Getting to know his father Zheng Nanrong through state surveillance files Zheng Zhumei: Happy and sad at the same time

The Ministry of Education today launched the 10th lesson "Prisoners Outside Prison" of "Have You Made Up the Lessons?" Zheng Nanrong's daughter Zheng Zhumei said that she was both happy and sad to know her father through the state surveillance files. (Photo by reporter Lin Xiaoyun)

"I actually got to know my father again in the state surveillance files." Zheng Nanrong, a pioneer of the democratic movement, set herself on fire and was martyred on April 7, 1989. At that time, her daughter Zheng Zhumei was only 9 years old. Years later, she applied for access to state surveillance files and gradually pieced together her father's appearance from the color of his eyes, family interactions, to the floor plan of Free Times magazine. The Ministry of Education today (29th) launched the 10th lesson "Prisoners Outside Prison" of "Have You Made Up Lessons?", which uses the life story of Zheng Nanrong Foundation Chairman Zheng Zhumei to reveal how white terror harms the families of victims.

Zheng Zhumei recalled that when she was a child, she often went to the Free Times magazine to find her father, and the two walked together along the red brick road and under the banyan tree. On the morning of April 7, 1989, her father told her to leave quickly. Later, she escaped from the rear window sill and was taken to the basement of the police station until her uncle informed her of her father's death in the afternoon. At the time, she didn't understand what "leaving" meant. It took a few months for her to gradually understand that her father would never come back.

Zheng Zhumei said that after her father passed away, there were many public commemorative activities in society, but at home, she and her mother Ye Julan found it difficult to talk about her father. It was not until they went to college that mother and daughter began to practice how to talk about him again and again.

In 2021, she read her father's diary from 1982. Zheng Nanrong wrote: "Facing my own daughter, I am very sad and angry." And asked her own generation of young fathers, do they not have the ability to build a better system for the next generation? Zheng Zhumei said that it was the first time she saw her father clearly mentioning his children and what he wanted to do for the next generation, and she was very emotional at the moment.

Starting around 2019 or 2020, she began to apply for national surveillance files, and found that the intelligence management system not only recorded the details of her father's life, but also monitored her mother Ye Julan. She described getting to know her father through the eyes of the country, like a distorted mirror, "I saw the father I didn't know. To a certain extent, of course I felt happy, but to a certain extent I also felt very sad."

Zheng Zhumei believes that her father is not a passive victim, but an actor with independent consciousness; but looking at the larger historical context, he is indeed a victim of state violence. She emphasized that looking back at history is not for hatred, but to understand the situation and choices at that time. "How we look at the past now is actually deciding what kind of future we want."

The Ministry of Education said that the harm of white terror not only occurs in prisons, but also extends to families. Family members have been subjected to surveillance, fear and social stigma for a long time, becoming another kind of "prisoners outside prison." The course hopes to allow society to see the cross-generational trauma caused by political violence and rethink the meaning of freedom, human rights and transformational justice.