A Heart for Freedom (2 page)

Then, on December 4, 2009, my heart was profoundly changed and my eyes were opened to all the dramatic events of my life. For the first time, everything started to make sense. I now see that the thirst I had is the longing for freedom placed in our hearts by God. Only when I came to know God could I truly begin to comprehend his unique purpose for my life. I’ve since been given renewed strength, healing, and insight to explain my perspective on China’s past, the meaning of the Tiananmen movement, and God’s future plan. I’ve come to realize this is not a book I could write on my own; rather, it’s a book that could only be written
through
me.

By May 2011, I finally was able to write about the events of my life in their entirety. I used to feel hurt and betrayed by so many; now I’ve been healed from most of the pain, and God has given me the strength to finish the story.

Over the past twenty-two years, many reports have been written about Tiananmen Square, and no doubt most have mentioned my role there. I have not read them all, nor would I be able to even if I wanted. This book is
my
story, a story of youth, passion, sacrifice, and triumph in the search for freedom and justice against great evil. And it is a story of the ultimate truth that sets us free.

Prelude

“We’re not going along with you this time!” my father said out of the blue. He looked especially frail and upset as he stood in the entryway of my home with his hand on the doorknob, ready to storm out. “Twenty years ago,” he said sternly, “you were young and brave and full of hope. You were so lucky to survive. We are fortunate to have half our family intact. You know how much we miss your mom and Grandma. . . .”

He paused, and we became silent. In 1991, we had lost both my mother and my grandmother, and it was still painful enough that we didn’t talk about it often.

After an awkward silence, Dad continued at a slower pace: “Things are different now. We are older. We are tired. We can’t do this again. . . . And you—can you do this again? You are no longer young and naive; you are a wife and a mother now. Getting involved in the movement again, after all you went through—what kind of consequences will you bring to us as a family? What kind of grief will you bring to your children?”

This was my father, the most amazing dad, who had been a devoted and talented doctor in the Chinese army, and later the head of a hospital, but who had given up everything he had worked for his entire life to be with us in America. Now in his seventies, he had stood by me, his eldest daughter, in the midst of the most difficult period of our family’s life, with no resentment and no complaint. But this time he was putting his foot down.

“Why can’t you be like your sister and your other friends and try to live a normal and common life?” Dad looked at me, shook his head, and walked out the door. A nice Sunday brunch ended abruptly.

All I had said was that, in a few days’ time, I would be on a plane to Washington, DC, to celebrate with Fang Zheng, a fellow survivor of Tiananmen Square, who had lost his legs during the massacre and who was now going to be able to walk—and dance—for the first time on prosthetic legs he received after coming to the United States. It seemed my father was making a bigger deal of it than was necessary. Yet, at the same time, I knew all too well his concerns could be well founded.

“What do you think, Bob?” I turned to my husband, hoping for some perspective. “Should I still go to DC?” I knew the impact on him might be the same as it was on my dad. He had seen the consequences of my involvement in the Chinese democracy movement.

Bob, in the middle of watching a Sunday football game, shot back a quick reply. “Of course you should go,” he said. “It’s fun. It will be great.” To my husband, a typical American, politics are as simple as a sporting event. You win or you lose, but you don’t die.

The situation, of course, is much different in China. There, trying to live a common life can lead one to become a revolutionary or a wanted criminal. And even if one leaves the country, the persecution doesn’t end. Recently, my dad was given a severe warning by some leaders from China: “If Chai Ling continues to join the movement, there will not be any good consequences for all of you,” they said. “China is different now; we are stronger and more powerful. A lot of things could happen . . .”

What was left unsaid made a big impression on my dad, but it isn’t something the average American can understand. Life in America is hectic and stressful, with concerns about money, bills, and a shortage of time. But the stakes are much higher in China, where you can lose your freedom or your life for merely trying to express yourself.

In the spring of 1989, the simple act of bringing water and bread to fellow students at Tiananmen Square led me to the top steps of the Monument to the People’s Heroes—center stage in the student protests for government reform and greater freedom. Later, in the face of oncoming tanks and troops, I would have to make a choice between life and belief. Now, after all these years of sweat and tears to rebuild my life in America, could a simple trip to Washington, DC, lead my family and me into another Valley of Weeping?

But how could I not go? How could I give up what we stood for? What if this were the very work I was kept alive to finish?

* * *

On the morning of October 7, 2009, I woke up early, knowing this would be a big day. Just four months earlier, on June 4, we had marked the twentieth anniversary of China’s Tiananmen movement and the Beijing Massacre; today we would celebrate a major victory in the life of one of the survivors.

Two decades had passed so quickly. In my mind, I was still the same young woman who had escaped from China, after months in hiding, as one of the “21 Most Wanted” student leaders at Tiananmen Square, not knowing if I would live or die. Now I live in the Cradle of Liberty—Boston, Massachusetts—the site of another historic massacre in the cause of freedom and democracy (though only five people died in Boston, compared to hundreds or thousands in Beijing).

Twenty years ago, I was a lonely immigrant—in exile—who barely spoke English. Now I am the mother of three young children, the wife of a loving American husband, and a successful business entrepreneur with a nice home—to many, perhaps, a poster child for freedom and the American Dream.

