A Heart for Freedom (22 page)

Just when we thought we’d done everything necessary to prepare for another night, a new challenge presented itself. The weather forecasters announced that a severe thunderstorm was headed our way and would hit Beijing the next day. How would we survive a downpour under these conditions? The garbage was piling up, and most student strikers were too weak to move.

After we had gotten just a few hours sleep at night, we were awakened by an urgent report of some strange activities on the Square. Someone said that government agents in white doctor’s coats were taking students into buses. Fearing it might be part of a government plan to clear the Square, we had to awaken all the students and tell them to be alert. By the time we were able to clarify the confusion, morning had arrived and my body gave out again.

This time I was taken to a hospital and given a dose of drugs that prevented me from returning right away to the Square. Later, one of the leaders of the Beijing Students’ Autonomous Federation told me she had suggested to the government that they put me under control so she could try to get the students out of the Square. I was frightened by her confession. What if the dose had not been a sedative but something stronger? We often heard stories of people who had vanished.

When I finally returned to the Square, I was astonished to see row after row of big buses parked on the north side of the Square, adjacent to Chang’an Avenue. Members of the Hunger Strike Committee had worked through the night to secure seventy buses from the city transportation company to provide temporary shelter for striking students when the thunderstorm arrived.

By the afternoon, when the first streaks of lightning sliced open the gray skies, all the hunger strikers had moved into the buses. Soon the Square, which only moments earlier had pulsated and throbbed with the energy of thousands, resembled an enormous pond of splashing water. Each raindrop hurled down from the sky sent out a ripple when it landed, and the ripples merged into a wave. I thought,
Just look at the wave we’ve created
.

19

Martial Law

Li Peng finally agreed to meet with student leaders, but no one from the Hunger Strike Committee attended the meeting. When we heard that a dialogue had been arranged between student leaders and possibly high-ranking government officials, we were busy herding students onto the buses before the thunderstorm. We were more concerned with their safety and no longer put much stock in high-level discussions with the government. When the meeting ended, Wang Dan raced back to the Square with news.

“It’s bad,” he said. “Li Peng is hostile.”

On May 19, day seven of the hunger strike, we learned the army would soon enter Beijing. Around four o’clock in the morning, news came that Zhao Ziyang and Li Peng had come to the Square. We dashed over to see them, but by the time we got to the scene, both men had departed. Those who had heard them said that Zhao Ziyang had been kind and sincere, but Li Peng was cold and phony.

We decided to call an end to the hunger strike. We held a meeting and swiftly concluded we did not want to give the government an excuse to bring in the troops and impose martial law. By day seven, the hunger strike had grown to four thousand people, but many were extremely weak, and some had to be moved on stretchers. We could not allow the army to march in and trample on our faithful comrades. I announced the decision over the loudspeaker and asked the students to start eating again. I urged Beijing residents to bring us food. I then went straight to Tiananmen Gate, where journalists were waiting for me to make an appearance. I declared we had won a moral victory and had earned the support of the Chinese people nationwide. Just then, the sun cast a wide shaft of golden light over Chang’an Avenue, and I felt as if a mountain had been lifted from my shoulders.

Not everyone agreed with the decision to end the hunger strike. An angry group surrounded our new headquarters aboard one of the buses, yelling that we had betrayed the hunger strike. They pushed the bus back and forth until it started to rock. Someone threw a stone that shattered a window. Out of nowhere, Feng and Wang Wen appeared and accused us of selling out the movement. They said the decision was undemocratic. Feng demanded another vote and grabbed a microphone to address the hunger strikers.

I thought he’d lost his mind. I seriously wondered if the Square had taken its toll on his judgment. As I struggled to wrest the microphone from his grip, the angry people outside continued to rock the bus. It was like battling aboard a storm-tossed boat at sea.

