Yearning For Home

A political exile in Flushing longs to return to the China he loves before dying

Li Yuan

These days Zhao Pinlu spends most of his time in bed or resting on a couch, curled under a checked quilt, dozing from time to time. Behind his Flushing town house, traffic noise from the Long Island Expressway comes and goes. When the room becomes too quiet, Zhao listens to Chinese

pop songs from the 1980s.

The star is still that star.

The moon is still that moon.

Hill is still that hill. ...

And the shadow of the fence

is still very long.

He pats his head gently to the rhythm. His hair is gone after a year of chemotherapy and radiation. At 5-8, Zhao weighs just 150 pounds; he's lost 25 pounds since being diagnosed with terminal lung cancer in January 2002.

Zhao, 47, ponders what people will remember of him. Will they recall him as a young carpenter in the Chinese railroad ministry, a workers' leader on Tiananmen Square in 1989, or a fugitive hiding in China's poorest villages for 3 1/2 years? Or will they remember him as a political refugee in New York who never stopped fighting the Chinese government and liked wearing black leather and dancing? Or will they forget him altogether?

Zhao, one of five founders of the Beijing Workers Autonomous Federation, China's first independent trade union since the Communist Party took power in 1949, thinks a lot about going back to China. After the Tiananmen democratic movement in 1989, hundreds of dissidents were forced into exile. More than a decade later, many want to return to China, either because they miss home or because they fear being distanced from mainstream Chinese politics.

The road home has proved dangerous and difficult, however. Wang Ruowang, a famous writer stricken with cancer, wanted to die in Shanghai, his hometown. But he refused to promise not to speak against the government or contact any dissident, and he died in New York in late 2001 at 83. Wang Bingzhang, a California-based dissident, was sentenced in February to life imprisonment in China; he was kidnapped along the China-Vietnam border last year while on a sightseeing trip with friends. Yang Jianli, a Tiananmen dissenter also living in California, was detained by Chinese authorities last spring; his family hasn't heard from him for a year.

Despite such precedents, Zhao wants to go back to Beijing. He yearns to visit his parents, who are in their 70s, his younger brother (who spent five years in prison because of him), the relatives and friends who helped him hide, the places he had visited. "When I die, I want to be a ghost in China, not in a foreign country," he said.

***

Outside his home, Zhao doesn't look like a cancer patient at all. He wears his black leather jacket and pants wherever he goes. He dances at the Chinese dissidents' New Year's party at Flushing Mall. Zhao wants to make people happy; he hates people feeling sorry for him. He makes fun of his cancer when in a crowd, said his friend, Quanbao Wei of Elmhurst. "But when he is alone with me, he is very emotional and gets teary easily. When a man cries so often, it means he carries a lot in his heart."

Zhao's radiation oncologist at Elmhurst Hospital Center, Victor Ayzenberg, said Zhao is doing well for a patient whose cancer has spread to all major organs. But the doctor refuses to answer Zhao's question about his prognosis for a year from now. "Everybody's condition differs," he tells Zhao through an interpreter.

Zhao is at a loss. He's always wanted to ask this question, but his son, Lei, 20, who interprets for him most of the time, has refused to do so. "Maybe when I go back to China, I will be happy and my cancer will disappear," Zhao says a few days later.

Whether Zhao should and can return to China is a topic he and his wife, Zhang Guifen, argue about a lot. She points out the obstacles: getting health insurance there, and ensuring his safety. To return, Zhao said he would have to ask the Chinese Consulate in New York and might be requested to promise not to speak out against the government or contact another dissident.

***

One wintry Sunday afternoon, while Zhao lies on the couch listening to music, Zhang is sewing clothes she's brought home from the midtown factory where she works.

A big world map hangs over the couch. On the opposite wall, a taped sign reads "No Smoking" in Chinese. The telephone rings, and Zhang picks it up. Zeng Huiyan, a journalist for the New York Chinese newspaper the World Journal, is calling.

"Bigger sister, you have to tell Pinlu to eat," Zhang says. "He lies there all the time. He doesn't eat breakfast or lunch. Every day he won't eat anything until I come back around 9 p.m."

