by Ha Jin
Both the teachers said good-bye to us when the train started. It pulled out smoothly as if wafted away by dozens of hands waving along the platform.
Soon after we settled down in our seats, Mantao and I were elected the leaders of the group, because we two were the only graduate students among them. The undergraduates assumed that Mantao and I, four or five years older than themselves, were more knowledgeable about political struggles. I was reluctant to accept any leadership, but after they repeatedly begged me, I yielded. I felt uncomfortable about my new role. Whenever one of them called me Vice Chief Wan, a sour taste would come to my mouth.
The train chugged along a muddy lake in the north, whose surface was mottled with green and dark patches of reeds. A flock of domestic geese, like white dots, were floating almost motionlessly in the distant water, brightened by the rising sun. After we passed the lake, the landscape suddenly seemed narrowed. The fog was thinning away, though the windowpanes of the train still sweated, blurring the endless peanut and wheat fields divided by rows of stunted mulberry trees. A baby burst out crying at the front end of the car; however hard its mother tried to calm it down, it wouldn’t stop. The baby’s hollering, mixed with the soft Taiwanese music and the pungent tobacco smell, made my head swim a little. The floor was littered with pumpkinseed shells, candy wrappers, popsicle cartons, chicken bones. Under our feet the wheels were grinding rhythmically but with such a clatter that when talking, we had to strain our voices. Since conversation was hard, we remained silent most of the time except that once in a while we’d curse the government together. Many of the undergraduates had somber faces as though they had grown older all at once.
A spindly attendant in a blue, visored cap appeared, carrying a large kettle, and seat by seat he poured boiled water for the passengers. With a few exceptions, people all produced their mugs. Many of the undergraduates brewed black tea, which a boy had brought along. For breakfast, some of them broke instant noodles into their mugs to be soaked with hot water. The attendant knew we were going to Beijing to join the demonstrations, so he was very patient with us. Unlike them, I was too sleepy to bother about tea and food. It was getting hot, though overhead a miniature fan in a wire cage revolved without stopping. The soot-grimed window near me got stuck and couldn’t be lifted up to let in fresh air. I was bored by the news blared out by the loudspeaker. Eyes shut, I leaned against the window frame, my head pillowed on my forearm. Soon I fell asleep.
Approaching the capital in the evening, we began to make plans for our next step. We decided to raise our flag, which had SHANNING UNIVERSITY printed on it, and march to a bus stop. From there, we would get on a bus going to Tiananmen Square. We were not sure what bus route we should take; some said Number 20, some said Number 14, and some said Number 1. But this shouldn’t be a problem; we could always ask.
The train was two hours late, and we didn’t get off until eight in the evening. Once out of the station, we were told that there was no bus service for the time being, because all vehicles had gone to barricade the streets to stop the army from entering the city. Even the subway was closed—rumor had it that the military was using the trains to transport troops downtown through the underground tunnels. A skinny young woman in a railroad uniform gave us each a handbill that contained mimeoed slogans, such as Our motherland is in danger! This is our last struggle! Let us save the republic! Stop the army from entering the capital! End martial law! Down with the corrupt government! I had a foreboding something hideous was unfolding in the distance. It was whispered that the army was going to clear Tiananmen Square tonight.
Bewildered, fatigued, and frightened, the undergraduates gathered around Mantao and me, expecting us to come up with a solution. Neither he nor I had ever been to Beijing before, so we were at a loss too. We didn’t even know whether we should still head for Tiananmen Square as we had planned. Mantao kept grinning and assured the others that we’d find a way, but I could tell he was also nervous. He went away to make some phone calls, but fifteen minutes later he returned, rather downcast, saying he couldn’t get hold of anyone at the headquarters of the Beijing Autonomous Student Union. His cheeks puffed up and the corners of his mouth fell.
