China's Great Wall of Silence: Beijing, November 2008. Part X

Mr. Wang’s family had vigorously objected to him meeting with me at all. “Do not let him get involved in your personal dispute!” was what I was told they had said to him. At one point, after I had made my airline reservations, they had succeeded in getting him to cancel the meeting. Now on the afternoon of the 28th I was meeting with him for the third time. Ye Weiyou again was our translator.


Mr. Wang told me that the call the previous night was from one of the Red Guard students at the school at the time. He said that the caller told him the last name of one of the girls who had participated in the beating. Mr. Wang told me that he had suspected this girl and tried to confirm the identity by her first name, but the caller denied that the girl was the one Mr. Wang had suspected.


Mr. Wang had brought some photographs with him to show me. The photographs had been taken a few years ago when he had hosted Weili Ye and Liu Jin in his apartment. As I looked at the photographs I asked Mr. Wang why they had wanted to meet with him, but what I really wanted to know was why he would want to meet with them.


Liu Jin had been one of the leaders of the Red Guards who had murdered Mr. Wang’s wife, one of those who had presented Mr. Wang with the “official” document on Bian’s “death.” She was the one who had informed the students the next day over the loud speaker,


“Bian Zhongyun is dead. That’s it. There’s no reason to talk about it.”


In the conversation that followed Mr. Wang said, “In China, human relationships are more important than human life.”

As foreign as that was to this foreigner personally, I told Mr. Wang that I understood the sentiment. I was thinking of something similar that I had heard a number of times in my job.


A lot of murders are committed in families or among friends. The victim, the perpetrator, and the witnesses all know each other and are close. When the murder occurs, they call the police of course. But after their loved one or friend has been in jail for a while awaiting trial, the mentality develops, “So-and-so is gone, we can’t bring him back. We have to look after the living now.” That is what I had thought about when I told Mr. Wang that I understood his statement.


When I got back to the States I pondered Mr. Wang’s statement further. He was not related to Weili or Liu. I found it utterly implausible that they had become friends over the years. And Mr. Wang had not used the word “friends,” that was my interpretation of what he meant. He had used the word “relationships.”


I tried to fit every variety of “human relationships” that I could think of into his statement but still couldn’t make sense of it.


Finally, I went back to the source. What Mr. Wang had meant was that “common Chinese” know that they have to keep up good relations with the privileged classes, or at least not offend them. He also felt that this mentality was why witnesses to Bian’s murder would not come forward.


It was the “slavish mentality” again, and the “please mentality” variant in the third meeting and Mr. Wang’s wish to provide me with information that he knew I wanted.


This was my last meeting with him and in the back of my mind I still wondered if he had something important to tell me. Perhaps he hadn’t told me in the first meeting because he was nervous or afraid, and then afterwards regretted it and asked for the second meeting, and the cycle then repeated itself. So I decided to ask an open-ended question with a wistful beginning.


“Mr. Wang this is the last time that I will ever see you. You and I aren’t getting any younger. Is there anything else that you want to tell me?” Ms. Ye translated.


“Benjamin, do you think that I am going to die soon?”


We all laughed. I asked the question different ways a couple of more times but he didn’t tell me anything more. So we just chatted as friends. He said that he wanted the two of us to write a book together. I was touched but I couldn’t help but think that maybe in part this was what he and everyone else had in mind when they asked me, “Why are you doing this?” Because I wanted to write a book, or make a movie, become famous, make money. I told him I’d be happy to.


Mr. Wang saw us to the door. We shook hands, and I embraced him. This is the last time that I will see this extraordinary man, I thought to myself. We were on the fourth floor of a walkup. I took my leave of him and walked down the first flight of stairs. I stepped onto the third floor landing.


“Benjamin.” I turned around and looked up at him. He was smiling just as broadly as he was the first day I met him in Ms. Ma’s apartment.


“Benjamin, see you again.”