THE GRAVE ROBBER

I met Tian Zhiguang on a cold November evening in 2002, near the front entrance to the Sichuan Provincial People's Supreme Court on Wenwu Road. He was in Chengdu to file a petition with the court against the local Public Security Bureau for “ruining his life through illegal detention.” Tian had run out of money and was begging on the street. I took him to a restaurant nearby and bought him a bowl of noodles.

Over the meal, Tian told me he had just turned thirty-three. He was known among his fellow villagers as the “grave robber,” even though he had never put his foot inside a grave.

TIAN ZHIGUANG: I remember a fortune-teller once telling me: “You come from a family that includes generations of peasants. You are predestined to be tied to the soil and to earn your money through hard labor. But should your calloused hand touch anything valuable, you are bound to get in trouble.” As you can see, fortune is not in my destiny. It's not like I don't want to make lots of money. I'm just not smart enough to handle wealth.

LIAO YIWU: Tell me about your life.

TIAN: My family lives in the Xijiashan No. 2 Village, which is under the jurisdiction of Jiangan County, near the city of Yibin. My village is pretty famous. During the Qing dynasty [1644–1911], a local scholar, named Xi, successfully passed the imperial examination and was promoted to be a mandarin. He bought a plot of land in an auspicious location and built a large mansion. A century later, the mansion remains well preserved. Because of the Xi mansion, the village has acquired a new name, the Xijiashan Rural Residence, and has attracted tourists from all over the country. Our village is also well-known for the cranes. Each year, thousands of white cranes migrate to the area and roam around.

My family has a house in the northwestern corner of the village, near the foot of a mountain. Both my parents are still alive and I have three siblings. My elder brother is already married with kids. My younger brother and I now live at home.

My bad luck started in 1993 after I had turned twenty-four. According to the local tradition, it should have been the time for me to get married. My girlfriend and I had been dating for over a year. She wanted to marry me because my family was quite well off. We earned pretty good money by collecting and selling crane eggs. So, at the urging of my girlfriend, I started preparing for our wedding. In the fall of that year, my family managed to raise five thousand yuan [US$625], and invited a local contractor and some craftsmen to add a new wing to our house. On the first day, my younger brother and I were assigned to work on the foundation by digging a hole in the ground and pouring concrete into it. Not long after we started, my brother accidentally hit something hard. We dug around carefully and discovered two big pottery containers. They were so heavy and hard to lift. My brother and I carried them into our house. We unsealed the covers and found shiny gold coins, in both of them!

I couldn't believe my eyes. I called all my family together. We emptied the pots, dumped all of the gold coins onto the floor, washed off the dirt, and then piled them up on the table. We counted and counted—there were one hundred of them. My goodness, my whole family was in a total blissful daze. Everything just felt so unreal. We truly believed that we wouldn't have to worry about money for the rest of our lives.

Oh well, as the saying goes: walls have ears. Apparently, our screaming caught the attention of the contractors. They had seen everything through the window. Those three bastards were consumed with jealousy. They immediately contacted the police. Half an hour later, several police cars arrived and surrounded our house from every direction. Of course, we didn't know that. At that moment, my whole family was still caught up in the excitement of our newly gained wealth. We were literally shaking with ecstasy. Suddenly, the door burst open.We saw fully armed police everywhere, as if they had just descended from heaven. Without any explanation, they shoved us aside and snatched the two pots of gold. Then, they tied up my whole family with one long rope, me, my parents, my younger brother, and my nephew, and herded us into a police truck.

At the Public Security Bureau, police interrogated us for a whole night. The next morning, they decided that my parents and my nephew were not directly linked to the case, so the police released them. My younger brother and I were transferred to a detention center in Yibing. Special detectives were called in to interrogate us in three shifts for several days. Police charged that we had stolen the gold coins from the grave of the Qing official. A Mr. Bai, who was the chief interrogator, put a gold coin on my palm and asked me to examine the head of the coin carefully. I looked at it closely and noticed several characters: “Minted in the sixth year of Qing Emperor Tongzhi's reign by the Xi family.” I didn't realize those gold pieces were minted in 1867. My family members were so carried away with the discovery that none of us saw those characters on the coins.

