Cosmos Left

A bad omen: 3 bicyclists killed in "accident"

I got an early start in order to read the newspaper accounts of the rapidly escalating events. This was necessary because today was the day I was going to the Great Wall with Mr. Xing from the TV Ministry. Though I truly wanted to visit the famous Chinese tourist attraction while in Beijing, I was not thrilled at the prospect of leaving the capital on this particular day, when things seemed to be headed for a showdown. But I had no choice in the matter; my associate told me that Mr. Xing had been planning this outing since Wednesday, and it is a commitment that must be fulfilled. The thought crossed my mind that Mr. Xing, as a representative of the Chinese government, had known by Wednesday that Saturday was the day of the army deployment into the square, and he had decided to get me out of the city and away from trouble.

It appeared that the Hong Kong Standard was doing its best to give credence to the government?s offensive against the protesters. An article entitled ?Elitism and Privilege back in Tiananmen? reported that the top echelon of the student leadership on the square was racked with corruption. It said that the central leaders were helping themselves to the millions of donated dollars arriving from Hong Kong and elsewhere, living like royalty, checking into luxurious hotels, and fancying themselves as heroes.

Students were complaining that their leaders were isolating themselves and had constructed their own version of a privileged bureaucracy. Rank and file students were not able to talk directly to the leaders, who had bodyguards to buffer them from the masses. Students from the outer provinces charged that the Beijing students looked down on them and had attempted to exclude them from the central leadership.

?Ordinary students are barred from meeting them or getting close to the Monument of People?s Heroes. Only people having special entry permits issued by the leaders are granted the rights of entry to the monument,? said a student from Beijing Normal University.

A student from Hong Kong charged that resources had been unfairly distributed throughout Tiananmen. ?For example, the student leaders on the square are given the best food and drink. The food and daily necessities distributed to the monitors are also better than those given to the ordinary students. The treatment of Beijing students is superior to those coming from outside Beijing. When you walk into the centre of the square, you will find big slumps of unconsumed packets of drink, bread and biscuits while the students staying at the periphery of the square are starving,? he said.

There were other, less serious charges levied against the student leadership. Certain prominent students had allegedly switched their dirty white shirts for imported Western suits for the press conferences; others were smoking coveted American cigarettes like Marlboro, Kent and Salem instead of China-made cigarettes, and traveling around in taxicabs instead of bicycles.

It?s not that there was no validity to some of these charges, for I had directly experienced the extremely tight, bordering on paranoia security surrounding the Monument of People?s Heroes. Only my connections to Professor Bai and later Wang and Liu enabled me to get as far as I did, but even then it was not without some trouble. And Wang had showed me a photograph of Liu?s martial-arts toting bodyguard from Tiananmen Square. No political leadership is flawless, especially when the ?leaders? are college students. We are all children of our times, and the fact that these students reflected some of the shortcoming of the very governmental leaders they were criticizing is not particularly shocking. But the timing and tone of the Standard article dovetailed all too snugly ugly with the Party?s propaganda offensive against the students, with its critical dissection of the students? behavior the day after troops were jogging into Tiananmen.
Another ominous sign was the report in the Beijing Daily that China?s official trade union federation had asked the government to ban the BAWF. In a ?solemn call? to the government, the All-China Federation of Trade Unions (ACFTU) declared the independent union ?illegal.? The paper said the party leadership in Beijing had branded the new union as counterrevolutionary before arresting three of its leaders earlier in the week. The official union accused BAWF of spreading rumors, inciting the overthrow of the government, making illegal calls for strikes, infiltrating security bodies and trying to divide the working class. An official from the ACFTU condemned BAWF for attempting to be ?completely independent? and called for ?vigorous measures for its immediate ban.?

More conflicting signs. On the one hand, the government bent to public pressure and released the three union militants after workers and students nearly stormed the Ministry of State Security. On the other hand, the Communist Party-dominated ACFTU was openly advocating the banning of BAWF.
At 9 am, Mr. Xing arrived at the Minzu Hotel with the same taxicab driver who had chauffeured us around all week. He announced that we were going to the most recently restored section of the Wall.

?It will take a little longer to get to, perhaps an hour and a half. But it will be worth it. It?s the best part of the Wall.?

Before we left Beijing, Mr. Xing turned to me and said, ?Oh. There?s been an accident in the city. A military jeep ran over some pedestrians. One person was killed. The people are very angry.?

