thought of the many modern Chinese movies and novels that continually show scenes of Guomindang (Nationalist) and Japanese executions of Communists during the Party's thirty-year struggle for power, in which a hundred thousand Communists died...
...Before they fell out of sight, from seemingly nowhere a line of forty-five green-uniformed policemen carrying rifles filed quickly into the creekbed...
...We knew the most dramatic act was coming...
...And government of, by, and for the people is no more a part of Deng's policies than it is part of China's historical legacy...
...John Creger is a freelance writer in Berkeley specializing in China...
...The rope ran in an "X" across his chest and around to his back, holding in place a tall narrow sign...
...To protect the bodies, a policeman pulled out one of the numbered stakes, scooped up some brains on the circular sign, and held the people at bay with it...
...Soldiers and policemen stood along the streets at intervals to keep the way clear...
...S ince Mao's death in 1976, Deng Xiaoping's relatively moderate policies of steady modernization, relaxed state control over production, and individual initiative have brought China to the point of entering into widespread exchanges, including trade, with the West...
...A few of the bodies, not having been hit squarely, still lay twitching or quivering...
...A ramp, in the right corner, led from the road down to the creekbed...
...The streets were strewn with trash, everyone was stumbling and streaming with sweat and out of breath, but still they followed the forty-five trucks...
...The moment the forty-fifth reached his place, three green flares launched into the air...
...They reared back ten or fifteen feet in a circle around him...
...It was twelve noon...
...Across China that September and October there were many shows...
...Faces pressed at each small window of the five-story red and yellow brick buildings...
...Most, like me, alternately ran and walked...
...China has two thousand counties...
...The widening is maybe two hundred by four hundred yards...
...Liu's experiences during nineteen years as a prisoner in labor reform camps in China...
...This one in Zhengzhou ran twice again...
...The horde following the parade swept onto the site, flattening the corn on the banks...
...But no questioning showed in their faces . . . This one performance was finished...
...I estimated later that close to half the city's population—almost a million people—must have left their jobs and classrooms...
...Before being executed, the heroes are asked if they have anything to say...
...The number almost certainly runs well into six figures...
...I glanced at my watch...
...Some fell sprawling over them...
...There had been no trials...
...The main attraction followed immediately: Forty-five flatbed trucks, one after another, rolled by at no more than five m.p.h...
...One morning while on this field expedition, my students and I witnessed an event, carried out at Deng's order, which shows a face China rarely turns to the West...
...Many of them had had lucky eyes...
...Corn the height of a man grows on the banks, up to their edges...
...The two escorting policemen in blue and white caught each man behind the knees, forcing him to a kneeling position, and then separated to each side...
...Some rode bicycles...
...Yellow banks from three- to six-feet high form a huge natural amphitheater...
...When we have seen something special, we Chinese say that our eyes have been lucky...
...If ten, 20,000...
...They are currently at work on a book on Mr...
...For the performance must go on...
...If he had begun to shout or struggle, we all knew one of the two policemen standing beside him would have pulled on the choking rope...
...I don't know...
...In the fall of 1983, as a teacher from a university in another part of China, I led a group of graduate students in fieldwork outside Zhengzhou, the capital of Henan Province, on the Yellow River plain in north central China...
...Claiming the body would demonstrate that one still had some sympathy with a criminal...
...Invariably they shout out, "Long live Chairman Mao...
...Inside China many have guessed at the number killed during that golden autumn of 1983...
...I followed along in the crowds, wondering, Why are we trampUng food to watch people killed...
...The forty-five shots rang out in one voice...
...Each escorted by two white- and blue-uniformed policemen, the accused were now marched rapidly down the ramp, the signs still tied behind them...
...So, I saw, the Pariy means to instruct the people with a show...
...It was what we call there a golden autumn...
...Of course no one knew who or how many were to be killed, or for what crimes...
Vol. 19 • December 1986 • No. 12
