Soundtrack: Zha Jianying (Part 1) | June Fourth, I Was in the Square · Watching This Regime Bare Its Fangs Again

In this episode, we interview writer Zha Jianying, reviewing her upbringing, her admission to Peking University in 1977, and her journey studying abroad in the United States. Zha recounts the story of her brother, Zha Jianguo, who was sentenced to prison for attempting to form a political party. She also shares her poignant personal recollections of the events surrounding the June 4, 1989 Tiananmen crackdown, explaining how this bloody suppression completely shattered her dreams as a literary youth in the 1980s, along with the subsequent political depression and her personal journey.

Video link:

Full text:

Sitting there watching the television, seeing all those images, I just kept crying. It felt as if this country was already beyond the point of no return. I felt that this regime had revealed its true face again; it was a killing machine. Suddenly, you realized its incredibly brutal and bloody fangs had been bared once more. Welcome to "Original Soundtrack," I am Xiao Yu. In the early hours of June 4, 1989, 29-year-old Zha Jianying stood in Tiananmen Square and witnessed the People's Liberation Army opening fire on the crowd. That night completely changed her life. Zha Jianying grew up during the Cultural Revolution, was admitted to Peking University in 1977, and later went to the United States to study. In the mid-1980s, drawn by China's burgeoning cultural atmosphere, she returned to her hometown of Beijing, determined to pursue her literary dreams. However, the gunshots of 1989 shattered all of that. She said that her entire dream as a literary youth of the 1980s ended on that night. This year, Zha Jianying's essay collection "Enemy of the State" was published in Japan. "Enemy of the State" is about her brother, Zha Jianguo, a former fervent believer in Mao Zedong who was later sentenced to nine years in prison by Chinese authorities for participating in the formation of an opposition party. A pair of siblings, two vastly different life paths, yet both deeply altered by China's politics and history. In today's Original Soundtrack, let us follow Zha Jianying back to that era, which was once full of hope and ultimately led to her disillusionment.

Recently, I found your book at the Politics and Prose bookstore in Washington, D.C. This new book, "Enemy of the State." When I opened it, the first sentence I saw was the dedication. On the flyleaf, it says: "This book is dedicated to my brother, Zha Jianguo, and to the Hong Kong youth who struggle unyieldingly for freedom." When I saw this, I was almost in tears. I don't know why, but it moved me deeply. So I want to ask you, why did you dedicate this book to your brother, Zha Jianguo, and to these Hong Kong youth who struggle for democracy and freedom? Why did you place them together?

Right, actually I feel that this book, because the articles it selects span 40 years, is also a record of my own mental journey. In fact, the struggle for democracy by the Chinese people spans many generations. What I depict here is at least two generations, and from different regions as well. My brother and his fellow members founded the Democracy Party of China in the 1990s, and of course before that there was June Fourth, the June 4th generation. Then the youth of Hong Kong, who later participated in this peaceful protest, starting from the anti-extradition bill movement and Occupy Central, they are extremely outstanding representatives of this movement. In fact, the cover design of my book, in silver and yellow, is also to commemorate Hong Kong, specifically the umbrellas of Hong Kong. When I watched their protest movement back then, truly, the tears I shed for Hong Kong were more than those for the mainland. Because the epidemic on the mainland was also extremely tragic, and many of my friends on the mainland were arrested, suppressed, forced into exile, and silenced. But I felt that for the people of Hong Kong to carry out such a large-scale movement—preferring to die standing rather than suffer in silence and accept all the authoritarianism forcibly imposed upon them—I felt deeply admiring and very moved. Of course, I also knew that the ending would be, not surprisingly, very tragic. But I feel their tragedy is not one of misery, but rather a beam of light illuminating the future path.

Now let's return to your brother, Zha Jianguo. Because he organized an opposition party in China to challenge the authority of the Chinese Communist Party, calling themselves the Democracy Party of China, he was arrested and sentenced to nine years in prison. As his younger sister, how do you view such a choice made by your brother?