A dignified-looking old man told us that in some areas the army had begun fighting its way into the city. “Students,” he said, shaking his pockmarked face, “there’s no hope for this country anymore. You’d better go home now. Don’t waste your lives here. Those old bastards at the top won’t bat an eye to have you erased. Go back, please!” He couldn’t help his tears while speaking. Indeed, we heard quite a few gunshots coming from the west, where patches of pinkish light shimmered in the sky. After the man left, the woman who distributed the handbills told us that his son had been bludgeoned half dead by some policemen the night before.
What should we do? Sitting in a ring on the ground before the train station, we discussed our situation briefly and decided to set out on foot for Tiananmen Square. We would go in two groups, because we were not sure if all of us could get there and afraid that the police might stop us. Although we were unfamiliar with the city, it wouldn’t be difficult to find our way to the square. We could ask for directions, and a lot of other people seemed to be going there too.
But before setting off, we noticed a white minivan parked at a bus stop. On its roof was a taxi sign, so we talked to the driver, a man in his early thirties who had a bell-cheeked face and a large wart between his left brow and eye. He would charge twenty yuan for a trip downtown, but hearing we wanted to go to Tiananmen Square, he smiled and said, “I can give you a ride free, but I’m not sure if I can get you there. Most streets are blocked.”
“Please take us as far as you can,” I begged. “None of us has ever been here before.”
“All right, get in my car.”
We thanked him profusely; several girls even called him Uncle. My group, composed of sixteen people, began climbing into the van, which couldn’t hold more than fourteen passengers.
“All right, no more,” cried the man. “This is an old car. I’ll have a flat tire if it’s overloaded.”
So we left two boys with Mantao’s group and headed townward. The streets were messy, here and there crowded with pedestrians and bicyclers. Some areas, apparently occupied by people during the day, were strewn with fruit cores, cigarette cases, leaflets, crates, glass bottles. Across a broad street four double-length buses stood parallel to one another, forming a barricade, and their tires were all deflated. We had to turn left into a small back street. The citizens here looked quite resolved to deter the army. The driver told me that he was a veteran and had quit his regular job at a steel mill a year ago, and that if he hadn’t owned this minivan, he’d have joined the team of workers called Flying Tigers, which was most active in supporting the student movement. “It’s funny, I feel the car owns me now,” he said. “I can’t afford to be as reckless as I used to be.”
We had to stop and detour at many places. About half an hour later the driver gave up, saying to us, “You better get off here. There’s no way I can take you to Tiananmen Square. I’ve tried three different routes, all blocked up. Actually the square isn’t far from here, ten minutes’ walk at the most, but I can’t help you anymore.”
We all alighted and thanked him again for the lift. Following his directions, we headed for Tiananmen. But about a hundred yards later, at a street corner, we ran into a huge crowd of people, at least two thousand strong, who were assembled around a column of army trucks, all the backs of which were under canvas. At the head of the contingent were six armored personnel carriers with heavy machine guns atop them. The civilians begged the soldiers not to go farther downtown to harm the students. Some of them shouted slogans, such as “The People’s Army serves the people!” “We love our soldiers!” “Don’t butcher the young!” By now the sky was umber beyond the high buildings, as if a fire was burning in the distance. Though I had told my group to stick together, we soon began to have stragglers. Two girls disappeared in the c
rowd, and try as I might, I couldn’t find any trace of them. As I was thinking what to do, the crowd suddenly surged and pushed us in different directions. I looked around in panic—my group was scattered, most of them having vanished from sight, and none was with me.
No longer able to hold my team together, I elbowed my way forward through the people to see what the soldiers were like. I couldn’t reach the front and stopped halfway. From there I saw a young man, flat-faced and with long hair covering his ears, standing at the rear door of the first personnel carrier. He looked like a college student. He was lecturing the dusty-faced troops inside the vehicle and telling them that they had been deceived by the government, and that the city was in good order and didn’t need them here.
“They’ll turn back like the group in the morning,” a man in coveralls said to others about the soldiers.
“This must be a different unit, though.”
“Do they belong to the Thirty-eighth Army too?”
“No way to tell.”
