Forbidden City (10 page)

Anyway, at least a thousand students started the hunger strike, and a day or so later, two thousand more joined them. Things in our office were pretty frantic. Eddie was going nuts, bossing everybody around, contradicting himself. He was supposed to be covering the upcoming visit of Premier Gorbachev, but he said he knew in his newsman’s bones that the student demonstrations were the bigger story. Dad was loving every second of it, spending millions on taxis. He’d dash off to tape the preparations for the state visit, then rush back to see what was going on in the square. Lao Xu seemed busiest of all, one minute translating stuff for Eddie, then running down to meet Dad in the square, then being called back by Eddie on the two-way radio to do something for him. Eventually he slept in the
suite with us, which was against hotel regulations, but no one in the hotel seemed to be paying much attention to regulations. It seemed like everybody was having a holiday from regulations.

Me included. I tried to keep up the schoolwork, but I didn’t get much done. I skipped school a lot. I went to the square at least twice a day to see what was going on. Sometimes I went with Dad.

Eddie said he figured the students started the hunger strike when they did to embarrass the government. He figured their tactic was to force the government to give in to their demands because the government wouldn’t want hunger strikers in Tian An Men Square when Premier Gorbachev arrived. It would look pretty bad, if when the premier came for the required tour of the square and the Forbidden City before going into the Great Hall of the People, three thousand students were laid out on the pavement starving to death.

Dad mimicked a tour leader’s nasal voice. “Here is the Monument to the People’s Heroes, and there, just past the students who are starving themselves because they think we’re a bunch of old crooks, is the Chairman Mao Memorial.”

When Gorbachev got here for his visit on the fifteenth, all the news reports showed him shaking hands with the Chinese government bigwigs. Everybody smiled so hard I thought their faces would crack. Banquets. Visits to the Great Wall. More banquets. More smiles and handshakes and
friendly talks while they sat in deep armchairs with big doilies on the arms and interpreters sitting behind them. There was a whole lot of talk about the renewed friendship between the Russian and Chinese people after a thirty-year break. I didn’t see any
xiao ren
— ordinary people — Russian
or
Chinese, on those broadcasts. As far as I could tell, the Chinese people were in Tian An Men Square.

And the Russian premier didn’t get to visit the Forbidden City or the square, because the students were still there, lying on the concrete surrounded by their friends and classmates. Too bad, Gorby.

On the second day of Gorbachev’s visit the ambulances started coming to Tian An Men Square. I was there. It was a hot sunny morning and the hunger-strikers lay in rows on army-type cots under protective canopies. Some of them had even been refusing fluids and were so weak they couldn’t stand or sit.

I tried again to find Lan and Hong, but it was hard to get close and harder still to see the faces of those lying down. But I kept searching. I must have been at it for over an hour before I found them.

I hardly recognized Lan. She looked like a stick-doll. Her eyes had sunk into her head and she sort of stared into nowhere. She was one of those who would not take anything to drink. Hong was on the cot beside her. He still had on his red cap. When I called out to him he got up on his elbow and smiled when he saw me.

“Hello, Canadian friend,” he said weakly. His
lips were dry and cracked. “How are you today?”

“How are
you?”

“We are in good spirits, although some of us are weak. More and more students are joining the hunger strike every day. We —”

Hong was interrupted by a voice blaring over the loudspeakers the students had set up.

“What was that all about?” I asked him when the noise stopped.

“More ambulances have come,” he said.

About fifteen minutes later, four students took Lan away. As she was being carried through the crowd a woman cried out and tried to clutch Lan’s clothing, wailing as though someone had died. All I could make out was, “Please, please.” Lan was lifted into the ambulance. Others were helped in after her. Then the ambulance crept away, horn braying as it moved slowly though the crowd. Hong stayed on his cot, staring up at the canopy above him. I figured he had one more day until an ambulance took him away, too. I said goodbye to him and he flashed me a victory sign.

Back at the hotel that night I thought a lot about what Hong and Lan are doing. I can’t decide whether they’re being really brave or really dumb. What I am sure of is that it’s dangerous. I guess that’s why I admire them so much.

Once the premier had gone, things started to happen fast. Two of the mega-powerful boys, Li Peng, who is the premier, and Zhao Zi-yang, the
chairman of the Communist Party, visited some of the hunger-strikers who had been taken to hospital. That was shown on TV also. Li Peng, with his round, smiling face and dark-rimmed glasses, was shown going from bed to bed, shaking hands with the students and talking to them. He looked about as sincere as a used-car salesman.

On Friday morning before dawn the phone rang. I heard Lao Xu answer it and start yelling into the receiver. Then he shouted, “Wake up! There is a rumour that Zhao Zi-yang is going to Tian An Men Square to talk to the students!”

We were all up and dressed in moments. “Let’s go!” Eddie said.

I grabbed my backpack. No one seemed to notice that I went right along with them.

The tall light standards in the square and the lights from the monuments make it easy to see where you’re going, although you need extra lights for TV pictures. It took us at least half an hour to push through the throng to the Monument to the People’s Heroes, which is where Eddie figured the action would be. Buses were parked in the square now, commandeered by the students for shelter when it rained. It was cold out, and a lot of people had coats on.

Nothing was happening at the monument. Eddie said to Dad, “Let’s split up and call on the two-way if we see anything.”

“Okay,” Dad answered. “I’ll go down towards
Qian Men.” That’s the Front Gate.

“I’ll cover the mausoleum,” Eddie said. “Lao Xu, let’s go.”

“Alex, you can come with me,” Dad said.

“Why don’t I stay here? That way we can cover three areas at once.”

“I don’t know, Alex. I don’t want you to get lost.”