Zha Jianguo is my half-brother. Actually, my father's first marriage produced two sons, and he was the eldest. He lived in a boarding school since childhood and was eight years older than me, so back then he felt like an older brother who was much older and whom I rarely saw. After the Cultural Revolution started, I was just a little elementary school student when suddenly a majestic big brother returned home, wearing a national defense green uniform and wearing a Red Guard armband. I remember on the eve of his departure for the countryside, he brought a group of his classmates to see him off, and the house was bustling with a group of people who felt very imposing. My brother back then deeply admired Mao, and was an extremely fanatical—what would be called a Little Pink today. They were definitely a group of Little Pinks back then, even redder, and took a huge number of actions. Today's Little Pinks are basically just talk; I think he was on the one hand—well, they were Little Pinks, they were truly a glowing red generation. So back then, as so-called rebels, they were also extremely fanatical, putting up big-character posters and engaging in various factions. Therefore, he very sincerely responded to Mao's slogan back then about going up to the mountains and down to the villages, to brave the storm and face the world. He actually wanted to go the furthest; he wanted to go to Tibet, but because he failed the physical examination, he had no choice but to go to Inner Mongolia, and once he went, he stayed for 21 years. After he went there, apart from me, only my second half-brother and I went to visit him. Because taking the train from Beijing back then took more than twenty hours, riding those slow, hard-seat green-skin trains, clack-clack-clack all the way there. He was in a small place by the Yellow River called the Ulanqab League region in Inner Mongolia. When I went there, I had already grown up; I had already come to the United States to study abroad. During summer vacation while studying in New York, I made a special trip to visit him.

You said that when he came to meet you, he looked just like a local old farmer, completely indistinguishable from the rest. I remember he was just squatting down among the farmers at the train station, because the locals all squatted there—there were no chairs or any place to sit, so everyone just squatted there waiting for me. Then he stood up, and all around the train station were local farmers selling melons and fruits or similar things. He took me back to their home, which was in a peasant-style courtyard, and even took me swimming in the Yellow River. I have a very deep impression of this. An older brother whom I had admired considerably back then, yet wasn't very familiar with, suddenly turned into a farmer, and our life tracks at that time diverged so much that... I was among the very first batch to come to the United States for overseas study, back in the mid-1980s.

Right, I know about your brother through the article you wrote, Enemy of the State. I felt quite struck by it; the two of you are like two sides of the same coin, sharing blood ties yet having such drastically different life trajectories.

Yes, many educated youth in the later period wanted to figure a way out and tried to return to the city. Everyone wanted to return to the city back then, but my brother didn't seem to want to.

No, he was very firm. Back then, they were called the 'root-taking' faction; he was determined to take root. And interestingly, my father was also influenced by his leftist teacher—a middle school history teacher—when he was young. He ran away from home to join the New Fourth Army guerrillas. In fact, he was the eldest son of a wealthy landlord family in the Jiangnan region. Once he left, he never looked back; he was a true believer his whole life. And his son, his eldest son, was also a true believer, just in the opposite direction. My brother believed in Mao to such an extent that he truly felt he had to follow that path to the end. So many people were returning to the cities, but he gave up his job placement quotas, and later his quotas for university as a worker-peasant-soldier student, to others. In short, he experienced everything. His disillusionment seemed to come very late. Even after Mao passed away, he seemed to still be commemorating Mao, mourning for an ideal he had once believed in—that this era had ended, but he was still there, unable to walk out of it, not yet able to walk out.

But what about you? How do you view his choices? In his activities of forming a party and acting as an opposition, do you feel he was like an egg hitting a rock?

