We stayed in a five star hotel on the outskirts of Beijing. The cool November air suited me much better than the June heat of my first visit. Though November, our room was warm so we called the front desk. They promptly sent someone up. We told him the problem; he didn’t understand. We took him over to the thermostat and pointed. He examined it, moved the switch and turned to us with a look that said, “There’s nothing wrong with it.” We mimed. We fanned our faces with our hands; we pulled on our shirts. He studied us intently but still could not grasp the nettle. Carmen took a bottle of water out of the refrigerator, put her hands around it and sighed with relief. The man’s face lit up. Carmen and I smiled at each other, pleased with our communica-tions skill. With purpose, the man walked across the room to the window and cranked it open. He turned to us and smiled with a look of satisfaction on his face at a job well done and then strode out of the room.
I spoke to seven people for approximately twenty-five hours in total. Five of those individuals were formally interviewed in seven sessions of about thirteen hours in all. Six of those sessions were at least partially tape-recorded. There are approximately eight hours of tape. There was additional informal discussion in restaurants and the like.
When the tapes are properly formatted I will make them available in their entirety by posting a link here. I am also having verbatim written transcripts prepared of some of the formal interviews. I will also post a link to them.
Everyone who I formally interviewed asked me a question: “Why are you doing this?,” and my answer was also the basis for my questions of them. Bian Zhongyun’s murder is historically significant in China, but I would not have become involved had not so many Red Guards, including, Song Binbin and Liu Tingting, immigrated to the United States. That turned the murder from a purely internal Chinese matter into one of proper to concern to Americans, or at least to this American.
The murder was also of professional interest since I am an American-trained lawyer and one whose entire career has been spent prosecuting murder cases. I could call on my professional experience in reading, researching, interviewing, understanding, comparing.
I can safely generalize about this: there is Chinese criminal law, there is American criminal law, and the differences between the two are profound. The American focuses on the individual: individual protection, individual responsibility. The most important goal in is that no innocent person ever be charged with a crime in the first place; second that that no person ever be convicted unless with overwhelming evidence and third, that the individual perpetrator(s) be identified and punished.
The Chinese government has never arrested anyone for the murder of Bian Zhongyun, nor was the case ever investigated to my knowledge. Yet the circumstances of the murder would have made for an easy prosecution. The murder occurred in broad daylight and over a period of hours, affording witnesses an ideal set of conditions to make accurate identifications of the perpetrators. In addition, witnesses knew the perpetrator(s), and there would have been dozens of eyewitnesses.
Thus, no evidentiary obstacle stood in the way of arrests. Rather, arrests were not made because the Chinese government ruled that the murder occurred in the context of a mass movement; therefore no individual persons were responsible. Only society was responsible.
The Chinese government made this ruling in a suit brought by Wang Jinyao, Bian’s widower. It reached a similar verdict on the Cultural Revolution generally: it was the greatest catastrophe in the history of the Chinese Communist Party, and was instituted by Mao Zedong. Significantly, this verdict was made in 1981, five years after Mao’s death. Thus not even Mao could be held responsible.
Long before going back to Beijing I had encountered this philosophical difference between the two systems many times in my reading and communication with others. The people whom I interviewed taught me a great deal more about this difference.
My first interview was with Mr. Wang Jinyao, the widower of Bian Zhongyun. I believe that I am the first foreigner with whom he has spoken about the case. I was deeply honored that he had agreed to meet with me and discuss Bian’s murder. He is a courageous man and I admire him greatly. He has stood up for the truth since the day that his wife was murdered. He bought a camera and documented the injuries on Bian’s body, an excruciating act of devotion. For forty-two years he has kept the dress that Bian wore that day in a suitcase under his bed, along with her wrist watch, the photographs, and evidence, such as the document given him as formal acknowledgment of Bian’s “death,” signed by, among others, Song Binbin.In the cab ride over to the meeting I was pre-occupied and a little tense. I had come all this way and had this one chance to talk to him. Ma Jisen, an author and former foreign service official had graciously agreed to host the meeting and serve as our interpreter.
Ma greeted us warmly at the door. Carmen and I gave her a basket of flowers as a small gift of appreciation. Ma said that Mr. Wang was already there and led us the few steps around the corner into the living room. Mr. Wang was sitting in an easy chair at the opposite end of the room. He rose slowly and with a wide smile. I hurried to help and got to him just as he was straightening up. We shook hands warmly and, instinctively, I hugged him.
I had brought him a gift too, one suggested by Youqin Wang, a statue of Justice. It was the perfect suggestion. I had thought of some brief prefatory remarks before giving Mr. Wang the statue. I was pleased with what I had come up with.
I told Mr. Wang that as a prosecutor, I have no client other than justice. I told him that I admired President John F. Kennedy and that President Kennedy had once said that when one man is denied justice, all men are denied justice. It gave me particular pleasure, I said, to present him with this statue of Justice on the forty-fifth anniversary of the president’s assassination. At which time my Cuban girlfriend, my Chinese hostess, and my Chinese interlocutor all simultaneously corrected me: tomorrow was November 22.
I explained to Mr. Wang the meaning of the statue. Justice was blindfolded to show her impartiality to both sides. The scales she held high in her left hand were to weigh the evidence of each side. She held the sword of punishment in her right hand, but down at her side, symbolic of the presumption of innocence, and of caution, that no one is punished unless proven guilty.
Very quickly I came to like Mr. Wang immensely. I enjoyed his company, our conversation, his personality. The meeting lasted five hours.
I prepared for all of the interviews in the same way I do in my job as prosecutor. I make notes of the subjects that I want to inquire about but I keep the interview free form so that it can develop naturally. The answers that I get and how the person answers them will change what and how I ask succeeding questions. I try to gain insight into the person by observing body language and facial expressions.
When asking questions I change subjects frequently rather than take a linear or chronological approach. Some questions I ask in an open-ended manner—“Tell me about such-and-such.,”—some call for a specific piece of information—“What did so-and-so say to you?” I will ask the same question in both ways. Some questions I write out verbatim because I want to ask them in just such a way. These are common, and commonsensical, techniques to direct the interview and to try to get accurate and truthful answers.
I decided to ask Mr. Wang in our first meeting, “Whom do you hold responsible for your wife’s murder?” I wanted to see his reaction to such a blunt question. I wanted the question to be personal: “you,” “your wife.” I chose “hold responsible” rather than “Who kicked, punched?” “Hold responsible” because I wanted him to think about general responsibility and answer based on everything that he knew, thought and suspected. I could then follow up with more specific questions to see if there was sufficient basis for his judgment. Not “Who kicked, punched?” because many lay people, both in China and America, think that a person can not be held “responsible” without personally striking a blow. Also because Mr. Wang did not witness the crime, so a perfectly honest answer would have been, “I don’t know.”
I asked the question. Without hesitating, and pointing for emphasis, he replied, “Mao.”
