Beijing Coma Blog 2

As Dai Wei still lies on a bed in his coma he progresses more through his memories when he was little. he is now a teenager and has meet Lulu a girl he likes. One time when they were walking home from school then went in a construction pipe and talked and they made out. after that they started to go out. he goes to her house at night and talks to her. one day he left a note under her flower pot because he wanted to tell her where to meet. the police found the note and brought him in. They were very brutal and kicked him in the balls and slapped him across the face. I thought this was a little extreme because he was only about 15 or 14 years old. after he a while he tells them about Lulu and how they were together and all the other things he had done that might have been considered illegal by the Communist Gov. This was also pretty extreme and I thought that half the stuff he wrote down were things I had done in the past and any other kid had done that were typically teenagers getting into trouble, which would have been ok in the U.S but nothing that would get you in trouble with the police. It made me feel how lucky I was to be able to grow up in a nice community and not one that the gov. controlled everything and could punish me for have early relationships as a teenager and other small things like that.

After Dai Wei's 16th birthday he dropped out of school and went to the city of Guangzhou, he wanted to make some money so he peddled porno magazines for a while. When he had enough money he would come back to Beijing with a bunch of foreign goods and sell them high priced on the black market. i think it was a good move for Dai Wei to drop out of school and go make some money for himself and his family. this shows that he cares about his family more then himself and was will to drop out of school a while for them. After a while of doing that he completed the entire year 12 of science in 6 months and since students who have relatives abroad got preferential treatment he got in to Southern University in Guangzhou city and planned to study for a degree in biology. when they visit the University his mother tells him to study hard and that there is no point in going to collage unless he gets a graduation certificate at the end. also before he leaves he tells his mom that since he is seventeen he should be able to read the journal his dad left for him. his mother didn't want him to read it and made him promise that he doesn't let anyone else see it. she tells him that the journal hold many of his father's beliefs and political views. I think that when he reads his fathers journal he will agree with all of his fathers opinions about the gov. and want to protest and change it into a democracy. that will led to him protesting at Tiananmen Square.

Beijing Coma

In the book Beijing Coma by Ma Jian, Dai Wei who is the main character in the book is in a coma because when he was at a united protest which became a huge gathering of people and is getting out of control. Dai Wei is one of those students who is at Tiananmen Square he argues with everything the Gov. does. On June 4th a soldier shoots a bullet into his his sending him into a deep coma. As Dai Wei lies in his bed trapped in his own thoughts you go through his past with him as he recalls how he lived his past. At first you see him remembering what happen to him as a child. he lived in a poor family and that the Gov. controled everything you did. his dad was a rightist( pro-democracy) person who tries to turn people views on the Gov. and help infuse his ideas and the the community to get people to notice that there is a better way to govern a country. As when know that Dai Wei is shot protesting when now see where he gets his ideas and beliefs from that his father help mold his political beliefs with how he talked of a America and how great it was over there. But his Mother was not always as supportive with these political beliefs. she wanted their dad to stop putting these idea into her children's heads because she is afraid of having their family separated again. their father was taken to a camp because of his beliefs for a long time, as you can see that the mother is worried you want Dai Wei to take his fathers political ideas to heart and help protest for democracy. this is a interesting book as of how you are viewing the story from. Ma Jian does a very good job of capturing the ways the the communist Chinese Gov. And how they controlled everything in your life and made it very hard to live. I look forward to reading this book and going through it by blogging about it.