'An egg hitting a rock' implies that if we look at it from a purely power-based perspective, the disparity in strength is so vast. I think I understand why this would be seen as an egg hitting a rock, because indeed, they are up against such a powerful system—the Communist Party, a party-state—that holds all the guns, controls all the public opinion, and possesses all the tools. It is too easy for them to crush these few dissenting voices. So from that perspective, and because they can make these people non-existent among 99.9% of Chinese people—since they control the channels of information—the vast majority of Chinese people do not even know such a small group of people exists. But is politics only to be considered in such a narrow sense? Right? And isn't the change of a society driven by all kinds of individual efforts, all kinds of spiritual power, or the power of words? In fact, they are all using different ways to pry at something that looks indestructible and huge, and perhaps, within the short time visible in our fleeting lives, we cannot see a turning point or even the day of a major change. But that does not mean these efforts have no meaning or value, right? And life itself is a process. In this process, you choose to do things that you believe are worthy of your own conscience, things you believe have value. I have great respect for such people. I am very proud that my brother is such a person. So when I first heard the news of their sentencing, I remember that day, I was told by a friend in Canada, and I saw it in a Canadian newspaper. I believe most Chinese people didn't know, but my first reaction was that I was very proud of him. I was very comforted that our family produced such a man.

At that time, you didn't seem to have much interest in politics either. Your dream back then was to become a novelist.

Yes, I was completely a literary youth, an artistic youth. We grew up with too much political indoctrination. In elementary school, we had political classes every day, and something called 'daily reading,' which meant reading the Selected Works of Mao. Political movements followed one after another. My family members were also persecuted and impacted by various political movements, right? And you yourself are dealing with politics all day long. So, later on, after the Cultural Revolution ended, when I went to college, and even more so when I went abroad, I had an extreme disgust and distrust of politics. I felt that everything I had believed in and been indoctrinated with since childhood was a lie, so I would never believe in any of these things again. And I wanted to draw a line, to distance myself from it. So I turned literature into a kind of very personal artistic dream—I wanted to pursue a kind of personal freedom in literary creation, to express myself. Politics is dirty, it's all deceptive. So I definitely had no interest in politics, and I wouldn't participate.

After the college entrance examination (gaokao) was restored in 1977, you were admitted to the Department of Chinese Language and Literature at Peking University. But in 1981, when you were a senior, it seems you didn't even get your Peking University diploma before you went to the United States?

Yes, because our class was the first one after the Cultural Revolution, the first batch after the gaokao was restored. So we enrolled in the spring—we enrolled in the spring of 1978—so if we were to graduate, we would have to wait until the spring, right? The spring of 1982. But the admissions in the United States at that time were, of course, for the fall semester. And I happened to stumble into a scholarship from the English Department at the University of South Carolina.

Your applications were all pretty funny. You just said, "My name is Zha Jianying, and I want to come study at your place."

Actually, my application was totally—well, you think of it, I was from the Chinese Department of Peking University, and my English wasn't any good, right? So I just tagged along with—well, the boyfriend of one of our classmates, who was my PKU classmate and best friend. They were applying for overseas scholarships, applying to Australia and the United States, and they brought me along and said, "You can apply too." So I followed them to a library in Beijing, copied down about 20 names and addresses of American universities indiscriminately, and sent out a very simple application saying: "My name is so-and-so, I want to come study at your place, do you have any scholarships?" Just a very simple English letter sent everywhere. As a result, the timing wasn't right, so everywhere else wrote back saying, places like Harvard and all those, "Apply again next year, our scholarships for this year were given out long ago." Only this place in South Carolina, they had never seen an applicant from mainland China—meaning mainland China applying for a scholarship in the English Department—so they sent me a telegram. The telegram was also very simple, just a few sentences: they didn't have a scholarship, but I should hurry up and mail my transcript, so I mailed it. After mailing it, just a few months before the TOEFL came to China, I got my visa.

Without taking the TOEFL?

