© 2011

Translation copyright © 2011 by Michael S. Duke

Preface copyright © 2011 by Julia Lovell

Zhongguancun, China’s Silicon Valley in northwest Beijing, is a fine place to visit these days. In the thirty-odd years since China abandoned Maoism for market reforms, glass- and marble-fronted malls and five-star hotels, brimful of balloons, promotions, and the promise of the good life, have sprung up all over the capital; and Zhongguancun has its fair share of such high-rent establishments. The district’s grand shopping plaza sprawls across two hundred thousand square meters packed with boutiques, supermarkets, cinemas, eateries, and eager consumers. The area happens also to be the center of China’s elite institutions of higher education, home to China’s most privileged scholars and students. With its glittering temples to self-gratification and to state-approved academic endeavor, Zhongguancun is one of the flagships of the contemporary Chinese dream.

On December 23, 2010, at one of Zhongguancun’s police stations, a less harmonious episode was taking place. That evening, a Beijing law professor called Teng Biao decided to pay a visit to the mother of a friend. The friend, it so happened, was a human rights lawyer called Fan Yafeng, currently being held under house arrest by the authorities. Since Fan’s mother was at home on her own, Teng thought it would be courteous to look in on her. As soon as he entered the apartment, however, a plainclothes police officer stormed in and loudly demanded his ID, pushing him for good measure. Not long after, a gang of Public Security reinforcements arrived and dragged Teng back down the stairs (confiscating his glasses in the process, leaving him extremely shortsighted) and into a police van, and drove him to a nearby police station.