June 5, 2016

More than twenty hours had passed since the government had declared martial law.

Like deer gathering at a lakeside to drink, the students gathered at the Monument, unaware that the Square was a hunting ground and the Monument was the snare.

               Ma Jian - Beijing Coma (p 410)

May 31, 2016

The wind slams the rain against the windows of the covered balcony.

I feel the damp enter the room and seep into the biscuits on the table, my father's ashes and the old shoes lying in the corner. I'd love to slip my feet into a pair of damp trainers. But shoes are made only for upright bodies. Prone bodies must remain barefoot in bed.

               Ma Jian - Beijing Coma (p 398)

May 30, 2016

'When I look at the moon, I get an ominous feeling. It has shone down on so many atrocities. The famous reformer, Lian Qichao, got his head cut off sixty years ago, over there, by Xuanwu Gate.'

My thoughts turned to my father's student, Liu Ping. A band of villagers, who'd previously been like uncles to her, tore her father's liver from his body, then raped her and cut off her breasts. In the Song Dynasty, General Fen's army ate dried human flesh which they euphemistically called 'two-legged mutton'. They considered women's meat to be the most flavorsome, referring to it as 'mutton's envy. But they only resorted to eating human meat because there was no other food available. The men who ate Liu Ping weren't driven by hunger, but by fear. The Communist Party had told them, 'If you don't eat the enemy, you are the enemy, and the Party will destroy you.'

                 Ma Jian - Beijing Coma (p 305)

May 25, 2016

'What kind of country is it that punishes the victims of a massacre, rather than the people who fired the shots?' my mother says again.

                        Ma Jian - Beijing Coma (p 213)

May 19, 2016

'The government pays me a salary and has given us this flat. What more could I want? Do you know how many counterrevolutionaries they've had to execute in order to achieve the stable society we enjoy today? Do you really imagine that you and your little band of classmates are going to be able to turn this country upside down?'

'I don't understand. The Party drove your father to suicide and locked up your husband. Why do you feel you have to defend it? If the Communists hadn't taken over in 1949, you'd be a rich woman now, living in a big house.'

'Without the Communist Party there would be no New China. Without the leadership of Deng Xiaoping and Hu Yaobang, our family wouldn't be having the life we enjoy today.' She stepped back into the kitchen, wiping her wet hands on her trousers.

Ma Jian - Beijing Coma (p 108-109)

May 17, 2016

All I could bring myself to ask was: 'Does Director Liu's daughter, Liu Ping, still play the violin? Is she still living in Wuxuan?'

'Liu Ping was only sixteen when they killed her. She was the prettiest girl on the farm. She could dance and play the violin. The night the militia killed her father, they raped her, then strangled her with a piece of rope. Once she was dead, they cut off her breasts and gouged out her liver, then fried them in oil and ate them.'

                                  Ma Jian - Beijing Coma, (p 69)

April 16, 2016

I bring up my parents' failed assault on the Great Books for a reason. Throughout my formative years, the set remained on our library shelves, weighty and regal-looking with its gold spines. Even back then the Great Books were working on me, silently urging me to pursue the most futile human dream of all, the dream of writing a book worthy of joining their number, a one hundred and sixteenth Great Book with another long Greek name on the cover: Stephanides. That was when I was young and full of grand dreams. Now I've given up any hope of lasting fame or literary perfection. I don't care if I write a great book anymore, but just one which, whatever its flaws, will leave a record of my impossible life. 

                                   Eugenides, Middlesex (p 342)