Without taking the TOEFL. If I had to take the TOEFL, I would have bombed it, I definitely couldn't have passed it. And for the visa, I still remember it was a very young, expressionless young American visa officer. After looking through my materials, he asked, "Are you going to study for a Master's in the English Department?" I said yes. He asked, "Did they give you a scholarship?" I said yes. And at that moment, I thought it was over. Then his next sentence was, "I think they've made a terrible mistake." Because my English was really terrible back then, my English was so bad that before going I even spent half a day memorizing some phrases he might ask, I memorized some ready-made sentences. But I didn't expect him to ask me those few sentences; my mind went completely blank, and I spoke stammering and stuttering. Of course he could tell, so my heart sank right then, and I felt it was completely over. I didn't expect his next sentence to also be quite witty; he suddenly cracked a smile and said, "But go ahead and good luck." At that moment, I just felt he was simply a benefactor, a benefactor in my life. He cut me some slack, probably thinking this young girl was so young and so bold, let her go give it a try. I don't know, that's my guess, how he just let me get the visa with a wave of his big pen.

I've seen a photo of you from back then when you were studying in America, wearing jeans, a striped shirt, and sneakers.

Right, right, right, literary yet trendy, and you're sitting on the floor of the library with your long legs, and your whole body is wedged between two bookshelves reading a book.

That was in the library of the University of South Carolina, that era, that era indeed. When I arrived there, of course, the head of the English Department was very expectant because of the telegram he sent me. But at our first meeting in the office, I felt the truth would come out immediately; of course he knew this kid's English was really—what to do? So he had no choice, but he was also very helpful, immediately arranging for me to be his research assistant. I worked as his assistant and tutor, actually going to the library for him to look up some index cards and things like that, while at the same time making me urgently cram my English. So I went back to make up for that, making up for a year, basically taking a year of undergraduate classes, including TOEFL, those English classes taught to foreigners there. Three years later, when I transferred, I applied then, and I got all the scholarships, getting places like the University of Chicago and Stanford, but I really wanted to come to New York, so I chose Columbia University.

Were you originally aiming for a Ph.D. degree, and then halfway through you became a deserter, didn't finish your Ph.D. dissertation, and went back to Beijing to write fiction?

Right. Why? Because at the time I was very impatient. Because I didn't come to America to get some degree, to become a scholar or a professor. I actually never had this since I was a child; I had a writer's dream, not a professor's dream. As soon as summer vacation arrived, besides working part-time, I bought a beat-up car, a second-hand car, and immediately started driving out on the road to travel everywhere and so on, and I had already lived in places in the South with a lot of character.

Then I lived in New York, and I felt I should return to China. I never thought about staying in the United States, nor did I think about getting a PhD to become a teacher; I still wanted to be a novelist. At that time, there was more and more news about various very active cultural events happening in China—the so-called "cultural fever" around 1987. It was a golden age, with all kinds of literary and artistic creations, and the intellectual circle was also very active. All my old classmates and friends in Beijing were telling me how interesting it was over there and that there were many interesting things happening that one could do. So I felt I should hurry back. I finished my PhD qualifying exams, and they even gave me a grant—I feel a bit sorry about this, I remember it very clearly—my department chair, Said, that is, Edward Said, the teacher who wrote Orientalism, I think he sensed that I might not be the type who was very settled on studying. Before I left, I went to his office to talk, and I remember it very clearly, he stared into my eyes and said, "You will come back to us, right?" And I felt like I had been seen through at that moment; I think he might have sensed that perhaps my heart wasn't in academics, that I might not really want to be a scholar. After that, I never came back. I went back and started writing novels, and then I published novels until June 4th.

All that prosperity and freedom you mentioned in the 1980s, that era where everyone had a light in their eyes—June 4, 1989, brought all of this to an abrupt end. Tell us about that time in 1989, around the Tiananmen movement; what were you doing at the time, what did you see, and are there any images that have left a particularly deep impression on you to this day?