Li Lu, who had been at the forefront of ending the hunger strike, now just sat and watched, though he must have been dumbstruck by Feng’s madness. Zhang Boli, who had been trying to calm Feng during the fracas, finally proposed a motion to remove Feng as deputy commander.

“I resign!” Feng screamed as he threw the microphone onto the floor and stormed off the bus. I was shocked and disheartened.

* * *

One hour after Chinese Central Television announced the end of the hunger strike, the Party Central and State Council held a meeting of high-ranking Party officials, the government, and the military to prepare for martial law. Zhao Ziyang had decided he would not be the one to carry out Deng Xiaoping’s order to use troops against the students and took a three-day sick leave. Li Peng, however, was more than ready. He wrote the speech ushering in martial law, which was formally declared at 11:00 p.m.

In support of the declaration, Chen Xitong, the mayor of Beijing, signed an order banning demonstrations, student strikes, work stoppages, and all other activities that would impede public order.

When the decision was announced, the city of Beijing exploded. Three hundred thousand people were on Tiananmen Square that night. While the government’s loudspeakers continuously broadcast speeches by Li Peng, we called on people to resist the troops in nonviolent, peaceful ways. We immediately organized able-bodied students to go to the outskirts of Beijing to block the army’s advance. We also sent students to mobilize the citizens of Beijing for the resistance. All night long, the Square boiled with anger and disbelief. A sense of impending doom prevailed.

One question circled my mind a thousand times:
Why is the government so coldhearted, so blind to the good intentions of the students?
We had reduced our demands to only two particulars: direct dialogue and a reversal of the
dong luan
verdict. Our student movement was by far the most peaceful and organized protest the city had ever known. Four thousand people had joined the hunger strike, and by the time of the martial law declaration, fifty-eight thousand students from outside Beijing had come to the Square to join the movement.

People on the Square waited all night for the troops to arrive. At daybreak, we learned that residents on the outskirts of the city had stopped the troops. With joy and relief, I went out on a truck to check the major streets in the surrounding city. I saw roadblocks at almost every intersection on Chang’an Avenue, and Beijing residents filled the streets.

“Go back to the borders to protect our country from foreign invasion!” someone shouted. “You are the people’s army. We don’t need you in Beijing.”

Back at the Square, I heard an unfamiliar sound overhead. Looking to the sky, I saw military helicopters hovering overhead. People began to curse and move around, waving their arms and covering their heads. We thought because the troops on the ground had been stalled, they would drop down on us from above. The helicopters discharged a storm of paper. Leaflets, on which were printed the martial law declarations, drifted downward and soon formed a new layer of refuse on the floor of the Square.

At noon, some sympathetic former military officers visited our command post to advise us on how to organize a resistance to block the army’s advance and cut off their supplies. They suggested we fly kites over the Square to stop the helicopters.

* * *

When the government declared martial law, the entire landscape of the protest shifted. Before, the slogans generated by students addressed government corruption and called for freedom and democracy. Now the protest became a people’s movement directed against the regime. Throughout the day, angry protestors denounced the leadership. “Down with the puppet Li Peng!” they shouted. “Down with dictatorship! Deng Xiaoping step down! Down with Deng Xiaoping! Deng Xiaoping is like the moon: He changes every fourteen days.”

Feng returned to the Square. He’d managed to recover his sanity after storming off the bus the night before. He told me he’d seen people lining up in front of banks and stores, buying up supplies as if preparing for a siege. The subway trains had stopped running, and the city had cut off the water supply to the public bathrooms near the Square, which had been our only resource during the strike.

The Beijing Students’ Autonomous Federation assumed leadership on the Square, and they announced a sit-in to protest martial law. Hundreds of thousands of people had already gathered, and more were arriving all the time from other cities. As the daytime clamor gradually died down with the coming of night, we were convinced the arrival of troops was imminent. But the first night of martial law passed without incident.

