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| Young female hunger striker holding out near the Square |
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Slowly
we made our way through the crowds toward Tiananmen Square. I was
surrounded by Chinese of every age. Entire families had decided to
spend their Sunday outing in Tiananmen. All along the route there were
students speaking to attentive audiences over loudspeakers. One
demonstrator spoke with particular intensity, and the crowd responded
with equally enthusiastic fervor. Just before the square I saw evidence
of the hunger strike for the first time time—pup tents set up on the
sidewalk bordering the Avenue of Eternal Peace. I poked my head inside
one of them and saw a young woman, no older than her late teens, lying
motionless and barely conscious, faint and weakened from lack of
nourishment. I had thought that the hunger strike was over by that
time, but apparently there was still a small group of students holding
out.
Finally
we arrived at the opening to the square. I wasn’t quite prepared for
the spectacle before me. Tiananmen is the largest public square I’d
ever seen, easily the size of 10 Times Squares. In the middle I noticed
a tall, imposing, granite structure raised atop a series of steps. Mai
told me this was the Monument of the People’s Heroes. The square was
already filled with many tens of thousands of demonstrators, and there
were red, yellow and white banners everywhere, representing all of the
colleges and universities participating in the pro-democracy movement.
I remained at the entrance of Tiananmen for a few minutes, taking it all in.
There
was a succession of parades marching into the square; joyous students
proudly marching under the banners of their schools, surrounded by
Beijing’s citizens cheering them on. One demonstrator carried a picture
of Li Peng wearing a necklace of skeletons and surrounded by tanks.
“Down
with Corruption” read a banner being carried right past me, and the
people applauded enthusiastically. The crowd clapped as the students
marched by chanting, “If we don’t achieve our purpose, we’re not
leaving!”, “Long live understanding”, “Patriotism is no crime” and
“Down with Fascism!”
Everyone
seemed to be waving the V-for-victory peace sign, so for a moment I had
the distinct impression I was at an antiwar demonstration in the
States. “Rulers of the East, wake up! We’re not afraid of anything!”
Throngs of curious but supportive onlookers on bicycles rode past the
square’s entrance as a student propaganda van drove by with the
Internationale, the communist anthem, blaring from the loudspeakers. A
student carried a sign reading “I’ll sacrifice myself to call up the
soul of the nation.”
Thousands
of people were in the street approaching the square’s entrance.
Speakers were reading declarations to large crowds, and hundreds of
contingents of student marchers kept filing into Tiananmen from all
directions, to nonstop cheers and applause.
As
soon as I set foot in Tiananmen Square I again heard the unmistakeable
strains of “The Internationale” coming from loudspeakers set up on
poles throughout the square. The V-for-Victory sign was omnipresent—on
buttons, shirts and banners.
The
Internationale stopped me in my tracks; it seemed the only proper thing
for a good communist to do. I guess I wasn’t prepared to hear the
communist anthem so quickly, but it was a rather moving moment. Somehow
the students and citizens massing in the square didn’t seem like
counterrevolutionaries with that kind of background music accompanying
them.
I stopped and a small group of demonstrators surrounded me with intense curiosity. One young man stepped forward.
“Where you from?” he asked.
“San Francisco, United States,” I replied.
“Aah,
San Francisco,” he repeated. Then he handed me a small notebook and
pen, motioning for me to sign it. When I obliged him with a smile,
another youthful protester gave me his pad and pen. We must have been
some sight—an American in the middle of Tiananmen Square besieged by
friendly student demonstrators asking for his autograph. I had come
half way around the world to witness history being made in China and
the students were treating me as the celebrity. If they didn’t have
pads or paper, they asked me to sign right on their jackets. Students
continued to ask where I was from; sometimes I said San Francisco,
other times the answer was New York. Most seemed familiar with those
two cities, but to several both were mysteries.
“I’m
a journalist from the United States, and I support your struggle for
democracy and freedom. I’m here to report back to the people in the
United States the truth about your movement,” I explained, knowing I
was understood by only some of those surrounding me.
I
was overwhelmed by the warm smiles, embraces and pats on my back. To
the students I was the celebrity—an American who had made his way to
the square was special in their eyes, especially an American
journalist, as my tape recorder gave me away. Indeed, a journalist in
the square was a VIP to the pro-democracy Chinese students, for here
was a chance to break through the lies of the government and tell their
story directly to the world.
Shaking
my head and smiling, I signed a few more autographs, and in the
background a war of the loudspeakers was taking place—students
broadcasting over the speakers in the square were competing with the
government spokesperson’s voice emanating from the speakers across the
way near Chairman Mao’s portrait by the Forbidden City.
