A Heart for Freedom (23 page)

That’s when I stood up to speak. I said that little had been accomplished under BSAF leadership. They had voted against the hunger strike, but then assumed leadership after it was a great success. Since the strike had ended, they had failed to maintain order on the Square. Meanwhile, the hunger strike leaders had remained strong and united. We had kept the Square in order even when our leaders were suffering from hunger and exhaustion. I promised we would return leadership to the BSAF once order was reestablished on the Square.

This was a moment when fatal disaster could have struck from two directions: the martial law troops or the chaos that ruled the Square. The sheer size of the protests, the anger, the pent-up anguish, the long-suppressed revolutionary fever—not to mention the undercover government agents who mingled among the people stirring rumors and panic—could have set a match to the fuse that was just begging to be lit.

During the afternoon, three men threw eggs dipped in black ink at the giant portrait of Chairman Mao above Tiananmen Gate. This unimaginable act of sacrilege sent shock waves through the Square. This was an act the government could have used to accuse the movement of anti-Communist, counterrevolutionary turmoil. The three men were immediately apprehended, and to my regret, a zealous student leader handed them over to the police. The men each spent more than a decade in prison and suffered inhuman torture.

Just as the egg-throwing incident began to die down, a sudden high wind blew into Beijing from the Gobi Desert, sweeping with it clouds of sand that turned the sky a hazy yellow. But before the dust could settle, windblown rain and hail began to pelt us, scattering people in all directions. The storm brought a ghostly feeling to the Square. Before darkness fell, Mao’s portrait had been cleaned and restored to its eminence above Tiananmen Gate.

The movement at this point desperately needed strong leadership. Amid the developing crisis, a new organization, the Capital Joint Conference, made its appearance. It was led by well-known figures from the 1976 April Fifth Incident at Tiananmen Square and various prominent scholars and intellectuals, who proposed a way to strengthen leadership on the Square. In the spirit of this proposal, a new leadership group called Defend Tiananmen Square Headquarters was formed, and they endorsed me as commander in chief for the Square. Zhang Boli and Feng—both of whom had returned from their safe houses—became key members of the new headquarters on the Square, along with Li Lu.

At 10:00 a.m. on May 24, with at least one hundred thousand people gathered in the Square, Wang Dan announced the formation of the Defend Tiananmen Square Headquarters. I led the assembled crowd in the annunciation of the following oath: “I swear I will protect the republic and Tiananmen Square with my young life. Heads can roll, blood can flow, but the people’s Square can never be lost! We are willing to fight to the last person.”

In the span of one month, I had gone from graduate student to student leader; from student leader to “mayor” of a small city, worrying about how to supply food, shelter, water, sanitation, and medical care to a growing population on the Square; from mayor to semi-military general, preparing to defend against martial law; and from general to spiritual leader—trying to overcome my own sadness and despair while continuing to cheer up thousands of young people and encouraging them to face the unknown with peace, strength, and purpose. I felt a greater, mysterious force was leading me and the entire movement into the realm of the unknown. All I could do was follow my instincts, keep pushing forward, and adapt to whatever circumstances lay ahead.

20

Defending Tiananmen Square

Along with my new role as commander of the Defend Tiananmen Square Headquarters came the responsibility of caring for the lives of the people on the Square. Though I hadn’t been trained or prepared for this task, I had a sense of what needed to be done from a big-picture perspective. First and foremost, we had to set up a broadcasting system so we could quickly establish authority and issue instructions. Second, we had to direct the student marshals to build a defense line to control the flow of traffic around the Square. Third, we had to establish a secure, central location for our headquarters so people would know where to find us and we would be able to protect the leaders dependably. We also needed a system to manage the donations of money and goods and provide food and water to the people on the Square. Finally, we must open a channel of communication to reach the news media and other organizations inside Beijing and beyond. To make a prolonged movement sustainable, I felt we needed to set up tents on the Square as shelters. I remembered how quickly the army had set up tents on our military base in the aftermath of the Tangshan earthquake when I was ten years old.

One week into martial law, the troops had been kept at bay and the subways were running again. Tiananmen Square truly belonged to the people. It was free and open to all kinds of activity, from political debate to rock concerts. The initial tension and fear provoked by the threat of martial law had vanished for the time being. After Li Peng issued a directive to the Railway Ministry to stop students from flooding into Beijing, many trains into Beijing from other major Chinese cities had been canceled. Even so, more and more students managed to find their way into the capital. As the intensity of the movement died down a bit and local Beijing students began to drift away out of disillusionment or fatigue, these provincial students formed the main student presence on the Square. Many were in Beijing for the first time. I heard reports that during the day, some of these students walked the Great Wall, toured the Forbidden City, circled the Temple of Heaven, and then returned to the Square at night to eat free food and sleep.

Our new leadership committee called a meeting of roughly 400 student representatives from 319 schools nationwide to decide how to proceed. Li Lu conducted the meeting, as he usually did. Out of the innumerable ideas suggested, we selected four options and put these up for a vote. Of the 288 valid votes, 162 were cast in favor of staying on the Square and launching frontal attacks to pressure the government. Specifically, the majority wanted to surround the central government compound in Zhongnanhai, seize key government organs, such as the Central Television station, and launch another hunger strike and a worker’s union strike. Of the minority, eighty voted to stay on the Square but pursue discussions and withdraw once certain progress had been made—such as the lifting of martial law; thirty-eight voted to preserve the purity of the student movement by not engaging in any power struggles with the government; and eight people voted to leave.
6

The Beijing Students’ Autonomous Federation was reorganized, with Yang Tao as its new president. Yang was a close friend of Wang Dan’s. He’d been actively involved in the democracy salon in the early days of the movement at Beida. We were all happy to see him at the Square. He had some new thoughts about how to deal with martial law. In order to hear his ideas in a relatively quiet setting, Feng, Boli, and I got into a taxi with Yang and Shen Zeyi, an older Beida graduate, and held a meeting while the cab slowly drove around the Square and the Forbidden City. Yang revealed his plan to us, which he called “empty campuses.” He thought students should vacate their college campuses and the Square and retreat to their home cities and towns. This strategy, Yang asserted, would rob the government of any excuse it might have to send in the troops. More important, Yang said, students would spread word of democracy to the far corners of the country. Every city square would become a mini Tiananmen Square.

