I didn’t sleep well that night. I slept some, but the trippy nervousness of my anxiety meant that my dreams were close to the waking world, yet when I woke, it was as if I was still dreaming. I hovered between one state and the next until the first tendrils of sunlight thinned and lengthened through the window. Always nervous, always afraid, but my fear was of a different texture now – sharper and sadder.
Rubbing my eyes, I washed. The thick fug of hunger and exhaustion still weighing on my brain, I staggered out into the early morning. The odd lone figure was wandering through the streets, head bowed; the only other people about were the late-night taxis still hoping for one final fare before dawn. I took a taxi towards Tiananmen Square, but the driver was nervous and would not take me all the way to Chang’an Avenue. He told me that he was old enough to be my father. That I should be back home. That it was dangerous for a ‘miss’ like me. His eyes were tired and kind. When I tried to pay him, he refused the fare. And perhaps because I was so tired myself, I felt my eyes well with tears.
‘I can still take you back, miss.’
‘That’s okay,’ I said. ‘I’m going to be absolutely fine.’
As I watched the taxi drive away, I felt a sense of yearning, a desperate craving to be back in the warm car, heading home to curl up in my bed, the bed I had slept in all my life. I envied the driver his escape, but I was almost there now, and it was important to head on. I made my way along one of the side streets which led up to Chang’an Avenue, and from behind there came a violent roar. I felt greatly afraid, for I was a child again, and I was certain the police had come for me.
Instead, it was a young man on a bike. I knew he was a student just by looking at him. I felt a burst of relief and gratitude. He raised a gloved hand to me and made the V for Victory sign. At once, I responded in kind.
‘You can’t go down Chang’an. The police are there in droves. The military is amassing from the south. Use the side streets. Enter the square from the east,’ he said.
I must have seemed confused; it was that early in the morning.
‘Get on!’ he said with a wink and a smile.
I straddled the motorbike, put my arms around him, and we whizzed away. The state may have had the police and the army. But we students had developed a force too. This young man was a member of what had become known as ‘the flying tigers’, students on motorbikes who zipped around the city, passing on messages, relaying the activities of police and military, helping to coordinate our protests. We arrived at the square through a side alley and, despite the massive police presence, we were not accosted. As I dismounted, he gave me another wink. He was a goofy guy, and he’d actually got a ‘flying tiger’ flag wrapped around his bike, not the most discreet or sensible of measures given the circumstances. He didn’t look like a hero.
But he definitely was one.
The atmosphere in the square had changed. I sensed it as soon as I entered. For the last couple of weeks we had all been living under martial law. But martial law hadn’t achieved what the government wanted; it hadn’t managed to clear the square. Two hundred thousand soldiers had been deployed to seize control of the seven central Beijing districts that surround Tiananmen Square in order to constrict and then crush the student movement. But things hadn’t worked out as expected.
As schoolchildren we had sung songs with lines such as ‘the army loves the people’. The army itself was called the People’s Liberation Army because it had been formed in the fight against fascism and dictatorship. The students and the citizenry more broadly were often suspicious of police because of their contempt and casual brutality. But we tended to have sympathy for the army because of the historical link between the military and the population.
So when those two hundred thousand troops marched on the city, the students and members of the public at large greeted them with flowers, questioned them, talked to them and fraternised with them. Large numbers of soldiers were infected by the joyous atmosphere of the protests, and for this reason, the potential for violence was negated. I remember being on the square when the announcement came through that the army had been halted in their advance by ‘the great citizenry of Beijing’. We all cheered. Years later we discovered that the army had been riven with divisions and mutinies at every level. The commander of the 38th Army – the Beijing division – had point-blank refused to carry out orders.
At the same time, the protests intensified. Every day, trains packed with students arrived from the provinces to replenish the numbers in Tiananmen Square. In Hong Kong, a protest in support of our movement saw six hundred thousand people take to the streets. Similar protests occurred in Shanghai, Wuhan, Chongqing and in many other regions and cities. In Beijing itself, more than one million workers had gone on strike in support of the students. On 23 May detachments of workers arrived at the square to show their support for us, making it clear they were prepared to lay down their lives, having dubbed themselves the Citizens Dare to Die Brigades. It was unbearably moving. Our resolve was strengthened. And within all this human drama was a moment of light comedy. Posters appeared across the city put up by members of the criminal underclass. Beijing’s thieves, the posters informed us, were putting on hold their thievery in order to show their solidarity with us students!
