Beijing Coma #7

I have decided that Beijing Coma is worthy of as many awards that it can get. When I first went into this book, I believed it would be just another ordianry tale of a person not living in my country, who was under a tyrranical government, and would somehow help in overthrowing the government. Although I was sort of right with that prediction, I was mostly wrong near the end. I find it very incredible how the story was told, with the story of Dai Wei's life told all the way from his early childhood and all his experiences, up to the fatefull day he was shot and entered his coma.

I believe the most emotionally stirring section of the book comes at the end where Wei is describing the situation he is in. He is in the middle of a protest, and every street he tries to turn down, he is greeted by a "green wall of soldiers". In a very strange moment, he sees his old flame A-Mei standing in the middle of the street. He ran to greet her, but she was shot in front of him. He says, "Did the bullet hit her? As the question came to my mind, my head exploded. My skeleton was shaken by a bolt of pain. I'd been struck too. I was going to die. Hot, sticky blood poured down my face. My hand reached out to touch my head, but I couldn't find it..." (584). I find it very interesting how the author decided to portray his travel into a coma as him knowing everything that was happening, yet he was still incapacitated.

Overall, I highly recommend this book to anyone who is in need of a nice long interesting book filled with many facts about a little known culture.

Beijing Coma #6

While continuing to read the book Beijing Coma by Ma Jian, I have began to connect the story with many events in the past. First of all, the Chinese government in this novel is acting under a communist policy, which I have recently learned more about in my European History class. Jian writes about how the government collectivizes most of the production from the various industries in the cities, which is simmilar to the different Five Year Plans of Stalin's Soviet Union. Stalin also collectivized the Soviet Union's production, in order to force more urbanization upon the country.

It is also very interesting to see the numerous times and ways that protest is involved with this story. It seems that every other event has to do something with protesting or getting ready to protest, and this has been going on since the beginning of the story, and I assume it won't stop, and Dai Wei will probably die protesting. I think a quote that shows the politically radical student's ideology the best is when a student named Lin Lu says, "We're not cowards" (315). This shows the pride the students show for their efforts. Also, the students are heavily involved in many life-threatening causes such as hunger strikes, and they even threaten to stop drinking fluids, and even light themselves on fire.

Beijing Coma #5

As I continue to read the book Beijing Coma, I start to realize the similarities between it's story, and the book Night by Elie Wiesel. During the many political revolutions that eventually lead the rise of Mao as the leader of China, there were atrocities similar to those that happened during the holocaust. Many times, Dai Wei talks about the peasent revolts that were brutally squashed by tyrraneous government, which reminds me of how the Nazis were in Germany.

When Dai Wei and a group of his school mates agree to protest at Tiananmen Square in Beijing, they are met with many police as a resistance. They proceed with the protest, and they were attacked, and shut down. When they are in the police station, Dai Wei asks an officer if he believes they will go to prison, and he responds, "I don't know. But they won't let those civilians off. They're the chickens, you are the monkeys. The authorities will kill the chickens to frighten the monkeys" (100). This is a very powerful line because it shows how the police was more harsh towards civilians, then people who go to university, and are higher up in the social status

Beijing Coma #4

As the story goes on, we meet A-Mei, Dai Wei's new girlfriend. She is attending college at the same place as Dai Wei, and later they move in together. During a holiday, Dai Wei travels to Guanxi, while A-Mei goes home to Hong Kong. Dai Wei traveled to Guanxi, because his father wished him to meet some of the people he knew at the labour camps their, and to see if they were still around.

He talks to a lady who worked at all the camps, and who knows Dai's father, but she tells him everyone is dead. When Dai asks who the murderers were, she responds, "Who were the murderers? You could argue the only murderer was Chairman Mao" (67). I think this really shows the contrast from the beginning of the book, where people were afraid to even copy books, to the current time frame where people freely oppose the government.

Dai Wei returns back to college once the holiday is over, but A-Mei does not come back. A week after she was supposed to return, he gets a call, in which A-Mei says that her parents will not allow her to be with him, as he is a political criminal, and they eventually break up. I think it's interesting that the people from Hong Kong seem to have different stadards than everyone else in the country of China.

