Encounter
September 15, 2012, Xi’an.
After serving as the director of the commentary department of a metropolitan newspaper in Xi’an, Jiang Xue has been out of the newsroom directly for some years, and it is impossible for her to foresee at what point in the future she will be back on the front lines. This afternoon, she and her friend were separated at a teahouse near her home. Some of the information proliferating on Weibo made her vaguely uneasy, and she instructed her friend who was driving a Japanese car to be safe.
Outside the city’s northern suburbs, Mr. and Mrs. Li Jianli are taking their son and soon-to-be daughter-in-law around the building materials market, the eldest son’s wedding is approaching, and the items are basically ready. The white Toyota Corolla they were driving, bought home just over a year ago, was shining in the daylight, just as bright as their mood.
However, Han is not in a good mood, he is in the district police station anxiously arguing with the police. He applied for the “918” parade, which called more than 300 merchants in the mall to join, and his heart was churning with enthusiasm. But now, the police in front of him advised him to withdraw his application for the march, and he was both puzzled and annoyed, so he decided to take to the streets to have a look.
Xi’an is centered on the Bell and Drum Tower area, with four main streets, east, west, north and south, cutting this square city into regular shapes. The street signs are decorated with elegant wooden carvings, and the ancient city attempts to capture the people who stop here with every detail that shows civilization.
On September 15, 2012, these four streets were crowded with people who were originally scattered around the city, as obscure as the unknown streets. Now, they were marching up these four main streets with their heads held high, never more convinced than at this moment that they were the defenders of some kind of rights in this country.
Finally, on the street outside the West Gate, in an event officially called the “anti-Japanese fishing march”, the fates of three people who had never met before met. On that day, the city, known for its long history, was filled with crazy crowds, smashed vehicles, crushed fences, cursing, moaning, wailing, tears and blood, and some hidden pains that could not fade away with time – Li Jianli’s injury, Han Dengguang’s confusion, and Jiang Xue’s sense of shame.
Those who suffered
They did not expect to walk for four years and still have not walked home.
In the crowd, Wang Juling stood on this side of the car and bitterly begged the car smasher, “We were wrong, we will never buy a Japanese car again”. Turning around, her husband had collapsed under a white van, bleeding like water. She howled and fell to her knees beside her husband, shouting “help”, but the body in front of her did not respond.
Wang Juling: The blood could not be covered. Nose, mouth all blood, is plasma, not blood. I was the first to take the hand to cover, you can feel the hole.
Onlookers have taken out their cell phones to take pictures. When Han Dao Guang pushed aside the crowd and saw Li Jianli, he figured the man was hopeless because he recognized the sticky, white stuff with blood in it as brain matter. Thinking that traffic had been paralyzed, it was better to call the emergency services than to help themselves, he stopped a cab and carried Li Jianli to the car with Wang Juling, when a police officer appeared and opened the road for them.
Behind them, the smashers have not spared Li Jianli that white Toyota Corolla, the parade is still marching forward ……
The first thing you need to do is to get the best out of your car. In the 915 day, “car” and “life The two words “car” and “life” are so tightly linked together.
In 2000, they were laid off and started a cab, one on the day shift and the other on the night shift, with little time for the couple to get together. But the income increased, the couple was laid off actually let life took a new turn. Looking back on that time, Wang Juling said “there is bitter and sweet”.
The bitter details flew by, and Wang Juling is more willing to talk about the “sweet” of life with a smile in her eyes: the economic conditions are better. There is hope and hope for life”. In Wang Juling’s opinion, what is there not to meet? Two years later, driving a cab saved savings, in the introduction of friends, the two of them and run a used car business, good reputation and rich resources, so their used car business is booming. The couple works out, travels, and has a good time.
In addition to the economic sources are always linked to the car, Li Jianli itself is a car enthusiast, the family’s family car has been replaced by three. Speaking of her husband’s love for cars, Wang Juling recalled that she had gone out with a friend in the family’s new car to do business, the new car was hit, and her husband rushed to the car first to check the damage to the car, rather than their own injuries. When she remembers this incident, she still turns her angry eyes to her husband who is smiling in the hospital bed.
