A Heart for Freedom (13 page)

Supplied with canisters of water, Feng and I bicycled through the warm, early spring dusk. The breeze was soft, and the sky was apricot tinged with lavender, which gradually became a deep purple blue as night fell. On the road, sailing along ahead of me, Feng was rhapsodizing about our future together as I pedaled faster to catch his flow of words.

“We’ll get into one of the American universities,” he sang out, “and we’ll get our degrees. Then I want to find a place where I can do research. I want to create the world’s best invention, and maybe we’ll have a house full of rug rats. I’d like that.”

Feng’s words filled me with hope. He sounded so confident. I loved hearing my young husband’s big dreams, his plans. His commitment to our future together filled me with a sense of relief after what we had gone through only a month earlier.

The most recent episode had left me feeling deeply bruised. It was unexpected and made me doubt the future of our marriage. It began with a disagreement that quickly turned ugly. After Feng and I had watched the English-language version of
Doctor Zhivago
, based on the novel by Boris Pasternak, we compared our impressions of the movie. I was moved by Lara, who inspires poetry; and Feng, in my view, seemed to resemble Lara’s absent husband, Pasha, whose devotion to revolution displaces family life. As I look back on that moment, I realize I was communicating my fear that Feng’s passion for political affairs would shatter our life together. My comments angered Feng because they sounded critical, as if I disapproved of him. We had walked the rest of the way home in uncomfortable silence.

At home, Feng told me how much he had once been infatuated with a tall, beautiful girl he had seen at Beida. Every time he caught even a glimpse of her, his whole body would start to tremble. This was not exactly what I wanted to hear. I felt hurt. Our conversation moved on to things like open marriage, love and care, truth and honesty, life and family. It made me sad to realize how profoundly I disagreed with my new husband about so many important matters. When he told me about his plans to go abroad, he made it clear I was free to join him or to go my own way. He sounded like a different man, remote, foreign.

The morning after this unsettling conversation, Feng simply took off and went to his lab, leaving me alone in our empty room. When Feng stayed away for several days, all sorts of dire consequences raced through my mind. Then one day, he came home as if nothing at all had happened. We both avoided the subject, and I made a serious effort to steer clear of another fight.

That’s why, as Feng and I bicycled through the warm evening air on our way to Tiananmen Square, his words brought delight to my heart. As we prepared to deliver food and water to the students on the Square and pay our tribute to Hu Yaobang, life seemed beautiful, bright, and full of promise.

* * *

I adored Feng for all the same reasons that had made me want to marry him. I admired his brilliant mind—his ability to hit the books the night before an exam and walk away with the top grade. He was hot and peppery, a hardworking boy from Szechuan Province, like our leader, Deng Xiaoping. Feng was someone who put moral values ahead of self-interest, as his parents had taught him. And I was still under the spell cast by his handsome good looks. He was a beautifully built creature, lean and masculine, yet sensuous: I adored his dark skin, strong chin, and sudden, brilliant smile. Above all, I loved his large, soft, brown eyes. He was a serious, passionate man who wanted to change the world. Yet he could be so warm and gentle.

What I did not know was the plan B he was hiding from me. As we breezed down Xidan Street into the heart of the city, I was unaware Feng was entertaining ideas that completely contradicted what he was saying. At the same moment he was telling me about studying abroad, a conviction was rising in his heart that he could make a bigger difference for China right where we were. As we rode toward Tiananmen, he felt an enormous pull, a magnetic attraction. He kept it to himself, but he already knew the road we were on would change our lives forever.

When word of Hu’s death had rippled across the Beida campus the day before, it had cut into the hearts of the students like the cold blade of a steel knife.

We were all so young and full of hope. We revered Hu Yaobang, the secretary general of the Chinese Communist Party, whom Deng Xiaoping had demoted two years earlier. We were told that Hu loved us, and we had ached for the day when he might return to power and pave the way for freedom in China. Hu Yaobang stood for reform and justice. He had rescued many outspoken opponents of the regime from certain imprisonment or worse. He was the foremost champion of change and democracy in China. He was our friend, and now, all at once, he was dead of a heart attack. He had died suddenly, after an emotional meeting with the same Party leaders who had brought him down.

When the rumor that Hu had died reached campus, students began to gather outside on the Triangle, the grassy space at the center of campus where so much activity took place. By nightfall, the Triangle was boiling with angry, grieving students, some of whom carried posters with provocative slogans:

“Forever Yaobang.”

“Those who should die did not, and those who should live have gone.”

“Some who already have died live on, others who live have died.”

“The warm one died, the cold one buried him.”

Feng and I turned left on Chang’an Avenue at the corner where it meets Xidan Street and rode toward Tiananmen Square. Up ahead we could see people sitting in front of Xinhua Gate, the southern entrance to the compound known as Zhongnanhai, where the Chinese Communist Party headquarters and other government offices are located. Zhongnanhai is where day-to-day administrative activities take place. It is home also to top government officials, such as Hu Yaobang’s successor, Zhao Ziyang. Until his death in 1976, Chairman Mao had made his residence there in a comfortable courtyard apartment.

As we passed Xinhua Gate, we heard sounds of quiet laughter and conversation from the cluster of young people who had settled in for the evening on the sidewalk under the dim glow of the street lamps. All seemed at peace.

At the edge of the Square, on Chang’an Avenue, Feng and I dismounted and carefully leaned our bikes against a tree. Across the Square, a crowd of people surrounded the People’s Monument. Together we headed in that direction and worked our way into the crowd.

A young man was giving a speech when we arrived. Every time he posed a question, he aroused the crowd to a fervent response.

“Is there a single person in this crowd who has never been bullied by a Party boss?”

“Why can’t we choose our own jobs?”

“Why must we let the Party assign us to a workplace?”