I?ll bet they are, I thought to myself. This was it. The day all hell was going to break loose, and I?m going sightseeing at the Great Wall with Mr. Xing. And we?re taking the long route there. I knew it; Xing had known since Wednesday that Saturday was crackdown day, and whether he did it on his own or on orders from his superiors, he didn?t want me around for the fireworks.

We took a nice, long, leisurely drive of just under two hours to the Great Wall, passing through the rural countryside that surrounds Beijing. The farms we passed were small, inhabited by hard working farmers and their families using simple implements and mules; they didn?t look like the layer of prosperous farmers who had benefited most from Deng?s pro-market policies. They looked more like the poorer farmers who were suffering from the deleterious effects of the high prices they were paying and the low prices they were receiving for their goods.

When we finally arrived at the Wall, Mr. Xing and I took a sky lift up the tree-filled valley to our point of destination. The Great Wall is more like a Great Fort, with an imposing, castle-like appearance. It is an impressive structure, over 3,000 miles long, built to keep out invading enemies by the early dynasties. Mr. Xing was so intent on keeping me away from Beijing as long as possible that he even wanted to take me to unchartered areas. Then, he made me sit through a prolonged lunch hour at the Wall restaurant. On the way out, I was besieged by a multitude of bitterly competitive merchants hawking their souvenirs. There were only a few other tourists that day; I had the feeling that they hadn?t been doing much business since the Tiananmen demonstrations. I broke down and bought a blue Chairman Mao cap with the red star, my Trotskyist heritage notwithstanding.

By the time we got back to Beijing it was nearly 2 pm, and the city was rocking. Changan Avenue was even more crowded than usual, and the destination of the throngs was Tiananmen Square. Mr. Xing did his best to delay me as long as he possibly could; he made an excuse to come up to my room for something. Finally he left, and not a minute too soon. I grabbed my tape recorder, and minutes later I was walking my bike up Changan toward the square. Panic gripped the streets; I knew Mr. Xing had succeeded in keeping me away from some kind of action.
I hadn?t taken three steps toward Tiananmen Square when a gasping man stumbled in my path and said that shots had been fired in Tiananmen about an hour ago.

?Rubber bullets,? he managed. ?Some injuries. They used belts and tear gas.?

Huge crowds seemed to be running in all directions on Changan, bringing chaos everywhere. This was no place for a bicycle, so I ditched it at the nearest bike rack and continued on foot.

Suddenly, I noticed a procession of bicycles clearing a path for a badly injured demonstrator whose face was covered with blood. Then a man staggered up to me and announced he had been knocked to the ground by the police, and he pointed to his scraped knee as evidence.

?The police, the police,? he kept repeating.

I found myself rambling into the tape recorder.

?The signs were coming yesterday. The stepped up warnings from the government to the press, prohibiting them from covering any demonstrations, talking to anybody. The embassy brief, the reports of some presence of military in the square and streets.?

When I came to the first intersection between the Minzu and Tiananmen, I realized the magnitude of what Mr. Xing had prevented me from witnessing. Two municipal buses, each filled with demonstrators, were blocking the intersection, every single window smashed, with broken glass everywhere. Changan and all of the side streets were packed with people and bicycles; the air was filled with tension and angry shouts. It was five o?clock and still boiling hot.
A man in his late thirties came up to me, looking at my tape recorder.

?Are you journalist?? he asked.

?Yes, from the United States. What happened earlier??

?Today Deng sends in army. Troops coming in to clear Tiananmen. But the people met them and fought. One side. Troops coming from west down Changan.?

?Was there resistance from the people?? I asked him.

?Some students and workers resisted,? he replied. ?But not much. But from east, people shouting ?go back, go back,? and the soldiers stopped. Soldiers very young. The people push pushed them, but soldiers don?t fire. The people waved banners and shouted.?

?Was there an accident this morning?? I asked the man, remembering M r. Xing?s story on the way to the Great Wall.

?Yes, yes, in the Muxude district [west of Tiananmen Square], a police jeep carrying soldiers ran into the people. One woman died. Three men were seriously hurt. The government says it was accident, but the people do not believe them. The people are very angry.?

In a few minutes I was in front of the Zhonghanan party compound, scene of the bizarre confrontation that had summed up the relationship of forces in Beijing all week long. Today was no exception. The entire street was filled with over 1000 angry demonstrators, only this time they weren?t squaring off with a half dozen yoga sitting unarmed soldiers. At least 100 armed, helmeted soldiers stood tensely in front of the compound. I was inching my way forward amidst an obstacle course of pedestrians and bicyclists. Someone had taken the banners reading ?Serve the People? out of the mouths of the lions in front of Zhonghanan. One small yellow banner was left on one wall.