“Yesterday an officer said they would never hurt civilians. He was a pretty good fellow.”
“Yeah, he said that after we gave his men a hamper of cucumbers.”
“But these men here look different.”
“Yes, like a bunch of hoodlums.”
A voice boomed at the people in the front, “Hey, ask them which army they’re from.”
“Yeah, ask them.”
A moment later the student cried back, “They’re from the Twenty-seventh Army. They said they didn’t like going downtown either, but they were ordered to get to Tiananmen Square by any means.”
“Tell them they’ll have to kill us civilians before they can pass.”
“Yes, we won’t let them go there.”
As people were talking, a jeep came up tooting its horn; inside sat a square-faced colonel and two bodyguards, all in steel helmets. The civilians parted to make way for the car to reach the front, assuming that the officer would order his troops to retreat. Seizing this opportunity, I squeezed forward through the crowd and got closer to the first personnel carrier. The tall colonel jumped off the jeep and went up to the student who was still talking to the soldiers. I was impressed by the officer’s handsome looks: broad eyes, thick brows, a straight nose, white, strong teeth, and a full chin. He looked like material for a general, at least in appearance. Different from his men, he wore a black necktie beneath his jacket, which had four pockets. His shoulder straps showed two stripes and one star. A purple belt tightened his waist, and a pair of binoculars hung on his left hip. Without a word he pulled out his pistol and shot the student in the head, who dropped to the ground kicking his legs, then stopped moving and breathing. Bits of his brain were splattered like crushed tofu on the asphalt. Steam was rising from his smashed skull.
Stunned, for two or three seconds we didn’t react. Then people staggered back and the crowd began churning. Turning to his men, the colonel ordered in a shout, “Move ahead! Shoot anyone standing in your way. Teach this rabble a bloody lesson!” He raised his pistol and fired into the air.
The vehicles started snarling one after another, then lunged forward as people swung away, struggling to avoid being crushed. All the personnel carriers and trucks began rolling, unstoppable like a crazed dragon. In no time gunshots burst out. The troops were firing at the people who couldn’t yet get out of their way and at us, the ones taking off.
“Real bullets!” a woman screamed.
“Oh, Mama!”
“Ah my leg!”
“Run for your lives, folks!”
“I’m killing all of you hooligans. Take this!” a soldier shouted and kept firing his AK-47. Some men in the same truck guffawed as they were shooting away.
“Now you see your grandpa’s temper,” cried another man while his rifle was cracking.
“No grenades!” ordered the colonel.
More guns were fired, and people broke into every direction. Not knowing where I could find safety, I just ran as fast as possible, following a young woman before me. She looked like a college teacher or a graduate student, wearing bobbed hair, brass-rimmed glasses, and a pastel dress with accordion pleats. As we were approaching a tall billboard, a volley of gunfire swept down a few people ahead of me. The young woman fell, then scrambled to her feet and zigzagged forward, shrieking, with both hands holding her bleeding left side. One of her shoes was missing, and her white stockings were soaked with blood. I pulled her aside to keep her from being trampled. She dropped down, but I dared not stop to carry her away because more bullets whizzed by, drawing blazing lines. I fled with the crowd, running and running until we ended in a small alley. My heart was beating so violently that I couldn’t help trembling.
Calming down a little, people began cursing and crying. I wept too, but I was so shocked that the whole time I couldn’t speak and my nose was dripping. A moment later someone shouted “Down with Fascism!” People followed him, roaring in unison. We went on howling “Down with Li Peng!” “People’s Army go to hell!” “A tooth for a tooth and an eye for an eye.” As we continued bellowing, bullets went on hitting the walls at the mouth of the alley, knocking chips of brick off the corners.