Beijing Coma #2

As the book continues, so does Dai Wei's story of his life. He talks about how oppresive the government was, and even recollects on how he was arrested one time. He says that he was arrested for copying a book, which apparantly was illegal at the time, for his girlfriend, which was also illegal to have. The officers take him to the station to interrogate him, and as they are doing so, they start to beat him. They force him to talk about everyone who was involved, and they also force him to write out every illegal thing he had done in his life, which he does out of fear. I find it strange that he has such a harsh punishment, for such a petty crime.

The story then jumps to when Dai Wei is off to college in Gangzhou, and his father has since been deceased. The father's dying wish was for Dai Wei to read his diaries, so he does, and they are filled with democratic and revolutionary thoughts. At school, Dai Wei is studying to become a doctor. One day, the body of an executed criminal is brought in, and the class disects it. The teacher asks him a question about what a certain part of the brain is, and he responds, "The archicortex is basically the hippocampus, down here... It's the older, more primitive part of the brain and is connected with memories and emotions.. If this part of the brain is damaged, the patient falls into a vegetative state" (67). I find it very ironic that he is talking about the part of the brain thathe presumably was injured in, leaving him recollecting his memories from the vegetative state he is know in. I believe this is a very pivital line to the story because it links it all together.

Beijing Coma #1

The book Beijing Coma by Ma Jian is one of very important events surrounding the ways government has affected the country of China over the years. It follows the story of Dai Wei, a pro-democracy protestor who was shot in the head at the riots at Tiananmen Square in 1989, and is in a coma. He is telling his story starting from his childhood, and I presume he will continue all the way up to the current day events. One thing that confuses me is how he is able to tell stories while he is in a coma, and how he can sometimes hear what people are saying around him. I comend Ma Jian for this intriguing way to tell a very important story. Dai Wei starts his life story when he was just a young boy, and his father had just come back from a work camp to try convert his liberal political views into a more socialist mindset. The day he returns, the father feels like he's been at home for years. After talking to his sons, the mother tells him, "Don't corrupt your sons with your liberal thoughts, Dai Changjie. All the activists involved in that Democracy Wall Movement last year are now in jail" (7). I believe this really epitomizes the fear the people in China had in that period in history, and also shows how the mother does not want her sons to get into trouble through their differing politics.

As the book continues, the family starts talking more about their plans for the future. The father tells them about how he had almost moved to America before the Communists had taken over China, and how he wanted to move their as soon as possible. Although the mother agrees with the father that it would be in their best interest to move to America, she tells him, "Don't praise foreign countries in front of the children. Now that you're back, you'll have to read the papers every day and make sure you keep up with the changing political climate. We can't let our family be torn apart again" (9). This really shows how conservative the mother wants the family to be, and how she is still living in fear that the 'Party' will take one of the family members away. With the knowledge that Dai Wei becomes pro-democratic later in his life, one can really see where he gets all of his controversial views, which is from his father. It seems that everyone in their village calls Dai Wei's father a bourgeois rightist, as if he's a villain, when all he wants is the freedom that many people in the world take for granted.

Audacity of Hope post #3

As I read later into the book, it becomes more and more interesting to me, particularly the chapter on Faith in the United States. Obama starts off by talking about how religious the country is, but also how it's popularity is on the decline. He says, "Respectable folks might still attend church every Sunday; Bible-thumpers and faith healers might still work the Southern revival circuit; the fear of "godless communism" might help feed McCarthyism and the Red Scare. But for the most part, traditional religious practice -- and certainly religious fundamentalism-- was considered incompatable with modernity..." (199). This shows how he believes that religion must change at the same rate as everything else does, so it can sustain it's importance in many people's lives.

While still talking on the topic of religion, he says "The single biggest gap in party affiliation among white Americans is not between men and women, or between those who reside in so-called red states and those who reside in blue states, but between those who attend church regularly and those who don't"(201). This shows how he believes that religion in society is being a sort of wall between people's ideas, and what I find usually is that the religious side is truthfully the most stubborn side. The fact that Obama, a now infamous politician, has the guts to tell it like it is without fear of losing any votes or anything shows that he believes the truth should always be open to the public.