Forbidden City (9 page)

I knew Dad and Eddie were out there somewhere, trying to capture the festival on tape, doing on-the-spot reports, probably trying to interview students. A lot of them could speak English. There were other journalists in the square. You could pick them out pretty easily. White faces showed up and so did foreign clothes, not to mention cameras on shoulders.

Behind the Monument to the People’s Heroes was a large contingent of students. Some were sitting, gathered around portable radios, some standing and talking, others were singing and clapping
their hands. As I passed them I heard “Hello! Hello! Mr. Reporter, come talk to us!”

A guy with a red baseball cap on and a loud-hailer in his hand was talking to me. Well, I thought, why not?

“Hi,” I said.

“What country you are from?” he asked.

“Canada. Canadian Broadcasting Corporation. How about you? What university are you from?”

“People’s University.”

“I am from Bei Da,” the guy beside him chimed in. “Beijing University.”

Already a crowd of students had gathered around us, staring at me and pointing and talking among themselves. I reminded myself that I was supposed to be a reporter.

“What do you hope to accomplish with this demonstration?” I asked, conscious of how stuffy I sounded.

“We have made a union of university students in Beijing,” he said, “and we have been on strike from classes. All Beijing university students are on strike. We have three demands. We want that the government agrees to talk to us like equals, not treat us like children. Second, they must apologize for violence against students last week.” He pointed toward Zhong Nan Hai, where some students had got roughed up a bit. “Third, we demand that Xin Hua news reports stop lying about us in newspapers and television.” Xin Hua is the government’s official
news agency. “We are not against Communist Party and socialism. We want these things to stay. But we want government to listen to the people and stop the corruption by high officials.”

The, students around us nodded and chattered away in Chinese.

“What do those say?” I asked him, nodding towards the signs and banners behind him.

He pointed as he translated. “Long live democracy. That one, Down with Dictatorship. Over there, Support the Correct Leadership of the Communist Party of China.”

“Do you think the government will listen to you?”

“Students’ Union has decided that if the officials do not listen, we will plan bigger demonstration on May Fourth.” Then he yelled something in Chinese and raised his arm, making the “V” for victory sign with his fingers. I caught the words “May Fourth” but nothing else. A deafening cheer surged from the students around us.

“Why then?” I asked.

“Pardon?”

“Why did you pick that particular day?”

“May Fourth is very important day to all Chinese students and intellectuals. Seventy years ago on May Fourth students from Beijing University began the movement that led to the Communist Revolution.”

I was starting to get frustrated. I was interested in what the guy was saying and I wanted to ask him some more, but the crush of students around us —
they were pressing against us as if we were in a crowded bus — was getting on my nerves and making me even more claustrophobic and I didn’t have a pen and paper to write down what I was seeing and hearing.

“Listen,” I said. “Is it okay if I come back and ask you more questions later?”

“Very okay. We are happy to talk to Western reporter.”

“What’s your name?”

“Sorry, maybe better I don’t give my name.”

“Okay,” I said, shaking his hand. “Maybe I’ll see you again.”

I managed to separate myself from the mass of human flesh and move away from the monument towards the hotel.

It was all too much for me. It was pretty warm out, and, I’ll tell you, pushing through an endless crowd, no matter how festive they seem, is a tough grind.

I worked my way back to Chang An Avenue and finally to the hotel. I was glad to get back to the empty suite and enjoy a cold pop.

Tonight we watched it all on the news. Eddie couldn’t believe that the government allowed the TV station to show the demonstration. I mean, some of the posters and banners were pretty critical. Dad was taping the news show to send it back to Canada after
Eddie did a voice-over commentary about how the news in China had been so free lately.

It was pretty exciting in the suite that night. Eddie was laughing, typing up a storm. “This is the biggest story since Liberation!” he crowed. Dad was happy as a little kid at Christmas, taping this, editing that. The enthusiasm was catching. I began to get interested too, especially after talking to that student. I thought I’d be the last person in the world to get hooked on politics.

But this wasn’t what we learned in school. This was real.

I was ready yesterday to play reporter. I had my tape recorder with me and something to write on.

It took me quite a while to find the student I talked to last Thursday. I decided to call him Hong, which means “red” in Chinese, because of the red baseball cap he wore. I searched for the red cap as soon as I located the Ren Min Da Xue — People’s University — banner. When I found him he was
talking to the crowd through a loud-hailer, but I couldn’t make out what he was saying.

When he stopped talking and the cheering died down I tapped him on the shoulder.

“Hi,” I said.

He smiled. “Hello, Canadian friend.”

“I was wondering if you and I could have a talk, and if it would be all right if I tape-record you.”

