by William Bell
It took half an hour to get to the square — usually a ten minute walk, tops. I don’t know how to describe what I saw. Maybe I should have paid more attention in writing lessons last year, although I doubted that my teacher could have described what I was looking at either. I mean, it was awesome! The whole square was packed — students, women with baby carriages, men with kids on their shoulders, cops. Lots of cops, most of them just wandering around. A couple of people were still trying to fly kites in spite of the press of bodies. There were huge, long white banners with characters on them and all the sentences, which I couldn’t understand, ended with exclamation marks. Dozens of small blue and red tents had been set up as protection from the sun. People shouted over loud-hailers. A lot of the students wore white headbands with writing on them.
It was like a huge carnival where too many people showed up. The popsicle and ice cream vendors made a brave try at pushing their carts through the throng, yelling out, doing a great business. Balloons floated on the ends of tight strings.
The Monument to the People’s Heroes was still piled high with wreaths and bunches of wilted flowers. Mao’s mausoleum, to the south, seemed to float on a calm sea of bodies.
I started to feel a little claustrophobic and I wondered what would happen if this mammoth flood of people panicked or got mad and they all started to stampede in one direction. Not that the atmosphere was ugly. It was like a crowd on the way in to a ball game or a line up outside a show that everyone was hot to see. It was electric.
I knew Dad and Eddie were out there somewhere, trying to capture the festival on tape, doing on-the-spot reports, probably trying to interview students. A lot of them could speak English. There were other journalists in the square. You could pick them out pretty easily. White faces showed up and so did foreign clothes, not to mention cameras on shoulders.
Behind the Monument to the People’s Heroes was a large contingent of students. Some were sitting, gathered around portable radios, some standing and talking, others were singing and clapping their hands. As I passed them I heard “Hello! Hello! Mr. Reporter, come talk to us!”
A guy with a red baseball cap on and a loud-hailer in his hand was talking to me. Well, I thought, why not?
“Hi,” I said.
“What country you are from?” he asked.
“Canada. Canadian Broadcasting Corporation. How about you? What university are you from?”
“People’s University.”
“I am from Bei Da,” the guy beside him chimed in. “Beijing University.”
Already a crowd of students had gathered around us, staring at me and pointing and talking among themselves. I reminded myself that I was supposed to be a reporter.
“What do you hope to accomplish with this demonstration?” I asked, conscious of how stuffy I sounded.
“We have made a union of university students in Beijing,” he said, “and we have been on strike from classes. All Beijing university students are on strike. We have three demands. We want that the government agrees to talk to us like equals, not treat us like children. Second, they must apologize for violence against students last week.” He pointed toward Zhong Nan Hai, where some students had got roughed up a bit. “Third, we demand that Xin Hua news reports stop lying about us in newspapers and television.” Xin Hua is the government’s official news agency. “We are not against Communist Party and socialism. We want these things to stay. But we want government to listen to the people and stop the corruption by high officials.”
The, students around us nodded and chattered away in Chinese.
“What do those say?” I asked him, nodding towards the signs and banners behind him.
He pointed as he translated. “Long live democracy. That one, Down with Dictatorship. Over there, Support the Correct Leadership of the Communist Party of China.”
“Do you think the government will listen to you?”
“Students’ Union has decided that if the officials do not listen, we will plan bigger demonstration on May Fourth.” Then he yelled something in Chinese and raised his arm, making the “V” for victory sign with his fingers. I caught the words “May Fourth” but nothing else. A deafening cheer surged from the students around us.
“Why then?” I asked.
“Pardon?”
“Why did you pick that particular day?”
“May Fourth is very important day to all Chinese students and intellectuals. Seventy years ago on May Fourth students from Beijing University began the movement that led to the Communist Revolution.”
I was starting to get frustrated. I was interested in what the guy was saying and I wanted to ask him some more, but the crush of students around us — they were pressing against us as if we were in a crowded bus — was getting on my nerves and making me even more claustrophobic and I didn’t have a pen and paper to write down what I was seeing and hearing.
“Listen,” I said. “Is it okay if I come back and ask you more questions later?”
“Very okay. We are happy to talk to Western reporter.”
“What’s your name?”
“Sorry, maybe better I don’t give my name.”
“Okay,” I said, shaking his hand. “Maybe I’ll see you again.”
I managed to separate myself from the mass of human flesh and move away from the monument towards the hotel.
It was all too much for me. It was pretty warm out, and, I’ll tell you, pushing through an endless crowd, no matter how festive they seem, is a tough grind.
I worked my way back to Chang An Avenue and finally to the hotel. I was glad to get back to the empty suite and enjoy a cold pop.
Tonight we watched it all on the news. Eddie couldn’t believe that the government allowed the TV station to show the demonstration. I mean, some of the posters and banners were pretty critical. Dad was taping the news show to send it back to Canada after Eddie did a voice-over commentary about how the news in China had been so free lately.
