October is the worst time of year in Beijing. The rapidly cooling weather combines with the dampest air we ever experience to produce day after day of drab gray overcast and clinging mist. As with the cold in London, I think it's the dampness that drills so deep into your bones and your soul. In a month or so, the weather will be 10 or 20 degrees colder, but the extremely dry air we have here through most of the winter - while it scours the skin - makes those kind of sub-zero temperatures seem much more tolerable, especially when the skies are clear and the sun shines. We've suffered five days of continual twilight gloom this week; and the damp cold is sucking on my bone marrow.
But there has been one bright spot in this week of thoroughly depressing weather. Yesterday I went out with Karen Patterson, the wife of the unjustly jailed Chinese artist/activist Wu Yuren, and she was in more buoyant spirits than I've seen her for a long time. She'd just come back from her weekly trip to the prison (she's not allowed any direct contact with her husband, but she visits once a week to leave money and fresh underwear for him), where she'd had a fortuitous encounter with one of Wu's cellmates who had been released just a few minutes earlier. He was able to give her the most detailed - and encouraging - account of her husband she's had in the nearly five months since his detention. It appears that he's keeping in good spirits and is much admired and respected by most of his cellmates - and, indeed, is finding a ready audience inside for his 'Human Rights: 101' pep talks.
Conditions in Chinese prisons can be quite appalling, with very limited facilities and an almost unimaginable degree of overcrowding (20 or more people sharing a cell intended for half that many; and all sleeping together on a single, hard sleeping platform). It's tremendously reassuring to hear that Wu's humour and charisma are undiminished by this ordeal. It's uplifting to know that, despite all the darkness around him, he's still keeping his inner light alive - and continuing to bring light into the lives of others.
[There's still no word on a trial date, but we're expecting that it could happen very soon - so, please participate in Amnesty USA's letter-writing campaign on Wu Yuren's behalf as soon as possible.]
3 comments:
Thats good to hear!
Yes, a heartening little snapshot of his life inside the prison. Karen was chuffed to bits.
And it was an astonishing piece of good luck that she got to hear this. The guy had got out literally five minutes before and had gone the the 'banking' office to reclaim the unused portion of the money his relatives had deposited for him to spend inside. He spotted Karen and figured that Wu's wife was likely to be the only foreigner visiting the place, so came over to talk to her.
Apparently, Wu is particularly juiced at the moment by the news about Liu Xiaobo.
They are allowed to read in prison, and the papers have been carrying some coverage of the Nobel Prize award (albeit very briefly and obliquely; I gather most of it is focused on vilifying Norway as "an enemy of China"). Wu is a great admirer of LXB, and signed up to Charter '08 himself.
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