Just past the compound, two army trucks had been overturned and thoroughly vandalized. Suddenly I was worried about the fate of the Goddess in the square. I could hear a great deal of yelling coming from Tiananmen?s direction. Had she survived the day?s battles? Was she singing Elton John?s song, ?I?m Still Standing??

As I approached the Great Hall of the People I could see several persons on top of the building looking down at the mobilization. Others were checking things out from inside their offices. There didn?t seem to be an empty space anywhere on Changan Avenue or in the plaza bordering the Great Hall. I passed by two trashed army trucks on Changan. One truck was overturned, the other was upright. The hoods on each truck were ripped open, every window had been smashed and every tire slashed. There were no soldiers in immediate sight, but I had just missed the clash.

I came to a relative clearing, and a young man approached me. He told me about the rubber bullets and belts. I mentioned the bleeding man being carried by the bicyclists.

?On the street. On the back of the stretcher. Yes, I saw him.?

I came upon a commandeered bus at the edge of Changan just before the Great Hall. Demonstrators were packed inside and perched on top, and all the windows had been broken. With the help of two young demonstrators I climbed to the roof of the bus to get a better view of the large mobilization bordering the Great Hall. From that point, I was able to see a large contingent of armed, helmeted soldiers surrounded by the large crowd of demonstrators. There were thousands in the plaza, and hundreds on top and inside of the two buses. Then a procession of marchers under a large red banner passed the bus and filed into the already jammed plaza.

A great roar of approval went up from the wildly applauding crowd. Someone told me that the banner belonged to the Beijing Autonomous Workers Federation. The independent union had gained public support with the arrest and subsequent release of its three members; its standing had clearly been bolstered in the public?s eye. If Deng Xiaoping had not ordered the army to clear out the square when he saw that sign calling for his death, he surely was going to do it now.

The mood was very intense now. Student monitors strained to hold back the angry crowd by locking arms and holding hands; the crowd was clapping and the hemmed in soldiers weren?t looking very pleased. It looked like they could charge any minute. I climbed down from the bus and made my way onto the plaza. People kept coming up to me asking, ?Where are you from? Are you from America? Tell the truth about today.?

One man told me, ?This is the first time the Army has attacked the people in China?s history.?

The tension builds under a blazing hot Beijing sun

A sit-down vigil was taking place in front of a gate that leads into the Great Hall. On the other side of the gate, inside the complex, stood 100 soldiers menacingly brandishing belts in their hands.

One student said, “We are angry that we have to listen to the Voice of America broadcasts in order to receive news about our own country.” She was expressing a fierce nationalism, one that had been tarnished and embarrassed by the fact that its people, faced with lying from its government, were forced to rely on foreign press as a source of information.

Another student walked up and said, “The army was first to hit the people, the first to use violence. They used belts, rubber bullets and tear gas against the students in Tiananmen today. At 2 o’clock in the square, a middle aged woman shouted to the soldiers, ‘Don’t beat the people!’ Then they beat her brutally with a belt.”

He told me the students were yelling, “Down with Fascism!” to the soldiers inside the complex. “You must know that earlier today, the top student leaders were carrying banners into Tiananmen. You know, Wang Dan, Wuer Xaxi. Chai Ling came too, but other students led her away from the trouble.
By now, I was with the demonstrators at the gate leading into the complex. Many were students and workers, but the omnipresent transients are everywhere too. The soldiers were 10 feet away on the other side, still brandishing their belts. My tape recorder’s batteries had gone dead, but it still gave me away as a journalist, which gave me VIP status in the eyes of the protesters. One offered me a jug of water to drink. Under the broiling 5:30 sun, I graciously accepted.

Now THIS looks like a Congress of the People!

One student talked about the necessity for a worker-student alliance. “The independent workers union is important, but the workers were not al lowed to join the new union. If they did, they would be expelled,” he said.

Another student handed me a tear gas canister. “Tell the world what our government has done,” he said. “In the morning, all of the office workers were at their jobs, but now they are getting off work and coming to the demonstrations.”

The soldiers now had daggers to go along with their belts. They stopped their forward motion, only four feet from the gate. They stared at us, and we stared back. Convinced they were about to charge, I braced myself for the assault. But they didn’t attack. Instead, the tense confrontation at the gate slowly, and inexplicably, diffused. Shouts and commotion were coming from a portion of the crowd not far away.