But as this explosion of popular power was unfolding, behind the scenes something more opaque and disturbing was playing out. The divisions and mutinies in the army, along with the wave of protests engulfing the country, meant the government was reaching breaking point. In Deng’s own words, spoken at a clandestine meeting with the eight elders in the Forbidden City, ‘Party and state are facing a life-and-death crisis.’ The government itself was fracturing, with more and more ministers seeing the wisdom of delivering a programme of liberalisation in order to meet some of the students’ demands.
But the old dictator had no intention of allowing any type of compromise. Wizened, arrogant and bloated from years of power and privilege, Deng curled his ancient, rotting lips in a sneer of contempt set against the millions of people our protests had set in motion. Clandestinely, he brought in some of the most powerful Party hardliners, and then, against every constitutional caveat, he began to crack down, singling out the reformists in the government, putting under police surveillance those whom he suspected, preventing them from leaving their homes. In this fashion, he was able to perform a coup d’état, to create what was, in effect, a dictatorship within a dictatorship.
And once he had returned absolute power to himself, he began to plan a more ruthless and lethal form of mass oppression. It was true that the whole country was engulfed in a revolutionary situation, but the epicentre of our revolution had always been Beijing, specifically Tiananmen Square. In his final gambit, Deng would concentrate all his forces here. The army had split, the Beijing section refusing to brutalise the students. Deng now recruited troops from the outermost provinces. These troops were housed in great camps on the outskirts of Beijing, completely isolated from the local population. While there, they were systematically and ideologically groomed to crush the uprising once and for all. They were told that the students were rioters, that they had been killing soldiers, and that there were plans afoot to kidnap major Party officials. Such poisonous lies spoke to the tenor and tone of Deng’s ‘patriotism’ and his ‘regard’ for the population to whom he so often proclaimed his loyalty.
When I entered Tiananmen Square on 3 June, none of this was known to me, or to any of us. These details would gradually leak out of closed files over the decades to come. But while we had no idea what was taking place behind the scenes in government, we intuited very swiftly that a new and terrifying repression was coming. The rumours of the troops amassing on the periphery had reached us. The atmosphere in the square had changed. It was serious and fearful; where once we would greet each other with the V for Victory sign, boldly and playfully, now that had been replaced with the grim gesture of a hard, clenched fist. The sense of the division between the state and the people, us and them, had never been so pronounced, never seemed so insuperable. We all contained a flicker of fearfulness at our core, the sense of a fatality set in motion, of events finally reaching their crescendo.
I was tired. I hadn’t slept well the night before – how could I have? I felt a moment of exhilaration when I stepped into the square, but that soon died. There were vast numbers of students, all of them solemn. In the morning light, before the Gate of Heavenly Peace, in front of the square, the national flag was raised. From the loudspeakers that were everywhere came the sound of the Chinese national anthem. Everyone in the square stopped, stood straight and saluted. Police and civilians on the outskirts, and the students in the square – those of us who had been branded traitors to the country – we too saluted, and with genuine feeling, though there was no longer any joy, only a sense of solemn respect. It was a brief and precious moment of unity. But it was soon to come to an end.
A faint mist tinted the summer-morning air. There were so many people. I made my way to the People’s Monument, but saw no one I recognised. In previous days, it wouldn’t have mattered that you were alone. Groups of students from other universities would have embraced you, would have invited you to share food and drink. But there was little of that spirit left. I wandered for a while, until the thin seam of mist abated. I thought for a moment about Gen. Would I run into him? Would he be here? I was almost certain he wouldn’t be. He had long since abandoned the movement, if indeed he had ever been part of it. Before I had pitied him for never having felt the solidarity and wonder of the protests. But at that moment, as a cold sliver of apprehension uncurled in my belly, I envied him. I envied all those who remained at home, warm and safe.
When I eventually stumbled across the Marauders, I felt a sense of relief. But it didn’t last long. On each face, I saw my own anxiety reflected back at me. Even though it was a mild summer’s day, an element of cold pervaded the square. Pan Mei had dark shadows under her eyes, while Jin Feng, usually so fresh-faced and cheeky, looked as though, behind his youthful features, there was a hesitant old man peeking out. All of them seemed significantly older. Perhaps it was anxiety and lack of sleep, but some part of me can’t help feeling it was a premonition of what was to come. The danger we all sensed, but none of us could imagine.
