This Empire must Fall Apart— Liao Yiwu

At the midnight of June 3th, 1989, Lv Peng, a 9-year-old naughty boy who was a primary school student in Beijing, sneaked out from home to watch the boiling street scene. Shortly a bullet came into his face, and he fell down, along with several civilians, among which he was the youngest one.

According to the testimony of individual researcher Ding Zilin, he was also the youngest victim during the entire Tiananmen Massacre. His chest was penetrated by the bullet with blood spewed out. He died on the spot. While his death spread around the city and ignited people’s angry fire. Even including those who’re indifferent to politics, numerous people in the sleep woke up, and came to the streets to build roadblocks, throw stones and petrol bottles to the armed soldiers, trying to stop the troops from approaching the square.

Lv Peng, his little body lying flat on the top of a convertible car, surrounded by protesters, like a hero, silently telling the brutal killing between streets. On that night, how many people were crying for this unidentified dead child? How many people immediately became the anti-government “mobs” when saw him?

Twenty-three years later, I re-announced the death of Lv Peng in the first line of the List of victims in Tiananmen Massacre in my new book Bullets and Opium, both in Chinese version and German version.

The cover of Bullets and Opium

He is forever nine years old. Hopefully, his death is a forever and last one.

Here, I myself, announce the Death of this Empire. As the Killer of its own Children, it must Fall Apart.

This is a tradition of ancient China.

More than 2,500 years ago, our great philosopher Lao Tzu, described two most soft and superior objects, Baby and Water, respectively symbolizing human reproduction and natural mobility, in his masterwork Tao Te Ching. Preserving children is preserving the vitality of the nation. Among the principles of the so-called Qigong in China, the fundamental one is to exclude the distractions, find peace in deep heart, and return to the state of chaos, just like a baby still in his mother’s body.

Lao Tzu further elaborated that the need of people coming back home and the old returning to earth is as important as a child need his mother’s arms. The division and integration of a country is to satisfy our daily needs, not the fake “national interest”.

As an ancient separatist, Lao Tzu propose a famous Utopia concept — “small country and few people”(小国寡民): “the neighboring countries help each other, the sounds of chickens and dogs echo together, people live on their land and don’t want to leave till death.”( 邻国相望，鸡犬之声相闻，民至老死，不相往来)

In short, his basic idea is that the smaller the country is, the easier the management is. If a country is as small as a village, citizens can easily find their president and drink together, pee together, or discuss politics together. How wonderful it will be! If you’re guests come from afar, especially the places even not heard by the locals, for example Germany and America, they will spread the news and welcome you excitedly. The Emperor Yao(尧) and Emperor Shun(舜), who ruled the country many years before Lao Tzu, were living among the common people. And they need to be diligent in not only administrative stuffs but also the farming works. Therefore, they win the eternal respect and love from Lao Tzu, Chuang Tzu, Confucius, Mencius and all other intellectuals in any dynasty.

In the time of Lao Tzu and Confucius, the Spring and Autumn period (春秋时代), the land of today’s dictatorial China, naturally existed dozens of countries. During hundreds of years, although the wars between countries happened occasionally, that period is still the widely-recognized splendid era of culture, economics and politics in our history. At that time, people enjoyed freedom of speech, and scholars developed their own thoughts and schools without suppression, creating the historic scene of “Contention of a Hundred Schools” (百家争鸣).

However, the Chinese Communists Party (CCP) who did everything to destroy the traditions, now shamelessly steals the concept of the heritage of “Contention of a Hundred Schools” period, holds “Confucius Institute” all around the world. Did they really read carefully our ancient books? Did they forget that Confucius is not a “Chinese” but a citizen of Lu State (鲁国)? At the age of 56, he had to run away from Lu at midnight because of his political conflicts with his emperor. Then he started his exile between a dozen countries, and was finally allowed to come back home until 70-year-old. In this case, Confucius should be considered as the spiritual ancestor of all the political exiles in any dynasty. And the “Confucius Institutes” are supposed to change their names as “Confucius Exile Institutes”.

The outstanding romantic poet Qu Yuan of Chu State(楚国) in the Warring States period(战国时代), is also a Separatist Pioneer. His country was invaded by powerful Qin State who finally conquered the whole land at that time. As a patriot of Chu, he committed suicide in Miluo River before his country being destroyed by Qin.

He left many patriotic poems featured with strong and unique local colors, which are still popular even nowadays. While the country he loved, not the Qin Empire, the first centralized empire established through the bloody conquer, also the start of the 2000-year forced-unified miserable times, but his forever homeland around Dongting Lake in today’s Hunan Province.

