Chapter 11

十一

It was hard to find anything in English. But using translation software, I found much more on Chinese websites and I stumbled across a brief article about a young woman, only 24, and stunningly beautiful, who was executed, here, by firing squad.

The gorgeous youth had been convicted of setting fire to her workplace, killing several people inside.

The article had a picture of the field where she’d been shot. Recognizing the landscape, I looked up the area on Baidu maps, and sure enough, the prison, the jailhouse, the execution grounds, were indeed right here, where the campus now sits.

And sifting through the search results on Baidu, I located a few old pictures of the prison, too.

The jailhouse was right where I was sitting, where the teachers’ living quarters were now located. This was the spot of the prison.

It hit me like a sledgehammer to the head, seeing it on the map, seeing its picture, and recognizing the hills in the distance that I could see on a rare day that wasn’t too smoggy.

I wanted to learn more of the prisoners here, at this prison, and through the further reaches of my deep dive, I’d found that this had been a prison for the worst of offenders, many of whom were sentenced to die. I found case stories, articles about several violent offenders here who’d murdered their families or coworkers in fits of rage, and one infamous soldier who’d stolen a gun and gone on a shooting spree in a village nearby, as well as several arsonists, most of whom had attacked and set alight public buses and packed restaurants.

All of the offenders had landed here. Ended their days on this soil.

There were intellectuals, political prisoners too, hundreds of them during the Cultural Revolution, those marked as “revisionists.” I read a story that said that so many intellectuals were executed that eventually soldiers started to throw the “state enemies” off the roof of the jailhouse so the army could ration ammunition...

I’d been online for hours, digging farther and farther down into a death penalty rabbit hole.

It was getting late, and although I’d taken a handful of Xanax, the gentle tyrant of sleep still hadn’t opened his arms. So, I stayed awake, sat by the window, which was wet with breath, and I researched more about executions in China.

I found that most executions in communist-era China, still to this day, are carried out by firing squad. Soldiers from the army serving as executioners. The condemned marched out to the execution ground.

The condemned are made to kneel and receive a bullet to the back of the head by a member of the People’s Armed Police, a paramilitary organization in China that’s tasked with internal security, riot control, amongst other duties.

Before the execution, the condemned has a finger pricked with a blade, presses a fingerprint in blood on the execution orders.

Family members, victims aren’t allowed to attend the executions. Nowadays the public isn’t allowed to watch, either, though every so often pictures or video would leak out from a concealed smartphone or from a camera nearby.

On Youku, China’s alternative to YouTube, I watched a couple pre-execution vids, showing gaggles of soldiers marching the condemned out to wherever they’d administer the ultimate punishment (usually a field or ravine).

One of the condemned I saw was a drug dealer from Sichuan whose face looked made of stone as he was led out of a police van, his arms trussed behind his back...

I felt a chill misting up my spine. Peering around, it was like I was living in a cemetery, like there were venomous ghosts around me. I guess anywhere you are in China, a land with 5000 years of history, anywhere you are, like hundreds, thousands of years ago, there was someone there. Anywhere you are could have been a graveyard at one point, or the site of horrific murder, war, floods, fires, famines, or accidents.

But to so knowingly be living in this cemetery, this place pregnant in agony and death, to know...

That there were ghosts everywhere. That I was a guest in their home.

And their plans, their designs, the ghosts’ agenda, particularly the venomous ghosts, the angry ghosts, concerned me most.

I decided to take another sleeping pill and listened to Sam Harris’s meditation app. I find his voice soothing. It calms me. I closed my eyes, breathed deeply, and ignored the ghosts. I focused on Sam’s slow cadence. His tone. Soon after he began speaking, I was finally able to pass out.