by Gay Talese
Columns of Chinese infantry and many tanks invaded the center of Beijing on Sunday, June 4, 1989, having been ordered to do so by a government no longer willing to be reticent. As Harrison Salisbury would report in his book published in 1992, The New Emperors: China in the Era of Mao and Deng, the government had become convinced that “evil elements” had penetrated the ranks of the students, and thus an assault was essential. “Neither then nor later were the evil elements identified,” Salisbury wrote, adding, “There were vague references to foreign agents—presumably the CIA, Taiwan, and Hong Kong. In fact, such agents were spotted in the square, but no evidence indicated they played any role except possibly as a conduit for funds from Hong Kong.” Prior to the PLA offensive, the troops had received instructions to keep signs of “violence and bloodshed away from the view of witnesses and cameras,” Salisbury wrote, but the PLA’s aggressions were nevertheless recorded by the media even though “two CBS men lost their cameras and were beaten and held overnight in the Forbidden City,” and reporters from Taiwan and Hong Kong were also arrested and detained for several hours. “The government claimed no one had been killed in the square,” Salisbury continued, but “the volume of gunfire in and around the square made this ridiculous.… Best guess: between 1,000 and 2,000 killed in Beijing, perhaps 300 in and around the square.”
From then, Tiananmen Square would be best known in the Western press, and in the minds of most Americans, as the place where the reactionary forces of China had initiated mass murders of unarmed students. Tiananmen thus became a single word signifying oppression—a catchword, a cause word that critics of China would thereafter use to smear and pockmark the square that Mao had earlier designed to memorialize his Long March. “Tiananmen entered our vocabulary as shorthand for the grotesque crushing of dissent,” said an editorial in the Far Eastern Economic Review, based in Hong Kong.
Some journalists and commentators, however, would in time amend their findings, maintaining that the square itself had not been part of the killing field. “As far as can be determined from the available evidence, no one died that night in Tiananmen Square,” wrote Jay Mathews, a Washington Post reporter who was in Beijing on June 4 and who in 1998 would publish in the Columbia journalism Review a critical essay about the Tiananmen coverage. “A few people may have been killed by random shooting on streets near the square,” Mathews continued in his critique, entitled “The Myth of Tiananmen,” “but all verified eyewitness accounts say that the students who remained in the square when troops arrived were allowed to leave peacefully. Hundreds of people, most of them workers and passersby, did die that night, but in a different place and under different circumstances,” Mathews wrote, adding that “the resilient tale of an early morning Tiananmen massacre stems from several false eyewitness accounts in the confused hours and days after the crackdown.” Among the unreliable sources cited by Mathews was a student leader named Wu’er Kaixi, “who said he had seen 200 students cut down by gunfire, but it was later proven that [Wu’er Kaixi had] left the square hours before the events he described allegedly occurred.”
Wu’er Kaixi, Chai Ling, her husband, and several other student leaders not only eluded incarceration but managed to get out of the country.
“The circumstances of Chai’s escape from China are mysterious,” Ian Buruma’s 1999 piece in The New Yorker reported.
She has never talked about what happened, perhaps to protect those who helped her, but there are stories about how she got out concealed in a wooden crate. All most people know is that she suddenly emerged in Hong Kong in April of 1990. From there she went to Paris, and then to the United States. While she was on the run in China, supporters of the democracy movement had her nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize. Earlier this year [1999] I met Chai at an outdoor café in Cambridge, Massachusetts, where she has been living since 1996, when she enrolled at the Harvard Business School.
Buruma’s article mentioned that Chai Ling had divorced her Chinese husband and was planning to marry a senior partner in a global strategy consultancy firm based in Boston. Buruma also wrote that Chai Ling was employed as the CEO of an Internet company backed by executives from Reebok and Microsoft.
