God's Double Agent (9 page)

“Hu Yaobang is dead!” he said. Yaobang was the former Communist Party secretary who supported the 1986 student movement. My mind flashed back to high school, when I had read news of the story in my stolen newspaper.

“What happened?” I asked.

“It’s mysterious,” he said. “No one knows exactly, but he died right in the middle of a high-level Communist Party leaders’ meeting!”

“What were they discussing?” I asked.

“What else?” he said. “The education budget.”

“He must’ve sided with our teachers!” I said. I envisioned him standing in front of the group, passionately arguing for the rights of teachers. I imagined the hardliners fighting back against his rhetoric and him dropping dead of a heart attack.

The whole nation was shocked over news of Yaobang’s death, especially students. Spontaneous demonstrations of mourning caught the government off guard. After the 1986 student protests, he’d been ousted and had become something of a disgraced icon of reform. Completely bereft, I left my friend and went to be alone in my dorm. There, in the silence of my room, I got out a pen and paper and thought about the legacy of Hu Yaobang.

The words flowed out of me until the sun went down outside
my window. By the time I finally turned off the light to go to sleep, I’d created a poignant tribute to the man who’d inspired so many students in China.

“Here,” I said the next day, when I saw my friend again. “For your consideration for publication.”

He took the poem from me, read it silently, and swallowed hard. “It’s perfect,” he said, fighting emotion. The official newspaper had a large distributorship beyond the school, and I smiled when I thought of all the people who’d read my tribute to the fallen leader.

The next day, the editor came to my dorm with a proof of the following day’s newspaper, used to catch typos before the school made the official copies.

“Look,” he said, holding up the proof of the paper. “Your poem will be front page, above the fold!” I grabbed the paper and admired the amazing placement. I read my poem again, this time aloud, enjoying the way the words rolled off my tongue. The poem was an imaginative interpretation of Hu Yaobang’s love of education and the circumstances that surrounded his death. It ended with a simple line: “We should all do more.”

That night, as I drifted off to sleep, I made plans to get several copies of the paper off the stands to show my friends and family. At midnight, however, a harsh banging on the door jolted me from sleep. I jumped out of my bunk bed, stumbled in the darkness, and flung open the door. My friend the editor stood there with a look of horror on his face.

“What have you gotten me into?” he asked.

“What do you mean?”

“We’re in big trouble,” he said. “We printed our newspapers and they’re already ready to be sent out to the school and other cities. But someone in the administration read your poem and recalled them all! We have to redo all of it!”

“Because of a poem?”

“Yes,” he said, exasperated. “I don’t understand it, but
apparently they didn’t want to portray Hu Yaobang in such a positive light.”

I rubbed the remaining sleep from my eyes. Was this a dream? Would a teacher’s college really not let me honor the life of an education reformer? And why would they take such draconian steps to stop me?

“And there’s not enough time to do another print run of the paper without it,” he finished.

After he left, I tried to go back to sleep, but the trepidation in my spirit wouldn’t let me. I pulled the covers up to my chin and looked at the ceiling. Why would the administration consider a poem so dangerous?

Without any real answers, I decided I’d try to snatch a copy in the morning and get advice from the university president. Surely, this was some weird oversight or miscommunication. I laid there all night, nervous about what seemed to be a strange tightening of control over the students. When the morning finally came, I jumped down off my bunk bed, threw on some clothes, and headed down to the newspaper rack.

Another student, wearing jogging attire, was standing next to a completely empty newspaper rack. All of the copies had been destroyed during the night.

“Look at that,” he said. “I wonder why there aren’t any papers today.”

A lump caught in my throat as I responded.

“I honestly don’t know.”

After that moment, I was shocked, confused, and more than a little angry. After Hu Yaobang’s mysterious death, some students had gathered at Tiananmen Square to try to get the government to reassess his legacy and to honor the man’s life. One week after his death, there were one hundred thousand students gathered there for his memorial service. But this spontaneous public mourning had turned into a nationwide protest for political reform and against all the Party corruption. The students held
hunger strikes and demanded government accountability and freedom of speech and press. Though some of our American professors were nervous about the unrest, no one else really seemed to give the events in Beijing much thought. It didn’t affect
their
grades, after all.

One evening, as I walked into an auditorium filled with studying students, I got so frustrated that I made a rather rash decision. I reached for the light switch and turned it off.

The lights flickered, then went completely dark. I heard a few gasps coming from the now dark room.

“Do I have your attention?” I yelled into the dark auditorium. “Why are you so numb?”

“Turn the lights back on,” a guy in the back of the room yelled. “Unless you’re going to take my exam for me.”

Some students giggled.

“I’ll turn them back on, after you hear me out,” I said. “Don’t you know the Beijing students are already acting for our country’s future? And yet, you sit here? You, who still have the luxury of studying. But how can you just sit, with your books open on your desks like nothing is going on in the world?”

No one spoke, but I could tell by the silence that the students began listening. I flicked the lights back on. “You’re so concerned about your grades and your future, but you aren’t willing to fight for it. Come on, everyone. Let’s go!”

Amazingly, a student in the back of the auditorium got up. Then, another. And another. Pretty soon, a large number of students followed me right out of the room and out into the campus. This time, I didn’t care about a permit. We were advocating for the right things, and I wasn’t going to be stopped because I didn’t have the right piece of paper.

“Anti-corruption!” we yelled as we walked down the streets. As we marched, our numbers swelled.

