Last Kiss in Tiananmen Square

by Lisa Zhang Wharton

  “New hunger strike! New hunger strike organized by Professor Chen Ninyuan! We need 200,000 people, the largest in the history to protest the government’s outrageous decision!”

  “Comrades, keep the good work!” Someone ran over and poked his head into the tent and yelled.

  Students in the tent flopped back to their blankets. Yumei and Baiyun stared at each other.

  “Ok, at least we will tell Federation to transfer you into a bus,” said Yumei before leaving the “Dare to Death” hunger strikers.

  Yumei and Baiyun could feel the newly heated atmosphere in the square through the cool breeze around them. Although the number of people on the square had decreased, every one of them (mostly students) was as energetic as before. They followed the crowd to the Monument of People’s Hero where the main Hunger Striker stage was still centered.

  There were twenty to fifty vehicles around the Monument of People’s Hero, most of which were buses filled with student hunger strikers. It was an unusual situation here. The monument, which was a sacred place and used to be a place where people came to pay tribute to people’s heroes, now had become a Rock & Roll concert stage. People ran around, wearing white headbands and arm bands which said, “Long Live Democracy”, “Rather Die than Give Up” and “Fighting to the Last Drop of Blood”. People were not fixing the buses but were rather taking them apart. Tires were punctured flat, and the steering wheels were pulled off. The place was more like a junkyard. On the other side of the monument, there was a Rock & Roll concert with the famous singer Cui Jian on stage. People were cheering and roaring. Immersed in this moving atmosphere, Yumei and Baiyun strolled around the monument and absorbed everything. Yumei, a good singer and dancer, was humming the current song along with the crowd while Baiyun could not help but write her news article about this spectacle in her head.

  “Yumei, have you noticed this?” Baiyun pulled Yumei’s arm to go through a narrow avenue between buses. They approached the neatly trimmed pine trees around the monument. Instead of green, the trees were white because they were covered with white cloth. This very much resembled the time when Premier Zhou died fifteen years ago when the same trees were covered with white paper flowers decorated by millions of Beijing citizens to mourn the death of Premier Zhou.

  “It looks so sad,” said Baiyun.

  “They were some of the hunger striker’s death wills.” Yumei stopped humming and started examining the white strips of cloth carefully.

  “Look at this one.” Yumei pulled Baiyun closer.

  Dear Mom,

  When you see this message, I probably do not exist anymore. Please don’t feel sad. Your son doesn’t have time to pay back your love because his motherland needs him for an even more important mission. Mother, stop crying. Look around you. You can see your son smiling among hundreds of smiling faces. Mother, stop weeping. You should be proud of your son who contributes to the happiness of millions.

  “It was written in blood,” said Baiyun. “Don’t you think we should join the Hunger Strike again?”

  “I have been thinking about it,” said Yumei while looking at the hundreds of white strips on the square-cut pine shrubs around the monument.

  “I don’t think the News Center needs me now. I used to think that I’m a writer so my job is to observe life and record it. Now I want more. I want to experience life fully using my blood or even my life,” said Baiyun. Her voice was getting louder. “Besides, this maybe our last chance to join the Hunger Strike.”

  “You really think so?” Yumei couldn’t believe her ears. She would never imagine Baiyun would go this far. It was such a big change for Baiyun from a bookish and selfish intellectual to a committed activist and hunger striker. But who could understand any of the events that happened recently? Disaster or danger could often bring the best out of people. Maybe this side of Baiyun just had been hidden until the opportunity came recently.

  “I don’t really know. I tried not to think about it too much. Sometimes I wish this movement would go on forever. It is very hard for me to imagine going back to school and sitting in the library all day long or going back to my strange family. Now even Dagong has gone back to his wife. What do I have left?”

  Baiyun’s confession had surprised Yumei because she had never talked so much about herself to others.”

  “Dagong will come back to you,” Yumei tried to comfort Baiyun.

  “I’m so happy that you are my friend,” said Baiyun and gave Yumei a hug.

  “Hi, girls. What are you doing here?” A well-dressed man walked toward them with his hand touching the white cloth on the pine shrubs. “Which school are you from?” He continued.