Suddenly another bloodied man was led away from the pushing and shoving. I walked 50 feet further toward the back of the plaza toward an incredible scene—a soldier saluting the crowd and saying, “We are the army of the people and we won’t fight the people.” Everyone around me was rhythmically clapping. The army had told the people they were only there for training. These must have been the soldiers from the 38th Division, an outfit based in the Beijing area, rumored to be a Zhao Zhang stronghold, and thus reluctant to follow Deng and Li’s hardline command.

Someone held up a white flag, but it was difficult to ascertain just who was surrendering to whom. Behind me, the steps leading up the Great Hall of the People were lined with thousands of demonstrators of all ages.

“Now this looks like a Congress of the People!” I remarked to no one in particular. Then, I had to rub my eyes to believe what I was witnessing. A soldier was leading the cheering crowd in the singing of the Internationale! Just 15 minutes earlier and 50 feet away, it looked like a sure bet that the belt-wielding, dagger-possessing soldiers were about to charge the crowd on the other side of the gate. Now, soldiers and demonstrtors were singing the international communist anthem under a white flag. A man told me that he had seen a soldier try to strike a reporter earlier.

The demonstrators applauded a banner showing China covered with blood, and continued to sing the Internationale and wave the V sign. It looked like Woodstock meeting the October Revolution. Then, in all the confusion, the soldiers appeared to be leaving the plaza, to the victorious cheers of the people.

The author's view from atop a commandeered bus during the standoff between demonstrators and the army by the Great Hall of the People, hours before the massacre.

I reached the back of the Great Hall to find the brilliant white lights from the news cameras illuminating a huge crowd surrounding another large contingent of soldiers carrying AK-47s, looking rather nervous about it all. I couldn’t tell if it was fraternization or trouble ahead, though I leaned to the trouble side. Disciplined student monitors barely kept the pushing and shoving demonstrators from swarming the kneeling, sitting soldiers.

I inched my way to the point where I could have reached out and touched a Chinese soldier. Suddenly the crowd broke out in still another rendition of the Internationale, the most spirited one yet. I noticed the soldiers were not singing along this time. An officer stood up, shouting into a bullhorn, motioning the crowd to back up with his hands in the air. The protesters responded with chants and more pushing.

“It looks like a student is talking right now, standing right next to one of the officers; it’s kind of hard to hear his voice. The video cameras are on him now, and the people seem to be increasingly aware that he is speaking. He appears to be urging the crowd to settle down and back off, but the crowd continues chanting.

“We’ve got another liberated bus coming in here, with hundreds of demonstrators inside and atop it, waving the V sign; they seem genuinely pleased with the applause and shouts of approval from the people. The bus’s arrival is turning attention away from the troops on the part of many protesters here. The bus is slowly making its way through the dense crowd. Someone is saying something about tear gas being used earlier. The people inside the bus are all smiling and very happy; on top several demonstrators are armed with bats, poles and sticks. Now they’re letting a film guy climb up the side of the bus. They took his camera for him and are helping him up. Now they’ve given him back his camera and are motioning for him to shoot away. I’m right next to the bus as it inches its way up the curb next to me. The crowd roars as the bu s has made it up on the curb. That burned rubber smell from the flat tires is very strong. Like every bus I’ve seen tonight, all the windows are broken, and this one has two rifles on the roof.”

“The fact that I’m speaking into the tape recorder has apparently attracted a lot of attention from some of the demonstrators on top of the bu s. One of them is motioning for me to climb up and join them, and that’s what I’m going to do.”

The young man who beckoned for me to join them reached down and helped me climb aboard the bus to get a better bird’s eye view of the confrontation. This American with the tape recorder was a VIP to the protesters on the roof; many were students, but some were the rougher, transient types I’d been seeing all week. They all were fascinated with my long hair, and a few of them laughed while gently tugging it.

Meanwhile, just below us, the student monitors were struggling to keep the swarming crowd from crushing the seated soldiers. The demonstrators sang another verse of the Internationale as they were bathed in the camera lights of CNN and ABC. Intense negotiations continued between the students and the officers. Finally, the soldiers got up and began filing out. The people cheered and waved the V sign, almost giddy from their apparent triumph.

The atmosphere was now exuberant. I thought of the Hong Kong Standard article earlier that day, which said the Party was making conciliatory noises about Zhao and HuYaoBang. Maybe the students and the people were too strong, after all.