“Although the road is long, I will go along up and down till death”(路漫漫其修远兮，吾将上下而求索), this famous quote shows his persistent love and faith to his country. In memory of this unyielding poet, people consider the date of his death as “Dragon Boat Festival”, in which they will row the dragon boats in rivers and put down the rice dumplings of Ba-Chu flavor, so that his soul could be pleased by his favorite food.

In the name of the Unification, there are countless bloody Slaughter in Chinese history.

The most famous example is Qin Shihuang, who spent his whole life conquering all other countries and established the first centralized empire --- Qin Dynasty. It is said that the population at that time was sharply reduced by two-thirds after his conquer.

After that, he did two more notorious things: one is rebuilding the Great Wall, another is burying the intellectuals and burning the books. The primary function of the Great Wall is to cut off the connections between inside people and outside world, so that he could make his whole empire as a huge prison. In order to complete this gigantic construction, numerous people were sent to the border and forced to work without any pay.

The aim of burying the intellectuals and burning the books is to isolate the people from their own traditions. At first, he released a “Recruitment for the Greatest Intellectuals”(招贤令) to get together about 460 most accomplished scholars all over the empire, who had great influence in their homeland and inherited their unique cultures. Then, they were all buried alive in the capital of this empire. The ancient classics along with them were also set on fire.

Two-thousand years later, the modern Tyrant Mao Zedong applauded for Qin Shihuang’s slaughter. He even said: Qin Shihuang only killed 460 scholars (which are too few), while we suppressed hundreds of thousands counter-revolutionaries, much more than his achievement.

The fact is, that Mao is too modest. According to their own recordings, in order to break the links between people and their own culture, which might develop into separatism, they launched the so-called “Land Reform Campaigns”, in which they advocated eliminating the “exploiting class”, and actually executed more than two millions landlords, squires and members of civil society. They were the elite class in the country, and most of them already submitted to the party. But the party didn’t trust them, suspected them “playing tricks behind”, or their “stubborn old heads cannot transformed into a new one that keep pace with this era”.

The Land Reform Campaigns.

The fundamental means of consolidating the party’s power is killing, which is unspoken but clear to every leader from Mao Zedong to Deng Xiaoping.(Now Xi Jinping also)

In so-called “Great Famine” from 1959 to 1962, nearly 40 million people died of starvation all over the country. While this “famine” occurred only because of Mao’s fear of political division and the loss of his own power. That was not a “famine”, but a disaster manufactured deliberately in the “Great Leap Forward Campaign” during 1950s.

In the “Cultural Revolution” from 1966 to 1976, two to four million people were tortured to death. This campaign was also out of the same concern of Mao.

“There is no worse disaster than ‘nation division and the death of the party’. ” This is the forever reminder from Mao. So that, it doesn’t matter if the people live in dire straits.

The similar teaching also came from Lenin, Stalin, Hitler, Ceausescu, Kim Jong-il, Saddam Hussein and Kazambier, all the tyrants in the world. “United Country, Integrated Territory” is always the ultimate Trump Card of a dictatorship. Under this cover, numerous evil deeds become publicly accepted.

In June 1989, to cope with the political crisis, the party sent out more than two hundreds of thousands armed troops to blood-wash Beijing. When the armored chariots hovering in the streets, when the intensive gunshots spreading through radio waves, an old poet in Chengdu, a city far away from Beijing, was reading Chuang Tzu, buried himself in the ocean of ancient classics.

As time went by, I was in and out of the prison because of my reading of poem Massacre on the night of that slaughter. Then I met with this old poet whose name is Liu Shahe, who was also in prison as an enemy of the party on the suspect from Mao that his poems were “criticizing the party allusively” in 1957, the year when I was not born. He told me that, the people like us, who had suffered a lot in their destiny, our scars deep inside hearts would never be cured. Therefore, let’s give up becoming a poet, but a witness of history, he said.

He then recounted the testimony written by Chuang Tzu two-thousand years ago:

A hermit of Kia State called Lin Hui, was fleeing from the invaders with a precious Jade in his arms, among many others, with their enemies chasing after. Suddenly he heard the crying of an abandoned baby in the ruins they passed by. No one stopped to rescue the baby except Lin Hui. While his Jade was too heavy to carry along with the baby, so he had to make the choice. Without hesitation he chose the baby other than the Jade. Others were so confused, they said: “How fool you’re to abandon the Jade for a baby, which is a living burden.”

However, Lin Hui replied, this is the will of God.

So does the inheritance of the truth.

The rise and fall of a country, the unification and division of a territory, are just some chapters in the history books. While the inheritance of the truth runs throughout.

This kind of long-lasting recording habits, exist like the little baby in the story of Chuang Tzu, abandoned in the ruins with sorrow crying, when a country is about to break, when Mao Zedong and Deng Xiaoping are conducting their slaughters. This baby needs inheritors like “Hermit Lin Hui”, who’re willing to give up their own interests and pick it up, take it away from the hunting, and patiently bread it, sharpen its mind, until one day it is able to record what happened and pass down this habit in the dark.