Finally,
the crowd around me broke up and I moved on. But the stares from
bewildered Chinese continued to follow me. That first day it seemed
everyone in China was staring at me, but not in a hostile manner. The
looks on their faces were of curiosity and wonder.
Mai,
Chiang and I made our way through the masses of students and legions of
tents to the Monument of the People’s Heroes in the middle of Tiananmen
Square. Hundreds of red and yellow banners surrounded the monument and
tents, and speeches were constantly broadcast from the loudspeakers.
Mounted on top of the lightpoles was a revealing sight—video cameras,
apparently put there by the government to spy on demonstrators, had
been rendered dysfunctional and covered up with rags by the students.
It
was a hot, sweltering day and as we waded through the dense crowd I
realized that the sanitation facilities were inadequate for the task at
hand. Tight security surrounded the tents nearest the Monument; here
was the command center of the student leaders, for inside these tents
were fax and linotype machines, broadcast equipment and medical
supplies. The speeches heard throughout Tiananmen were coming from one
tent which served as a makeshift public address system. I climbed to
the top tier of the Monument and looked out over the crowd of at least
100,000. The peace sign was everywhere and with the Internationale
playing in the background, the atmosphere was a poignant combination of
Woodstock and the anti-Vietnam War demonstrations of the late 1960s and
early 1970s. The chanting and sloganeering that had accompanied the
demonstrators marching into Tiananmen had been replaced by a more
somber, silent mood.
But
all was not quiet, for the War of the Loudspeakers was escalating in
Tiananmen Square. There were actually two wars going on: the major one
between the government’s broadcasts from the Forbidden City and the
student speeches in the square, and a friendlier competition among
various Tiananmen speakers. Mai told me that the government
spokesperson was imploring the students to leave the square, that the
turmoil must end and the students must go back to school, be loyal and
build the nation. She said that the student speakers were calling for
more democracy and freedom, with one speaker saying something about the
legalization of multiparties in China. I asked Mai if she knew of any
discussion among the student leaders as to whether they would continue
the protests in the square. She said that the day before a smaller
group of students had proposed staging a final rally in Tiananmen on
Tuesday before returning to their schools.
We
walked to the east side of the square, the side that bordered the
Revolutionary Museum of History. I was causing quite a stir, partly
because I was a Westerner and partly due to my tape recorder. Before
long, we had attracted the attention of Wan, a prominent student leader
from a university in Inner Mongolia. He agreed to an interview, and
with his small entourage we found a suitable location for a talk—under
the cover of a leafy tree between the square and the Museum.
Wan
was a portly, serious yet pleasant young man who moved as if he carried
a heavy weight on his shoulders. His interest in talking with an
American journalist was tempered by a distinct caution, for there were
undercover agents lurking about, and trust was not in large supply in
the square. Surrounded by his friends and other students, Wan joined
Mai and I under the tree. He crossed his legs yoga style, and Mai said
she was ready to translate, and I turned on the tape recorder.
“When did you first arrive at Tiananmen Square, and what are your immediate plans?” I asked Wan.
“We
arrived on May 16th, and we are now in the process of considering
leaving the square, because there is a certain necessity for leaving.
But it’s also imperative that we remain, so the student leaders are in
the process of determining what would be the best thing to do.”
“Have you heard anything in terms of what the government is planning to do?”
Wan
replied, “Ever since the last dialogue was cut off, the methods of
communicating or having any dialogue with the government are extremely
few.”
“That’s as far as direct dialogue, but have you heard any reports, rumors, etc?” I queried.
“Basically,
no communication is going on whatsoever, not only at the highest
levels, but even the levels below. There’s really no access to what’s
going on for the students or for the press,” said Wan. He spoke with a
quiet, firm determination, and he appeared to command the respect of
the other students.
I then said to him, “It seems the danger to the
students is very low at this point, in terms of staying here in
Tiananmen Square. Is that what the students feel, or do they believe
they’re in a lot of danger?”
Wan
answered, “This is a patriotic, democratic movement, and if the
government would use force against the patriotic, democratic movement,
it would be just too disappointing and very unwise.”
I
asked him, “Have you heard anything about the formation of an
independent labor union federation, and what are the prospects for
forging a worker-student alliance to move the pro-democracy movement
forward?”
Wan
replied, “This student movement has inspired and moved all the people
at all levels of society, so for the workers to be involved is
absolutely imperative. But it’s not very well organized at this point;
some groups that are organizing are not really for the benefit of the
people.”
I
wasn’t completely satisfied with this answer. I was looking for some
concrete information about the Beijing Workers Autonomous Federation
which was reported to have set up a tent on the square the week before.
I pressed Wan further on this.
“But
have you heard about the Beijing Workers Autonomous Federation? It was
reported about in the Western press, in the United States.”