There were reports that at least one army advance had been repulsed earlier in the day; maybe the movement will pull off another May 23rd and successfully block the army’s advance; maybe Deng and Li will be forced to make co ncessions after all. But for the moment, my attention was focused on the chaos caused by the nonstop wailing sirens of racing ambulances. I climbed down from the bus and headed straight for the Goddess. One of the students from the bus accompanied me for the short walk there. He told me that the announcement coming from the loudspeakers on top of the Great Hall of the People was a call to all the government workers not to leave their posts, and to be at work on Monday morning, because this so-called unrest needed to be crushed.

Should we stay or should we go?

An important meeting was taking place to the left of the Goddess of Democracy and Freedom. My friend informed me that the contingent of small tents encircling the statue had been donated by the people of Hong Kong. A basket of flowers was at the feet of the Goddess, and she was surrounded by dozens of flags from all the universities and colleges participating in the pro-democracy movement. An assembly of close to 1000 listened intently to the emotional tone of the speakers.

“What is this speaker saying?” I asked the student.

“All the efforts are for one thing—democracy.”
An enthusiastic round of applause followed the last speaker. It was now ten thirty, and I found myself outside a group of tents under a large banner with red characters on it, at the entrance of Tiananmen near the Avenue of Eternal Peace.

“Can you tell me what the banner says?” I inquired of my student friend.
“Yes, it is the tent of the Beijing Autonomous Workers Federation. It says the red flag cannot go down. And justice will win the victory. This movement is a movement for democracy, not just the student movement.”

“For all the people,” I said to him.

“Yeah, yeah. In fact, it’s a democratic revolution. Our aim is not just to oppose corruption, not just to put down Li Peng’s government, not just to put down conservatives, but to eliminate society’s problems, all these problems. Down with dictatorship.”

The BAWF had its own mini tent city; people were going in and out of several tents under its banner. Everyone seemed somber but determined. A man nearby held some kind of newspaper in his hands.

“Was this just printed?” Is this a new declaration?” I asked him.

The student looked at it and replied, “This one is . . .I think it is a newspaper from before. No date.”

I turned my tape recorder on:

“I’m standing outside the tent which is apparently the headquarters of the Autonomous Workers union. The workers have hung various artifacts from today’s battles up on the post. There’s an army boot, some spears, belts and army license plates.

“A young man is huddled around a map showing the army locations around the city. There appears to be a high level conference going on among three activists here.

“Quite a few people are milling around Changan Avenue near the union headquarters, as the unions’s flag with its large characters is mounted at the entrance of Tiananmen Square, facing the Heavenly Gate across the way. The union’s tents are right inbetween the two main lightposts.”

I asked a young man about one of the other men involved in the conference occuring around the map of troop locations. He wore a white cloth headband with red and black characters on it.

“Nanging University,” he replied.

“And he is one of the commanders?”

“Yes.” The young man talked for a minute with the headband-wearing man, then returned.

“I have information from the Chinese army, they are coming to square at one.” [one a.m.]

“What are the students’ plans if the army comes at one?”

The man answered, “Chinese people army. We’re not going to defy them.”

I asked again, “So what are you going to do when the army comes?”

“You are friend of the Chinese people?”
“Yes, I’m a friend. I support the democracy movement.”

“Thank you. I hope that you . . . tell international news.”

“Yes, I’m on my way to my hotel to send the story back to the United States tonight,” I told him reassuringly.

“Thank you!” the young man replied emotionally. “Please, tell world we die for freedom and democracy.” As he said this, the freedom fighter took off his headband and gave it to me. There were black characters in the middle, flanked by the same character in red on each side.

“What does it say?” I asked my friend.

“It says, ‘Die for democracy, die for freedom,” he told me.

I realized then what was behind the meetings taking place in the square. The demonstrators were being informed that the army was on its way, so the hour of decision was upon them. They could leave the square while there was still time, or they could consciously decide to be martyrs before their nation and the world and make a stand for democracy in Tiananmen Square. This young man from the Beijing Autonomous Workers Federation had made his decision, and the headband was his testament to the world. It was no ordinary souvenir.

I knew it was time to return to the Minzu to hammer out that story for the San Francisco Examiner. I shook hands with everyone outside the BAWF tents and bade them good night.

“I’m going back to my h otel to write a story for the American newspaper,” I told my friend. “But I’ll be back up here by one o’clock. I will tell the world what happens here. I will tell the world the truth.”

“Thank you. Thank you, friend.”

It was now 11 o’clock, and I found myself walking down the Avenue of Eternal Peace in the middle of a massive mobilization, still reeling from the stop at the Autonomous Workers Federation tent. I thought again of the strange confrontations at the Great Hall of the People, and how they ended with the soldiers in apparent retreat. Maybe enough of the army was still backing Zhao to prevent Deng’s orders from being carried out. The citizens of Beijing seemed angry and out in the streets ready to repulse the army again; the Goddess still stood in Tiananmen Square; the government papers were saying nice things about Zhao. Maybe this could be it for Deng and Li Peng; maybe the people were too strong.