“Why does the Party keep a personal file on each of us, and why don’t we have the right to see it?”

That last one got to me. I thought of how the security man at Beida had used my personal file to almost ruin my life. The speaker called it a “black file.”

He talked about the meaning of democracy and called out, “Are we not entitled to some basic rights of freedom?”

The crowd cheered. The words he spoke went straight to my heart.

Then a voice cried out that police were attacking students in front of Xinhua Gate, and someone said we should all go over there.

A row of armed soldiers stood in front of Xinhua Gate, guarding the entrance to Zhongnanhai beneath a royal blue escutcheon.

The students sat on the ground facing the soldiers, separated from them by a few feet. Onlookers formed a human wall behind the students. When we arrived with people from the Square, we immediately enlarged the throng of student protesters. Some of the new arrivals started throwing things like hats and gloves, and someone even threw a shoe that struck a soldier in the face. (Later we wondered if the person who did that had been planted by the government.)

From time to time the crowd took up a chant: “Come out, Li Peng. Li Peng, come out.”

Li Peng was the premier and had gotten the job at the expense of Hu Yaobang. In January 1987, when Hu was forced to resign, his position of Party secretary general went to Zhao Ziyang, Deng Xiaoping’s handpicked premier. That left the premier’s seat vacant. Li Peng was an engineer with no political expertise, but he had conservative views and close ties to the Party elders. Nobody knew if Li Peng was in Zhongnanhai. The student representatives who had disappeared inside the compound earlier in the day to deliver a petition had not emerged. Outside the black gate, the crowd had grown to several thousand strong. Some people impatiently pushed against the cordon that kept protesters at arm’s length from the soldiers, who stood motionless, their backs to the gate, their eyes blank, facing straight ahead.

Suddenly someone shouted, “The police are coming!”

I looked down Chang’an Avenue toward the west, away from the Square. People were stampeding toward us up the wide avenue, like a herd of frightened impalas on the Serengeti Plain, pursued by truncheon-wielding police. At once the night air was filled with screams and the thunder of running feet. When the police reached Xinhua Gate, they started beating people with nightsticks to clear the way. I ran with the crowd in sheer panic as fast as my feet would carry me.

When I finally slowed down to catch my breath, I was burning with shame and rage. I had never felt so humiliated in my life, chased down the street like a dog. Feng was by my side, and I could feel the heat of his body. Our eyes met and we were instantly united in the fury of insult. We were at the rear of the crowd, and together we turned to see a battalion of police running directly toward us about thirty feet away. They looked like ghost runners in the night, spread out across the eight-lane avenue. The vanguard was followed by more police. We stood stock-still, in the middle of Chang’an, and faced them. Others in the crowd came up from behind to join us.

I had come to the Square that night with a simple thought: to deliver food and water to some school friends and to pay tribute to a fallen leader. But within a few hours, I was transformed. Being chased by the police and seeing others unjustly beaten triggered the pain of the unresolved wound left by the Beida security officer and the angry saleswoman. In my heart, I determined I would no longer be the young woman from two years before who had cried all the way home on the train. My wounded pride and a newfound rage dried up my sorrow. From now on, I would not run away, and neither would Feng.

On my way to the Square, I had worried about the crumbling edges of my life with Feng. Now all that was no longer important. When we stopped running and looked into each other’s eyes, a bond deeper than ever was born between us. I knew then that we shared something larger than life, something more profound than any future plan. We must live like human beings and protect our dignity.

That night, when the government sent the police to Tiananmen Square and compelled the younger generation of China to stand up, a new chapter in our country’s modern history began.

11

Searching for Feng

The morning after our confrontation with the police on Chang’an Avenue, Feng and I awoke to hear the government radio denouncing the spontaneous student gathering at Tiananmen Square. A government spokesman described the grief-stricken crowd as a handful of ill-meaning troublemakers who had seized on the death of Hu Yaobang to conduct illegal activities—which would not be tolerated. With this outright lie, the government threw down the gauntlet to the students of Beijing.

Feng and I went to the Triangle that evening to see how students had responded to the government broadcast. Feng was on fire. He had an astonishing ability to devour and digest volumes of complex material in one sitting, which had made him a star at Beida, and he’d spent the day in the university library poring over
The Constitution of the Chinese Republic
,
The Constitution of the Chinese Communist Party
,
The American Government and Its Politics
, and a biography of Mahatma Gandhi, among other tomes. He wanted to be prepared for what was about to happen. He could feel the breath of destiny on the back of his neck.

Two or three thousand students had already gathered at the Triangle. Various students gave speeches, and soon they were focused on forming an organization to lead a movement. Feng made his way to the forefront to propose his ideas for student leadership, including the creation of an independent newspaper that would advocate for free assembly and free speech. I stood and watched from afar as Feng became a founding member of the Preparatory Committee, one of seven people designated to establish an independent student leadership organization. I was there as Feng’s supportive wife. I was not going to stand in his way. I was determined to show solidarity.

I truly loved Feng. He was at once vulnerable, passionate, and brilliant. And I yearned for his respect. I was never so proud of him as I was the night I watched him take command of the student movement with his six colleagues. At last, I thought, all that frustration will be released as a positive force.

* * *

The next morning, I mailed my application to a graduate program in child psychology at Columbia University’s Teachers College. I was not going to waste a nanosecond before following up on Feng’s enthusiastic declaration about studying abroad together. Then I went over to the Triangle again because Feng had not returned home the night before. There I found a big poster announcing that students had returned to the Square. A bloodstained shirt hanging next to the poster bore silent witness to the risks of joining the protests. I began to worry. Feng could have been at the Square. It was easy to imagine him being singled out for a beating, to teach him a lesson, so to speak. I began a frenzied search.