It was pretty exciting in the suite that night. Eddie was laughing, typing up a storm. “This is the biggest story since Liberation!” he crowed. Dad was happy as a little kid at Christmas, taping this, editing that. The enthusiasm was catching. I began to get interested too, especially after talking to that student. I thought I’d be the last person in the world to get hooked on politics.
But this wasn’t what we learned in school. This was real.
I was ready yesterday to play reporter. I had my tape recorder with me and something to write on.
It took me quite a while to find the student I talked to last Thursday. I decided to call him Hong, which means “red” in Chinese, because of the red baseball cap he wore. I searched for the red cap as soon as I located the Ren Min Da Xue — People’s University — banner. When I found him he was talking to the crowd through a loud-hailer, but I couldn’t make out what he was saying.
When he stopped talking and the cheering died down I tapped him on the shoulder.
“Hi,” I said.
He smiled. “Hello, Canadian friend.”
“I was wondering if you and I could have a talk, and if it would be all right if I tape-record you.”
“Okay.”
Beside him a young woman shook her head and started rattling away in Chinese. He and she talked at each other for a few moments — that’s what it seemed like, because they were both talking at once — then he said, “Okay.”
The press of bodies was on us again. I looked around for a place where we could go and talk more privately and immediately laughed at myself. The sea of people flooded the square completely.
“Well, I was wondering what has happened since I saw you last Thursday.”
“Government has become a little bit reasonable, but not enough. Last Saturday officials had a meeting with student representatives, but it was a phony one. Those so-called students are from the government student unions. They do not represent us. We have formed our own Autonomous Union and officials must speak to us. So far, they refused, so that
’s why we are here today.”
“What will you do if the officials still won’t talk to your people?”
A grim look passed over his face. “We have something planned.” The woman beside him nodded and the chattering around us went up a notch. A lot of the students understand English.
“How old you are?” said the woman. She wore jeans and a jean jacket, so I figured I’d call her Lan, which means “blue.”
I didn’t want to lie, so I tried changing the subject. “What do you study in university?” It was a pretty lame question but it worked. She started to talk about university life and Hong threw in a remark now and then.
Lan is twenty and she’s from the Foreign Affairs University where China’s diplomats are trained. Hong is twenty-three, a medical student. Lan told me what subjects she studied and all that stuff, but I was more interested in some other facts. While I listened I thought about Lao Xu, I guess because I was hearing the same kind of stuff that Eddie was telling me about Lao Xu’s life. Everything is controlled. These students were being told how to run every part of their lives. For example, they weren’t supposed to date. They couldn’t get married. They had to go to political study classes every week. And if they stepped out of line there were hundreds of thousands of others waiting to take their spots. No wonder they thought that no one listened to them. No wonder they were here.
We talked a bit longer and then I said goodbye. That night on the news we heard that Zhao Zi-yang had made a speech later in the afternoon and said that he thought the situation would calm down and that there would be no turmoil in China.
After the newscast ended we all looked at Lao Xu, waiting for an interpretation. I was beginning to learn that the Chinese often speak in a sort of code so that they don’t have to say things straight out.
Lao Xu looked worried. He sighed and said, “Zhao Zi-yang has broken with Deng Xiao-ping.”
“What!” Eddie shouted.
“Remember the editorial on April 26, Eddie? It came from Deng and it said that the students were promoting chaos. Now Chairman Zhao is saying that there will be no chaos. He has rejected Deng’s analysis. That means he has rejected Deng.
“The Communist Party now talks with two voices. That means trouble. Big trouble.”
I wondered where the students and Lan and Hong fit in to all this. Then I realized it. They were right in the middle.
Things have gotten really hairy around here.
I’ve been so busy I haven’t had time to keep this journal every day. Everyone thinks there’s a big wind of change blowing, and when the storm passes, I want to remember every second of it.
On May 13 the students in Tian An Men Square changed their tactics. Up until then, thousands had refused to leave the square, and every day the place was a carpet of humanity. But on the thirteenth one thousand students started a hunger strike and vowed to keep it up until either they died or the government promised to meet with their representatives and to begin reforms. When I heard that I rushed down there. The students were set up in the centre of the square, sitting or lying on spread-out newspapers, surrounded by thousands more who were not hunger-striking. The da zi bao, the big character posters, demanded that the Communist Party become more democratic and that corruption in the high levels of the Party be stopped.
I spotted Hong and Lan among the strikers, but I couldn’t get near enough to talk to them.
Later, when I asked Lao Xu what this stuff about corruption was all about he looked a little bit uncomfortable. He gave me a vague answer about a few bad men being dishonest. Eddie butted in as he usually does.
“Lao Xu is giving you the Party line, Alex. He doesn’t want to criticize the government.”
Lao Xu looked even more embarrassed and laughed the way Chinese do when they feel uncomfortable. Eddie shouldn’t have centered him out like that, I thought. I let the matter drop until Lao Xu had left. Then Eddie told me that the powerful men and women in the Party got special treatment in everything, from buying foreign goods in special stores that only they could shop in, to housing, to special hospitals or special sections of already existing hospitals that had all the latest medical equipment. They made sure their relatives and children got good jobs and privileges. They sent their kids to universities in Europe, Canada, and the States, all at government expense. And they used government money to fatten themselves. Meanwhile, ordinary people stayed poor.