But there was too much chaos in Beijing that Saturday night. It felt as if a lurking terror was slowly rising to the surface.

“I’m heading home now; it’s a little after 11. It’s been a busy night. We’ve got a massive demonstration in the middle of the Avenue of Eternal Peace. A young man in a jeep is holding another bloodied shirt of a demonstrator. He’s holding it up next to a flag. There’s a large crowd of people on their way home; it’s kind of like Chinese rubber-necking going on between the bicyclists and pedestrians. A lot of people are standing around in the center of the street next to the blood-stained shirt, listening to the man shouting; then there are quite a few others who are stopping as they’re on their way home by foot or bicycle.

“I’m approaching the Zhonghanan compound of the Communist Party. This is the largest mobilization yet this week; there must be over 1,000 demonstrators outside confrontating at least 100 angry armed soldiers; many are shouting for Li Peng to resign. There’s a vehicle in the middle of the street that’s been turned over and is surrounded by a large crowd. Now the people are shaking the overturned car.

“I’ve just passed the compound; I’m approaching the next intersection which has another overturned vehicle in the center of it; it’s an army vehicle, a jeep of some sort. Large crowd are moving through the intersection peering at the burned out buses strewn across it. There's a lot of commotion here; crowd noise and those bicycle bells I’ve been hearing all week long.

“I’m now no more than a block from the Minzu Hotel, and . . .wait. I hear shots coming from the direction of the hotel. That’s coming from the west. I hear excited shouts that sound like warnings. Something’s definitely happened up ahead. There’s two men doing wheelies on their bicycles, tearing ass from the direction of the shots, headed this way. They’re shouting at the top of their lungs. They look like 1989 Chinese versions of Paul Revere. They’ve spotted army! There’s other people running out of this back alley, very excited, yelling, shouting. What’s that army? Army coming?”

As if anyone could understand what I was saying. Without knowing a word of Chinese besides hello and thank you, I knew that the Paul Reveres were warning the people that the army was on it way down the Avenue of Eternal Peace.

I started running towards the Minzu, noticing a car on the roadside which had been stripped of its radio and thoroughly trashed. As I got closer to the hotel, I witnessed what looked like a full scale riot occurring right outside the entrance. Through all the chaos, I could see a man being savagely beaten by an angry mob. They punched and kicked him furiously; some were getting their licks in with sticks and poles.

“They’re beating him up right here, right past me. They’re beating the shit out of him. Shouts, yells from the crowd. “Somebody’s getting beaten!”

“They’ve got a spy! They’ve got a spy!” someone was yelling in English. I recognized a young Pakistani man I had met in Tiananmen Square Tuesday evening.

“What happened? They caught a spy?” I asked him.

“I don’t know.”

I quickly went through the revolving doors and dashed to the bar for an orange soda to quench my parched throat. I bought the soda, and as I turned around, I heard an American voice shouting, “Let me in! I’m a guest in this hotel. Let me in!”

An American who was staying at the Minzu was trapped in the revolving doors holding the beaten man in his arms. Inside, the hotel manager was refusing them entrance. Outside, the crowd was pounding on the doors and yelling for the pair’s blood, having recovered from the shock that this crazy foreigner had pulled the “spy” from their clutches.

Finally the manager relented, allowing the American and beaten man into the lobby. He took them to a room on the second floor, and I followed along, curious as to the man’s identity. Responding to the manager’s interrogation, he admitted to being a police undercover agent. Aside from several cuts on his face and being shaken up, he seemed okay.

As for the American, he was congratulating himself all over the place for saving the man’s life, while lecturing the masses about due process and how mob rule had no place in the democracy they were fighting for. To me, it seemed like he was grandstanding and in dulging in self-aggrandizement. I didn’t think the Chinese people needed a lecture from this self-proclaimed ambassador of due process in the middle of their revolution and counterrevolution. To me it was a case of the masses catching an enemy agent working for those responsible for unleashing the army against them and meting out revolutionary justice.

All during the questioning of the undercover agent, we could hear the enraged crowd demanding the return of the spy and the American who rescued him. But I sensed that it wouldn’t be long before the crowd’s attention would be diverted by the advancing troops.