This was truly an unforgettable and unique period of time. At that time, when the students started taking to the streets, I was still working at The New York Times—well, working part-time—at their Beijing bureau. I was actually working as an assistant to their correspondents in China, doing everything; I wasn't a real reporter, just helping them with interviews, organizing and translating Chinese newspapers, and so on. However, after the students took to the streets, I soon resigned because I felt that the American side had journalistic requirements, meaning if you are involved with a media outlet, you cannot participate in political activities. At that time, I was already prepared to return to the United States to receive training from a company, with the plan that after the training, they would send me to China. I thought that might be a way for me to live in China for a long time—writing on the side while working for a company in China. I didn't expect that this student movement would become increasingly massive, right? And those of us involved felt we saw a side of Chinese people we had never seen before—such large-scale peaceful protests, from all walks of life, from students to media, universities to ordinary citizens. From April 15th, when Hu Yaobang passed away, Beijing turned into a big stage for a kind of Chinese-style democracy every day, with all kinds of things happening, all peaceful. Then, in Tiananmen Square, there were all kinds of speeches every day. Suddenly, people stood tall; everyone had dignity on their faces, and they were very kind. And that feeling—because we might know better now—for me, at least, a common expression on the faces of many Chinese people is either very timid or very calculating, very worldly. You know, everyone knows there is a certain Chinese way of life, a way of conducting oneself, with various boundaries you cannot touch. So, in those few months—I know it sounds like I might be beautifying or romanticizing it, and perhaps to a certain extent that's true, at least that's how it is in my memory—but being in the midst of it at the time, I truly felt every day that you suddenly saw another side of Chinese people. You saw that Chinese people could be like this, and this longing for freedom of speech among Chinese people—it was a feeling I had throughout those few years I went back in the 1980s, and perhaps this feeling was even stronger in Beijing—it was a very burning desire, a desire for this kind of spiritual life. The possibility of political reform was also very obvious; there were calls for it from top to bottom, this ideological liberation, and there were independent bookstores, various grassroots salons. All of this constituted a kind of social atmosphere in China that seems almost unbelievable today.

Many eyewitnesses have mentioned this, including the massive demonstration the day after the April 26 editorial was released, and the signs held during the April 27 protest. For instance, there was a very famous sign from the People's Daily staff—something about how they had been kneeling for too long and wanted to stand up and walk—which is unimaginable today. Reporters from state media, as well as officials from within the system, all came out to clearly support the students, calling for freedom, calling for freedom of speech, and framing all these student actions as patriotic. It felt as if the vast majority of people in the city held such a strong desire and goodwill, and the whole world was watching. It also happened to be during Mikhail Gorbachev's visit to China, so many international media outlets recorded the atmosphere of that time—from May all the way up to June 4, and even after June 4. Because after that day, there were still quite a few records; I remember at least one very famous photo showing a forest of tanks in front of Tiananmen, a sea of tanks captured in a shot, which contrasted with the peaceful crowds from before, people wearing various slogans on their heads. And including the moment the shooting started—I was on the scene—ordinary people were trying to save those who had been hit, using tricycles, flatbed carts, or bicycles. These things are truly still vivid in my mind.

Were you on Chang'an Avenue or in the square at the time?

On the afternoon of June 3, I had moved back to live with my parents for a while, right by Chang'an Avenue, near Jianguomen. We just kept walking until we reached Tiananmen. I remember that afternoon was the first time I went out, and I saw the first dead person. A military vehicle had driven in, and under the Jianguomen overpass, the person who was crushed to death—there was white brain matter spread on the ground. He was lying there, and a huge crowd of people, all civilians, students, and perhaps reporters, were gathered around. I remember I went in to take a look, and when I looked up, I saw a New York Times reporter—I had already resigned, but I had worked for him before; his Chinese name was Nicholas Kristof. We locked eyes, he was there too, and then we went our separate ways.