Having shouted ourselves hoarse, we stopped and began talking, trying to figure out why the army had suddenly gone on such a rampage. But as the enormity of the event sank in, many of us grew reticent. An amalgam of loneliness and grief overwhelmed me. I hadn’t intended to come here to fight for democracy, but now I was caught up in a tragedy that didn’t make sense to me at all. I shouldn’t have been here to begin with. Then I remembered the wounded woman I had left behind; she must have died by now. Why hadn’t I carried her away to a safe place? She must have bled or been trampled to death. Coward! I couldn’t even prove to myself that I was above cowardice. This realization brought me to tears again. I wept wretchedly. An old woman patted my shoulder, saying to no one in particular, “Lord of Heaven, please save those kids in Tiananmen Square!”
Her words reminded me that the troops were headed for the square to get rid of the students there. So this was it! Again a numbing pain tautened my chest.
“I do Deng Xiaoping’s mother!” cursed a man, his round eyes aflame. He had a bristly face, which had become murderous.
“Li Peng will have to pay for this with his life,” a short woman cut in.
“I know where his daughter lives. I’ll blow up her apartment one of these days.”
“Yes, they are our class enemy now.”
After a pause, someone added, “The troops must’ve been drugged.”
“Yes, they looked crazy.”
“I smelled alcohol on the colonel’s breath.”
“They’re a different unit. I heard they’d been brought in from Datong or somewhere.”
“A bunch of bandits.”
After about an hour’s cursing and talking, some people grew restless, eager to go home or look for their siblings and friends who had come out to stop the army too. But the instant they stepped out of the alley, volleys of bullets would force them back in. Apparently the army was determined to keep everybody off the street. A loudspeaker was ordering all civilians to obey martial law and stay indoors because the People’s Liberation Army was suppressing the counterrevolutionary uprising so as to restore order in the city. The announcement brought out more curses among us.
A woman student, grazed in the arm by a bullet when she had attempted to get out into the street, sat on the ground blubbering hysterically. Now and then some people would stick their heads out of the alley to watch what was happening on the street. Units of tanks passed frequently, roaring fitfully. I searched through the hundred people trapped in the alley, but didn’t find anyone of my group. I was worried about their safety and whereabouts.
Exhausted and hungry, I sat down in a corner and soon dropped off despite the crowd milling around. During my two or three hours’ sleep, I vaguely heard that another person had been wounded while trying to leave and had been carried back into the
alley. When I woke up, I couldn’t help shivering; the night was chilly; if only I had brought a jacket. I went to the mouth of the alley, lay down, and stuck my head out to see what it was like out there. A puff of fireflies was flickering before my face. In the distant sky an orange glow pulsed while the sound of gunshots was rising from somewhere as though a battle was under way. Two or three armored personnel carriers stood at a nearby street corner; beyond them dozens of soldiers in fatigues and helmets crouched against trees or sat on the curbs, all with AK-47s or SKS carbines in their arms. One of them fired three shots up at a window of an apartment building from which some residents had called them names a moment ago.
As I watched, a boy suddenly appeared on the street. He threw an empty bottle at the soldiers, then dashed aside, running to a doorway; but before he could enter it, a gun fired. “Aiyah, I’m hit!” The boy fell, screaming for help. A few more heads joined me watching.
A group of soldiers ran over and kicked the boy in the chest and back. “Don’t beat me, Uncle!” he begged, but they went on battering him with their gun butts. In no time he stopped making noise.
“We must save him,” I said.
“Yes,” agreed a young woman in a white blouse. “He may still be alive.”
“The Benevolence Hospital isn’t far away to the south,” said an old bald man.
“Can you show us the way?” I asked him.
“How can I get out of here?”
I found a long bamboo broom, took off my white shirt, and raised it on the tip of the wooden handle like a flag. Stepping out of the alley, I cried at the soldiers, “Comrades, please don’t shoot. I just want to save the boy’s little life. He’s only a kid. Please give him a chance!”
Though quaking all over, I walked straight toward the dark lump lying about eighty yards away. The soldiers didn’t open fire. Then the young woman came out of the alley too, followed by a few others, one of whom carried a board dislodged from a wheelless flatbed tricycle.
“Only three people can come to take him away!” ordered an officer.