What a lame thing to say, I thought. Eddie must have agreed. “Are you kidding, Ted? Your kid knows this city better than most of the residents!”

Dad agreed, reluctantly, and the three of them waded into the crowd. I went up to the base of the monument among a hundred or so students and tried to get a look around. The first tier of the tall building still had a lot of wreaths on it. Nothing unusual seemed to be happening — other than probably half a million people, tents, parked buses, voices yelling over loud-hailers, TV lights sparking up for a few minutes then fading again.

I fished my camcorder out of my pack. It would be worthwhile to try taping anything that happened. Then I checked my radio to make sure it was on channel one and that it was on receive mode. I put it in my breast pocket.

I stood around for a while, fighting off the chill, before I noticed something going on over at the Great Hall of the People. A blaze of lights had come on, like a cluster of white torches. Something was up. The lights began to move towards me so I decided to stay put.

I took out my radio and keyed it. “Dad, Eddie, this is Alex. Can you see the lights? In the northwest quadrant, moving towards me. Over.”

“Alex, Dad here. I can’t see them. I’m on the south side of Qian Men. The smell of Kentucky chicken is driving me nuts. Over.”

“And I can’t see
anything,”
was Eddie’s response.

“I’ll check it out and let you know. Over and out.”

I put the radio in my pocket again. The lights were moving towards me quickly. They were TV lights. Somebody important was coming.

Right near the monument was a bus, and when Zhao Zi-yang got to the bus he stopped. He was at the centre of a tight circle of students wearing the white headbands that said
Democracy Now!
in Chinese. He reached up and started shaking hands with students in the bus. Amazing. This guy was the second most powerful man in China.

By that time I was making my way towards him. I had to climb down from the monument’s base, so I lost sight of Zhao, but the lights were easy to home in on. What wasn’t easy was pushing through the crowd. Then I got an idea. I took off my hat and stuffed it in my pocket so my blond hair would show.

“Press! Press!” I shouted, and held my camcorder up high so it could be seen. “Press! Let me through, please!”

It worked. The crowd of students parted and I got to the bus in time to see that Zhao was talking. He was of medium height, with a high forehead and
western style glasses. I put the camcorder to my eye and zoomed in to get a medium close-up of Zhao with students at the bus windows in the background. Even through the viewfinder I could see that he was crying as he spoke to the crowd.

The only thing from his speech that I understood were the words … “too late.”

I probably don’t need to write down how deliriously happy Dad and Eddie were when I hooked my camcorder up to our office TV and showed them the tape. I thought Eddie was going to carry me around the room.

Within an hour Dad had found someone in the hotel who agreed to take the tape to the satellite feed station and Eddie had written a report and faxed it to Toronto.

I was delirious myself. The reporter’s bug had
really
bitten me.

We all wanted to go back to sleep but we couldn’t. Too much to do. I skipped school again. Dad went back to the square with Eddie and Lao Xu to try and interview some students about Zhao’s visit and ask them what they thought it meant to their movement. I got to clean up the office because Eddie wouldn’t let anyone from the hotel in. Pretty demeaning job for someone who got his video report on national TV, if you ask me.

It took me all morning to tidy up the office. It’s hard to make an office neat when you know that the people who work in it are used to a mess and that if they ever came back to find an orderly workplace they’d think they were in the wrong office. I also made sure all the battery rechargers were full and charging away.

After lunch Lao Xu came by and started using the phone as he often did. He tried to catch people after the customary afternoon nap, before the lines got too busy again. He was shouting away for an hour or so, saying “
Wei? Wei?”
about once a second, then he sat and made some notes.

Eddie and Dad came back later in the afternoon, looking tired. Dad put away his camera in its aluminum case and flopped into one of the armchairs. Eddie said hello and headed for the shower with his pipe still in his mouth.

Just as Eddie padded into the office wearing a towel around his large middle and drying his hair with another towel the phone rang. Lao Xu answered it, yelled for a few seconds, listened some more, and hung up, looking glum.

“There is a rumour that Chairman Zhao Zi-yang has been removed from office,” he said quietly. “And my friend says we should turn on the TV.”

I pushed the button and the screen came to life. We gathered around.

“That’s Li Peng,” Lao Xu said. The premier was talking. He looked stern, even angry, but he had a look
on his face that seemed to say, “I’m the boss now.”

“What’s up, Lao Xu?” Dad asked.

Lao Xu kept his eyes on the screen. “Please wait, Ted.”

So the three of us stared at Li Peng, dressed in a dark blue Mao suit, collar buttoned up under his chin, chopping the air with his hand, karate-style, as he talked. I could make out a couple of words, like
China
and
student
and
foreigner
. Then it was over.

Dad and Eddie and I turned to Lao Xu. We knew from the look on his face that the news was not good. He spoke in a low voice, as if he couldn’t quite believe his own words.

“Premier Li Peng says that Beijing is now under martial law.”

“Oh-oh,” Dad said.

Eddie let out a low whistle, puffing out his moustache.

Lao Xu continued. “And he has ordered all students and others to clear Tian An Men Square or face the consequences. Their presence is illegal. All demonstrations are illegal. It is also illegal to spread rumours. And,” Lao Xu added, looking directly into Eddie’s eyes, “foreign correspondents are forbidden to report on anything to do with the students’ presence in Tian An Men Square. If they disobey, measures will be taken.”

I knew what martial law meant. It meant that all laws were suspended, even the constitution, and the government made policy directly, using the military to
carry it out. Martial law meant soldiers on the street corners with guns, searches of persons and houses without any kind of warrant — by soldiers, not police. It meant curfews. And fear mixed with excitement.