In her account of the “915” day, Wang Juling regretted her choice of road, the timing of her return home, blamed her fate, and even the fence in the middle of the road that prevented the car from turning around, and of course, hated the perpetrator – Cai Yang who wielded a U-lock and hit her husband’s head hard.
At the end of the day, the woman who had worked so hard to run her family – who was afraid to drink water for fear of not being able to find a toilet when she ran a cab, and whose knowledge of Japan was limited to sushi and fuel-efficient cars – said to us with all the determination in the world. “I think in the end, it’s The Japanese who are to blame for this. “
“Patriot.”
He is not sure if the information given to him by the police is accurate, and how confusing it really is.
A young man born in Handan, Hebei Province, Han Diao Guang was running a hardware business in Xi’an at the time. He had always been eager to take part in the demonstrations.
In 1999, when Han was a high school student, he was part of the protesters who marched in the streets during the bombing of the embassy of the FRY. He still remembers the feeling of everyone making common cause, the feeling of righteous anger, and the feeling of blood rushing to the surface.
Thirteen years later, in Xi’an, Han saw a similar sight: a parade of people shouting slogans, a long motorcycle and limousine convoy. The sight of the motorcade opened the way, and the hot thing inside Han was stirred up again, and Han thought, “Three days later, he applied for the “918” parade to do the same.
He continued to pile into the crowd. The four streets in the southeast and northwest were filled with crowds of people holding signs and banners, like a giant machine that leaves only ruins everywhere it goes, and all the individuals lost their differentiated faces, shapes and movements.
However, the scene in front of him soon made Han spoiled Guang go from feeling familiar to beginning to feel weird and frightened. Instead of just marching, people began to smash cars and stores.
Han: There was a man wearing black sunglasses and a black short-sleeved T-shirt, and he gathered people together and told them how to smash, how to overturn, and what to do when they met resistance. The company said it would not let one go, as if it was planned.
The “men in black” changed from one group to another, and the procession came to the car store on the south side of the road. The car store, which sells mainly Japanese cars, has long been closed, but several young men still “worked together” to pry open the roll-up door.
Han spoiled light: a row of boys shouting slogans, clang stomp, after the lower side of the deformation, the hand can be stuffed, one two three to rip out, froze the door to pull, with the same tear paper.
On the other hand, a group of people are beating the shopkeeper. It was a young man in his early thirties, a white face, tall, and led a girl. He fell to his knees and howled, kowtowing to his compatriot and begging for mercy. Blood paste all over the face, it has long been unclear whether it was beaten, or their own knocked.
It was close to 4 p.m. when I met Mr. and Mrs. Li Jianli. Han Diao Guang captured the chaotic scene with his cell phone, knowing full well that the murderer was probably in one of the shots he was taking. Later, the video information he provided really helped the police to catch the main culprit, Cai Yang.
From the West Gate, he walked to Yuxiang Gate, Lianhu Road, North Street, North Gate Out, and then turned back from North Gate Out, back to the Bell Tower. All this way, Han spoiled the light to follow the parade, constantly discouraging the car smashers, “Let’s not bully women,” “Forget it, it’s all Chinese”. He knew he couldn’t stop it, but could only minimize the damage.
It was not until the evening when heavy rain fell that the crowd of marchers gradually dispersed. Han told us that in addition to many cars and stores being smashed that day, many stores were looted in the chaos. The march, which was held under the banner of “patriotism,” had completely deteriorated.
Four years later, Han still remembers a young boy of six or seven years old. Earlier that day, they ran into each other at the West Gate. “He asked me, uncle, uncle, why did they smash the car and why did they beat people up? Han repeated the scene to us over and over again. This once bloodthirsty “patriot” will forever be trapped by such a childish question.
After that day, Han withdrew his application for the march.
Recorder
She did not hesitate to go back to the front line of the news because of that day.
On the day of 915, Jiang Xue couldn’t hold back the news on the Internet, and the next day, she visited the scene. The city has entered a state of siege, various gates are guarded by armed police, some places are a mess, “the whole city, like a big enemy”.
The next four or five days, Jiang Xue began to interview people who experienced it. Among them, “a sad mother” Zhang Hui (a pseudonym) made a deep impression on her.