I told the police repeatedly that my brother and I had found those gold pieces under our own house. On hearing that, Mr. Bai gave out a cold laugh: These gold pieces are clearly part of the treasures inside Mr. Xi's tomb. How could those gold pieces end up buried under your house? They didn't have legs, did they? He also said that there were many Ming [1368–1644] and Qing tombs in the vicinity of the village. About 70 to 80 percent had been looted by an organized group of robbers. He said my case was only the beginning of a large-scale investigation. The government was determined to protect cultural relics as well as to wipe out the crime syndicate. Police hoped to piece together all the clues from my case and capture the ringleader. They suspected that my brother and I were both grave robbers.

I was dumbfounded. I had no clue as to what Mr. Bai was talking about. He said sternly: Don't attempt to put on a show. 'Fess up. Cooperation will lead to leniency. We know that you and your brother are not the ringleaders. Who is behind all these lootings? Are you hoarding any other precious cultural relics, such as porcelain, jade, or pottery? How many have you sold on the market? My mind was completely fogged up; I couldn't have cooked up stories even if I had wanted to. I just kept saying: I don't belong to any group and I haven't stolen anything. Then, Mr. Bai became really nasty: I initially thought you guys were just a bunch of hicks. Didn't realize you are pretty experienced in coping with interrogations. If you refuse to cooperate, we can keep you here forever. Don't blame me if you get the tougher punishment.

LIAO: How did the gold pieces end up under your house?

TIAN: From the unexpected discovery of fortune to our sudden arrest, everything happened so fast. We didn't even have time to think about things such as who had buried those gold pieces under our house. We still don't know.

Anyway, since the interrogation didn't yield much of a result, the local police refused to release us and detained my brother and me for three and a half months.

The days were long and miserable. Initially, the guards thought I was some kind of a big shot—the head of a triad specializing in robbing graves. They were a little fearful of me and treated me nicely. One guy even offered me a quilt when it became chilly in the evenings. Several weeks later, they found out that I was only a country bumpkin. Then things started to get nasty. The guards secretly instructed my fellow inmates to straighten me out. Under the guards' prodding, the “big boss”—a tall burly guy in my cell—began to orchestrate the initiation ritual that I hadn't gone through in my first week of detention. They stripped me, forcing me to lie down on my stomach. Then about twenty inmates walked over, spat on my ass, and then stomped on it. They called this “granting the knighthood.” I was later told that prisoners had gotten the idea from a Hong Kong kung fu movie about a fictional kingdom of beggars. After I was “knighted,” two prisoners placed a big plastic chamber pot on top of me. They called that “tortoise carrying the shitload.” Both of my hands were pressed under the container. Each time I tried to move my hands or my body, the toilet container would tilt and urine would spill over onto my body. One guy, who had been assigned to be my torturer, would kick my head if the container tilted. He kicked it so hard that my hair was soaked in blood.

LIAO: How could they be so brutal?

TIAN: That was just the beginning. Each time the inmates walked over to relieve themselves, they would sit on the container and step on my body. The nicer ones would only put their feet on my shoulder or back. Those evil ones deliberately put their feet on my head. I began to scream with pain, begging for mercy. But the big boss wouldn't let me go. With the help of two guys, he managed to sit on the container with both of his feet up in the air. By then, he had moved all his body weight onto me. I yelled loudly: You are killing me. You are killing me.

My loud screaming startled the big boss. He jumped off and asked his lackeys to cover my mouth. But it was too late. One guard on duty heard me. He opened the cell door and pulled me out of there. My whole body was soaked with urine. Luckily, the guard was a new graduate from the local police academy. He was young and still had a strong sense of justice and sympathy. He ordered other inmates to fetch me some hot water so I could wash and change. The guard then called the big boss to his office for interrogation. The big boss was all smiles and said I was having stomach pains and accidentally knocked over the urine container. The guard turned to me, and asked if it was true. I immediately nodded my head. The guard was skeptical but had to believe his story. He called the clinic and asked the nurse to give me some pain medicine and then issued a warning to the big boss: Next time, if there are horrible screams from your cell, I won't hear a word of explanation. I will just tie you up and put you in solitary confinement.

