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Book: The Corpse Walker: Real Life Stories: China From the Bottom Up by Liao Yiwu
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Authors: Liao Yiwu
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corpse? Didn't people worry about retribution for blaspheming the dead?
LUO: People were so caught up in the moment that traditions and taboos went totally out the door. It was like a circus. The crowd kept getting rowdier. The excitement was quite contagious. Some younger guys tried to climb onto the stage to touch the corpse. The soldiers wrestled with them, attempting to push them down. It was a real mob scene. Then suddenly we heard a loud crash: the stage had collapsed. People were screaming and falling over one another. One soldier raised his gun and fired at the sky several times before the crowd became silent and under control.
Luckily for the two brothers, their kung fu skills came in handy. They were able to dodge the attacks from the mob and survived with some minor injuries. The soldiers then untied the corpse from the elder brother's back and sent both of them back to the dark room. That night the two brothers broke a window and escaped. They were soon discovered by soldiers on patrol, who chased after them for several kilometers. The elder brother, though shot in the leg, didn't want to surrender. As he stumbled forward up on the mountain, he accidentally stepped on a loose stone and fell into a ravine. After that the younger one was caught without any resistance.
LIAO: Was he executed?
LUO: The younger one was allowed to wrap the bodies of his brother and the army officer's wife in straw mats, and he dug a grave and buried them together outside the village. Then he was deported back to his local village with the death certificate of his brother. I heard later that the government charged the elder brother posthumously with “refusing to admit crimes and committing a sacrificial suicide to honor a counterrevolutionary.”
LIAO: What an ending.
LUO: But that wasn't the end. Several days later, the village officials had some unexpected guests: the relatives of the Nationalist officer's wife. They had received a letter from the officer telling them to welcome home the body, and they had set up an altar and were prepared to hold a wake. They waited and waited, but the corpse walkers never showed up, and eventually they got word of what had happened at the public denunciation meeting.
LIAO: What could they do? She had already been buried.
LUO: The relatives cried and screamed and went all the way to the county chief's office. They begged him to give the body back. Normally, the county chief wouldn't dare meet such a request for a Nationalist officer's wife. But the fiasco at the public denunciation meeting plus the killing of a corpse walker, who was considered a member of the working class, had made him nervous.
He was afraid that the relatives of the dead woman could take the issue to a higher level of government and get him into trouble. So he let them dig up the body. The relatives then hired some professional mourners, who carried the body home. It was quite a procession in the old-fashioned style, which the county officials pretended they didn't see.
It had been a long journey home for that woman. As for the elder brother, it was really sad that someone who had spent his whole life returning the dead to their ancestral homes should end up getting buried in a place far away from his own home.
THE LEPER
A year ago, I met a medical doctor named Sun outside Shimenkan, a village in the mountainous region of Yunnan Province. Dr. Sun used to have a cushy practice at a government-run hospital in Beijing, but in the midnineties he joined China's underground Christian movement, and his religious beliefs eventually cost him his job. Since then, he has been traveling around Yunnan preaching Christianity and offering medical help.
About two years ago, while visiting a tuberculosis patient in Shimenkan, he came across a dilapidated hut hidden in the woods on the slope of the mountain. Intrigued by this lonely dwelling far from town, he decided to find out who lived there. His local guide tried to prevent him,
LUO: People were so caught up in the moment that traditions and taboos went totally out the door. It was like a circus. The crowd kept getting rowdier. The excitement was quite contagious. Some younger guys tried to climb onto the stage to touch the corpse. The soldiers wrestled with them, attempting to push them down. It was a real mob scene. Then suddenly we heard a loud crash: the stage had collapsed. People were screaming and falling over one another. One soldier raised his gun and fired at the sky several times before the crowd became silent and under control.
Luckily for the two brothers, their kung fu skills came in handy. They were able to dodge the attacks from the mob and survived with some minor injuries. The soldiers then untied the corpse from the elder brother's back and sent both of them back to the dark room. That night the two brothers broke a window and escaped. They were soon discovered by soldiers on patrol, who chased after them for several kilometers. The elder brother, though shot in the leg, didn't want to surrender. As he stumbled forward up on the mountain, he accidentally stepped on a loose stone and fell into a ravine. After that the younger one was caught without any resistance.
LIAO: Was he executed?
LUO: The younger one was allowed to wrap the bodies of his brother and the army officer's wife in straw mats, and he dug a grave and buried them together outside the village. Then he was deported back to his local village with the death certificate of his brother. I heard later that the government charged the elder brother posthumously with “refusing to admit crimes and committing a sacrificial suicide to honor a counterrevolutionary.”
LIAO: What an ending.
LUO: But that wasn't the end. Several days later, the village officials had some unexpected guests: the relatives of the Nationalist officer's wife. They had received a letter from the officer telling them to welcome home the body, and they had set up an altar and were prepared to hold a wake. They waited and waited, but the corpse walkers never showed up, and eventually they got word of what had happened at the public denunciation meeting.
LIAO: What could they do? She had already been buried.
LUO: The relatives cried and screamed and went all the way to the county chief's office. They begged him to give the body back. Normally, the county chief wouldn't dare meet such a request for a Nationalist officer's wife. But the fiasco at the public denunciation meeting plus the killing of a corpse walker, who was considered a member of the working class, had made him nervous.
He was afraid that the relatives of the dead woman could take the issue to a higher level of government and get him into trouble. So he let them dig up the body. The relatives then hired some professional mourners, who carried the body home. It was quite a procession in the old-fashioned style, which the county officials pretended they didn't see.
It had been a long journey home for that woman. As for the elder brother, it was really sad that someone who had spent his whole life returning the dead to their ancestral homes should end up getting buried in a place far away from his own home.
THE LEPER
A year ago, I met a medical doctor named Sun outside Shimenkan, a village in the mountainous region of Yunnan Province. Dr. Sun used to have a cushy practice at a government-run hospital in Beijing, but in the midnineties he joined China's underground Christian movement, and his religious beliefs eventually cost him his job. Since then, he has been traveling around Yunnan preaching Christianity and offering medical help.
About two years ago, while visiting a tuberculosis patient in Shimenkan, he came across a dilapidated hut hidden in the woods on the slope of the mountain. Intrigued by this lonely dwelling far from town, he decided to find out who lived there. His local guide tried to prevent him,
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