“Okay.”

Beside him a young woman shook her head and started rattling away in Chinese. He and she talked at each other for a few moments — that’s what it seemed like, because they were both talking at once — then he said, “Okay.”

The press of bodies was on us again. I looked around for a place where we could go and talk more privately and immediately laughed at myself. The sea of people flooded the square completely.

“Well, I was wondering what has happened since I saw you last Thursday.”

“Government has become a little bit reasonable, but not enough. Last Saturday officials had a meeting with student representatives, but it was a phony one. Those so-called students are from the government student unions. They do not represent us. We have formed our own Autonomous Union and officials must speak to us. So far, they refused, so that’s why we are here today.”

“What will you do if the officials still won’t talk to your people?”

A grim look passed over his face. “We have something planned.” The woman beside him nodded and the chattering around us went up a notch. A lot of the students understand English.

“How old you are?” said the woman. She wore jeans and a jean jacket, so I figured I’d call her Lan, which means “blue.”

I didn’t want to lie, so I tried changing the subject. “What do you study in university?” It was a pretty lame question but it worked. She started to talk about university life and Hong threw in a remark now and then.

Lan is twenty and she’s from the Foreign Affairs University where China’s diplomats are trained. Hong is twenty-three, a medical student. Lan told me what subjects she studied and all that stuff, but I was more interested in some other facts. While I listened I thought about Lao Xu, I guess because I was hearing the same kind of stuff that Eddie was telling me about Lao Xu’s life. Everything is controlled. These students were being told how to run every part of their lives. For example, they weren’t supposed to date. They couldn’t get married. They had to go to political study classes every week. And if they stepped out of line there were hundreds of thousands of others waiting to take their spots. No wonder they thought that no one listened to them. No wonder they were here.

We talked a bit longer and then I said goodbye. That night on the news we heard that Zhao Zi-yang
had made a speech later in the afternoon and said that he thought the situation would calm down and that there would be no turmoil in China.

After the newscast ended we all looked at Lao Xu, waiting for an interpretation. I was beginning to learn that the Chinese often speak in a sort of code so that they don’t have to say things straight out.

Lao Xu looked worried. He sighed and said, “Zhao Zi-yang has broken with Deng Xiao-ping.”

“What!” Eddie shouted.

“Remember the editorial on April 26, Eddie? It came from Deng and it said that the students were promoting chaos. Now Chairman Zhao is saying that there will be no chaos. He has rejected Deng’s analysis. That means he has rejected Deng.

“The Communist Party now talks with two voices. That means trouble. Big trouble.”

I wondered where the students and Lan and Hong fit in to all this. Then I realized it. They were right in the middle.

Things have gotten
really
hairy around here.

I’ve been so busy I haven’t had time to keep this journal every day. Everyone thinks there’s a big wind of change blowing, and when the storm passes, I want to remember every second of it.

On May 13 the students in Tian An Men Square changed their tactics. Up until then, thousands had refused to leave the square, and every day the place
was a carpet of humanity. But on the thirteenth one thousand students started a hunger strike and vowed to keep it up until either they died or the government promised to meet with their representatives and to begin reforms. When I heard that I rushed down there. The students were set up in the centre of the square, sitting or lying on spread-out newspapers, surrounded by thousands more who were not hunger-striking. The
da zi bao
, the big character posters, demanded that the Communist Party become more democratic and that corruption in the high levels of the Party be stopped.

I spotted Hong and Lan among the strikers, but I couldn’t get near enough to talk to them.

Later, when I asked Lao Xu what this stuff about corruption was all about he looked a little bit uncomfortable. He gave me a vague answer about a few bad men being dishonest. Eddie butted in as he usually does.

“Lao Xu is giving you the Party line, Alex. He doesn’t want to criticize the government.”

Lao Xu looked even more embarrassed and laughed the way Chinese do when they feel uncomfortable. Eddie shouldn’t have centered him out like that, I thought. I let the matter drop until Lao Xu had left. Then Eddie told me that the powerful men and women in the Party got special treatment in everything, from buying foreign goods in special stores that only they could shop in, to housing, to special hospitals or special sections of already existing
hospitals that had all the latest medical equipment. They made sure their relatives and children got good jobs and privileges. They sent their kids to universities in Europe, Canada, and the States, all at government expense. And they used government money to fatten themselves. Meanwhile, ordinary people stayed poor.

I remembered that Lao Xu had told me that most of the powerful men in the Party were Long March veterans.

“All
of them?” I asked. “Are they
all
crooked?”

Eddie frowned. He didn’t like being contradicted. “They control everything, and they keep most of it for themselves,” he summed up.