Then later that night when I walked to Tiananmen Square again, it was already midnight, almost midnight. The troops had already been coming all the way from the west. At that time, we heard that as they drove all the way in from Muxidi and the west side, there were already dead people, and shots had been fired, but there were still a lot of people. The students were still there, under the monument, and we, the so-called citizens or whatever, there were also a lot of people. Right across from the Jinshui Bridge, it was basically on both sides of Chang'an Avenue, between the Great Hall of the People and the National Museum, there were still people. But after they drove in from the west, they were clearing the road along the way. We were on the east side, but I remember the flames blazing in the middle of the night, because an armored vehicle had been set on fire, burning right beside the Jinshui Bridge. Just imagine that in the dark night, the golden fire burning a military vehicle. Then at around 1:15 or so, the loudpseakers started broadcasting repeatedly, over and over again, saying that a counter-revolutionary riot had broken out in Beijing, asking all citizens to go home immediately, otherwise all consequences would be borne by themselves. This was looping on the broadcast. But even so, very few people left. There were still a large number of people. I felt that there must have been around a thousand people just around me, still waiting there. And I remember the first dead person, everyone still thought it was rubber bullets, a very tall person, a bullet probably passed through his neck, and this person suddenly fell down. Then we thought at the time, this must be a rubber bullet, right? As a result, this person died for sure? The bullet passed right through his neck, right beside us, and everyone was still guarding there in groups, saying, "Are these students still not leaving? Are they really going to shoot?" It was as if at that time, people had probably gone through one or two months of this kind of peaceful protest, military vehicles had driven in once, and were actually blocked back by the citizens. Maybe everyone felt, you know, sometimes people's courage is stimulated, or maybe they just couldn't believe that this regime would be so brutal as to actually come out with real bullets to kill these unarmed civilians. There was a kind of unbelievable unreality to it, right up until the shooting started. Then the shooting suddenly started. Of course, the first batch of bullets was not aimed directly at the crowd, it was fired in front of us, with a lot of sparks on the street. I remember it very clearly because it was already around 1:30, should be close to 2:00, the time was probably around 2:00. When on the east side of the Great Hall of the People, there was also a unit, at 4:00, the unit on the east side of the Great Hall stood up, fixed bayonets, and prepared to march into the square. Only then did people start to feel that this might really be shooting for real, and they began to retreat. Then a few rounds followed, and with every round someone fell down, and immediately after that, when they stopped strafing, people would go up to rescue those who had fallen on the street. I remember very clearly, in the summer everyone wore white shirts, and you could see those white shirts being dragged up, put on a flatbed cart and hauled away. I remember seeing a huge patch on the back of those white shirts, which was a dark mass of blood, the feeling of black blooming, just like in a movie.

And then with so many people, after one or two rounds of shooting stopped, still refusing to leave, there were thousands of voices shouting loudly, saying, "Beasts, beasts, beasts." I heard the recording from back then, many citizens were shouting, "Fascists. Yes, fascists." Now when I think about it, we walked together, and now nobody knows who anyone is. It had been proven that the government would stop at nothing to clear the square, so there was no need to keep pretending to reconcile with them. You felt it was unfair to those who died, they died so miserably. I don't know how many people died.

Which school are you from? When you came here everywhere, how old were you?

That was probably that time. And I remember at the time, walking while shedding tears, feeling as if something had ended and died. Because this thing really happened? In times of peace, the first time you see people being killed on the street in downtown Beijing, and you see these military vehicles. Later, of course, many years later, I remember Mr. Fang Lizhi said a sentence, he said, "I have never seen a country invade its own capital, meaning the army of one's own country invades the capital of one's own country, and then kills people after the invasion." The so-called people's army killing the people, yes.