That day, the young mother drove her two children in a Japanese car to the park to pick leaves for bookmarks, the beauty of ordinary life, eventually turned into their inner eternal pain, the children had to receive psychological treatment, and now the recovery is unknown. The day Jiang Xue went to the interview, the mother still had bruises on her knees – she was on her knees begging the crowd that smashed the car, saying that there were still children in the car, but the car was still smashed.
“Patriotism can become a shelter, a cover for hooligans,” Jiang Xue said. But what kind of “hooligans” are doing these things?
A year after “915,” Cai Yang, the main culprit who caused Li Jianli’s serious injuries, was sentenced to 10 years in prison, when he was only 21. Cai Yang, a native of Nanyang, Henan province, came to Xi’an in 2009 to work as a mason, and his biggest hobby after work was online games. on Sept. 15, 2012, he left work early, spent 35 yuan to buy a large national flag, and merged into the crowd in a dignified manner.
During his three years in Xi’an, Cai Yang didn’t save any savings, but he donated blood five times and gave the blood donations to his workmates. According to the workers, Cai Yang usually did not see any radical or violent tendencies, and chose to endure when he was aggrieved. But the moment he jumped up and smashed the steel U-lock in his hand to Li Jianli, he made the full force.
“In essence, every innocent person who suffered that day was suffering for each of us,” Jiang Xue says in her article “September 15: The Pain of Xi’an,” Jiang Xue wrote in her article “September 15: The Pain of Xi’an. Asked what the biggest impact of that day was on her, Jiang Xue replied that she would not consider buying a Japanese car. However, this choice was not because of “anti-Japanese” or “patriotism”, but out of a deep fear of “fellow countrymen It was out of a deep fear of “compatriots.
Jiang Xue later told us that the first Uniqlo chain store, a Japanese clothing brand, opened in Xi’an a month after September 15. That day, the whole place was full, and people’s mad rush to buy was no less than the day of the smash-and-grab.
The sound of the bell
Xi’an on Oct. 19, 2016, four years after the 915 incident.
Li Jianli is still living in the same ward number 45 from four years ago. It was only in August this year that Wang Juling received 520,000 yuan in social assistance, and there is still nothing at all to say about how the long rehabilitation treatment will continue in the future. Li Jianli has a superhuman memory and desire to learn, but has completely lost the mobility of the right side of his body, and the farthest Wang Juling has traveled in the past four years is the suburbs of Xi’an. The day she received the relief money, her son drove the car that was smashed four years ago and drove them out for a walk.
Han has already started a new business in another city. On the day he came to see us, he had two books in the back seat of his private car, one on online finance and one on Monet’s art. He said his favorite thing to do is still to read books, and he reads all kinds of books. I don’t know in which book, there are answers to the confusion in his mind.
Jiang Xue left the newspaper she was working for two years ago, when the newspaper refused to publish her report on “915”, she posted it on her own media platform four years later. She posted it on her own media platform four years later, and the number of readers broke 100,000. Being an independent media person gave her more freedom and uncertainty, and she said she always had an inexplicable but persistent “sense of justice” that she had planted when she studied law in college. She said she always had an inexplicable but obsessive sense of “justice” that she had planted when she studied law in college.
On our last day in Xi’an, we followed Han and Jiang Xue to visit Li Jianli in the hospital. The three parties, who had largely lost touch with each other over the past four years, saw each other again. Jiang Xue meticulously inquired about the current state of their lives, and Li Jianli and his family suddenly broke down in tears.
Six or seven hundred meters south of the hospital, there is a clock tower, every whole point, the music of the “East is Red” will penetrate every corner of several kilometers, of course, including Li Jianli’s 45 ward. On the wall there is the “Rehabilitation Exercise Plan for Unconscious/Bedridden Patients”, and on the windowsill are three small green plants, which Wang Juling says are secretly raised because the hospital does not allow it. Wang Juling said that this is secretly kept, because the hospital does not allow it.
After bidding farewell to Li Jianli, we headed to the Bell Tower. Xi’an – still the second most popular Chinese city among foreigners and the “symbol of ancient Chinese civilization” in the eyes of the Japanese. ” in the eyes of the Japanese. We stood on its streets, looking up at the clock pointing to the full hour, waiting in silence for the camera and memory to take it all in.
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