LIAO: You were lucky to have met a sympathetic guard.

TIAN: When the big boss and I were sent back to the cell, he tossed me a cigarette butt and said: You were quite a guy. You didn't betray me. Go rest up for a couple of days. I will give you a new assignment. Why don't you clean the floor?

LIAO: How did it work?

TIAN: The big boss assigned the chores to all inmates in my cell. If he didn't like someone, he would assign the person to dump and clean the chamber pot. Two people were needed for the job. Those two had to stand at attention by the container all day, one on each side. When the big boss or his friends needed to take a dump, the two guys had to help him take off his pants, and then stand in front of him to shield the big boss from public view. If the big boss wanted to spit while sitting on the pot, he would grab one of the guys by the collar and spit into his shirt. Compared with those two toilet helpers, I was really lucky. At least I was promoted to be the floor cleaner and didn't have to serve as a human spittoon.

LIAO: I've been in jail once and know something about initiation rituals. But I've never heard about the ceremony you told me. I guess prisoners are getting more creative when it comes to torturing people.

TIAN: For a while I thought I was doing OK. Two weeks later, the detention center launched a large-scale “Confession Leads to Leniency” campaign, which encouraged us to confess our own crimes and report on others. One day, about three hundred detainees from nine cells were called to the courtyard for a meeting. Leaders from the local Communist Party, the Public Security Bureau, and the People's Court showed up. We lined up in neat horizontal and vertical rows and sat on the floor, both legs crossed and back straight, just like soldiers in training. One by one, the leaders gave their speeches. All of them were saying the same thing: You should seize opportunities to confess. Confessions will lead to reduced sentences. If alleged murderers voluntarily confess their crimes and if the details they provide can be confirmed by authorities, they will get life imprisonment instead of the death penalty. At the end, the prison chief reminded everyone that the new policy would last for only two weeks. Once the campaign was over, no matter what kind of confession a detainee made, no leniency would be granted.

I sat there quietly, listening very attentively. I didn't even dare cough or fart. The courtyard was surrounded by fully armed guards, and two machine guns were aiming at us from the window of a building nearby. At the end of the meeting, I suddenly heard my name called by the head of the Public Security Bureau. “Yes, sir!” I immediately got up and stood at attention. He looked at me with a fake smile, and said: Tian Zhiguang, I want you to think hard and take advantage of this opportunity, understand?

Overnight, the chief's remarks turned me into a top celebrity thief. Once again, everyone began to think I was a big criminal. After we were back in the cell, a guard whispered something to the big boss, and then delivered some pens and notepads. Every inmate was supposed to put his confession in writing. The big boss pulled me aside and whispered: You are a lucky guy. Even the head of the Public Security Bureau knows you. If you confess, he will probably let you go home tomorrow. I shook my head and answered: I don't have anything to confess. The big boss slapped my head: You dumb ass. This type of campaign only happens once a year. If you don't take advantage of it, you will end up in jail forever.

Then, he continued to lecture me: Those officials out there are all liars. Under normal circumstances, they trick you into confessing, promising you the reward of a reduced sentence. Once you tell everything, they never keep their promise. You probably end up with a bullet in the head. However, this campaign is different. The media has written about it. If those officials renege on their promises, they will lose face and credibility. After hearing his lecture, I told him the same thing: I don't really have anything to confess. The big boss finally lost patience with me. He tossed me a pen and a notepad, and said: Don't try to fool me. You'd better tell everything to the authorities. Just blame everything on your accomplices who are on the lam. Your confession will benefit me. I can take credit for extracting the truth out of you. If I'm lucky, I can get my sentence reduced.