  “Beida.” Yumei found him strange.

  “Oh, great. You are local. I’m from Shanghai.” He attempted to shake hands with Hongmai. Yumei refused.

  “You don’t sound like Shanghainese,” said Baiyun whose mother was from Shanghai.

  “I grew up in Shan Dong province,” said he leisurely. He looked as though he had the whole day to chat.

  “Do you enjoy staying in Beijing?” Yumei asked but her eyes were looking elsewhere.

  “Yes. I wish that I could spend the summer here. The summer in Shanghai is like hell.” He said as though he was living in a hotel in Beijing with air conditioning twenty four hours a day. “Do you know who I really am?” His eyes formed a thin line. He moved closer toward Yumei. His head with crew cut hair glimmered under the streetlight.

  “No.” Backed a few steps, Yumei and Baiyun were waiting for him to say that he was the Devil from Hell.

  “Ha, ha. I know you can’t figure me out. Let me tell you. I’m a plainclothes police officer. There are a lot of us around here. You’d better get out of here as soon as possible. Otherwise it will be too late. I know exactly what is going to happen tonight. You can’t even imagine how fast the troops are moving in.” Approaching the girls even closer, he boasted out the secret, “You’d better run if you could!” He waved as though trying to chase the chickens away.

  Yumei and Baiyun turned around and ran away as fast as they could. It was not that they were afraid of the policeman. It was because they felt the information was urgent and they wanted to find someone in charge. They wanted to go back to the headquarters to find Longfe and Xia Nan.

  Xia Nan, the head of the student organization in the economic department, had switched from an anti-movement advocate to one of the Beijing Student Hunger Strike leaders. Especially now when the hunger strikers took control of the Tiananmen Square, he became even more powerful. He was in many news conferences with the foreign press, and formed new alliances with some most powerful student leaders around. He seemed always to be able at the right place at the right time. Yumei and Baiyun hoped to find him in the new Hunger Strike Headquarters in one of the buses around the monument.

  People still enjoyed the frenzy of destroying the buses. Now they were jabbing holes on the already flattened tires. Their actions made sense since the tires had been destroyed to such a degree that they were impossible to repair. The Rock & Roll concert still went on and the cheering was louder than ever.

  As they checked from bus to bus for Longfe and Xia Nan, suddenly Baiyun noticed two familiar people standing next to a motorcycle under a streetlight. It was her mother Meiling and boyfriend Lao Zheng in an intimate position. Too embarrassed to tell Yumei, she had kept quiet. Actually she wished that she could dig a hole that was deep enough to hide in. This was not the first time when she was so embarrassed by her parents that she pretended that she didn’t see them.

  In 1975, in the midst of the Cultural Revolution, she was 9 years old. One day when she was playing jump rope with her friends outside of their apartment, one of her friends pointed to an old man walking toward the apartment.

  “Look, who is that?” said her friend.

  He wore old faded pants and wrinkled shirt. His hair and stubby beard were gray. There was a rolled-up quilted blanket hanging on his back weighing him down yet his head was only
slightly bent down. In his hand there was a beaten up duffle bag. It took a moment before Baiyun realized that it was her father, Professor Yang. But how could she admit that was her father? He just came back from the labor camp and he still looked like a prisoner. He had caused her enough trouble already at school. Because of his political problems, she didn’t have any friends at school for a long time. She was not allowed to perform in any plays or musicals because of him. Kids chased her and threw stones at her because of him. Now finally she had a couple of neighbor girls to play with. He was here again to ruin it. She was determined not to admit that he was his dad.

  “I don’t know him.” Baiyun kept playing.

  Fortunately Professor Yang didn’t notice her either when he walked by them. Since he was busy looking down, he seemed not to notice anyone or he, too, was too embarrassed to say hello. When he finally went inside of the apartment, Baiyun was so relieved that she almost fell.

  So Baiyun could do it again. As they were walking forward, it was obvious that Yumei and she would encounter Meiling and Lao Zheng because they were actually talking to Xia Nan.

