A Heart for Freedom (18 page)

Later we learned that Deng’s family had become alarmed by the mass reaction from the people on April 27. They felt Deng had been misled by Li Peng’s exaggeration of the situation. Deng’s family had all suffered from his banishments during the Cultural Revolution, but in many situations they had been helped, protected, and loved by the goodness of the common people. They had a tender spot in their hearts for the Chinese people and the Beijing citizens who had led them back to power. Two of Deng’s children went to Beida to try to build a bridge of communication with the students, but when they came to the South Gate of campus, they were met with talk of revenge and retribution by some students and other bystanders, none of whom were part of the official student leadership. Deng’s son and daughter had cut short their diplomatic mission, and Deng Xiaoping soon left Beijing for his summer residence in Beidaihe, an ocean resort a few hours north of the capital.

When our meeting with the man and his wife was over, he arranged for a car and driver to take us back to Beida. We were accompanied by two sharply dressed men, who were brisk in manner and conducted themselves with impressive efficiency. They told us they had watched tapes of the demonstrations and had easily identified the student who was with me in the car as one of the protesters. My heart froze, and my mind replayed stories of people who had disappeared to unknown places. These men were part of the national security force, which was different from the local police. Rumor had it their boss, who was one of the seven politburo members who made all the decisions for the country, was secretly pro-reform, but he did not like anarchy. “If you really want to do something,” one of the men said as we sped along toward Beida, “get serious.”

“What do you mean?” I asked.

The two men looked at each other and the one spoke again. “On the evening of April 19, on Chang’an Avenue, we saw a student sitting on a piece of white cloth that said ‘Hunger Strike.’ But when the police moved in, that student jumped up and ran like a rabbit. You can’t be taken seriously if your protests are that laughable.”

I looked at my fellow student, and neither of us could believe what we were hearing. Advice from the enemy? Who was with us and who was against us?

Before they dropped us off at the South Gate of Beida, the men handed us a business card. “Call us if you’re in trouble,” they said. “Don’t sell us out.” As soon as we stepped clear, the car sped away. I knew an important opportunity for peace and reconciliation had come and gone.

* * *

We walked back quickly to Dormitory 28 and told the other leaders about our encounter. Just as we finished our report, I was told someone was waiting for me outside.

It was my dad. He had changed out of his army uniform into civilian clothes and was standing in the shade of a tree with a piece of paper in his hand.

It was the note I had written to Feng the day after police had chased us down Chang’an Avenue. I had written the note in a state of rising panic when I couldn’t find Feng anywhere and thought he’d been arrested—or worse. My father had found the note, which provided a much clearer picture of the situation.

“Ling Ling,” he said in a heavy voice, “I should leave now. I understand how you feel and why you have to do this. I can only hope nothing bad will happen to you. You and I went through these debates in the past. What needed to be said has been said. There is no use for me to stay here; whatever will happen is beyond my ability to stop. Our family needs me; it will collapse without me. So I’ll leave now.”

My heart ached because I knew what was going through his mind. Years earlier, Dad had lost his younger sister to the Revolution. She had babysat for a village leader who was involved in land reform, and they had all perished in a fire set by an angry landlord seeking revenge after his properties were seized by the Communist Party. My father had never stopped blaming himself for not being there to protect his younger sister. Now his daughter was placing herself in harm’s way, and there was nothing he could do to prevent another tragedy.

I felt terrible he had taken time from work and our family to come all the way to Beijing to see me, only to cut his visit short. He had come to celebrate my mom’s recovery and the return to happiness at home and also to tell me—I found out years later—about his promotion to CEO of the hospital, the job he had worked his entire life to achieve. Now he had come to the realization that he might never see his eldest daughter again. To comfort him, I said I would send him a telegram every three days.

“What if three days go by and I don’t get one?” he asked. “Then what?”

“I don’t know, Dad,” I replied. “If that happens, maybe you should stop waiting for me.”

