Far and Away: Reporting from the Brink of Change

In the artists’ village at Yuanmingyuan, everyone calls Yan Zhengxue the mayor. At forty-nine, he is older than the others and has been in the village longer. Yan does not particularly look like an artist; he has short hair and ordinary clothes. His big ink paintings are decorative and traditional; his manner, unassuming.

On July 2, Yan took bus line 332 from central Beijing to Yuanmingyuan. He tried to get off just as the conductor closed the door and a minor argument ensued. The conductor was aggressive and Yan was annoyed. At the next stop, the conductor deliberately closed the door just as Yan tried to exit, and so Yan was carried to the last stop, where the conductor accused him of having taken items from his money bag and summoned the police. The area is under the same jurisdiction as the village, so the three policemen who came all recognized Yan Zhengxue as the mayor. He recognized them as the policemen who had closed down an exhibition that artists in the village had tried to mount. Yan said he had never touched the conductor’s bag, but the police pulled him out of the bus, beat him, and threw him on the ground. Some local residents stood watching, too afraid to interfere.

Then the police dragged him to the station and beat him with electric nightsticks. “I did not fight back,” Yan said, “but only kept asking, ‘Why are you beating me?’ But they didn’t stop.” We were talking in Yan’s small courtyard house in the village, and he produced photographs of himself burned, covered in blood and oozing blisters. “They hit my groin repeatedly.” He held out a particularly grotesque photo. “The electric sticks burn badly. They loosened my teeth, and they bruised my chest, back, bottom, head. They told me to kneel down, but I refused and then they beat me even harder. They said, ‘If you vomit, you will clean the floor with your tongue. We know who you are. Artist, who made you mayor of the village? You have no authority at all.’ ” Then they asked him to sign a confession stating that he had stolen from the bus conductor, and when he refused, they beat him unconscious and dumped him, at midnight, outside the station. At 4:00 a.m., a local resident wrapped him in a blanket and took him to a hospital, where he was treated for bodily injuries and loss of hearing.

A few days later, one of the village artists recounted this story to Wang Jiaqi, a lawyer who ordinarily works in a Beijing real-estate firm. Wang immediately contacted Yan: “I told him this fierce event violated the law. Our central government does not like such petty police violence. I suggested that we bring a lawsuit.”

Yan asked artists to sign a petition protesting his treatment. Fang Lijun was among the first of the Yuanmingyuan artists to sign; Lao Li kept a page of the petition at his home, asking those who visited to sign as well. Some Chinese journalists agreed to write about Yan’s lawsuit. As publicity spread, Yan got hundreds of letters from victims of similar violence. “Some asked how to bring a suit; others warned me that I would meet with a ‘sudden accident’ if I didn’t take care.”

Wang submitted papers including photos, hospital documents, Yan’s statements, and copies of the petition to the courts. “They agreed to hear our case,” Wang told me. “We won’t get any money and the police won’t be punished, but if we can get them to admit that they committed a crime, that will be something. I avoid speaking publicly of human rights and democracy. It’s too dangerous. I work on individual cases in legal terms. The Chinese people have no idea of using law to protect themselves; they imagine that laws exist only to constrain them. We want to stand against that.”

As I flipped through the snapshots in front of me, showing Yan Zhengxue’s injuries in horrible detail, I said, “It’s funny that I am in China to write about art and about artists and that I have found myself listening to a story about civil rights and personal freedom. It almost belongs to another project.”

“This is a story about art and about artists,” Yan said. “The police hate me because I am an artist, disobedient, free in what I do. They resent their lack of control over this village, these unregistered people living here without work units, without schedules, with Westerners wandering through. I was a natural target. In this country, you can seek money, have women, drink, and as long as you are registered in a unit, it’s okay. But to be an artist”—he gestured at his big ink scrolls—“this is a problem.”

Wang nodded at this. “Mr. Yan is bringing this suit. He is continuing to disobey convention by pursuing the law. Because he is a strong individual, Mr. Yan was beaten badly, and as an individual he is not simply accepting this. Whether we win or lose, I hope we will give this idea to people, that they can protest, that they can find a way to stand up for what they believe, that they can live as human beings.”