I was left with no choice. I took the pen and began to agonize over my confession. The cell was like a classroom and every “student” was asked to write a paper. The big boss walked around the room, making sure that every inmate was following instructions. I wrote in detail about what I had already told the police. After a whole day of nonstop writing and rewriting, we finally turned in our “papers.” The next morning, we were told that half of the inmates had failed to produce any new stuff. The big boss became mad, really mad. He told his lackeys to slap and kick us. Then he ordered us to kneel down, put our notepads on the floor, and then bend over to revise our confessions. It was very painful to kneel and bend like that for hours. Two older inmates couldn't take it after ten or fifteen minutes. They began to moan with pain. The big boss dragged the two guys to the chamber pot and dipped their heads in urine. He then forced them to resume. Every now and then, he would yell at us: Your confession needs to be sensational. Don't try to simplify and whitewash. The more serious your crimes are, the better it makes me look.

Under the intense pressure, my fellow inmates began to fabricate stories of rape. Having grown up in the countryside, I was an honest bumpkin. I wasn't good at making up stories. I kept writing the same thing. The big boss became really irritated. He lit up a cigarette and poked the burning end of the cigarette at my eyelids. I began to scream. He ordered another inmate to seal my mouth with Scotch tape. He then grabbed my hair and said: Are you fucking with me? I have the backing of the prison authority, do you know that? He threw me onto the floor and asked other inmates to kick me. After about ten minutes, he told them to stop and unsealed my mouth. He asked again: Are you going to do it or not? I got up, knelt in front of him, and said: Sir, I don't really have anything to write.

Again, he grabbed my hair, and asked one inmate to pry my mouth open: You have a very stubborn tongue. He stuffed four or five burning cigarette butts right into my mouth. They hurt but I couldn't spit them out because two guys were holding my head and chin. I coughed violently and tears ran down my face. The big boss asked again: Are you ready to confess or not? If you don't, I'm going to light up this whole packet of cigarettes and stuff them down your throat.

I caved in and became creative. I admitted that I had robbed graves before. He asked: How many times? I raised both hands and showed him eight of my fingers. He smiled: Very good!

Believe it or not, my imagination began to run wild. Even though there were many grammatical errors in my report, I did it very vividly. I said that I started robbing graves at the age of fifteen and had been in the business for nine years. I used chisels, hammers, and flashlights as tools. Each time I robbed a grave, I would hide the excavated treasures, such as gold, jewelry, and other valuables, under some shrubs. I would then dig them out five or six months later, after the coast was clear.

I also said that I used a special compass to locate tombs. The compass helped me to detect how much treasure was buried inside.

Before dinnertime, I showed my newly fabricated confession to the big boss. He was very satisfied with the information. He then handed them over to the guard on duty. As a reward, I was given a bowl of spicy pork. I was so hungry and wanted to swallow it all. But my mouth and my tongue still hurt from the cigarette burns. Every bite brought excruciating pain. It took me two hours to finish that meal.

The next day, one guard put the handcuffs on me and shoved me into a police car. I was supposed to take four police detectives to my hometown and uncover those hidden treasures. The car jolted along the bumpy road for about four or five hours. We passed Xijia Mountain and then came to a crossroad. The police asked me which way to go. I pointed randomly to a small side road. The police car drove right on. Then the car came to a sudden stop. I realized that we had come to a dead end, in front of a run-down farmhouse.

