Prologue
Shenzhen, China
February 21st, 1976
February 21st, 1976
The truck rumbled on into the darkness with its headlights off so as not to alert a soul; its path was guided only by a small gas-powered lantern, which the man in the passenger seat hung out the window. Under the rumble of the engine, one could hear whispers in the night, and the soft but seemingly infinite footsteps echoing in the solitude of the Chinese countryside.
The old man leaned back slightly in his seat in the rear of the truck, it was cold. An unexpected climate for the south. He pulled his coat tighter around his frail body. He was only a little over 60, yet his body was weak and frail, underneath his undershirt his ribs were visible on his chest, and his head had long since been covered in gray. His eyes were hollow, and his breathing was labored, he clutched to his chest a knapsack, almost bursting at the seams with its contents. He resisted the urge to open and check that everything was still there. It didn’t really matter either way, everything that he’d been leaving behind had long since been reduced to ashes. Family, friends, comrades. In the almost silence under the stars, it hit the man how much they’d lost–no, how much had been taken from them–but there wasn’t anything they could do about that now. Now was not the time to look back, now was the time to run. And here he was having thought he'd learned everything a man could have possibly needed to enrich his wisdom with. Despite everything he almost smiled.
“Not very long now,” Whispered the young man leaning out from the driver seat, “We’ve passed most of the populated parts now. We’re almost there, uncle.”
The old man sat up again and lifted his head to look around. Granted his eyes weren’t what they used to be. But even with his blurry vision and the pitch black around him, even an older man could make out the forms moving behind the truck like a dark wave on the raging seas. Stumbling, leaned forward, their bodies wrapped in blankets and coats, and their backs bent with the weight of their homes carried on their backs. Mothers held their children close at their sides, reassuring them quietly, some rode on horseback, hunched almost entirely over so as not to give themselves away. Some of the more sickly, injured, elderly, or pregnant men and women rode on top while another led the horse forward. They were almost there. They were so close to the edge.
All of them knew leaving meant they’d never be coming back. Most of them didn’t care, there wasn’t a future for them here anymore. They didn’t know if there was one waiting beyond the border, though, either, but the chances couldn’t have been much worse than staying. They had to try. So the people moved on, shuffling together behind the truck, a single dim light and the bodies swaying almost in synchronization around them, the only affirmation that they were still going. That they weren’t dead yet. Then they stopped. The engine that once added a quiet hum to the chorus of crickets and footfalls went silent. The door to the truck creaked open and the young man and his lantern-bearer stepped out. He walked forward a few meters like he was unsure if what was in front of him was actually there, he reached out and grabbed the wire fence with one hand, before turning back to the other man in the truck.
“Give me the cutters.” The man passed him what was essentially a set of pliers, and the young man knelt down and began cutting at the fence. The people hugged closer to each other as he snipped away at the fence, a sense of hope yet also unnerving discomfort traveled through them like an electrical current. Finally, after what felt like ages, the man stood and peeled back the section of the fence he’d managed to cut open. It was small, but it was enough for people to fit through.
“Everyone start getting in line. Children and mothers first. Put that light out Jun.” The old man watched as the light was snuffed out, and as the people began moving into formation, single-file, sometimes in pairs, they slipped through the wired fence and towards their freedom. The end was in sight. Someone patted the old man on the shoulder, he leaned over to see a woman kindly smiling at him.
“Uncle, we’re here, it’s time to get out now.”
“Yes…Yes, let's go.” The elderly man struggled for a moment to stand before moving towards the back of the truck, most of the other elderly already hopping out ahead of him. The woman held his hand as he slid slowly and carefully off the truck when suddenly he heard a hushed whisper from in front of the truck.
“Jun! Turn the bloody engine off!”
“We did turn the engine off, that isn’t the truck.” All at once the old man was on alert, and he could hear how the night had suddenly come to life again, the hum was back, but it was not coming from the truck. It was coming from somewhere nearby, and it was growing louder by the second. The relative quiet lasted for only a moment before panic set in,
“Everyone across the border! Go, go, go, now!” the young man said frantically,
The young woman quickly took hold of the old man by both of his shoulders and began leading him quickly to the wire fence. The Old Man's breathing was heavy and fast now, of course, it was too good to be true. Like they’d just let them slip away.