Only Lan was still smiling in the way he always did, his huge frame irrepressible, his face beaming with some spontaneous and happy thought. At one point he started giggling, I can’t remember at what, and his husband told him he was a ‘silly sausage’ – but Min said this with light and laughter in his eyes.
The previous day, the pop singer Hou Dejian had come to the square and performed his song ‘Heirs of the Dragon’, a song which referenced the Boxer Rebellion that had begun in Beijing in 1900. The students had cheered and sung along with the lyrics. Now a lesser-known band was performing to a more subdued audience. There was something different about 3 June.
It started with the bus. A group of students had found an abandoned bus on the edge of the square packed with ammunition, AK47s and machine guns. At once people began to panic. Was this a sign of the approaching military? Had they hidden their supplies here in order to unleash live ammunition from the epicentre of the protests? Some of the student leaders urged caution. Appealed for calm. This was almost certainly a provocation, they argued. The state had been monitoring these protests for weeks, months, refining their tactics. They would not be so sloppy as to leave an unattended bus full of munitions right in the heart of our forces. The guns had been left on purpose, in order to sow fear and create panic. They were hoping to incite us into rash and impulsive action.
But if that was true, it could mean only one thing. Without question, the state had committed to out-and-out repression.
The atmosphere in the square hardened. People began to argue furiously. Paranoia crept over each of us like a second skin. An eagle-eyed individual had managed to discover army infiltrators in our midst, undercover soldiers who identified themselves to one another by their clothing. They were all wearing white shirts and khakis. The students at once responded, jostling and isolating the agents provocateurs, deriding them and sending them into a panic.
Day became evening, and evening quickened into night. The darkness spread itself across the sky like blackened blood. The arteries that led into Tiananmen Square had already started to bleed, great plumes of smoke arising from the barricades that had been erected only half a mile away. We heard the distant rumbles and saw the smoke climbing into the sky. But no one knew at that point what was happening. We had a vague sense the military were on the move. We know now that the news of the military crackdown had spread. During the weeks and weeks of protests, the citizens in the surrounding areas had come to love the students. They’d shared in our tribulations. And, knowing what was in the air, these same people – workers, nurses, shopkeepers, street sweepers, cleaners, taxi drivers and many more – had once again come out, filling the entry points into the square, seeking to block the legions of soldiers and the tanks that were rolling towards the student occupation.
And it was these men and women who were the first to find out that the ammunition the military was using was live. They were shot down in their dozens. They fought back, of course. Throwing bottles and stones. They had come to believe in us entirely. I don’t imagine they wanted to leave their families, their children, in order to come out onto the streets. But they couldn’t bear the thought of what was going to happen. So they did.
In Tiananmen Square we saw the smoke rising from the barricades but we were unaware that the death toll had begun. We were both terrified and defiant. At eleven o’clock on the night of 3 June all the students in the square once again held their hands aloft in a V for Victory, the sign that had come to embody the very best of our movement, the lofty hopes we had.
Some minutes later, the student broadcasting station at the corner of the square began to relay the news. The army was advancing. There were already casualties. In the distance I heard the sound of an ambulance siren. A feeling of absolute fear came over me, such that for a few moments I felt paralysed. We looked at each other. The Marauders were dumbstruck, none of us capable of mouthing a word. One of the student leaders was speaking into a microphone, the sound crackly and desperate: ‘There is still time before the troops get here. I urge you to remain in the square, but when the army comes, don’t resist.’
From the flickering lights of the square, the city beyond was an ocean of darkness.
That’s when the first tank arrived, the sound of it a growl from within the black. It came powering into our midst. Its visceral, rumbling presence seemed to break the tension, its appearance shattering the fearful anticipation and uncorking a blinding rage. While our leaders tried to urge caution, students armed with Molotov cocktails hurled them at the tank until it was illuminated in blazing flames against the backdrop of the night.
And that’s when things reached a flashpoint. Having broken through the barricades and the ranks of civilians, the army now entered the square. There was no preamble, no hesitation; they started shooting in the dark, and from every angle. The popping sounds seemed unreal, but the balmy air was swiftly tinted with the scent of hard, hot metal. I saw people stumble and fall. And although I knew the military was upon us, nevertheless my first thought was that these people had simply tripped and fallen by accident. I was a good way back. Those students who had created their own battalion – the student security service – had formed a line between us and the oncoming soldiers. They were the bravest and physically strongest amongst us, but they could do little before a military machine surging forward, and they simply flopped and folded like rag dolls. Again, it didn’t seem real. Because, despite their bravado and courage, they were only students like me. And we were all so young.
