A Heart for Freedom (17 page)

Then from our student broadcasting center, which had loudspeakers several floors above the campus speakers, came a strong voice:

In this China, the power, the law, the government, the army, the economic system, the country, the media, and the people are all controlled by one Party. The Party system and the legal system are one and the same. The Constitution can’t reflect the people’s will but it is simply a chapter of the Party. And the National People’s Congress formed under this Constitution does not reflect the people’s will either. Why in the past thirteen years, since the ending of the Cultural Revolution, did people not voice their opinions through the People’s Congress or the Party organization or the government? The answer is very clear: The ruling Party, the government, and the People’s Congress do not reflect the people’s will. This is the result of corrupt politics, corrupt politicians, and a corrupt legal system. Can lies go on forever? To make the National People’s Congress truly represent the people, the one Party monopoly must end!
5

The speaker was a longtime political dissident named Ren Wanding, who had recently been released from prison. I found his speech brilliantly insightful, but he was quickly interrupted by student leaders. “The one Party monopoly must end” sounded too radical for a lot of students at that time. The student leaders did not want the government to find more excuses to harm the student movement. They wanted to help push reform and clean up corruption and carry out some basic practices of democracy, first on campus. To overthrow the ruling Communist Party was definitely not on students’ minds.

Calling us “an organized antirevolutionary conspiracy, aiming to overthrow the Party and socialism” was too much for us to accept. We felt we were being wronged. When you were wronged by your parents, you could run away from home; when you were wronged by your local Party boss, you could take it to a higher level, to the city, provincial, or central government. But when you were wronged by the highest authority in the country, the dictator of the land, where did you go? We took to the streets again.

Before the government verdict appeared in the
People’s Daily
, the Beijing Students’ Autonomous Federation, a new student organization that intended to lead a citywide student movement, had proposed a march to Tiananmen on April 27. Many students hadn’t yet recovered from the fatigue of recent demonstrations, and some student leaders preferred to run activities on campus. But the
People’s Daily
editorial changed the tenor of the movement.

* * *

The mood on campus was tense after the
People’s Daily
editorial appeared. Some law students rushed to prepare a response to the editorial, which they broadcast over our loudspeaker system.

This broadcast eased the tension a little because it provided a great deal of clarity. It also supplied a legal basis for the ongoing student movement. Our immediate concern was whether the students should march to Tiananmen Square the next day. Throughout the morning, the Triangle was filled with new protest posters as the students’ anger burst out in black ink.

Meanwhile, the newly elected student committee members and organizers gathered in a classroom. After an intense debate, five of the committee members voted 3–2 against the next day’s march to Tiananmen. Wang Dan and Feng voted to go. The other three members insisted the government’s tone had been too harsh, that it was better to focus our energy on the campus democracy. Wang Dan and Feng believed that before the government verdict, it was possible to make compromises by scaling down the activities on campus; but with a verdict of
dong luan
, we would be accepting the government’s accusation if we didn’t take strong action. They argued we must put more pressure on the government to reverse the verdict. Otherwise any further activities on campus would be labeled
dong luan
.

“If the Preparatory Committee decides not to go out tomorrow because we’re one vote short,” said Feng, “it would hurt this leadership’s reputation. After our first failed election, this organization already suffered. If we decide not to support the demonstration, but the majority of students go out tomorrow anyway, we will lose the support of the students and be left in the dust. And if the students go out without any organization or leadership, the chance of bloodshed will be higher when they encounter the police.”

Feng made a good argument. He then went back to the podium and suggested another vote—this time to include the head of each department under the Preparatory Committee. This time the majority voted to march the next day.

* * *

At sunrise the next morning, two thousand Beida students were out on the street, along with students from neighboring schools, many of whom had come out on their own. After a few confrontations between students and police, who staged blockades at all major intersections, more students joined the march.

I was still at the office, working with some students to make another banner stating our commitment to peace and support of the Four Basic Principles—upholding the socialist path; upholding the people’s democratic dictatorship; upholding the leadership of the Chinese Communist Party; and upholding Marxism, Leninism, and Mao Zedong thought. I wanted to make sure we could de-escalate the tension but focus on continuing reform and ending corruption. I later read in a government report that the leaders were confused by this “change in message.” We never meant for war.

Before I could join the march, a man who claimed to have some kind of relationship with Deng Xiaoping and his family came to see me. He told me, “Deng and the other older leaders like young people very much. . . . But right now they are having a difficult time and hope the students will give them some time before pushing the movement further and bringing harm to everyone.”

I was surprised by this information because it was entirely different from what the
People’s Daily
editorial had implied. If Deng had been misinformed about the student movement, which was possible, then it would be helpful to let him know the peaceful intentions of the students. I asked the man to take back the message that we had nothing against Deng; in fact, we liked him and were grateful for the reforms he had launched and wanted him to stand behind the reforms and push them forward.

After saying good-bye to the man, I rushed to join my fellow students. As soon as we walked out of the Peking University campus, we met up with students coming from Tsinghua University. As we walked south to People’s University, we encountered the first police blockade. The policemen formed a line in the middle of the street with their arms locked together. We had already decided to remain disciplined to avoid chaos and any clash that might give the government an excuse to call our movement a form of turmoil. We stopped and waited for the student leaders to talk to the police, but a great number of onlookers then moved into the street, chanting, “Move away! Move away!” and forced the police to the sidewalk.