The police became impatient. They waved their guns at me: Where the hell is it? I stammered: It—it's somewhere around here. They kicked me out of the car. I had no idea where we were. I simply pointed in the direction of a hill nearby. The police parked their car on the side of the road and all four of them followed me. My mind was running blank. All I did was to amble forward into the bushes, jump over small streams, and climb steep slopes. About twenty minutes later, we saw over ten tombs scattered around a cleared area. I sat down, exhausted. I pointed at the tombs and said, There they are. The policemen were panting, gasping for air. They asked me: Which one? I simply drew a circle on the ground, and said: From here to there. One guy took out a small military shovel from his backpack, and a piece of elaborate-looking equipment. Seeing that the police took my words really seriously, I began to tremble with fear. I walked around those tombs, pretending I was trying to remember where I had buried my treasures. The guy with the detecting equipment followed me. Others were digging frantically. An hour later, nothing had turned up. As darkness fell, the head of the group lost his patience. He seized the collar of my shirt and yelled: Where in the hell did you bury your treasures? I put both of my hands up: Sir, I really don't know . . . Before I even finished my sentence, he punched me in the face. I fell into the bushes. I struggled to get up, and knelt in front of him: Sir, please forgive me. I lied and I deserve to die. One guy tried to hit me with his shovel, but was stopped by the group leader.

By the time we walked back to the parked car, it was already after midnight. On our way back, I told them about the tortures I had gone through and explained to them why I had to lie. Nobody listened to my story. One guy even pointed his gun at my face and said: If you don't shut up, I'm going to blow your head off.

LIAO: You certainly played a big practical joke on the police.

TIAN: I had no choice. Otherwise I would have to swallow a whole pack of burning cigarettes. My body could have been turned into a furnace.

LIAO: What happened later on?

TIAN: The big boss in my cell blamed me for trashing his opportunity of getting a reward. He and other inmates stripped me naked and ordered me to stand by the chamber pot for twenty-four hours. Each time I tried to doze off, they would use cigarette butts to burn the hair under my armpit, on my legs, and around my genitals. It was so painful but I didn't dare to make a noise for fear that the guards would hear it. If they had, it could have gotten me into more trouble with the big boss. I passed out a couple of times from the pain, but the big boss wouldn't give up. He ordered one inmate to inject some peppery water up into my ass. I begged him: Please have mercy. I promise I will confess this time. Nobody believed me. I said: No. I swear to Chairman Mao that what I'm saying is true. If I lie, my mother will turn into a whore for the Americans. My desperate begging made everyone laugh. He softened his tone by saying: If I can't get you to confess, the guards will give me a hard time. I'm glad you understand.

I then fabricated more stories in my second round of confession. Before I gave it to the guard, the big boss reviewed it and forced me to put a statement at the end of my confession. It read: If I tell lies this time, I'm willing to subject myself to any type of punishment from the people's government, including the death penalty.

LIAO: You were really bold.

TIAN: What would you expect me to do? I knew very well that the authorities would take a couple of days or so to read my confession. Then it would take another day before they decided to drive me out to find the hidden treasures. That would buy me several days of peace. I could also get some food. As for what consequences those lies would bring me, I didn't even care to think. After two days of peace and quiet, I was on the road again, in a police car. Once again, we ended up with nothing. The police kicked me and slapped me and tied both of my hands tightly behind my back. I was locked up in solitary confinement for several days. When I was back in my cell, the big boss ordered more beatings. I passed out many times. Each time after I regained consciousness, I would beg and scream: I'm going to tell the truth this time, I swear to Chairman Mao. They never trusted me again. Several times, when I saw the guards passing by in the hallway, I would reach my hands out through the iron bars, trying to get their help. They simply ignored my plea.

But one day, things suddenly began to change. Two guards came and took the big boss away. At the end of the day, he came back, subdued and silent. When the other inmates saw that, they all got scared and sat around him quietly. I picked my usual spot by the chamber pot, anticipating another round of beatings. But nothing happened. At bedtime, several of his lackeys tried to massage his back and made his bed for him, but he simply pushed them away.

LIAO: Could it be that some high-level officials were coming in for an inspection?