"Give me the phone," Zhao tells his wife in Mandarin. "I will, I will," he tells his friend, finally sitting up. He will eat. The journalist has heard that Zhao and another dissident threw eggs on a portrait of Chinese President Jiang Zemin that day in a Flushing protest.

Zhao laughs, for the first time that afternoon. "I have been lying on the couch the whole day today, how can I do things like that? I wish I'd done it, though."

When Zhao hangs up, Zhang says, "There is less hope that they will permit you to go back. Once you arrive, they will arrest you and put you into prison."

"That will help me fulfill my dream," Zhao says, stroking his head. "One day, when the Communist Party is overthrown and history has to be rewritten, historians will write that 'Zhao Pinlu contributed to the realization of democracy in China.'"

"Who will remember you?" Zhang asks, a little angrily. "Nobody will. By that time nobody will remember you."

"It doesn't matter," Zhao said, smiling and stroking his head again. "You will live to that day. Our son will, too. And you both will remember me."

***

When he first participated in the Tiananmen pro-democracy movement, Zhao said, he was only striving for a better life - an ordinary Chinese accidentally involved in a historical event. Born to a maintenance worker's family in Beijing, Zhao was sent to a village during the Cultural Revolution, like most Chinese youth. Three years later, he returned to Beijing, became a carpenter, married in 1981 and had a son.

To escape poverty, Zhao became a street vendor in 1986, selling ice cream, fruit, clothing. When corruption and inflation made it impossible for most businesspeople to make a living, frustration drove him to Tiananmen Square in mid-May 1989.

Millions of students, workers and ordinary Chinese flooded Tiananmen Square in the center of Beijing, urging the government to practice democracy and crack down on corruption. The six-week standoff ended with tanks and soldiers driving demonstrators out of the square in a bloody confrontation on the night of June 4 that killed hundreds. (The exact number of deaths will never be known and is in dispute.) Leaders of the largest democratic movement in new China's history were either imprisoned or forced into exile.

In two weeks, Zhao's life changed as he became a workers' leader. On the night of June 4, his name appeared on the Chinese government's 45-member most-wanted list.

After 3 1/2 years of hiding in villages, working in fields, mills, and mines, Zhao escaped to Hong Kong, then came to New York in December 1992. He washed dishes, painted furniture, sold meat in a supermarket. After his wife and son joined him in 1995, he started a small moving and renovation business.

Every May to July is what Zhao calls the season of revolution. He plans to demonstrate as long as his health permits. He has protested at the Chinese Embassy in Washington, D.C., asking the government to improve its human rights record and practice democracy. He has demonstrated in front of hotels when top Chinese leaders stay in New York or Washington. He would drop any business at hand to join a rally.

Zhao was one of the few workers who were deeply involved in the Tiananmen pro-democracy movement, which was organized mainly by college students, said Hu Ping, editor of the New York dissident magazine Beijing Spring. "Zhao might not be as well-educated as many student and scholar dissidents," Hu said, "but he has a very deep understanding of Chinese politics and is very devoted to his belief."

The phone rings again. "Yes, we've hung the mirror up. Hope it will help change the feng shui of this house," Zhang tells a family friend.

Friends say their home's feng shui, a Chinese belief that people's environments can affect their fates, is bad. Zhao refuses to move, Zhang says. "There must be something wrong with the feng shui of this house. Otherwise, how could he get cancer four months after we moved in?" Besides, she says, the $1,900 rent is too expensive.

But Zhao doesn't care about feng shui, nor does he want to think about bills. The family lives on Zhang's monthly salary of $800 to $1,000, plus Zhao's Social Security income of $300 to $500. But the garment business is slow. Zhang got only a $170 paycheck the week before.

They've already sublet one room for $600. But Zhao doesn't want to move; the house is the symbol of a life he has worked so hard to have. "I only think of today and tomorrow. I don't want to think of next month or next year," he says. "Otherwise, I don't know what to do with my life."

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Source: "Newsday".