Tilanqiao is a place name in Shanghai, where Shanghai Prison is located. As time goes by, the word “Tilanqiao” becomes synonymous with “prison”. The entire prison space is very large, occupying several acres of land. Those who have been sentenced after interrogation in several city detention centers are sent here to serve their sentences. Among them were political prisoners, as well as general prisoners who were not considered suitable to be sent to labor farms, either because they were too old and weak for physical labor or because they had some special talent to develop. No one knows exactly how many prisoners are held in the entire prison, but it is estimated that there are about 20,000 or more men and women working in the various prison workshops. Products such as abacuses and buttons were produced here, some of which were exported abroad.
The prison hospital, located just inside Tiranqiao Prison, has a much stricter security system than the First Detention Center. The jeep passed through two checkpoints, both very tightly checked, carefully checked the documents before allowing the car to drive into the large iron gates guarded by many PLA. The guards were all armed with pistols.
The entire prison compound looked very deserted, not a single tree, only to hear the many workshops, the sound of bursting machinery. The long row of houses marked with various small signs were the interrogation rooms and offices, and the walls were also covered with various slogans to fight the enemy and urge the prisoners to reform and rehabilitate themselves. In the distance, behind a high wall, there were six buildings with half-black boards on the windows, just like the windows in my cell. Those buildings, I guessed, were the prisoners’ living quarters.
The guards took me into the hospital building, where there were also walls full of slogans, quotations, and a huge portrait of Mao Zedong. The people who decorated the environment were really “ingenious” and even painted the head of Mao Zedong on the window glass. Some of the head at the bottom, but also painted with a red heart with arrows. Other portraits have the word “loyal” written on the side.
The waiting room of the prison hospital can be described as a corner of hell. Although no one would be devoured by beasts, burned in the fire, or thrown into the raging sea, it was a silent hell of unbearable pain. The emaciated patients wrapped in ragged clothes, their thin faces showed extreme pain, as if they were just waiting for death to come. I don’t know if it was the torture of the disease, or hunger, or both, that wrecked them into this state. Even doctors with excellent medical skills may not be able to restore their health. I had heard about the alarming death rate in Tiranqiao prison, and the patients I now witnessed would immediately enter the next batch of statistics.
Some of the prisoners were hunched over on wooden benches, and there were many more patients on the side, wrapped in quilts, lying on filthy canvas racks resting on the concrete floor. A bald old man, lying in front of me, deep-set eyes tightly closed, wax-like face, taut layer of almost transparent skin, except that the open mouth is still spasmodically gasping for air, is completely like a dead man.
The windows in the room were closed, and the air was so muddy that it was suffocating to breathe.
I closed my eyes tightly to avoid the depressingly sad image, and waited with bated breath for the doctor’s summons.
“One eighty-six!” A nurse in a dirty, almost black and gray coat called from the doorway of the waiting room.
I followed her into the consultation room, where the female guard, already there, was talking to a middle-aged doctor. The room was quite large, with a fireplace in the middle and a pot of boiling water sizzling. A small table was placed around the stove, and the doctors were sitting at their seats to see the patients. Here there is no regard for traditional Chinese etiquette, no cover, men and women patients, in public undress, in full view of the examination. There was a lot of noise as doctors and patients talked loudly to each other. At the time, I only thought that this uncivilized behavior was only for the prisoners. When I was released, I realized that during the Cultural Revolution, hospitals all over Shanghai were in such a situation.
I was very nervous and wondered how I would cope with the doctor if she asked me to undress in the middle of nothing. At that moment, she handed me a thermometer, but fortunately there was nothing more to ask. After taking her temperature, she told the guard that her temperature was very high and she should be hospitalized for a few days. The ward was on the fifth floor, and I was afraid she wouldn’t be able to walk up there. Let’s use a stretcher to carry her up there!
“I’d rather walk up myself!” I pleaded with her. Because I really didn’t want to lie on that stretcher, it was unbearable.
The doctor’s face was wrinkled and her temples were gray. Her eyes were kind and understanding, and she seemed to know that I didn’t want to touch the dirty stretcher, so she said to the guards, “You can take the staff elevator, which is faster than the stretcher. She is really very sick, probably pneumonia.”
The guard escorted me again to the fifth floor ward. In addition to warning me not to discuss my respective case with other inmate patients, I was told that the basin and towel I needed would be brought to me later by other guards who brought inmates to the hospital. She then gave me to a young woman with a labor rehabilitation tag on the front of her lapel. Over there, there was another PLA on duty, watching over us from the side.
There were five beds in the small hospital room. The two near the door had patients, and my bed was against the wall, separated by two empty beds. The woman who was serving her sentence told me to undress and lie down.
I was hot and sore, and now I was lying on a real bed, how comfortable! The unbleached sheets were shoddy, but clean. The room was still cold, but the bedding was thicker and warmer. I took off my cotton jacket and pants and lay down in my woolen sweater and pants. The young woman brought another quilt and pressed it on top of me, and I soon fell asleep.
In the next few days, I remained unconscious, sometimes in a trance I could recognize my surroundings, but most of the time, I was still in a drowsy dream. When I finally woke up, I found that I had an IV tube in my arm. I had been relying on the infusion to maintain my nutrition for the past few days. The young woman in the labor camp put a thermometer in my mouth to take my temperature. When she found that I was awake, she took away all my IV tubes and so on. Although I was awake, I still felt weak and wanted to sleep.
After a while, she brought me a bowl of hot liquid: “Drink it!” She said.
I lifted my stiff, non-belonging arm and managed to hold the bowl steady, and drank the whole bowl. It tasted special, and only later did I realize that it was soy milk with a lot of sugar added to it. Because I hadn’t tasted sugar in a long time, I couldn’t react immediately to the “sweetness”.
Now I feel much better, the dizziness is gone, and I feel much more relaxed. Reaching out to feel my forehead, the fever has gone down and my forehead is slightly sweaty. The young woman was holding a small syringe filled with milk-like drops and was coming to give me an injection. She asked me to turn to my side, and I was a little nervous because I still remembered the injection skills of the young military doctor in the detention center. This time, I didn’t feel any pain, because her injection skills were very skillful, fast and good, she was an expert. I’m sure she was probably a professional nurse originally. I felt bad for her. How did she come here to work and reform?
In the evening, she brought another bowl of fluffy rice, a pot of vegetables, and a piece of braised fish with green onions and garlic over it. The fish was not very big, about six inches long, but it was so tasty that I swallowed it all. My toiletries were already on the chair next to the bed, and a flat toilet was on the floor. I was eager to get up and wipe myself off.
After the young woman put away the empty bowl, a PLA locked the ward’s big iron door and walked away. At that moment, the woman in the other bed, then walked over.
“You were in a coma for six days, and they thought you were going to die. Are you better now?” She was as thin as a stick of firewood, cheeks deep, skin white and dry, but a pair of eyes shining. She was wearing a cotton jacket, which was already patched and patched. It seems that she has more than sixty, but the voice sounds like only thirty years old. She spoke very softly, and from time to time to look at the door.
I nodded and smiled at her. I was happy to have her as my companion, but my physical strength made me too weak to talk to her. She sat down next to me on the edge of the bed.
“You have just been transferred to Tilbury Bridge? When was your sentence?” She asked me.
I remembered that the female guards had warned me not to talk about the case with anyone, so I said nothing and just smiled a little more.
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