As we marched on, many students from other schools were simply waiting at intersections to join us as we advanced toward the center of the city. When we reached Second Ring Road, a main boulevard circling the city, our march became more organized. Each formation proceeded under its school’s flags and banners, and student picket lines protected the main body of the march, preventing nonstudents from mixing into the march. In front of each square formation, student leaders with whistles and bullhorns shouted slogans as they led their troops. Usually shy in public, I, too, held a bullhorn and led the shouting. The police blockades at all major intersections did not put up much resistance. Instead, many of the police cheered us on.

On Chang’an Avenue, we encountered armed soldiers, who formed a human barrier on the northern edge of the Square, determined to keep us from entering. But we were in such a happy, cheerful mood that the fear of bloodshed had evaporated. The march turned into something more like a festival as millions of Beijing residents filled the sidewalks and overpasses, giving us bread, water bottles, and ice cream bars. When we approached Tiananmen Square, we knew we were not there to pick a fight. Instead, we left the empty Square to the nervous soldiers and marched on to the far end of Chang’an Avenue, traveling from west to east, in the opposite direction of traditional, government-sponsored parades. The march became the single largest protest against the government since the Communist Party had seized power in China. For the first time since the
People’s Daily
editorial had made such dire threats, the students and citizens of Beijing won a total victory.

At one moment, after we had reached Chang’an Avenue, I stepped to the side to take it all in. Before me, a sea of people—young and old, men and women—poured onto the eight-lane boulevard from all directions and all parts of the city. They joined together and became an unstoppable wave, pulsing and moving forward, full of vigor and vitality. That experience left a profound and lasting impression on me. For the first time in my life, I had experienced the massive power of the people’s will for freedom. Despite all the intellectual analysis that came later, I knew in the core of my being that this was a force no individual, no organization, and no party could stop, control, suffocate, or manipulate. With joy and delight, I knew I was part of and deeply connected to this force.

15

Secret Meeting

My father paid me a surprise visit on May 1, which is Labor Day in China, a national holiday. He had not been to Beijing since 1986, when he and Mom came to visit me. It was not exactly the most opportune moment, from my standpoint, because Feng and I were deeply immersed in the gathering storm. We no longer even lived in our little one-room home, although as chance would have it, I happened to be there when my father unexpectedly appeared.

He seemed uncharacteristically relaxed. My mother, he said, had almost recovered from her nervous breakdown. The family crisis that had almost been too much for him to bear had passed, and that’s why he felt he could pay Feng and me a visit.

I rushed out to buy a Peking duck and some ice cream so he and I could enjoy an afternoon lunch outside on our little patio. By the time I returned, Feng had joined us as well.

As we sat beneath the huge, leafy tree that shaded the courtyard, I delicately inquired of my father whether he had any inkling of the political situation in Beijing. He was blissfully unaware that anything was underway. Carefully, and with some circumspection, I filled him in on what was happening. I assured him none of the apparent brouhaha would interfere with his sightseeing opportunities. The Summer Palace, for example, was a short bus ride away.

I told him to make our little room his own for however long he wished. Feng and I would sleep at school. (Feng and I lived on campus all the time now, but I did not include that information.) I really wanted my father to enjoy his richly deserved vacation, but I could not bring myself to tell him I was too busy to take him out and show him a good time. I avoided direct eye contact and encouraged him to eat more duck.

He soon realized things were more serious than any other political movement he had experienced because this time his daughter was in the forefront. I saw fear flit across his face as he lit up a cigarette. He didn’t say another word for the rest of the lunch. His ice cream turned into a bowl of pink soup while he burned through one cigarette after another.

At a traditional Peking duck banquet, the tongue of the duck is set aside and presented to the guest of honor at the end of the meal. The woman who packed the duck for me at the restaurant expressly reminded me not to discard it. Now, as I looked at my father’s worried expression and saw the lines around his eyes, I couldn’t find the heart to present him with the precious duck tongue, which now looked like a piece of dried rubber, worthy only of the garbage pail.

Dad spent the entire next day at my little home, consuming cigarettes, moving from the bed to the chair to a little stool out in the courtyard. He never touched the leftover duck. A growing turmoil, a real
dong luan
, was brewing inside him.

* * *

As much as I wanted to spend time with my dad, I had an urgent mission to accomplish. I had told the committee about the man who had approached me before the April 27 march claiming to have connections to Deng Xiaoping, and they had agreed to send me and another student representative to see if we could contact Deng directly through this man. My instincts told me that if we could speak to Deng in person on behalf of the student leadership, as the man had suggested, we could explain what was really going on with the students so he could see our true motives and our desire for democratic reform. Deng might not agree with us, but at least he would know that the students were not hostile toward him and the other leaders. I wholeheartedly believed that love and peace could bridge the gap of distrust, soften the hearts of the leaders, and end the escalation toward violence.

After traveling most of the day through the hot and sweaty city, by some miracle we were able to find the man who had come to see me. But by then his attitude had changed. No longer optimistic, he denied he had any real connections with Deng’s family.

“They left the city,” he said.

As we were about to leave in defeat, the man seemed to reconsider what he had said. Instead of sending us away, he invited us in to warn us of the dangers ahead. He told us the government could crack down at any time, and he did not want to see any more lives destroyed. “You youngsters do not know how dark and cruel the Communist system can be. You all should quit now.” His wife, too, kept urging us to stop the protests, with sincere concern and worry written all over her face.