Yang Tao was only twenty years old, but he carried himself with poise and deliberation. By now the mass movement was running out of emotion, and his idea was very intriguing. If we sent students back to their home provinces equipped with a mission, they just might push the democracy movement into a new dimension. I felt the stress and fatigue begin to lift from my shoulders as I envisioned democracy spreading to all corners of China.

The warm afternoon sun reminded me of our campus and how beautiful it was around the lake in springtime. “It would be so nice to go back to school,” I said. All of us in the taxi were simultaneously struck by nostalgia. Our driver stepped on the gas, and soon we were flying west through the city.

Beida—the birthplace of modern-day student movements; the place that nurtured our youth, cultivated our love, and enriched our minds. Its beauty and serenity were pervasive.

As we drove through campus, Shen Zeyi, who had been prosecuted for challenging Mao and had spent many years in prison, spoke passionately against the “empty campuses” idea. He said it could be a trap that played right into the hands of the government. “When all of us go back to the countryside,” he said, “the government will mobilize the local police and military, and the local Party machine, to catch us one by one. Then the entire movement will be crushed, disappear, and vanish in silence. The Square is our battleground. We cannot give it up by leaving it.”

His words brought an air of heaviness into our moment of joy and relief. Even Yang Tao, who only a minute ago had been excitedly championing the idea, was brought to silence.

The driver seemed to know how we were all feeling. He steered the car toward No Name Lake, driving slowly to let us enjoy the setting sun over the water. No one spoke. We knew it would be a long time before we would all come back to this spot together, if ever. This vision of the landscape formed an image in my mind that I would carry forward into the future. It was the last time I ever saw Beida in such a beautiful light. Our lives would soon be radically changed.

Back on the Square, Yang Tao’s proposal went nowhere. Li Lu was the first one to shoot it down. He argued persuasively that if we left the Square without achieving our initial goals, we’d lose the support we had accumulated. He seemed unhappy with me for even considering the “empty campuses” idea.

A day later, Yang Tao, like many of his predecessors, resigned from the Beijing Students’ Autonomous Federation. The pressure of leadership on the Square demanded a high level of physical perseverance and sheer willpower.

Among our pressing concerns, the most immediate and urgent problem involved food and shelter. Fifty thousand students were living on the Square, and our headquarters provided bread and water from a fund of donations at a cost of 40,000 RMB per day. This meant each student could count on only one piece of bread per day. And though the good people of Beijing donated whatever else they could, the influx of donated food had begun to dwindle. Many students held out boxes inscribed with the word
donation
, but they managed to collect little, if any, food this way. As for shelter, most of it consisted of flimsy lean-tos made out of plastic. Two days earlier, a professor from Hong Kong University had responded to my suggestion and volunteered to acquire tents for the Square.

* * *

The next morning, May 27, I came to our Headquarters tent, where the broadcasting center was. I remember sitting along the outer edge, where part of the fabric had been lifted up to let in some fresh air and light. There was a bit of tension between Li Lu and me, which might have been due to the fact that I had agreed with Yang Tao’s idea the night before. We were sitting two or three people away from each other, and there was an awkward silence.

Then a student sitting across from us asked a question.

“So what are we hoping for? What can we achieve?”

I had been thinking about that myself.

Li Lu responded calmly and quietly, “What we are actually expecting is a crackdown.” (In that context, I assumed he meant
in public
.) “When the government runs out of tricks, like a dog trying to jump over a wall, and has to face the people with a butcher’s knife—when the Square is awash with blood—only then will the people of China be awakened and united to overcome this government.”

I saw the student’s face light up at this shocking and powerful insight. Now I understood Li Lu’s reason for rejecting the “empty campuses” idea. Both he and Ren Wanding shared a strong conviction that if the government were able to move the students away from the spotlight, the same kind of crackdown would take place in the darkness, out of the public eye, and the truth would be covered up. That would be a tragedy, because all the sacrifices the students and citizens had made to this point would be lost. That morning was the first time I realized what some of the scholars had been saying about the April Fifth movement, in 1976, when the government had sent plainclothes police into the Square at night to beat and arrest people who had gathered in memory of Zhou Enlai.

Phrases such as “dogs jumping over a wall,” “butcher’s knife,” and “awash with blood” may sound horrible to an English-speaking audience (I felt the same way as a Chinese speaker when I heard the English phrase “drop-dead gorgeous”), but these were common phrases when we were growing up in the Communist Chinese culture. Still, I was shocked by what I had just heard. For the first time, I began to realize that our hope for a dialogue with the government and a reversal of the
dong luan
verdict was gone and we were now facing an inevitable crackdown. Even so, I did not think Li Lu was talking about a massacre.

Before I could process it any further or ask any questions or discuss it, a man poked his head into the tent and changed the subject. It was one of the tall representatives from the intellectuals.

“Here you are, Chai Ling, Li Lu. I’ve been looking for you guys all morning. We need you to come. The meeting is starting now. Come quickly.”

Before I could respond, Li Lu waved his hand at me and said, “I’m not going. It’s a waste of my time. But you go, Chai Ling. You should ask them for some money for the Square.”

* * *