  Baiyun saw Xia Nan nodding his big head with shoulder length hair and shaking hands with Meiling. Lao Zheng, who now had grown a mustache, was standing next to his shiny new motorcycle under the streetlight next to a red bus.

  “That’s Xia Nan! That’s Xia Nan!” Yumei exclaimed. Of course, Baiyun didn’t remind her that her mother Meiling and her new boyfriend were standing next to Xia Nan.

  “Let’s go, Baiyun,” commanded Yumei as bossy as ever.

  Baiyun couldn’t understand why Yumei got so excited to see Xia Nan. Baiyun obediently followed Yumei like a dog following her master.

  “Ok, I will tell headquarters about your information. Don’t worry. We will find the way to deal with it,” Xia Nan was still nodding.

  “Hey, Baiyun. Do you know who Xia Nan is talking to?” Yumei turned around, pulling Baiyun’s sleeves. “That old lady and the young man look like people who belong to the ‘Flying Tiger Brigade’, some of whom were just common workers. I could not imagine our comrade Xia Nan could deal with people like that.”

  “I don’t know.” Baiyun cast her eyes down and kept walking forward. She wished to disappear.

  “Hi, Baiyun!” Through her tinted glasses, Meiling was the first one to notice her.

  “Mother. It is nice to see you,” said Baiyun quietly, her fingers crossing and her face burning. She didn’t want to admit that she was proud to see her mother here.

  “Hi,” she also nodded to Lao Zheng, who smiled at her. Leaning against the motorcycle, dressed in leather jacket and gloves, Lao Zheng looked quite handsome. With a white headband on his slightly baldhead, he looked like a perfect member of the “Flying Tiger Brigade”.

  Yumei, of course, was stunned to see this. Having heard a lot about Baiyun’s mother, this was actually the first time she had ever met her. Staring at them, she didn’t even notice Xia Nan’s stretching out hand.

  “Hi, you crazy girls, still here?” Xia Nan sounded like an old man.

  Stamping her foot and tilting her head toward one side, “So what?” said Yumei firmly.

  “Longfe has been looking for you.” Behind his big thick glasses sitting on top of his hollow cheeks, Xia Nan looked sympathetic.

  “Tell him that I can take care of myself,” said Yumei. She was determined to sound tough.

  “Ok, I don’t care what is going on between you two? But do you know how serious the situation is?” Xia Nan moved closer to Yumei, mouth wide open.

  “Who says that we don’t know?” murmured Baiyun.

  “Do you think you girls can be running around like this forever?” Xia Nan continued.

  “We are not just running around. We are working!” Yumei’s voice was still firm. Yet the sense of doubt started showing on her faced. She looked concerned.

  “Okay, Okay, Okay. You girls are iron women. No missiles or tanks can stop you. But at some point, I have to give the order for everyone to leave. The situation is just getting too dangerous.”

  “Yes. It’s very dangerous. Why don’t you order everyone else to leave?” Yumei yelled. Her face was red and eyes moist. “Do you know that soldiers are coming tonight to the square through the subway? I just heard that from a plainclothes policeman.”

  “Really, an honest soldier. I’m surprised. But don’t worry. Baiyun’s mother Meiling just told us that our Beijing citizens have already disconnected the electricity in the subway so the soldiers are stuck there now. But the situation is getting tense. The government will figure a way to send the troops over. You really should seriously consider leaving here soon.”

  “No, as long as we are here, the victory will be ours.” Yumei said firmly.

  “Hi, Yumei. I have been looking for you.” Longfe rushed over and quickly nodded to everyone.

  “Longfe!” Yumei ran toward him and held his tall frame. His hair had grown longer than last time she saw him. In the front, the hair covered his eyebrows and ears while in the back it covered his neck, which made his small face even smaller. Like many people on the square, he wore a white headband

  “Ok, I will let you to take care of these ladies.” Xia Nan seized an opportunity to get out of this torment.

  “Mother, aren’t you afraid?” said Baiyun. She was still in Meiling’s embrace. She felt very close to Meiling.

  “No. This is exciting. I have never had so much fun in my life. I feel young! I feel proud!” Meiling’s face was radiant. She did look young for her age.

