Kublai Jian was in Qing Huang Dao 780 Political Prison, the former Shanhaiguan Pass Confinement Camp. And indeed, he had passed over the railway track on the journey, the track on which, years before, Hai Zi had laid down his body and allowed himself to be decapitated.
Over the course of two weeks the guards left Jian in a cell and watched him, as he waited for his “trial.” He wasn’t handcuffed or beaten and he was isolated from other prisoners. They treated him in a controlled manner, cold, even slightly polite sometimes. Guards like automatons. Unlike the Beijing Haidian Police Station where he had been arrested, this place was very clean, scrubbed, as if even the sight of dirt, like freedom, was also withheld from the prisoners, so as to cut them off from all life. He was charged with engaging in “subversive anti-state activities.” He was not surprised by this. Everyone got charged with some crime in the end. The reality of the arrest was harder than he expected, but then it flowed over him, since he felt all sense of control had left long ago. Perhaps his drive to perform and campaign had all been aimed at this in the end. Part of him now accepted it as a kind of fate. That all roads, however he travelled them, would lead here.
During that month, Jian “disappeared” from the public eye. No contact whatsoever was allowed. In fact, no one even knew where he was. The people who knew him had to live with that thorn in their sides: his absence. Some people in the capital were trying to help Jian. But they could do nothing. A group of fans tried to protest on the streets in Beijing, in front of public spaces like the Central Fine Arts Exhibition Hall or Beijing Poly Plaza, or even Kempinski Hotel, playing his music and brandishing campaigning banners. But they were either ignored or intimidated by the authorities. It looked hopeless.
However, suddenly things began to happen, though just how and why wasn’t clear. First, a warden in the prison received an important phone call from an undisclosed government telephone number. The order came from high up to transfer Jian from prison to a secret destination. Jian was immediately disappeared from Qing Huang Dao 780 Political Prison.
A Western fan of Yuan vs. Dollars, living in Beijing and working at the British Embassy, found out where Jian was being held. He had heard Jian’s trial would be soon and wanted to help. But then, only a week later, he found out that the trial was indefinitely postponed. No reason given, no law cited. “Someone from the higher echelons of government made a phone call,” the rumour said. Three weeks later, Jian was secretly driven to the south of China with a brand-new British tourist visa. On 29 December 2011, the day the snow became dirty and the frost broke, he left China via Hong Kong, with no resistance by the authorities.
When the plane took off from Hong Kong, Jian’s eyes looked down at the blue water underneath him. The last few weeks had left him utterly exhausted, and utterly unable to collect his thoughts. He was just running, just living on his reflexes, which were about to fuse, and leave him in some stage beyond collapse. He had no idea what was ahead of him, or what he had left behind. The doors in Qing Huang Dao 780 Political Prison had been closed, slammed shut, cutting him off from the outside space, but also shutting him out from his past. But then those very doors had opened again. But who had walked out? Like the ghost of Misty Poet Hai Zi, Jian was now on a plane, his body being transported into the sky: a different kind of prison. His soul had been poured out and had seeped into the earth under the Great Wall, melting beneath the tracks leading into that dark tunnel. That day the events of 1989 seemed somehow alive again and his student self sat alongside the Kublai Jian of 2011, and thought about the long journey they’d taken together. It was the day he wrote his long letter to Mu.
Dearest Mu,
The sun is piercing, old bastard sky. I am feeling empty and bare. Nothing is in my soul, apart from the image of you.
I am writing to you from a place I cannot tell you about yet. Perhaps when I am safe I will be able to let you know where I am. I don’t know exactly what the plan is and what my future might hold. One thing is for sure—I will try to stay free and alive, for you. And whatever happens, these ideas I have stuck by all my life—the beliefs that landed me here in the first place—I cannot let them go. I must live for them. I know we’ll see each other again, my love, but how long until that day I cannot tell …