Wan
responded, “The workers have very good intentions and they are very
supportive of the students and the needs of the people and they’ve come
together and organized.”
At
that point Mai interjected. She spoke to Wan for a minute, then turned
to me and said: “I tried to give him the example of Solidarity in
Poland, but he thinks they have something different.”
It
was clear that was all Wan wished to say on the subject, or all that he
knew on the matter of the workers federation. It was a reasonable
assumption that no specific ties has yet been established between the
students and the Beijing Workers Autonomous Federation, but it also
seemed true that Wan was at least aware of its existence. I tried a
different line of questioning.
“Do you know what time the student meeting is going to be?”
Wan
replied, “Where and when it is going to take place I don’t know, but
there definitely needs to be a meeting and they all need to
participate. They have to get together themselves and decide what the
next step is going to be."
I
continued: “Okay, but obviously they have to decide soon. What about
yesterday’s report that the students were going to leave the square by
Tuesday? Is that still operative?”
“As
far as I know I think it’s a rumor, at least my organization has not
made such a decision, and I don’t think the Beijing students or any of
the other student organizations have made such a decision either. I
want to emphasize that Wang Dan and Wuer Xa’xi, two of the central
student leaders, cannot necessarily represent all the desires of the
students.”
This
was my first awareness of divisions in the student camp. I took Wan’s
comment to mean that Wang and Wuer favored withdrawing from the square,
while many students wanted to continue the occupation. I asked him how
many students were in Tiananmen Square.
“We
represent 317 universities,” he began. “It’s hard to say how many
people because people are coming and going all the time. I think at the
most, 200,000. There is a need for leaving. If you look at the purpose
of this there are two: 1) arouse the people; and 2) push the government
to make decisions beneficial to the people. That’s our highest hope and
most altruistic hope, most sincere. The first we’ve already
accomplished. The second we’ve lost.”
Sensing
his disappointment over this failure to achieve the second objective, I
said to Wan, “You have not only aroused the people in China but people
all over the world as well.”
Wan smiled and said he was proud of the Chinese people for that. “We know it will
take a long time to achieve democracy. To achieve full democracy is not
possible out of one or two movements. It will take a long time.”
In
the background, the government spokesperson droned from the Heavenly
Gate loudspeakers. But the people weren’t listening to that speaker; it
was the students’ voices who Beijing’s citizens were listening to now.
Though
we had tried to conduct the interview in an inconspicuous manner by
choosing the cover provided by the thick-leaved tree, a curious crowd
was gethering around us, straining for a view.
I
continued: “Wan, the U.S. government and the Western press are
distorting the pro-democracy movement for their own reasons. They are
presenting this movement as proof that communism has failed. But I get
the impression so far from talking to people and hearing the
Internationale that the Chinese people do not want to overthrow
communism but they want to make it better. Is that true?”
“Communism is centered in the Western world,” answered the student leader.
“As
the students grow up we learn that Marxism is a good dream to struggle
for, a noble ideal. We should struggle for it. The main goal of the
students’ movement is to arouse the patriotic passion of the people.”
“But what were the short-term goals of the students?” I asked.
“More democracy,” he replied.
But concretely, what actions by the government would satisfy the students?” I pressed.
“As much as possible. The aim is to get closer to democracy,” Wan said.
I was getting frustrated with this line of question and answering. “What does democracy mean to you?” I asked him.
“Freedom of the press, speech, assembly and participation in government,” he answered quickly.
“What do you know about Revolutionary Cuba?”
“Very little,” Wan responded.
I
told him the Cubans had the right to recall any government official at
any time and elect someone else in his place. Did the Chinese enjoy
that same right?
“No,
no, that’s what we are struggling for!” laughed Wan. He motioned to his
friends that the interview was over. I thanked him for taking time to
talk with me and wished him and the pro-democracy movement success.
Then Wan and his entourage were gone, and my friends and I returned to
Tiananmen.
There
must have been 125-150,000 people in and around the square, a large
turnout, but not as massive as the million-strong demonstrations
earlier in May. The workers in the city still supported the students
and their demands for democracy, but there was a sense that the
movement, which had been going on for six weeks, was now ebbing. Mai
informed me that the Communist Party was putting intense pressure on
the workers not to join the demonstrations in Tiananmen Square or they
would risk losing their bonuses or even their jobs.