I’m also continuing this recording habit. Through my writing, I publicize my study on the victims of the Tiananmen Massacre, and my thoughts about the split of China to the whole world, not only in Chinese, but also in German and English.

In a few years, I will come back to my beloved ancestors. Now I’m here, in the splendid St. Paul Church, in front of the elites of German society, I pay my tribute to them in advance, especially to the oldest master Sima Qian in this field. In order to pick up the truth vulnerable as a baby, he even lost his two testicles as a punishment from the emperor, in the false image full of singing and dancing of the Western Han Dynasty. Despite his loss of the fertility of the body, the fertility of his soul thrived after this humiliation.

His masterpiece Records of the Grand Historian accompanied me in the journey escaping the dictatorship of China, along with I Ching, another classic written by King Wen of Zhou when in the dungeon.

The baby and the truth are mixed with each other in the history.

When an empire goes to the point of slaughtering the children and obliterating the truth, it should be the ending of that empire.

While the sophisticated evildoer Deng Xiaoping proposed the strategy that tightening the politics while loosening the markets, to rescue the party, on his trip from Beijing to Shenzhen in the spring of 1992.

In Bullet and Opium, I wrote:

Many years after, I still cannot settle down in my home country. The sufferings are more and more severe, the hearts are more and more numb. However, along with the takeoff of Chinese economics, there is a popular international tone that, the economic development can push forward the political reforms, and turn the dictatorship into democracy. Therefore, the western countries which sanctioned the party for the Tiananmen Massacre, now rush to do business with these killers, although they’re still arresting and killing innocent people. The new bloods cover the old ones, the new atrocities disfigure the old ones. The common people are struggling their ways in these bloods and atrocities, and unavoidably become more and more shameless.

The cycle of shamelessness and sufferings dominates our past, present and future. After the Tiananmen Massacre, there were successive suppression towards the relatives of Tiananmen Massacre victims, Qigong and Falun Gong practitioners, democracy parties, mistreated petitioners, landless peasants, laid-off workers, human-right lawyers, underground churches, dissidents, the relatives of Sichuan earthquake victims, the signers of Charter 08, the participators of Jasmine Revolution, and also the brutal suppression in Tibet, Xinjiang and Inner Mongolia.

The blood piles up, with the dictatorship intensifying. Maybe their first killing is with shaking hands, while now they have no fear at all since they have killed enough and get considerable economics increase after each killing. For example, if no Tiananmen Massacre, there would be no Deng Xiaoping’s southern tour, in which he invoked people’s desire to money instead of patriotism to this land (which is a big threat to the power of this party). Similarly, without the gangster-style forced demolition, cities could not crazily expand with the foamy real estate in recent years. Also, there would be less corrupted officials and cold-hearted real estate developers who launched the “Tofu-dreg projects” in order to get more profits.

The killers are winning during this long time, since all people in this country become their slaves, who are plundered and shackled arbitrarily by them, until the last drops of the marrow are squeezed out.

The killers also invite western business men come in to build factories, open companies and construct buildings. They said to western investors:

As long as you keep silence on human rights, you could do whatever you want and make a fortune in China. In your countries, there are laws, public opinions and criticism, so that what you can do is under strict restrictions. While in China, nothing is impossible, come here and follow us, let us do great business together.

There are billions of the cheapest labors all over the world, who’re willing to work as a machine day and night, just for a little payment and without welfare or insurances. There are plenty of rivers, lands, woods, grains and underground waters for you to utilize and pollute, we will not accuse you or punish you. And when most Chinese people get sick because of the heavy work and polluted environment, we can even make more money through the medical care industry!

In this largest landfill, there is always the biggest business potential.

In the name of free trade, many western consortiums hooks up with the killers to make this landfill together. The profit-first “garbage value” have increasingly affected the whole world. The ordinary people in China all know that, the killers and the westerners, they have money as well as the retreat. They can simply abandon this ruined country and move to the western countries with their whole family, to enjoy the pure air and sunshine, to embrace the freedom, equality and fraternity. They can even join the church after that, to make Jesus Christ, who was crucified by the ancient dictator, make atonement for themselves.

Once Chinese people figure out that, there is no justice and fairness for them even in the democratic western world, they will just follow the “glamorous examples” who are winners both inside and outside China — — the corrupted officials and cold-hearted businessmen. Thus, in the near future, there will be plenty of shameless Chinese scammers filling up the whole world.

The value system of this empire has completely collapsed. The only thing remaining to maintain this empire is their complicated interest collusions. While this evil chain of such interest is deep-rooted and inter-wined all over the world, making the free world of economic globalization speechless and helpless for the moment.