  “How about death?” asked Baiyun. Then she regretted. She was afraid that talking about it might be a bad omen.

  Under the light, Lao Zheng, tall with his newly oiled leather jacket and gloves, even looked heroic.

  “Baiyun, your mother is not afraid of death.” Patting Baiyun’s shoulder, Meiling made death sound like a trip to Shanghai.

  Sure, Baiyun remembered the countless times Meiling talked about death so frankly. That was during the 1984 earthquake when Meiling chose to stay inside of their fragile home instead of following the orders to move out. That was when her father raised the cleaver and threatened to kill Meiling during one of her parents’ many fights. Meiling faced the cleaver and her eyes didn’t even flinch. Baiyun knew her mother and she knew her well. But the situation was different back then. Meiling acted out of desperation. Now Meiling finally found her role in society and found her way to make a contribution to her country. Why would she want to die, of course, if the death itself was a contribution to society?

  “Longfe, let’s forget about your mother’s offer for us to hide in your home,” Looking at Longfe’s pale face and fragile body, Yumei regretted telling him that. But under such an urgent moment, who could care more?

  Longfe nodded and didn’t say a word.

  “How about join the hunger strikers? Maybe this is our last chance,” asked Yumei. She buried her head in Longfe’s chest and let herself shed a few tears. Then she turned to Baiyun, “Baiyun, does it sound like a good idea to join the final hunger strike?”

  “Yes.” Without hesitation, Baiyun agreed. “I’ll join you.” Then she ran toward Meiling and gave her another hug. She could see tears prickling around Meiling’s eyes.

  “Take care!”

  “Take care!”

  Baiyun joined Longfe and Yumei and departed. The idea of losing her mother after this brief reconciliation reunion bothered Baiyun for a while. She wished that she had got on Lao Zheng’s motorcycle and joined them.

  “The Goddess of Democracy and Freedom has arrived!” Someone yelled in the crowd.

  “The Goddess of Democracy and Freedom? Where?” someone in the crowd questioned.

  The square was stirred up by the new excitement. People formed groups and started flowing toward that direction.

  The square was completely lit up. The Goddess, 33 feet high white statue, made of foam and papier-mâché was been taken by the students passing the monument toward the direction of the F
orbidden City. It stopped in front of the hunger striker’s buses. Students from the Central Academy of Fine Arts were still putting on the last bit of touch-up to it.

  “Long Live Democracy!”

  “Long Live the Chinese People!”

  “Premier Li Peng, step down!”

  The slogans were deafening, especially when everyone on the square was shouting at once. Then someone started ‘The Internationale’.

  “Arise, the damned of the earth,

  Arise, prisoners of hunger,

  Reason thunders in its crater,

  It is the eruption of the end!

  Let’s make a blank slate of the past,

  Crowds, slaves, arise, arise!

  The world is going to change from its base,

  We are nothing, let’s be everything!

  This is the final struggle

  Let us gather, and tomorrow

  The Internationale

  Will be mankind!”

  Baiyun stood on her tiptoes and could only see the top section of the Goddess through the space between people’s heads. The Goddess had a Chinese woman’s figure with straight hair blown toward one side by the wind. She had broad shoulders and strong almost male like body. She was holding the torch with both of her arms. Pointing the torch toward the sky, she was facing the Forbidden City and staring at the Chinese people’s formal God, the portrait of Chairman Mao.

  The slogan shouting came in waves and rhythms like those you could only hear in sports events or during the Cultural Revolution rallies. Along with the rhythm, Baiyun held Yumei’s shoulders and jumped up and down so she could see what was going on. Suddenly someone held her waist behind and lifted her up. She became a head taller than everyone else around her. She turned around and shouted, “Dagong, you rascal!” They hugged for a long time and Baiyun’s face was full of tears.

  “How about sitting on my shoulders?” asked Dagong.

  “Is that alright?” She looked at Dagong’s newly shaved face and was still trying to get used to this new look.

  “Of course. Don’t you want to be a Goddess for a change?” Dagong teased her.