I remembered that Lao Xu had told me that most of the powerful men in the Party were Long March veterans.
“All of them?” I asked. “Are they all crooked?”
Eddie frowned. He didn’t like being contradicted. “They control everything, and they keep most of it for themselves,” he summed up.
Anyway, at least a thousand students started the hunger strike, and a day or so later, two thousand more joined them. Things in our office were pretty frantic. Eddie was going nuts, bossing everybody around, contradicting himself. He was supposed to be covering the upcoming visit of Premier Gorbachev, but he said he knew in his newsman’s bones that the student demonstrations were the bigger story. Dad was loving every second of it, spending millions on taxis. He’d dash off to tape the preparations for the state visit, then rush back to see what was going on in the square. Lao Xu seemed busiest of all, one minute translating stuff for Eddie, then running down to meet Dad in the square, then being called back by Eddie on the two-way radio to do something for him. Eventually he slept in the suite with us, which was against hotel regulations, but no one in the hotel seemed to be paying much attention to regulations. It seemed like everybody was having a holiday from regulations.
Me included. I tried to keep up the schoolwork, but I didn’t get much done. I skipped school a lot. I went to the square at least twice a day to see what was going on. Sometimes I went with Dad.
Eddie said he figured the students started the hunger strike when they did to embarrass the government. He figured their tactic was to force the government to give in to their demands because the government wouldn’t want hunger strikers in Tian An Men Square when Premier Gorbachev arrived. It would look pretty bad, if when the premier came for the required tour of the square and the Forbidden City before going into the Great Hall of the People, three thousand students were laid out on the pavement starving to death.
Dad mimicked a tour leader’s nasal voice. “Here is the Monument to the People’s Heroes, and there, just past the students who are starving themselves because they think we’re a bunch of old crooks, is the Chairman Mao Memorial.”
When Gorbachev got here for his visit on the fifteenth, all the news reports showed him shaking hands with the Chinese government bigwigs. Everybody smiled so hard I thought their faces would crack. Banquets. Visits to the Great Wall. More banquets. More smiles and handshakes and friendly talks while they sat in deep armchairs with big doilies on the arms and interpreters sitting behind them. There was a whole lot of talk about the renewed friendship between the Russian and Chinese people after a thirty-year break. I didn’t see any xiao ren — ordinary people — Russian or Chinese, on those broadcasts. As far as I could tell, the Chinese people were in Tian An Men Square.
And the Russian premier didn’t get to visit the Forbidden City or the square, because the students were still there, lying on the concrete surrounded by their friends and classmates. Too bad, Gorby.
On the second day of Gorbachev’s visit the ambulances started coming to Tian An Men Square. I was there. It was a hot sunny morning and the hunger-strikers lay in rows on army-type cots under protective canopies. Some of them had even been refusing fluids and were so weak they couldn’t stand or sit.
I tried again to find Lan and Hong, but it was hard to get close and harder still to see the faces of those lying down. But I kept searching. I must have been at it for over an hour before I found them.
I hardly recognized Lan. She looked like a stick-doll. Her eyes had sunk into her head and she sort of stared into nowhere. She was one of those who would not take any
thing to drink. Hong was on the cot beside her. He still had on his red cap. When I called out to him he got up on his elbow and smiled when he saw me.
“Hello, Canadian friend,” he said weakly. His lips were dry and cracked. “How are you today?”
“How are you?”
“We are in good spirits, although some of us are weak. More and more students are joining the hunger strike every day. We —”
Hong was interrupted by a voice blaring over the loudspeakers the students had set up.
“What was that all about?” I asked him when the noise stopped.
“More ambulances have come,” he said.
About fifteen minutes later, four students took Lan away. As she was being carried through the crowd a woman cried out and tried to clutch Lan’s clothing, wailing as though someone had died. All I could make out was, “Please, please.” Lan was lifted into the ambulance. Others were helped in after her. Then the ambulance crept away, horn braying as it moved slowly though the crowd. Hong stayed on his cot, staring up at the canopy above him. I figured he had one more day until an ambulance took him away, too. I said goodbye to him and he flashed me a victory sign.
Back at the hotel that night I thought a lot about what Hong and Lan are doing. I can’t decide whether they’re being really brave or really dumb. What I am sure of is that it’s dangerous. I guess that’s why I admire them so much.
Once the premier had gone, things started to happen fast. Two of the mega-powerful boys, Li Peng, who is the premier, and Zhao Zi-yang, the chairman of the Communist Party, visited some of the hunger-strikers who had been taken to hospital. That was shown on TV also. Li Peng, with his round, smiling face and dark-rimmed glasses, was shown going from bed to bed, shaking hands with the students and talking to them. He looked about as sincere as a used-car salesman.