“Come on Uncle we need to run faster,” a few things happened in that split second, there was the sound of a sharp crack in the distance somewhere west of where the Old Man was standing, and in the next second the man with the lantern fell backward, collapsing with a bullet hole in his chest, the lantern fell from his hand, and shattered on the earth. Then, all hell broke loose. Screams filled the air as people scrambled forward for their only exit, some tried to flee backward, and a young man on his horse attempted to turn around and gallop away but was shot in the ribs and fell sideways off his steed. Gunshots joined the cacophony quickly and the Old Man became very aware of the men that were now closing in on all sides from over the hills. The world blurred as the Old Man slid underneath the wire fence, ignoring the dull pain in his back as he scrambled. When suddenly the bag he’d been holding was yanked from his grasp, he turned fast and saw it had caught on the protruding wire fence. The young woman quickly snatched up the cargo and shoved it into his hands,
“Uncle, we need to run-” Blood sprayed into the Old Man's face as another bullet found its mark in the back of her head, and she collapsed forward. Fear ran through his bones, and the Old Man scampered away from the corpse, breaking into a limping run, he joined the crowds of people making a mad dash for the river line. Waiting, there was an arrangement of boats, each of them now filling with people who were shouting, jostling, and climbing on top of each other, trying to get away. The muscles in his legs screamed their own obscenities at him as he ran faster, as fast as his legs could carry him.
“Uncle! Come on!”
“Climb aboard!”
Hands grabbed at his shirt and underneath his arms lifting him up into the Boat.
“Push off! Get us the hell away from here!”
The Old Man huddled in the corner of the boat, listening to the terrified cries of the people around them from boys as young as eight to women as old as eighty, accompanied by the not-so-distant sound of gunfire. Frantically, they began dipping their hands into the water and trying to move themselves forward, if only slightly speedier, only achieving to splash those behind them as sheer terror pulsated in their veins. Then suddenly, a new volley of gunshots came from the treeline, shredding into the boats filled with people, making sharp cracking sounds as they hit wood, a sickening squish, and fleshy sound as they met human bodies, and a splash as they caused miniature explosions in the river water surrounding. People screamed, and some jumped ship, attempting to swim to the other side, not realizing they’d already been hit, only to drown helplessly as the dark water around them became darker. The Old Man held his bag tightly to his chest, now himself screaming in a raspy and broken voice, crying out for anyone to save him. Hell itself came up and raged around the man, wrapping its tendril around him. Dragging him down. He felt the wooden shrapnel embed itself in the side of his face as splinters sprayed like seawater. He felt the boat rock as people tried to find cover in the cramped boat and were struck in the head, collapsing upon each other like cattle.
Then suddenly, people were scrambling forwards, clambering over the Old Man, and falling out of the sides of the boat, screaming like their skin was on fire. Opening his eyes ever so slightly he saw to his surprise that they had made it to the other side of the river, people were now dashing over the hillside and running wildly toward freedom. Dragging their wounded relatives along with them, a few hunkered out of the rifle fire and waved wildly for him to come join them. They shouted and encouraged him, he was almost out, he could make it.
The Old Man tried to stand, and suddenly, he became aware of the most piercing pain in his rib cage. His blood ran ice cold as he looked down, and to his horror, there was a massive blood stain growing on his side where a bullet had pierced him. The man coughed weakly and tasted iron on his lips, the sounds of the world were drowned out around him, as his knapsack slipped from his grasp onto the floor of the boat. As the world began to cave in around him, and everything began to melt away, the last thing the man saw was the dawn. Rising over the distant mountains of Hong Kong.
~
The 1976 Massacre at the Hong Kong-Shenzhen border would not be covered by China's state news agencies of the time; massacres generally did count as “bad PR”, something the new government had no shortage of. The British Hong Kong newspapers, on the other hand, widely published the story of Hong Kong's first major flood of refugees from the mainland in what felt like decades. The corpses of the murdered refugees would be fished out from the Sham Chun River, graves dug, belongings retrieved, and small monuments to honor the dead erected by locals close to the site of the massacre. For the better half of that decade little other than news like the border massacre would come out of Beijing, stories of government purges, revolutionary fervor, and widespread persecution. Followed by the occasional arrival of new refugees that made the perilous dash for the border. The reasons were generally the same, fear of death or persecution, but on that fateful day in 1977, the reason those refugees crossed over from China into Hong Kong was because on February 19th, 1977, the Vice-Chairman of China's Central Committee, Deng Xiaoping, was publicly executed as a revisionist traitor, and the new Chairwoman of the Chinese Communist Party, Jiang Qing declared the beginning of the Second Cultural Revolution.