Twenty minutes later, the sounds of a pitched battle breaking out on Changan could be heard from the interrogation room. I hurried downstairs and flew through the revolving doors just in time to see a contingent of 20 or so riot police in the middle of the street armed with tear gas, hiding behind shields and being pelted with bricks and rocks from hundreds of angry citizens.

My Pakistani friend was standing outside the Minzu’s doors, along with 20 or 30 others who were watching the unfolding street battle.

“Hi. Was that really a spy in there?” he asked me.

“Yeah, yeah. He admitted to the hotel manager he was undercover. How was he exposed?”

“I don’t know. Look at that. There they go again!”

Sure enough, the brick-throwing crowd was emerging from the shadows of the side street next to the Minzu and making another charge at the besieged police crouched behind their shields. For the next ten minutes, a cat-and-mouse game ensued, with the missile-throwing demonstrators charging the retreating riot police. Then the people backed off into the shadows, and the police advanced again.

Meanwhile, hotel personnel were trying to persuade those of us watching the battle to enter the hotel for our safety, but without much success. Suddenly, the largest crowd to emerge from the blackness of the side street rushed the police. This time, the cops’ retreat was final. They threw down their shield and disappeared. The demonstrators seemed buoyed by this latest victory; it appeared the people had again triumphed.

Then gunfire erupts only a few blocks away. The onlookers outside the Minzu no longer needed any persuading; most of us voluntarily entered the sanctuary of the Minzu’s lobby.

A few minutes later, the first casualty was brought into the lobby wrapped in a bloodied bedsheet. He was a soldier whose head had apparently been bashed in by a brick and was covered in blood. He looked no older than 17.

From the sounds of the riotous commotion and the soldiers’ gunfire, a fierce battle was raging outside the Minzu. Within minutes, the lobby was transformed in a makeshift infirmary as three more teenage soldiers were carried in, wrapped in blood-soaked sheets. Their faces were covered with so much blood that you could not recognize them. One soldier looked as dead as the first boy brought in, his head bashed in by bricks so badly that you could see his eyes popping out amidst his brains. The other two soldiers were moving slightly.

At least ten more bodies were brought into the hotel from the street fighting. A few of them were soldiers, their faces also covered with blood, barely alive. The rest appeared to be civilians wounded by gunshots. Several young Chinese roughed up a British-sounding man holding a camera, apparently for taking a picture they didn’t think he should have shot. He pleaded with them, but to no avail; the camera was confiscated and broken.

All hell was breaking loose in the streets near the Minzu, as the gunfire was growing closer. I was trying to catch a glimpse of the raging street battle when hotel personnel began pushing us to the rear of the lobby. It’s a good thing they did, for minutes later, bullets were flying through the windows into the lobby. I hit the deck behind a huge painting at the rear of the lobby. Everyone else scatttered to take cover from the hail of bullets terrorizing the lobby.

As I hid behind the painting I felt rage toward the old men who had ordered the army into the city. First, they sent unarmed teenage boys to face the citizens’ wrath; now the tanks and guns were blazing away. I thought back to the day before, when they had sent unarmed jogging soldiers into Tiananmen to be routed by the masses. It was as i f they had purposely sent outmanned forces into the large crowds, knowing they would be humiliated; all the more easy to rile the armed soldiers and whip them into a murderous frenzy.

Minutes later the gunfire into the lobby stopped. The hotel manager herded us into the elevators, instructing us to go to our rooms and remain there. Joining me in the elevator were the British photojournalist who had lost his camera, Bob Gannon, and my Pakistani friend, whose name I never learned. Neither had any place to go at the moment, so I invited them to my room. In essence, we were under house arrest.

My room offered shelter from the storm; a chance to take comfort in each other’s company. Bob was the most physically shaken up from his altercation with the Chinese students in the lobby. I found out he worked for the Manchester Guardian, and had covered the Palestinian intifada in the West Bank and Gaza Strip. He spoke admiringly of the Palestinians, and compared the terror of the Beijing night with Israel’s iron-fisted military occupation of Palestinian land. He started telling us how the angry demonstrators outside the Minzu had attacked the young soldiers, something I had missed while witnessing the interrogation of the spy.

There was as a lull in the gunfire outside. I turned on the tape recorder.

“Once they charged,” gasped Bob.

Pakistani man, turning to me: “He’s talking about what we saw first, or after when they came in?”

Me: “No, he’s talking about when they charged, not when I was out there with you, but after that.”

Bob: “They just kept bashing him on the head.”