After I got back home, I still remember my parents heaved a sigh of relief. Finally, my younger brother was also outside, and we had all been in Tiananmen Square back then, so we had finally returned safely and nothing had happened. But everyone's heart was still hanging, and everyone felt it was unbelievable. By morning, when we went downstairs, because it was so close to Chang'an Avenue, we heard the Red Guards—actually, the clearance had already been completed since it was already morning—many neighbors downstairs listened to the sound of tanks rolling through, rolling along Chang'an Avenue. Those tanks did not have mufflers, so the sound was extremely sharp, extremely loud, truly deafening. It made a screeching, grinding sound as it rolled over, and everyone stood there in dumbfounded silence listening to it. In our community courtyard dormitory, there were many older students. One elderly person said, "This reminds me of back when the Japanese, the Japanese entered the city, it was just like this." He was probably referring to the eve before the War of Resistance Against Japanese Aggression. And then, I think this was also the day my father finally became speechless, because he had previously believed that they would absolutely not open fire, how could it be that the People's Liberation Army could possibly open fire on the people, on civilians?

After June Fourth, you experienced a huge spiritual crisis, and you kept crying during those days?

Yes, very much, all the time. However, I think it was probably just a kind of spirit, a manifestation of depression. And then I happened to have a plane ticket that I bought a year ago to return to the United States, so this ticket happened to work out blindly, and I came back right after June Fourth. But when you got back to New York, it felt like this was another world. I arrived here and stayed at a friend's house, and that was the first time I saw international media from all over the world filming countless things. When you are in the middle of it yourself, you can only see what your eyes can see, right? Because the Chinese media quickly blocked all of that. It was then that I saw the panoramic view, and not just in Beijing, but in various cities like Chengdu, Shanghai, Shandong, everywhere there were protests, everywhere there were such scenes of protest, and various speeches, and all the way to the panoramic view of the shootings, including Tank Man, a young man blocking a line of tanks—all of that I only saw after I returned to New York.

When you were looking at all of this here, I immediately had to go report to work, at my company in Midtown Manhattan, a trading company. Of course, all day long we were talking about business, and the contrast between everything I had just experienced—the huge contrast with my own psychological state—was that outside of going to work and getting off work, when I got home I would just sleep in a daze, completely unwilling to wake up, it was so difficult. This was living a life with a split personality in two worlds, a very fragmented existence. I also felt as if that country could no longer be returned to, and I felt that this regime had once again revealed its true colors. It was this killing machine, and suddenly you discovered that its extremely cruel and bloody teeth, its fangs, had all stretched out again, right? And you had witnessed it with your own eyes. Then successively, news kept coming in about friends being arrested and fleeing.

Then I remember that maybe it was July, perhaps when Wu'erkaixi and the others came to New York. That was when people started fleeing, and the initial beginnings of the Taiwan pro-democracy movement started, coming to fundraise and give speeches in Lower Manhattan. They asked me to help them translate into English. I still remember that under the scorching sun, while I was translating halfway through, I suddenly collapsed headfirst. It was completely without warning; perhaps I had various psychological issues at the time, and I was unconscious of it myself, and then I lost, suddenly lost consciousness. It was like that; my body and mind had truly suffered such tremendous trauma. Before going to work, I would sit there watching the television, watching all kinds of footage, and I would just keep crying. Even at work, I had started buying, quickly bought some work suits because I was going to work at a trading company, and they were going to train me back then. I wore the suit, then sat on the bus, surrounded by strangers, and suddenly my tears just started streaming down. It was very embarrassing, and I didn't know why. I didn't feel, I probably didn't have any concept of depression back then; those concepts didn't really exist. Today, it might be called political depression. Yes, political depression. This was very obvious, and for me, it was definitely a very, very atypical experience, because I was someone who—my mom used to say since I was little, she would say this child in our family doesn't like to cry, this daughter doesn't like to cry. I was the type who rarely shed tears, especially in public places like that. How did I become such a person? It was very strange. And you don't know what the next step is; it's completely at a crossroads beyond your expectations and plans, and you don't know which way to go. And you were originally a person who didn't care about politics, and then for the first time, politics was so direct. Yes, that is to say, my entire dream as a literary youth of the eighties ended on that night, right after the shooting on June 4.