Life on the Line

Narrated by Wang Baixing

Compiled by the editorial team of Voice Translated by Zhang Lei

Life on the Line

Narrated by Wang Baixing

Compiled by the editorial team of Voice Translated by Zhang Lei

At 9:30 a.m., November 20, 2005, a self-claimed postman dropped a parcel addressed to a prosecutor surnamed Yang in Wei County,Hebei Province. Yang took a look and declared, “I don’t know anyone from this address.”

His colleague joked, “Yang, is it a bomb?”

Yang called the police. The parcel was taken to the People’s Hospital of Wei County and X-rayed. It turned out it was indeed a bomb. Several bomb technicians were invited to dispose of the bomb, but none succeeded. Then they found me.

As I studied the two X-ray plates, I grew more and more disconcerted. Could I do it?

We took the bomb to Handan City where I opened the shell of the bomb to discover a thick and long column. Then I was stuck there from 10 a.m. until 6 p.m. It was too complicated.

A fellow from Hebei Province said, “Mr. Wang, let’s just set it off.”

“Ok,” I agreed.

But at that moment, I saw Yang’s face. He looked pale. I immediately took my words back,“If we set it off, we won’t be able to find out who did it. Someone has sent a bomb to Yang. He’ll be living in fear the rest of his life.”

“Mr. Wang,” my fellow worker said. “If you want to try to defuse it, we won’t stop you. But what if it explodes? How shall we explain that to the Ministry of Public Security, to your supervisor in Henan Province, and to your family?”

I said, “You won’t have to.”

That night I designed my disposal plan. At first, I found a big seamless steel pipe and cut a rectangular opening to place the bomb inside the pipe. On top of the pipe, I laid sandbags. If an explosion happened, the shock would be let out through the ends of the steel pipe and what would leak out of the opening probably could only blow off one of my hands instead of killing me.

We did a full preparation. It took us two hours to make the opening. Holding the bomb, I carefully poured the explosives out. There were 1kg of explosives and 0.5kg of steel balls from bicycles. Just imagine the power and damage this 1kg of explosives and so many steel balls could have caused if it exploded!