As I lingered along the edge of Tiananmen Square observing the crowds on this peaceful autumn afternoon in 1999, I wondered if the so-called Tiananmen Massacre (this is how most of the Western press would persistently refer to what had happened in Beijing on Sunday, June 4) was comparable to the Bloody Sunday that I had witnessed along the highway in Selma, Alabama, back on March 7, 1965. Footage shot that day would add Selma’s name to the world’s gazetteer of places with horrible images, footage linking it in my mind with the square in Beijing that I was now seeing for the first time but seeing through the reflected memory of having seen it repeatedly in recent years on American news broadcasts and documentaries. My sense of contemporary history had been influenced by the airing of what television programmers had chosen to show because it had visual appeal—that is, the image of the diminutive Chai Ling shouting and sobbing in front of thousands of her followers in an attempt to inspire them, the image of an unidentified young man stepping in front of a moving tank on Chang’an Boulevard and causing it to stop, the image of young people wearing headbands being chased through the streets by helmeted PLA soldiers firing tracer bullets in the sky while other soldiers demolished the “Goddess of Democracy” statue in Tiananmen Square.
“Reporters created a kind of epic story that showed good pitted against evil, young against old, freedom against totalitarianism,” said Richard Gordon, codirector of the 1995 documentary called The Gate of Heavenly Peace. He could have been talking about Selma’s Bloody Sunday. No one died in Selma on that day, but the scenes captured by the television cameras were evocative, showing as they did the onrushing lawmen wearing gas masks and brandishing their weapons within clouds of smoke above the heads of black demonstrators lying on the ground. In covering the Beijing protest movement of 1989, the press “found a simplified narrative irresistible,” wrote Carolyn Wakeman, a journalism professor and author, in her essay entitled “Beyond the Square,” published in 1999 in the Media Studies Journal. Wakeman wrote that the “compelling footage” of the turmoil in Beijing “appealed to broad media audiences never before interested in China,” and at the same time it prompted in other Americans deep-seated conflicts about the Chinese people. “For more than a century Americans have oscillated between seeing the Chinese as noble peasants and Oriental demons,” Wakeman wrote. “Missionaries, businessmen, the military, and journalists have each contributed different elements to the picture of China that has emerged in the United States.”
Among the misleading impressions conveyed by the news coverage of the Beijing story, said Jay Mathews in the Columbia Journalism Review, was the perception that the PLA soldiers had singled out the students for punishment, when in fact their main targets were the rebellious masses of workers who had allied themselves with the students. Unhappy with their uncertain status in an increasingly changing China, the workers fused their frustrations with those of the students, and, prior to the crackdown, the number of protesting workers had far exceeded the student representation. The government saw its stability threatened more by the workers than by the relatively privileged student element. And as Jay Mathews pointed out in his critique, it was predominantly the names of workers and innocent bystanders that filled the death lists, while it was also true that “a few soldiers were beaten or burned to death by angry workers.”
Still, it was the alleged victimization of the students that had caught the fancy of the media, Mathews emphasized, and “over the last decade, many American reporters and editors have accepted a mythical version of that warm, bloody night.” He mentioned that when President Bill Clinton visited China during the summer of 1998 and was welcomed in Tiananmen Square, the press coverage of Clinton’s trip continued to remind readers that the square was once “the site of the student slaughter” (New York Post); was “where the pro-democracy d
emonstrators were gunned down” (USA Today); and was “where Chinese students died” (Baltimore Sun). The Wall Street Journal, in recalling the “Tiananmen Square Massacre,” described it as the place where “hundreds or more” demonstrators had been killed by the invading troops.
“Given enough time, such rumors can grow ever larger and more distorted,” Mathews wrote. “When a journalist as careful and well-informed as Tim Russert, NBC’s Washington bureau chief, can fall prey to the most feverish versions of the fable, the sad consequences of reportorial laziness become clear. On May 31 [1998] on Meet the Press, Russert referred to ‘tens of thousands’ of deaths in Tiananmen Square.”
I stood for about twenty minutes along the northern edge of Tiananmen Square, seeing it as a vast photo op, a backdrop for opportunism, a space open to exploitation by those with a vested interest in doing so. It was where people came to make news. In a way, it was what the Golden Gate Bridge represented to suicidal publicity seekers. It was where they went to make a big splash, and, if they survived, they made headlines. Chai Ling had challenged the Communist regime in Tiananmen Square, had survived, and had ended up going to Harvard and becoming a CEO.
