China's Great Wall of Silence: The Murder of Bian Zhongyun.

Two years ago* I wrote an introduction to a brief series on a China-related trip to Providence, Rhode Island. The introduction was also a retrospective on my amateur studies to that point. I was stumped and wrote:

"Trying to imagine what was in the minds of the Beijingers involved in Bian Zhongyun's Passion was the wall I hit."

There was no forethought given to use of the term “Passion;” it just came out that way when I wrote.  I’ve given some afterthought to it and it seems to me there’s some hunt in that dog.

Bian knew she was going to be made a “sacrifice”--that word is Weili Ye’s--, just as Jesus of Nazareth did. Bian bathed the night before to make sure her corpse would be clean.  Both willingly went to their deaths, Mr. Wang Jinyao walking his wife part way and watching her disappear around a corner. Both were tortured before death.

Christ willingly went to his execution to save mankind.  Bian?  Several nights ago I read this:

“I am not afraid to die, Citizen Evremonde, but I have done nothing.  I am not unwilling to die, if the Republic, which is to do so much good to us poor, will profit by my death;”**

If we substitute “Comrade” for Citizen Evremonde, and insert “People’s” before Republic, that might be the mentality of those, like Bian, who willingly became victims during the Cultural Revolution--like the man who casually went to the stadium where he was to be struggled. Or it might not. Mr. Wang never offered anything like this as explanation in my interviews of him.

The killings of Jesus Christ, Bian Zhongyun, and Dickens’ nameless seamstress were all ritualized and all done in the name of some higher good.  This is considering the Cultural Revolution from an anthropological perspective, as palimpsest.

*http://publicoccurrenc.blogspot.com/2009/10/what-brought-me-to-that-hotel-room-in.html

** “A Tale of Two Cities,” Charles Dickens, 368.

Image: Teacher Bian's children weep over her corpse.