The Square was a vast rumor mill. When word reached us that the government had sent trained killers to the Square to assassinate the student leaders, some students skilled in the martial arts immediately assigned themselves as bodyguards for Feng, Li Lu, Zhang Boli, me, and the other leaders of the hunger strike, though now that the hunger strike had officially ended, we were all “off duty.” Discussions swiftly followed on the matter of how we should carry on the fight by living, not dying—how we should save “the revolutionary seeds” and spread the democracy movement to all four corners of the country. We still had a small fund of donations, enough to provide committee members with “escape money” in the amount of 1,000 RMB each. Safe houses were in the process of being arranged, and the committee decided Feng and I should go our separate ways to avoid being recognized. My heart was ripped by sadness. This was May 22, our first wedding anniversary.

Somehow my sentiments on this occasion inspired Li Lu to announce that, regrettably, he had never experienced marriage and sex. His girlfriend had just arrived from Nanjing and found him on the Square. “Why not get married now, right here?” I said. Everyone thought that was a grand idea. We were all familiar with the movie
Marriage on the Execution Ground
, which tells the story of two young Communists captured after an uprising against the Nationalist forces of Chiang Kai-shek in the city of Guangzhou. The couple decides to get married before they are executed, and they die in a hail of bullets while singing “The Internationale.”

Tension and fear gave way to cheers and laughter on the Square. We all needed something like this. Thousands sang the “Bridal Chorus,” and Li Lu invited Feng and me to be best man and maid of honor. Zhang Boli managed to produce a marriage certificate embossed with the seal of the Hunger Strike Committee. Followed by a fanfare, we walked around the Square and up the steps to the People’s Monument. As flashbulbs went off all around us, Zhang Boli pronounced the couple husband and wife. As a beautiful sunset cast its glow on the scene, Li Lu gave a rousing speech. “We have to fight—but we must marry, too,” he declared in his strong voice.

The crowd responded with a thundering cheer. We could not provide the couple with a wedding cake, but someone produced a big watermelon. It was a sweet, fond, parting memory before we said farewell to one another and prepared to go underground.

I left the Square that night for a safe house. A Beijing family let me sleep in a little bedroom in their apartment. For the first time in many days, I took a shower and slept in a comfortable bed. Alone in the quiet, moonlit night, I wondered about Feng. Where was he? Now, more than ever, exactly one year to the day we had married, I yearned for him and our life together. I drifted to sleep, alone in my safe-house bed, with memories of our wedding day swirling in my mind.

* * *

When I awoke the next day to news that nothing had happened on the Square during the night, it didn’t take me long to decide to return. What use could there possibly be in hiding? A life on the run was not the life for me. I took two hundred renminbi out of my “escape money” allotment and gave it to the family who had protected me. They brought me several new outfits and a backpack so I could shed my dirty clothes.

Li Lu had remained on the Square overnight, and that’s where I found him upon my return. He gave me a quick update about the chaotic situation. Several organizations were present on the Square, he said, but none seemed equipped to assume a leadership role. One group had changed presidents 182 times in just a few days. Anyone could organize a meeting, gather a group, and direct the people toward one purpose or another. Little groups took over areas of the Square and posted their own guards to protect their turf. This went on, back and forth, throughout the evening, Li Lu told me.

Sanitation conditions had become worse, and the risk of an outbreak of illness had increased. Many students were irritable, irrational, and easily angered—on the verge of emotional breakdown. Rumors of an imminent crackdown circulated constantly.

In the middle of the night, Wu’er Kaixi had again tried to move people off the Square, but before anyone could act on his hoarse exhortations, another voice had announced that Kaixi only represented himself, not any leadership group. This caused great confusion on the Square in the early hours of the morning.

The Hunger Strike Committee called for a meeting with representatives from many different groups. Li Lu wanted the Beijing Students’ Autonomous Federation to turn the Square back over to the Hunger Strike Committee for twenty-four hours so we could restore order, but the BSAF vehemently opposed this proposal.