“Xiqiu!” I heard from a side street. When I turned around and saw the man from the propaganda department running toward me, I was ready to defend myself. After all, he had previously admonished me in an ominous tone, threatening me. Dread filled me, but I tried to push it out of my mind. They couldn’t make me disappear like they had Bruce. After all, there were even professors walking alongside us!

“You can’t stop me,” I said, preemptively. “What we’re saying is good and right.”

“We don’t want to stop you,” he said, a little out of breath. Behind him, a guy carrying two portable speakers emerged. “We want to join you!” The student protest in Beijing seemed to have softened the whole nation. There was something about the peaceful protest that penetrated the very essence of the nation.

We took the loudspeakers and continued our march, drawing even more people out of the dorms and classrooms. Students from all levels and disciplines joined me. Even more teachers followed.

“Look!” someone yelled, pointing to a university car following slowly behind the parade. “It’s President Ming!” The president of the school, my friend and ally, waved out his window at me. It made me walk even faster and shout even louder. After all, I knew he’d be on our side.

“Higher wages!” we yelled.

The campus the next morning was electrified by the protests. People began to skip classes in solidarity with the Beijing students. One friend hung a bedsheet from his window with the word
freedom
written in his own blood.

It was meaningful and exciting to be a part of something that was larger than us. “There are a lot of people fed up with this system,” I remarked to my fellow student union leaders a few days later as we gathered to plan our next moves. “Our student union really helped enact change.” However, deep down, I was secretly proud of myself, thinking I was the true catalyst behind the movement.

“What should we do next?” one of the leaders asked. “What’s our next move?”

“Actually, I think we should disband,” I said.

“Are you sick?” the union secretary asked. “We just successfully created the first protest at Liaocheng Teacher’s College!”

“But our group is Communist school–approved,” I explained. “And we’re ushering in a new day! Now we advocate for freedom!”

“Should we not protest?”

“No, we should,” I said. “But only after we disassociate ourselves with the Communists.”

“Well, I agree we should reorganize into a new group,” another leader said. “But we’d have to figure out a new name.”

“And we can’t leave it up to Xiqiu,” another said. “No offense, but you named your newspaper
Ugly Stone
.”

That’s how we became the descriptive yet not creative “Supporting the Democracy Independents Union,” and everyone was happy. With a newly democratic group, our next move was to put our loudspeakers in dorm rooms to blast our messages into the campus. I was in charge of the news media and all broadcasts. Another student was in charge of the donations. The whole school rallied, and I couldn’t help but enjoy the fact that they rallied around me.

Of course, they were truly passionate about what was going on in the nation. However, at lunch, everyone gravitated to my table. When people saw me on campus, they warmly greeted me and sometimes gathered around me to receive updates.

“Xiqiu, what’s the latest on the protests?” someone would ask. “Are you heading to Tiananmen Square?”

It was a fun time of life, both at the university level and on the national level. The national party secretary, Mr. Zhao Ziyang, was sympathetic to the Beijing students and in an amazing turn of events ordered the newspapers to report honestly on the unrest. The Communist Party’s mouthpiece began to present
points of view that differed from the official government message. Students’ views about the protest were reported fairly on the front page. Other articles praised the Beijing students’ courage.

This was the only time in the eighty years of Communist Party history when there was real freedom of speech and press. Giddy with our newfound freedom, we began to believe one day we could be free from hatred, violence, corruption, and fear.

The joy spilled out into everyday life. Shop owners, construction workers, and other citizens greeted the protesters warmly and sent food out to us when we marched. An owner of an ice cream shop sent ice cream treats free of charge. In Beijing, even a group of thieves decided not to steal anything for a time to show support of the protestors. The police were busy with Tiananmen Square, so ordinary citizens stepped up to direct traffic. Miraculously, drivers slowed down, yielded the right of way, and did all they could to preserve the peace. Bicyclists who got in wrecks didn’t curse each other, as was customary. Even the newspapers reported that these accidents resulted in friendly exchanges in which people greeted each other and left without argument or blame. “It’s okay,” they’d say, leaving the scene. “Everything’s fine.”

It was like someone who’d held on to our arms so tightly suddenly let go, and we were lighter with the newfound freedom. We walked more confidently, we smiled, we debated issues with intellectual honesty. In record numbers, people spoke out against the Communist Party. Others expressed support for it. Some even advocated for anarchy. Everyone’s opinion was fully respected and discussed.

Life, with freedom, felt fuller and more robust. I remember thinking the flowers in the garden were particularly vibrant and the aroma of cooking rice was more pleasant. Freedom seeped into everything.

Sadly, it lasted less than two weeks.

“I hear rumors,” said Joseph, “that the government is going to declare martial law.”

I dismissed his words, even though his father was a government official. After all, why would the Communists do that to peaceful protestors? It just didn’t seem right. But the government couldn’t agree on how to handle the unrest, and consequently began to retighten its grip on the media. Suddenly, the newspapers went back to printing the same kinds of filtered propaganda and life settled back down into its gray, listless state. Though Zhao Ziyang was still compassionate toward the students, he was branded a troublemaker.

By late May, the students at my college had pushed the protests into the back of their minds. Life returned to normal. Even though we’d called for a boycott of all classes, I noticed some students showing up there. As the vice president of our new democratic student group, I called a meeting to discuss the situation. “These students who are so apathetic to the plight of the protestors are wrong.”