A Mother Cannot Forget
By SU BINGXIAN
He was the quietest of my three children, and he promised he wouldn't get into trouble. But when we heard gunfire around Tiananmen Square on that night 10 years ago, I began to worry about Zhao Long, my 21-year-old son. It was the beginning of a nightmare I have relived for a decade. He had left home after dinner with his sister to see what was happening around the square. I told them not to go out, but they promised they'd be back early. They weren't going far: we live on an alley off Xidan Street, only two blocks from the square.
Zhao Long went frequently to Tiananmen during the demonstrations, saying he wanted to witness history. I often went as well. Our young people, I learned, are far more complicated than we were in our youth. We had little contact with the outside world. Whatever the Communist Party said, we did.
But while the protests were calm, I knew all about the risks of challenging the government. My father, the poet Su Jinsan, was criticized in 1957 as one of the most notorious "rightists" in Henan province. My mother was labeled an "extreme rightist" because she refused to divorce him. They were both attacked again during the Cultural Revolution. In 1989 I worried about my children, especially my elder son. In May I sent him to my hometown on the pretext that my father was ill. Little did I imagine that my younger son, Zhao Long, would die.
At 4 a.m. on June 4, Zhao Long still hadn't returned home, so I set out to find him. I headed toward the square, but it was overrun with soldiers. I went to the nearby hospitals; carrying his photo I worked my way through the sick rooms to the morgue. The bodies were in drawers. We pulled out one after another looking for him. My husband and I finally found Zhao Long on June 6 at the No. 3 Hospital. Doctors recalled a boy in the morgue dressed in the yellow T shirt, blue jeans and Nikes I described. He had been carried in by two students during the shooting. The doctors refused to let me look at him; they feared I would drop dead, as another mother had, from shock. I met a man who still had not found his son. He said I was lucky.
I kept silent about Zhao Long's death until 1994, when I met Ding Zilin, an activist who lost her own son that night. I began to help her organize petitions. Each year we write to China's leaders asking why so many had to die. I am not afraid of the repercussions. I have done nothing wrong. All I want is an explanation.
Su Bingxian formerly worked for the China Central Compilation Bureau, a translation office for ideological texts
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