However, since that night its own people were killed twenty-three years ago, the destiny of this empire has been written down, that it must Fall Apart.

The list of the victims in Tiananmen Massacre, headed by nine-year-old Lv Peng, is becoming an epochal parable in human history, due to the persistent efforts of the Tiananmen Mothers led by Ding Zilin.

Vaclav Havel, who passed away recently, repeatedly emphasized “the power of the powerless”. While in China, when the desperate powerless couldn’t do anything violent against the brutal authority, the only power remaining to them is words passed one by one. This is also an ancient tradition. When people were forced to build the Great Wall for Qin Shihuang, they had no way to refuse or fight back, except spreading the story Lady Meng Jiang weeps the Great Wall as a curse to the emperor. Till now, the Great Wall is still a famous tourist attraction, but in folk fables, it had already collapsed long time ago, because of the crying of a young woman who lost her beloved husband.

Confucius once sighed at the bank of an endless river: is the flowing of memory just like this?

Are these two deaths also like this?

On June 21st, 2003, a three-year-old girl Li Siyi in Jintang County of Chengdu, starved to death at home because her mother were taken away by the police as a suspect of taking drugs and no one looked after her, during those 17 days without her mom.

On October 13rd, 2011, a two-year-old girl in Foshan, Guangdong, was knocked to the ground by a car when crossing the road, then run over twice by two different trunks. During this whole process, many passed by her while no one stopped to rescue her. According to a video taken by a witness, there were 18 passengers in seven minutes on the spot, but none of them cared about her. In the end, a kind-hearted granny who was a cleaner, picked her up and set her to the hospital. Unfortunately, it was too late to save her life.

The blood has cooled down, and the hearts have been hardened.

While when the nine-year-old Lv Peng was slaughtered, the bloods of Chinese people were still boiling.

Who wants to be such an idiot brainwashed by the killers’ economic strategy, named as “Chinese”?

In China, everyone is used to saying that, I’m from Sichuan, I’m from Shaanxi, I’m from Guangdong, and I’m from Beijing. Just like in Berlin, people are saying that, I’m American, I’m German, I’m Tibetan, I’m Romanian.

When a Taiwanese tells me that your China is always bullying Taiwan, I will answer that, the China you refer to has nothing to do with my Sichuan.

Right before my fleeing, I once had a chat with a farmer who lived at the border of Yunnan. He said, our home Yunnan is different from your home Sichuan. It’s easier for us to go abroad than for you to leave your province. Within a few blinks, we can arrive in Vietnam, Laos or Myanmar to have tea with local people. Therefore, Yunnan should merge with Vietnam, Laos and Myanmar as one country, in which case we can live more convenience than travel a long way to go to Beijing or Shanghai.

I said, is your idea a betrayal of the country (in Chinese, we use the phrase “selling the country”)? He answered, how much is the weight of a country? How can I sell it?

In ancient times, Xinjiang, Tibet, Inner Mongolia and Taiwan were all exotic regions. Princess Wencheng of Tang Dynasty marrying to Tubo (ancient Tibetan Empire), was just the same sensation with goodwill as a woman from Shanghai marrying to America in the era of ROC.

Why do Tibetans burn themselves so often? If they are still an independent country that shares borders with Sichuan and Yunnan, and receive no suppression from Beijing, I’m sure this plateau nation who enjoy singing and dancing in everyday life will never think about burning themselves.

The possible map of East Asia after China Falling Apart.

This anti-human bloody empire, the source of all the disaster on this earth, the infinitely expanding landfill, must Fall Apart.

In order to prevent children from death in vain, this empire must Fall Apart.

In order to make mother no longer lose their children, this empire must Fall Apart.

In order to let Chinese people settle down in their own land, no longer run away to other countries to survive, this empire must Fall Apart.

In order to let the old be buried in their hometown, and the descendants remain their traditions, this empire must Fall Apart.

For the peace and tranquility of all mankind, this empire must Fall Apart.

At last, I want to sing a song I wrote for the victims and survivors of the Tiananmen Massacre in 1989.

July to September, in Berlin.(2012)

Tiananmen Mothers

My children,

Do you feel well in heaven?

Mother’s heart,

Has blossomed in the fields.

The gunshots are gone and your blood faded away.

My dear,

Please come back from your dreams.

My dear,

Are you still cold below the earth?

The snow is so heavy that

White all my hair.

The river is running without stop

Just as my tears.

My dear, do you feel lonely in the underworld?

Hey, mom!

Whom are you talking to at the window?

The long-lasting light,

I shall let you to my kids to warm them up.

The world is changing so fast,

While the grass on your grave is always green.

Hey, my dear mom,

Is your crying helpful?

Translation: Mount. 07.2019.