Free Will the Boat Sink the Water?: The Life of China's Peasants by Chen Guidi, Wu Chuntao

that there were so many sides to the issue, and that it was a case of premeditated murder. He had no choice but to confess that he put out the broadcast by order of the county authorities. The dead cannot be resurrected, true, but at least there must be a just verdict. The victims had been killed because they were champions of the peasants and had been entrusted by the peasants to look after their interests. This ghastly chain of events was totally unacceptable, and the fabricated TV news item was even more aggravating, adding insult to extreme injury. The enraged villagers decided to confront the county Party boss.
    The county Party and government headquarters was right next to the county TV station, separated by a wall. When the villagers made their way out of the station building, they discovered that the street was filled with people. The news had spread, and many people had been outraged by the flagrant atrocity of the killings. When people learned that Zhang Village had turned out en masse to have it out with the TV station, they sensed that something was afoot. Nowadays, news reports were
    the village tyrant

    rarely reliable, especially reports of major incidents. And so people poured out into the streets to find out the truth of the matter for themselves. In no time at all, three thousand people were milling around the town of Guzhen.
    The county authorities, being right next to the TV station, had a clear picture of the situation. By the time the villagers made their way to their office, the county’s Party and government officials had disappeared.
    On February 21, the day following their fruitless trip to the county seat, the villagers were notified by the village Party boss, Zhang Dianfeng, to meet in Huang’s house at the western end of the village. Huang had built the house for his son’s coming marriage. The young man was still working in the city, and the house, standing empty, was often used for meetings and other events.
    When the villagers gathered for the meeting, they discovered that leaders from the township had descended upon them. Present were the deputy head of the township, He Jingkuei, and the Party head for legal affairs, Qiu Ya, as well as members from the township security force. It turned out that the reason for their presence was to seal up people’s mouths.
    The atmosphere at the meeting was extremely tense. He Jingkuei opened the meeting by reading sections of the criminal code, and then announced that it was forbidden to appeal to the higher authorities, or to start a disturbance, or to gossip about the incident. Everyone present was nervous, especially the fam-ily members whose loved ones had been killed. They were made to feel as if they had transgressed the law and were now being treated as if they fit into two of the “four pariah” categories of the old days: forbidden to “talk out of turn,” and forbidden to “act irresponsibly.”* It seemed as if the victims were under suspicion and were being controlled from all sides.
    *The four pariahs ( di fu fan huai ) are the landlord, the rich peasant, the counterrevolutionary, and the bad element.
    will the boat sink the water ?

    After the meeting, Zhang Guiyu’s widow, Wei Surong, collapsed on her bed and sobbed. Her husband had died for nothing, it seemed, and there was nowhere to appeal for justice. She was even forbidden to mention the frightful event. She cried because the ways of the world seemed so dark and inscrutable, and she felt she was about to go mad.
    On May 7, nearly three months after the tragedy, a newspaper based in the provincial capital published a story on its sec-ond page, titled, “Village Chief’s Temper Flares Up; Four Villagers Lose Their Lives.” The article was published just when the procurator of the city of Bengbu, which had jurisdiction over the county, was just about to transfer the case to the municipal court, for public prosecution. The article was ingeniously worded to manipulate public