It
was late afternoon but the Beiing sun was still unbearably hot, and as
we walked back through the square the mounting piles of garbage were
hard to ignore. But the speeches could still be heard from the
loudspeakers, and there were still many demonstrators milling about the
square. We reached the Avenue of Eternal Peace and walked down a steep
set of stairs which led to a subway-like underpass that was filled with
an eclectic mix of demonstrators, street people camping out, and
stragglers of all kinds. The scene reminded me of similar images from
New York and San Francisco. Beijing in 1989 was a teeming Asian
metropolis rife with contradictions—a hybrid of new and old, socialist
and capitalist, East and West. In terms of social and economic
development, the city appeared to be halfway between New York and Hanoi.
But
the biggest contradiction was the martial law that wasn’t. That is,
everyone knew the army was right outside Beijing’s limits, but there
was not a single visible sign of governmental authority, except for the
traffic police at the major intersections. The people were running the
city, the students occupied the square, and everything seemed to be
running just fine. For a city rife with protests, a strange calm
permeated Beijing.
Before
returning to the Minzu that evening, I decided “when in Beijing, do
what the Chinese do”: ride a bicycle. I found a rental place further
down Changan Avenue not far from the Beijing Hotel. You haven’t truly
ridden a bike until you’ve done so alongside a few hundred thousand
people. Changan is a wide avenue with bicycle lanes on both sides, and
the competition for space can sometimes be very intense. When I was
able to divert my attention from the road in front of me, I could see
some of Beijing’s contradictions. There were tall, modern skyscrapers
and hotels next to old, decaying buildings; there were new housing
projects for workers and poor, dilapidated houses belonging to the part
of the city known as “Old Beijing.”
Back
in my room Sunday evening, I thought about my first day in Tiananmen
Square. My conversation with Wan had left me somewhat frustrated. It
was increasingly clear that the students were on a collision course
with the government, like a game of “chicken” was occurring in Beijing,
with only one side holding lethal weapons. I started to come to grips
with the fact that for all of the spontaneous support for the students
being shown by the working people, this movement was essentially
politically leaderless. The students were serving as the moral
conscience of China, but they were making no pretenses that they had
all the answers. The students possessed no blueprint for a new order;
they were not raising the question of who should run China.
Wan
had said that the two main goals of the students were to arouse the
Chinese people and force the government to change its policies. He
conceded that the latter objective had failed, and in the face of the
government’s increasingly ominous warnings to clear the square and end
the turmoil and threats to socialism, he seemed to favor continuing the
occupation of Tiananmen, because it would be too “unwise and
disappointing for the government to attack this patriotic movement.”
To
a foreigner who had only just arrived, this seemed rather naive, as it
also apparently did to some of the student leaders who were arguing to
leave the square. I got the sense from my conversation with Wan that
the two sides were growing further apart with no chance of a dialogue.
The army was outside the city, Zhao was nowhere in sight and rumored to
be under house arrest, Communist Party conservatives were warning of a
plot aimed at toppling Deng, and Deng and Li Peng appeared to be
consolidating their power.
A
radical faction of the students was also hardening its position,
defiantly vowing to remain in the square. More significantly, there
were calls in Tiananmen that day for Li Peng’s resignation, along with
a poster depicting Li with skeletons draped around his neck. Perhaps
some of the students were still buoyed from the previous week’s
victory—when Beijing’s masses blocked the army from reaching the
square. Maybe others still had faith in Wan Li being able to convene an
emergency session of the National People’s Congress.
I
thought about some of the slogans and chants Mai had translated and
what they showed concerning the range of opinions in the pro-democracy
movement: “Patriotism is no crime,” “Long live understanding,” and
“Down with Fascism.” While some may have been more militant than
others, the overall mood of the demonstrators was peaceful and
moderate. The people were demanding radical reforms and more democracy,
but it was clearly within the framework of the existing system. I
didn’t see or hear anyone calling for the overthrow of socialism or the
Communist Party.
I
realized from that first day that the language barrier was going to be
a problem While Mai and Chiang had been a big help in translating some
of the banners and chants and hooking me up with Wan, their assignment
to assist me was over. Although the V for Victory sign was universal
and I had seen a banner reading “We Shall Overcome” in English, there
was a great deal going on that I could infer only from mood and spirit.
I had the feeling that the pro-democracy campaign needed a spark to
counter the government’s strategy of wearing the students down and
dividing them from Beijing’s working people. Questions were nagging me: Where was the movement going? And where was the Beijing Autonomous
Workers Federation (BAWF)?
I
was disappointed that I had not come across any signs of BAWF. I knew
they were somewhere in Tiananmen, but I had made no progress that day
in locating them, and Wan wasn’t able or willing to contribute any
concrete information about the independent union.
Before
retiring Sunday evening I called my friend in Beijing and told him
about the day’s events. He informed me that we had some business to
attend to during the day on Monday, but on tap for the evening was
dinner with Professor Bai from Beijing University, whose command of
English was excellent. Maybe Professor Bai would know more about BAWF.
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