Mercifully, after that first rally, after that first set of bodies hit the ground, the military stopped. Our chants and protest songs had died out, each of us shocked to the core by what had happened, but the expectation was that we had endured the worst and now the situation would calm.
A group of ten People’s Liberation Army soldiers formed a line, and began to march forward methodically. I remember there was no anger in their movements, no emotion. It seemed as well coordinated as military operations should be. With a single precise motion, they stopped dead. The rifles held aloft at their shoulders were lowered. And, surreally, they were then pointed at us.
Even then, I think we expected some kind of demand. Some form of negotiation or threat. ‘If you don’t do … we will …’
But those pops rang out once more. Again, more flopping, collapsing bodies. And all around, screams of anguish, screams of rage.
Suddenly, the lights in the square were cut. We were blanketed in darkness. And now large numbers of soldiers rushed forward, killing indiscriminately. I found myself rooted to the spot, watching. Despite everything, it didn’t seem real. I knew it was, but my mind hadn’t quite caught up. As though there was a lag between the noises and the flashes of light and the agony of the faces all around – the insulation inside my head forming a barrier between imagination and reality. None of it seemed real.
The soldiers came crashing in. Many were already shot. Now they got to work at close quarters. I heard Min scream as a soldier charged into his small, thin frame, and in the same moment I heard Lan shriek with rage, an unnatural sound coming from such an amiable and soft-spoken young man. He charged over to his husband. I don’t think Lan ever knew violence, or what to do with it; his fists were clenched, I am sure, but he had never in his life swung them. He simply did not know how to hurt another human being, and yet the sheer power and bulk of his body charging in a frenzy of fear and love hoisted the soldier off the ground, sending him flying. Another shot rang out, and Lan staggered for a moment, like a tottering child, before falling to one knee.
I turned away. I should have gone to them, I know that. But I turned away. It wasn’t a conscious decision. The terror was like an electrical charge driven into my body, sending me scurrying through the darkness. People were screaming, over and over. I ran as fast as I could. I ran towards the Great Hall of the People. Still bathed in light, it seemed the only sanctuary from the dark, and the popping sounds and the screams. I felt that light might somehow herald safety.
I was wrong. A new set of soldiers poured out from the base of the building. They were shooting. I heard the bullets, like insects whizzing by. I recognised a young woman beside me, from another university in Beijing – the briefest glimpse of her features, and then another sound, and her face a flash of red from the corner of my eye. All at once, the struggle to move was too much, and I sank to one knee. The Marauders had vanished long ago, or perhaps it had only been minutes, but it no longer mattered. I was alone. In all this violence, I was alone.
I cowered on the floor, the fear overwhelming. Eventually I tried to stand, but people were rushing past me so quickly, and I caught a blow to my stomach, from a soldier or panicked student – I don’t know which. I wriggled on the ground, fighting for breath, but the shock of the impact had also revived me, for now the sounds and screams from the night came sweeping back into my consciousness and I felt the warmth of the tears on my face. More than anything, I was desperate to live. For an hour, for a day, for a week. I just wanted to live. I had to live.
I picked myself up once more, careened through the darkness, only now as I moved, the earth itself seemed to crack and rip – a single roar peeling across the ground, shuddering through my body and shattering my ears. I heard a voice in the dark, desperate and indignant and forlorn:
‘The tanks are crushing people, the tanks have crushed people!’
It was uttered in a tone of revelation as though, on hearing these words, someone might take heed, and the horror of what was unfolding might be put to an end. I never saw him. I heard his voice as the thunder of the tank opened up behind me, and it was the loudest sound. It seemed to split open the world. I couldn’t help looking back. The tank was moving some feet away, veering off in another direction, and as it disappeared into the darkness, the echo of its roar reverberating, I glimpsed just the briefest slip of a blue dress caught beneath its treads.
I was swaying forward, my lungs screaming for air. I was terrified as never before, but at the same time, the need to lie down, to slip into the dark, was there with me. I felt the violence of my breathing, but I managed to keep moving through the expanse of dark. I glimpsed another brief outline of light, and I staggered towards it. I was crying.
. . .