I couldn’t believe I had uttered those words. We looked at each other, and my tears began to flow. Never in my wildest imaginings had I ever expected to say farewell this way to my father.

“Don’t cry, Ling Ling,” he said. “Crying is not a good thing to do for farewell. Bye now!”

He walked away, and then suddenly stopped. His voice trembled a bit as he said, “You built such a nice home. It is hard to watch it being destroyed.”

How I longed for him to forgive me for all the pain I’d caused him in my growing-up years. How I wished I could ask him to forgive me for all the grief the impending storm was going to bring. All I could say was, “I am so sorry, Dad.”

The gap that had opened between us during my headstrong teenage years, the gap across which I had never been able to build a bridge, suddenly closed in the presence of our unspoken words. I felt closer to my father than ever before. Through my blurry eyes, I saw the kindest and strongest man in my life fighting back his own tears to give his daughter the strength she needed.

It was the last time I saw my father in China. He received no telegrams, no phone calls, no letters, but he went on waiting for me. Like everyone else, he learned I was still alive after the massacre in Beijing when he read my name on the government’s most-wanted list. God only knows how many nights he holed up in his room with his ear pressed against his shortwave radio, hoping to hear my voice or any news of me from Voice of America.

* * *

Looking back twenty years later, it’s clear the students wanted more than Deng was willing to give. After suffering greatly during the Cultural Revolution, Deng wanted people to have food on the table, but he had no stomach for democracy, freedom, human rights—all that Western, liberal nonsense, which he believed would only lead to turmoil, chaos, and tragedies similar to those of the Cultural Revolution. Deng envisioned an economically prosperous China and an obedient Chinese people, and he believed preserving a democratic dictatorship was the way to achieve it.

Other advisers, including Ruan Ming, felt that Deng had wanted reform and democracy in the late 1970s but that he had changed his mind after Wei Jingsheng posted his famous critique on Democracy Wall: “Do we want democracy or new dictatorship?” Deng had suffered plenty of name-calling during the Mao era. Enough was enough.

When Zhao Ziyang came back from North Korea, his power struggle with Li Peng intensified. Deng had made it clear before he departed for Beidaihe that he wanted the situation in Beijing cleaned up in time for Mikhail Gorbachev’s state visit in mid-May. Zhao and Li differed on how to accomplish that objective. While they battled it out, Deng rested at his summer home—though he closely monitored the situation in Beijing. In the words of an old Chinese adage, he was sitting on a mountaintop, watching the tigers fight. If Zhao and Li failed to clean up the mess, Deng knew he had yet another option at his disposal: He could call in the army.

We students knew very little about the power struggle at the top. We were caught up in trying to read the tea leaves to determine what we should do next. After the April 27 march, some students were intoxicated by the apparent victory. Others insisted that nothing had really changed. A staged dialogue on national television between the government and some handpicked student leaders made the students appear unorganized, ungrateful, and spoiled. The phony dialogue punctured the illusion of victory and drove the students back into the streets. The Beijing Students’ Autonomous Federation coordinated a march to celebrate the seventieth anniversary of the May Fourth Movement, commemorating the youth movement that led to the birth of Chinese Communism. On the morning of the march, we left the Beida campus at eight in the morning and arrived at Tiananmen Square around three that afternoon. The police were out in force, but they mostly acted with restraint.

Students from fifty cities all over China staged demonstrations, and hundreds of journalists joined our march on the Square, protesting the closing down of the
World Economic Herald
, a Shanghai newspaper that had run a long article commemorating Hu Yaobang on the day of his funeral. When Jiang Zemin, the local Party boss in Shanghai, fired the
Heral
d
’s editor in chief and then closed down the newspaper, the journalists fought back. They appeared on the Square with banners and slogans, such as one that declared, “Don’t Force Us to Lie Anymore.” This was unprecedented. Under Communist rule, newspapers in China operated under tight censorship.

