Jericho kept quiet. Tu slurped at his tea, as though to wash the taste of the word ankang from his mouth.
‘Well, anyway, since Wanxing was deported in 2005 the victims have begun to speak up for themselves. Early 2005 the People’s Congress even passed a law forbidding police torture, though this was a farce of course. It’s still standard operating practice to work suspects over until they sign some kind of confession as proof of mental illness, then you can torture merrily away and call it medical treatment. There are about a hundred ankangs in China, and these days there’s a lot of public debate and international pressure because of them, but back when Hongbing was admitted to the Hangzhou clinic it was still 1993 and there was no such thing as a right of appeal. There was a red banner hanging in the plane trees in the grounds, a very pretty thing to look at, saying A healthy mind in a healthy body means lifelong happiness, the usual cynical vocabulary of the gulag. Hongbing gets a diagnosis: he’s suffering from paranoid psychosis and political monomania. You won’t find a doctor outside China who’s heard of either of these conditions, they’re not on any international list, but that’s just more proof of how stupid foreigners are. The clinical assessment is all couched in the most harmless terms, it says that Hongbing makes a good impression, his mental condition is stable, he does as he’s told, he listens to the radio, he likes reading, he’s keen to help, it’s just that – and I’m quoting word for word here – he displays massive impairment in logical thought as soon as talk turns to politics. He’s quite obviously mentally disturbed and his thought processes display clear signs of megalomania, affective aggression and a pathologically overdeveloped will. The doctors prescribe a course of pharmaceutical treatment and close supervision to bring poor Hongbing back to his wits, and with a stroke of their pen, he has no more rights.’
‘Couldn’t he talk to a lawyer, at least?’ Jericho asked, nonplussed. ‘There must have been some way to get his case heard.’
‘But, Owen.’ – Tu had started eating the nibbles again, scooping up another handful just as soon as he’d swallowed the first – ‘that would have been a nonsense. I mean, how can a madman contest the fact that he’s mad? After all, everybody knows that loonies always think they’re the only sane ones. There’s no way to appeal against a police finding that you’re mad; the only people who decide how long you’re detained are the police psychiatrists and functionaries. That’s what makes it so unbearable for the victims. In a prison or a work camp, at least you know how long they’ve sent you down for, but when you’re in an ankang it’s entirely up to your tormentors. But do you know what’s truly despicable here?’
Jericho shook his head.
‘That most of the inmates really are mentally ill. That’s cruel, eh? Just imagine how a healthy person suffers when he’s surrounded by others who are seriously disturbed, criminals, threatening him the whole time. Not even half a year after admission, Hongbing sees two inmates murdered, and the staff stand by and watch. Night after night he forces himself to stay awake, for fear he could be next. Then there are other prisoners, pardon me, patients, who are perfectly sane, just like he is. Doesn’t matter. They all have to go through the same hell. They’re given regular therapy, the chemical cosh, insulin shock, electroshock therapy. You’d never believe all the cures they have for a sick mind! They stub their cigarettes out on your skin, genitals preferably, they torture you with hot wires. Extreme heat, sleep deprivation, dunking in ice-cold water, and beatings, always the beatings. Troublemakers get chained to the bed and tortured till they pass out, for instance by sticking a needle into their upper lip and then passing a current through – they vary the voltage, switching from high to low so that you can’t get used to the pain. Sometimes, if the doctors and nurses feel in the mood, all the inmates in a section have to submit to punishment, whether or not they’ve done anything wrong. Given this level of expert care, many patients die of heart attacks. One that Hongbing had befriended was so desperate that he went on hunger strike. So they chained him to the bed as well, and then the mentally ill inmates were told to force-feed him, under staff supervision. But how do you go about that? Since nobody actually taught them what to do, they just force the poor guy’s jaws open and tip the liquid food into him until he suffocates, but at least he’s eaten. The death certificate called it a heart attack. Nobody was charged. Hongbing was lucky, if you want to call it that: they didn’t use the worst tortures on him. There are some car-crazy cadre members in Shanghai who put in a word on his behalf, discreetly, so that they wouldn’t draw reprisals onto themselves, but it was enough to make sure he got relatively privileged treatment. He gets a cell to himself, he’s allowed to read and watch television. Three times a day he gets a dose of narcoleptics, with very pronounced side-effects, and all the while many of the doctors are quietly letting him know that they think he’s entirely healthy. Hongbing hides the pills under his upper lip and then gets rid of them down the loo, then he gets insulin shock therapy as punishment and lies in a coma for days. Another time he’s strapped down, the doctor puts on a pair of gloves with metal plates on them and puts his hand on his forehead, boom, there’s an almighty bang and he can’t see or hear. Electroshock therapy, this time as a punishment for being Hongbing. It’s always booming and banging in the ankang – you can’t get a wink of sleep for all the screams of pain. The patients hide under the beds, in the toilet, under the wash-basin, no use any of it. If you’ve been chosen, they’ll find you. Oh, we’re out of nibbles.’
It took Jericho a moment to react. In a trance, he stood up, went to the bar and came back with a couple of bags of crisps.
‘Cheese and onion,’ he read out. ‘Or would you like bacon?’
‘All the same to me. In the second year, Hongbing tries to escape. He’s almost out and then they catch him. He still dreams about that today, more than about all the rest of it. As a reward for showing so much initiative they dose him with scopolamine, which makes you listless, so that you don’t spend your time thinking about silly things like escape. I hardly need mention that the stuff causes serious physical and psychological injury. In the third year of his stay, summer of ’96, a young worker is admitted to the clinic who had reported her factory manager’s son for taking bribes. The son beat her senseless, and she reported that as well, so the factory manager decided that anyone who could act with such a lack of decorum must be insane. The chief of police and the director of the ankang agreed. She’s whisked away to the clinic without any medical diagnosis, without standing trial or being sentenced, while the ankang director’s son-in-law is named a section manager in the factory. Coincidences do happen. Oh, and Hongbing? Falls in love with the lady, and looks after her until six months after her admission, when she dies under insulin shock therapy. Which breaks the last of his resistance. On the day he lost that woman, Hongbing lost the last of his strength.’
‘That’s dreadful, Tian,’ Jericho said softly.