TIAN: Not exactly. The next day, all inmates were called to the courtyard for a meeting, just like the one we had had before. After the meeting started, five inmates were paraded onto the podium. Two guards pushed them down onto the ground, with their faces down and their hands tied behind their backs. It turned out that during the “Confession Leads to Leniency” campaign, a guy in Cell Six had died from severe beatings from his fellow detainees. He was a midlevel executive at a state-run enterprise, and was a chief suspect in an embezzling case. Police interrogated him for a week, but he wouldn't admit any guilt. The guards secretly asked inmates to roughen him up a bit. That poor guy wasn't up to it. After getting hit and kicked on the chest by a couple of bullies, his face turned blue. But those guys still wouldn't stop. One tall guy grabbed the former executive by the feet and held him upside down while another one punched him in the stomach. Soon, his body became limp and he began to spit blood. By the time the guards found out, the executive had already died. His death leaked out to the media. To prevent future embarrassment, the local government ordered prison authorities to crack down on big bullies inside the detention center. But who were the real murderers? Not those bullies. They were coerced by the guards, none of whom was taking responsibility.

LIAO: This practice of ordering prisoners to extract confessions from fellow inmates has been around for a long time, from the Qing dynasty to the present.

TIAN: Yeah, that's what everyone says. But that doesn't mean it's legal. After the meeting, the big boss in my cell was scared shitless. He knelt down, kowtowed to a little portrait of the Buddha that had been smuggled in by an inmate: He then told his lackeys to be careful during future tortures: We should focus on those areas where we can cause pain and discomfort without killing the person. He then patted me on my shoulder: Thank God you didn't die in my hands.

The next day, right after breakfast, the loudspeaker inside each cell was suddenly turned on—we were told that the bullies were going to be paraded around inside the detention center. We all gathered around the iron bars and looked toward the hallway. Soon, the bullies in Cell Six came, and stopped right in front of us. They recited a couple of lines, like robots: My name is so and so and I'm a bully. I illegally tortured my fellow detainees. I deserve severe punishment. Please do not follow my example. After that, they were dragged away to another cell. It was quite a festive occasion. Several guys in my cell started to applaud. The big boss gave them a nasty look, and they immediately stopped.

The campaign worked in my favor. During the next week, it was very peaceful and the big boss was nice.

Before I even had the chance to witness the execution of those bullies, my brother and I were released. My poor brother was locked up in a separate cell and suffered internal injuries from the bullies. When we got home, we found out that our mother had gone insane. She would sit by the door all day, without moving. She peed and shat in her pants. My dad moved in with my elder sister's family. He would come in to cook for my mother every couple of days and clean. My brother and I used to be very energetic. But after we got out of jail, our health got really bad. We looked like ghosts and didn't have the strength to do any physical labor. On top of that, we were shunned by everyone in the village because people thought we were thieves. My brother had blood in his stool for a long time, but he doesn't have money to see a doctor. I've been having bladder problems for nine years and I'm impotent. I think about women all the time, but just can't get it up. I don't think I'm capable of having kids to carry on the family name. Someone needs to pay for our sufferings.

LIAO: How?

TIAN: I became a beggar and wandered in the county for quite a while. One day, I overheard someone talking about a newspaper report that said that a peasant had won a lawsuit against the local Public Security Bureau. I was inspired by the story. I changed into some clean clothes, and went to seek advice at a law office. I told the lawyer in tears about my detention and the tragic impact on my family.

LIAO: What did the lawyer say?

TIAN: He was very sympathetic to my situation, but declined to take my case. He said it would be very hard to sue the local Public Security Bureau because no one would be willing to testify on my behalf. He said my own account was insufficient. That made me really mad. I had to seek justice somewhere. I took the case to the local court myself and they wouldn't take it. I then went to file petitions to higher levels of government, seeking 200,000 yuan [US$25,000] in compensation. Nobody listened. So I came to Chengdu to file a petition with the provincial supreme court. I want to sue the police for illegally detaining me. I also want to sue the detention center for secretly encouraging detainees to extract confessions from their fellow detainees. Those bullies in the detention center had turned the Communist jail into a living hell. Last, I want to sue the local Public Security Bureau for embezzling the gold coins. Nobody knows where the confiscated gold coins have gone. Those involved in the case should be liable for the loss of the coins.

LIAO: Sounds reasonable to me.

TIAN: So far, nobody has yet handled my case. The Communist Party and this government are very cold-blooded.