I felt sure that members of the outlawed Falun Gong would soon be making an appearance here, following in the footsteps of the long-departed students. Without casting doubts on the spiritual sincerity of the Falun Gong’s leaders, I gathered that they were quite adept in reaching out to the media. During the first week after my arrival the leaders had held clandestine press conferences with Western journalists and had managed to get lots of favorable publicity—stories that portrayed the Falun Gong as an oppressed group whose civil liberties were being violated merely because its members wished to meditate and perform ritualistic exercises in Tiananmen and other public places. Although the government had begun arresting Falun Gong members months before I arrived in China, the organization remained boldly confrontational and newsworthy, being the subject of such headlines and stories as appeared in the International Herald Tribune:
Falun Gong
Steps Up Resistance Campaign;
New Arrests in Tiananmen Square Fail to
Break Sect’s Determination
… over the past few weeks, thousands of adherents of a popular Buddhist-like sect have poured into Beijing to undertake a quiet and surreal challenge to the government’s three-month-long crackdown on their group, called Falun Gong. In five consecutive days of silent protests on Tiananmen Square … Falun Gong followers have expressed their opposition—peacefully but stubbornly—to the Communist Party’s decision to ban their group on July 22.…
I waited for another ten minutes, idly watching as people continued to wander around the square or sit on the stone steps of the Great Hall, or fly kites while standing in front of Mao’s mausoleum—but still no sign of the Falun Gong. As a reporter, I had hoped to see in person what I had been reading about. But now I decided that it was probably better that I return to my hotel. I was in town on a tourist visa. My story was the soccer lady. So I turned away from the square and retraced my route along Chang’an Boulevard, passing once more the little boy with the shoe-shine rag, and the hustlers of black-market films and CDs, and the women whispering “massagey-massagey,” and the yellow-heimeted workers at the construction site of the Oriental Plaza’s chrome blue glass office buildings and convention center.
When I was within a few blocks of my hotel, I turned to the left and entered “Silk Alley,” a crowded and noisy market street that was lined with hundreds of booths selling a great variety of famous-brand merchandise at low prices that could be negotiated downward—Gucci shoes listed at thirty dollars a pair, a Louis Vuitton handbag for twenty-five dollars, a Cartier watch for twenty dollars, a pair of Nike sneakers for fifteen dollars, North Face parkas for ten dollars, a Ralph Lauren sweatshirt for five dollars. There were also antiques, used household goods, curios, copies of Mao’s Little Red Book, baseball caps representing every team in the major leagues, and thousands of T-shirts emblazoned with the names of recognizable people and places, and even T-shirts depicting Tiananmen Square, with its name printed in English. I bought two of them for a dollar, returned to the hotel, and mailed them to my daughters in New York.
34
AFTER I HAD BEEN IN BEIJING FOR A LITTLE MORE THAN A WEEK, I received word from Patrick Wang’s office at Nike that on the following day, if I would be standing in front of my hotel at 2:00 p.m., I would be met by representatives of the soccer association; and so I was.
Two Asian men, one a slender and sharp-featured individual in his mid-thirties wearing a black turtleneck polo shirt and a navy blazer, the other a stockily built younger fellow wearing a colorfully striped sports shirt and an identical blazer, walked directly toward me as if they knew who I was. After a quick nod and a handshake, they presented me with their business cards, extending them in an almost ceremonial manner with both hands. As they introduced themselves—the older one was Liu Dian Qiu, the younger Li Duan—I regretted that I did not have a card to give them. I had never had business cards. How should I describe my business?