Even in my wildest dreams, I could not have imagined my life would turn out this way. What I have experienced is far beyond what any country girl from a fishing village in China could ever have expected. Often when I’m at an expensive country club or a fancy fund-raising event, I still feel a bit out of place, like I’m living in a fairy-tale world. Sometimes I wonder,
Who am I now? Is this my true destiny?

I said good-bye to my husband and my girls and settled into the taxi that would take me to Logan Airport. The light of the morning sun dappled the colorful leaves of the majestic oaks that give our home the feel of an old English estate. As we drove along the gleaming Charles River, which winds past the ivy-covered brick buildings of Harvard Business School, my alma mater, the morning turned into a glorious New England fall day. The air was fresh and crisp, the sky a sapphire blue.

Aboard the plane, as I squeezed into a middle seat between two large passengers, I reflected on the twenty-year anniversary of Tiananmen Square. An article in
The
Chronicle of Higher Education
had called it “The Great Forgetting.”
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Few students inside China today would recognize the iconic picture from 1989 of a lone young man standing in front of a line of tanks. And many middle-aged Chinese no longer talk about the reform movement. In a more prosperous China, they no longer are interested in discussing politics or think it is relevant to their busy lives of raising their families and getting on with their jobs. I was deeply saddened by this.

That’s why the day’s event was so special. While the rest of the world tried to forget Tiananmen, a few still chose to remember. That’s why it was important for me to drop my daily duties to be with Fang Zheng, to celebrate and be a witness to his amazing triumph, and to thank the people who continued to do the right thing by offering love and support to the oppressed.

My dad’s voice still rang in my ears. I wished I could tell him that I had to do the right thing, especially when the rest of the world remained silent. If I became afraid and caved in to the pressure, I would deny the very person I am.

Maybe Dad was just overreacting. Maybe I’m just imagining things.

My stomach started hurting again. How much I hated this kind of conflict! What would it be like to live like a common person, never having to confront or experience this kind of pain or mental anguish?

The steady noise and motion of the aircraft dulled my senses and lulled me to sleep.

I awoke to an awful sensation of suffocation, as if someone were choking me. I opened my mouth as wide as I could, but I could not breathe. My arms and legs seemed to be losing strength. If this is not what it’s like to die, then I don’t know what dying will be like. I tried to shout, but the noise of the plane drowned me out. The two giants on either side of me must surely have heard my cries, but for some reason, they kept looking straight ahead—as if I were crazy and their best response was to pretend I wasn’t there.

Finally, I tapped the arm of the person sitting to my left, closest to the aisle. “I can’t breathe,” I said. “Please get someone to help me.”

A few minutes later, a flight attendant arrived and escorted me to the front of the cabin. She gave me a cup of water and a bag to breathe into, which helped a little. My face must have looked as pale as a sheet. A doctor traveling on the plane checked me and asked me a number of questions.

“You are having an attack,” he said. “Are you anxious? Are you nervous?”

“I don’t think so,” I replied, a bit confused. I had never experienced this kind of debilitating emotion, even at the height of the Tiananmen crisis or throughout my underground escape.

“It seems you are suffering an anxiety attack,” he said. “Have some more water. You should get better.” He told me to call my physician when we landed, and he went back to his seat.

Anxiety attack?
I couldn’t believe it. I didn’t know that what was happening in my subconscious could have the power to create such a powerful reaction in my body. On this day of joy and triumph, my past journey and my future destiny decisively collided.

Like Abraham going up to the mountain to offer his most beloved son, I felt as if I were climbing the mountain for a second time, to again face the anxiety of possibly losing everything most near and dear to my heart. The first time happened in the last hours at Tiananmen, as the tanks and soldiers converged on the Square. Then, we were young, passionate, and with a big dream to reform China. And though our dreams were crushed and my heart was broken, our lives were spared, like the life of Abraham’s son. But now I had real children, beautiful and innocent children, who knew nothing about the cruelty of evil. How could I rejoin a battle that could not be won and in the process sacrifice my most precious loved ones? Who was I, a common individual, to take on a battle against an entire regime with enormous resources and networks, against the backdrop of a world that seemed to have forgotten—or at least was unaware of—the situation in China? I felt the wind being sucked from my sails. I could not move forward, and I could not move back. I was stuck in an ocean of anxiety.

* * *

A year later, in June 2010, I caught the same flight from Boston to DC—this time to announce the beginning of a movement called All Girls Allowed, whose mission is to end China’s one-child policy and stop the world’s largest gendercide against women and girls, a massive crime against humanity that has taken more than four hundred million innocent lives. This new battle seems so much larger than Tiananmen, yet I no longer live in fear and conflict. My life is truly filled with peace, and I overflow with joy and laughter.

If someone had told me in 2009 that my panic attack would be the beginning of a beautiful chapter in my long, arduous—yet splendid—journey; or that shortly after my return to Boston, God would meet me and lead me to the summit of a tall mountain from which I could look down upon the torturous path of my life with new understanding, I would not have believed it. Nor, perhaps, would you. This book, which started out as a simple memoir for my American-born children to know their mother’s history of coming to freedom, has become an audacious hope to record and reveal what might have been the mind of God all along—to free China and to free girls and women under oppression around the world. But for you to see and believe, we will have to start at the beginning of the journey. . . .

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