By that point, I had arrived at the northern section of the square. A small tent had been set up. It was a medical emergency tent manned by students from the Beijing United Medical College. I don’t know what kind of salvation I hoped for. Perhaps we all believe, in times of crisis, that there will be people who know exactly what to do. People who are calm and methodical, who are used to working in a desperate situation, and can help persuade you that you are sure to survive the chaos, that you are going to be okay.
The young man who was one of the people manning the tent was of this mould. I was shaking violently.
‘How are you doing?’ he asked softly.
‘I am okay.’
He looked me over. He briefly touched his fingers to my forehead.
‘Yes, you are okay. Are you good to stay here for a bit?’
‘Oh yes,’ I gasped in relief.
‘Would you sit with my friend here?’
For a moment, the question baffled me. I nodded dumbly.
He guided me to a bed towards the back, where a young man lay wrapped in white, the wounds he had sustained seeping through the bandages. He’d been shot in the side of his head.
I looked at the student doctor who had ushered me in. I went to say something, but I had no words.
He registered my look. He spoke softly to me.
‘We can’t do anything, we don’t have plasma, drugs,’ he said almost apologetically. ‘Would you just stay with him for a while?’
I nodded again.
I was not a carer. I had looked after my grandmother, of course, after she became ill. And years before, when I was much younger, my mother had made me change my brother’s diapers on the odd occasion. But I had never felt as though I knew what I was doing. It wasn’t something in my nature. But I didn’t want to leave, to go back out to face what was happening on the square. So I stayed. I looked at him, prostrate on the bed. Half his face was covered with a bandage, one eye flickering in and out of consciousness. He didn’t appear completely human.
‘Please,’ he said in a rasping whisper, thick with blood.
I wanted to feel compassion, but all I could feel was panic. I regretted everything – coming here, all the protests. I should have stayed at home. I was so tired.
‘Please!’
‘Please what?’ I whispered.
‘Will you bring my mother?’ That gargled whisper again.
My instinct was to tell him there wasn’t time, she wasn’t here, but something stopped me.
‘Yes,’ I said.
His shivering frame relaxed somewhat.
And in the next moment, a single question:
‘Mother, are you here?’
He was bleeding so badly. For a few moments I was taken aback. And then it happened almost automatically, it was something I never intended. My voice arrived softly, a whisper almost.
‘Yes, I am here.’
‘I’m sorry, Mum. I am so sorry. I love you.’
I fought as hard as I could to keep my words soft and under control, to fight back my sobs.
‘It’s okay. You have done very well, my son. And I love you very much.’
I put my hand on his. It was, by that point, so very cold. I don’t think he even felt my touch. But his eyes changed. He was between consciousness and unconsciousness. Then his closed eyes seemed to relax a little, and a slight smile lingered on his face just as he died. In those last moments, his expression seemed almost warm and at peace. I really do believe that what I said had given him that.
I have to believe that.
It was early in the morning. The lights came on again at around 4.30. I wasn’t witness to what happened, but two students – in defiance of their lives – approached the military lines. Their bravery, in coming forward, stayed the guns of the soldiers and they were able to beg for a truce. Records note that the officer in command spoke the following words: ‘You have limited time, but if you can do this you deserve merit.’
Thus, a fragile balance was established. The military made the following demand: ‘Leave quickly. If you do not leave we will have to implement the cleansing order and there may be bloodshed.’
Ironic, that last touch, ‘there may be bloodshed’, when the square was strewn with the bodies of our dead.
The students, given everything that we had gone through, everything we had learned, made one final decision. We put it to the vote. It was the last democratic mandate we would ever use. Because of the large numbers of wounded and dead, we finally decided to vacate the square.
The government had won.
But as the early-morning light seeped in, I was relieved to be alive. I thought about little more than that. In the blue-white light, the devastation of the square was laid bare, people hobbling away, supporting one another.
As we were let out, I flinched when my face was bathed in a sudden brightness. A foreign film crew had been waiting. The US reporter asked me:
‘How do you feel right now?’
‘Like … I can’t breathe.’
‘Do you think anybody was killed?’
I looked at her in disbelief. As shattered as I was, I knew answering this question would be dangerous to my future. But I was beyond caring. I felt a sudden swell rise up within me. I was still alive, and so very angry.
‘Of course. Many students were killed. I saw it with my own eyes.’
I turned from her. And hobbled away.