* * *

After the May Fourth demonstration, the student movement began to lose steam. One demonstration after another, and what did it prove? On campus, we seriously debated whether to end the boycott. When we distributed a questionnaire on the matter, two-thirds of the students voted to continue. Feng, meanwhile, discouraged by the endless debates between student leaders, returned to the lab to continue his research. On Beida’s campus frustration was building even as the energy ebbed.

Still, we kept up the pressure. On the Triangle, we selected and formed a dialogue delegation, led brilliantly by Xiong Yan. Anyone who wanted to join the dialogue team had a chance to mount the podium and present his or her speech skills. Yet as the government continued to ignore our demands for dialogue, we held brainstorming sessions to discuss ways to pressure them into meeting our demands.

Marching yet again to Tiananmen Square was out of the question. We’d been there, done that. Someone proposed a hand-holding rally encircling the entire city. Another person proposed a bicycle parade around the city. Yet another student proposed holding an event in a giant wasteland, a sort of Chinese Woodstock.

The idea of a hunger strike had been floating around for some time. It was nothing new. Boycotts and hunger strikes seemed to go hand in hand. I first heard the idea from Zhang Boli, one of a group of talented writers who came to Beida for a one-year residency. Boli raised the subject in a writing class I attended. He was inspired by Gandhi’s autobiography,
The Story of My Experiments with Truth
. He told me with great excitement how Gandhi had used hunger strikes to achieve political goals, notably against British colonial rule in India. Boli could quote Gandhi’s words: “When I despair, I remember that, all through history, the way of truth and love has always won. There have been tyrants and murderers, and for a time they seem invincible, but in the end, they always fall—think of it, always.” These words struck a responsive chord in my heart.

But most of the student leaders at Beida and the Beijing Students’ Autonomous Federation argued against a hunger strike. They opposed it because they thought it was too drastic. There wasn’t enough of a rationale to justify a hunger strike, they insisted, even as they wavered indecisively and waited for permission to enter into a dialogue with our government leaders.

Days went by. Students at other universities went back to class. More than a week passed, and Beida students began to run out of patience.

Finally, we held a debate at the Triangle to discuss whether or not to stage a hunger strike. Thousands of students showed up.

It seemed like the right time to do it. Mikhail Gorbachev, the Soviet leader and a political reformer, was scheduled to arrive in Beijing on May 15. If we launched a hunger strike to coincide with Gorbachev’s visit, we would give the Chinese leaders a reason to engage us in discussion.

16

Hunger Strike

On May 12, Wang Dan came to tell me he had decided to join a hunger strike. Only forty Beida students had signed up by then. He told me with some frustration that because the student organizations had voted against it, he could not join the hunger strike as a student leader. He’d sign on as an individual. Without hesitation, I told Wang Dan I’d be on board too.

The Beijing Students’ Autonomous Federation did not support the hunger strike because they didn’t want to take responsibility for people’s lives. Their leaders stayed behind closed doors, talking and arguing, seemingly out of touch with the sentiment of the students. They said if we’d mellow out, the government wouldn’t settle scores too harshly with us later.

At nightfall, I went to the Triangle with Wang Dan. As usual, he was simple, clear, and direct when he spoke. “My name is Wang Dan. I am going to join the hunger strike.” With his calm demeanor, his young face shone with inner strength.

Then I went to the podium.

This was the only time I stood on the Triangle and addressed my fellow students. The microphone felt heavy in my hands, but my heart was heavier. I scanned the people in the crowd surrounding me. Their heads were like black ocean waves under the glittering night stars. I saw many young faces in the first rows, unwashed, unshaven, and earnest. They reminded me of myself, five years earlier, when I’d first come to Beida from an army base near a fishing village. I knew where they came from and what they had brought with them. I could feel the crowd’s heartbeat and energy. We’d shared the same kind of love, the same kind of dream, and now we shared the same frustration and hope for our country. I knew the truth was on our side. I knew our hearts were filled with love. What more could I ask for at that moment? To speak truth to power, to sacrifice our health to win freedom, to face the unknown with calmness—these were the great notions with which I and my generation had been raised.