Me: “There’s a lot of pent up anger coming out tonight, it’s all exploding. I kept saying all week, it can’t go on like this. It’s the old story, though, it’s the old men, old fucking men like Deng Xiaoping and Yang Shankgun up there, sending out these kids and the kids get killed. We all might be out of here tomorrow, guys. They might just kick us all out.

“You’re lucky you came out of this relative okay,” I said to Bob. “Go ahead, clean yourself up. Such are the hazards of being a journalist, eh?”

“Yeah,” laughed Bob.

Me: “What was that, gunshots?”

Indeed, gunfire had rudely broken the all-too-brief period of calm. Suddenly all power in the room went out, including the air conditioner. Then the power bounced back on, but it must have been the hotel’s backup generator, for from the window we could see the city was still in darkness. My room was not at the front of the Minzu facing the Avenue of Eternal Peace; it was on the side, but from the window we could see a portion of Changan and Beijing in the background. As ambulance sirens screamed from the city streets, the Pakistani said good bye and left the room.

Me: “There’s some people down there. That’s not the front of the building. That’s the side.”

Bob: “The front’s over there, isn’t it?”

Me: “No, the front’s over there. It sounds like they are shooting at random, just opening up with volleys. Machine gun fire too. There’s crowds of people running down the street there.”

We heard the International coming from the street below. Beijing’s citizens were answering the army’s bullets with the communist anthem.

Me: “These people are incredible. You have to admire them, they’re fucking unbelievable. Like the Palestinians.”

Bob nodded his head in agreement. “They’re putting a body down the road on the back of a cart.”

Me: “Those fucking Stalinists.”

I turned off the tape recorder for the final time. We decided that Bob wasn’t going anywhere that night, since his hotel was a mile or so down the road in the direction of the advancing army.

I got on the phone and called Andrew Ross, the foreign affairs editor for the Examiner. Andrew had told me before I left the Bay Area that if I found myself in the middle of something newsworthy to give him a call for the eyewitness report. Having seen what I’d seen that day, and now sequestered inside the Minzu while the army’s guns were blazing, it seemed like the appropriate time.
I spent the next 45 minutes telling Andrew about the incredible confrontations between the soldiers and protesters at the Great Hall; the last stop on Tiananmen Square at the Beijing Autonomous Workers Federation tents; the beating of the “spy” outside the Minzu; the ensuing street battle, and now the gunfire against the background of the singing of the Internationale. At one point, Bob called me over to the window to see more citizens being shot and put into bicycle carts and carried off. I held the phone outside the window so Andrew could hear for himself the gunshots piercing Beijing’s night. He said it was all great copy and would appear on the front page of tomorrow’s Sunday Examiner, and added, “Hey Nivek, take care of yourself. It’s not worth getting killed for.”

When I hung up with Andrew, I joined Bob at the windows for a view of that portion of Changan Avenue visible to us. By now, a steady procession of tanks and armored personnel carriers were rumbling down the avenue on their way to Tiananmen Square. Soldiers perched on top of every other vehicle were firing indiscriminately at citizens who were hurrying to get out of harm’s way. The large crowds that had filled Changan earlier were now seeking refuge down sidestreets, many shouting and th rowing bricks. But many were being gunned down. Dozens upon dozens of bodies were picked up, placed on bicycle carts and taken away. Through it all, the steady backdrop of screams and the haunting chorus of the Internationale provided a grisly scene from the 20th floor of the Minzu Hotel.

An hour later, just after the last of the army vehicles had passed, a huge crowd of demonstrators—men, women and children—reemerged from the shadows and charged down the street in pursuit of the tanks and APCs, yelling furiously and still singing the Internationale. Red Cross trucks moved through the streets, and it seemed as if tens of thousands of people were converging on the square from every direction. The army’s mission was to clear out the square and physically crush the pro-democracy movement, but it wasn’t going to happen without a fight. This was not a vanquished, demoralized people ready to passively submit to the forces of repression. They would fight with whatever they had. Unfortunately for th em, that didn’t include guns. The bricks and rocks had been enough to crush the heads of the teenage recruits. Bob and I knew we had seen the first army casualties of the night.

The long, agonizing Saturday night dragged interminably into Sunday morning. Three, four, five am, and the ominous popping sounds from soldiers’ guns did not end. How many people were dying? There was still shooting going on near the Minzu, but we could discern a more distant gunfire coming from the direction of Tiananmen Square. I thought of the scene in the square just before I left, shortly before 11. Many had decided to leave, but many more seemed willing to remain and meet the army in a defiant last stand, defending the Goddess and all she stood for.

Chapter 9: Sunday, June 4th