I followed the men to a black sedan that was parked at the curb, its doors held open by one of the hotel’s red-uniformed doormen. At the direction of Liu Dian Qiu, I sat in the back next to Li Duan while Liu slipped into the driver’s seat. In the passenger seat was an attractive almond-eyed woman wearing a beige silk blouse and a gray jacket. She turned to smile while handing me her card. Her name was Chen Jun. She was with the soccer association’s advertising department. Like the other business cards, hers was printed in English on one side and had Chinese characters on the other, and in the left-hand corner was a tiny image of the Forbidden City resting on a soccer ball.
As we drove along Chang’an Boulevard, approaching the real Forbidden City, I sat trying to communicate with Li Duan in English. He spoke haltingly, but I was grateful for his efforts. Up front, Chen Jun and Liu Dian Qiu—his card identified him as the soccer association’s “vice general manager”—were speaking to each other in what I assumed was Mandarin. They never once tried to explain anything to me, and this would be true throughout our time together for the rest of the day. Either they could not speak English or chose not to in my presence. In either case, I decided I should not have been surprised; except for those Chinese who had gone to school or resided in places where English was the primary language, such as Nike’s Patrick Wang, or who were specially trained as translators and interpreters within the upper echelons of international political and business affairs, it was unreasonable of me to expect to meet English-speaking Chinese while traveling here under these circumstances. Even at the China World Hotel, where many Americans were registered, there were relatively few employees who were fluent in English, except for the concierge and his colleagues.
When our vehicle paused for a red light at the Forbidden City intersection, I briefly turned away from my backseat companion to steal a glance through the side window at Tiananmen Square. I could see a few kites flying high over the parade grounds, and hundreds of pedestrians moving around unhurriedly, and only two police officers on guard. I guessed that the Falun Gong demonstrators were taking the day off.
Our motor ride continued for more than an hour without us arriving at our destination. After we had reached the end of Chang’an Boulevard, we had turned right and circled around a ramp onto a modern highway that took us past warehouses and coal yards and soot-smeared apartment buildings, most of which were painted pink or tan and had laundry hanging within their glass-enclosed balconies.
As we proceeded, I learned what I could from Li Duan about the women’s soccer team. I could not figure out from his business card what exactly he did for the soccer association—his vaguely defined job title was “Player Transfer”—but he did say that he was an ex-athlete, one who had played soccer for a few seasons within the men’s municipal league, and that he currently served as an administrative assistant with varied chores to perform, including that of being my interpret
er, although he apologized for not being fully up to the task. As for the Chinese women’s national team, Li Duan suggested that it was probably superior to the men’s national team, the latter being lazy and lax. I told him that I had recently read a similar opinion expressed in the sports section of the China Daily; in fact, I had seen a cartoon there showing a male soccer player driving a sports car with his nose in the air and with one of his arms around the shoulders of a frizzy-haired woman (she was smoking a cigarette and clasping a bundle of cash), and in his other hand he gripped an XO-labeled bottle of cognac. Standing nearby, primly posed on a pedestal while embracing a large trophy, was a woman in a soccer uniform. Above the cartoon was the headline CONGRATULATIONS TO OUR MEN’S SOCCER ALSO-RANS. The men’s team of 1999 had done poorly in international competition and had failed to qualify for the 2000 Olympics. The women’s team, however, even before it had walked onto the field in California to play the Americans, had received a phone call from the Beijing office of President Jiang Zemin saying that the players would be welcomed home as heroines no matter what happened in the World Cup finale.
Earlier at my hotel, I had written out a list of questions in preparation for my interview with Liu Ying, and now in the car I handed the list to Li Duan, hoping that he would be able to understand my English well enough to translate it accurately into Chinese and communicate it to the soccer lady. I also gave him a photocopy of a New York Times article by George Vecsey that I thought would be appreciated by Liu Ying and her teammates. Vecsey’s piece, published some weeks after Liu Ying’s failed kick had resulted in the American team’s triumph, questioned the ethics and tactics used by the American goalkeeper Briana Scurry when she had blocked Liu Ying’s shot in the final minutes at the Rose Bowl.
WHEN IS IT GAMESMANSHIP, AND WHEN IS IT CHEATING? asked the Times headline, and in the article’s opening paragraphs, George Vecsey explained: