6

“Tickets, please,” the conductor asked, glancing at me and then across at Heidi.

I reached for my wallet. It was going to be a long ride, but I figured it would go pretty fast. Our sudden trip had the intoxication of a road trip and the joy of a mission trip. Not only was I participating in a national shift in our country, I was doing it with people I cared about deeply. “I need to buy two tickets,” I said.

“Destination?” he barked, looking down at the roll of tickets he carried in his hand.

“Beijing.” I nodded to the other rows of my friends, who were talking quietly. About twelve of us had left the comfort of our dorms. After riding the bus for five hours, we looked a little crumpled and tired. But now that we were on the train, we were invigorated once more. “My friends and I are going to join in the protests.”

“Let me guess. Tiananmen Square?” he asked. He had the air of a man who’d seen everything and was generally unimpressed. At the height of the protests there had been a half-million students there, but many of the students had grown tired and left. “We believe in freedom and democracy,” I said. Part of me worried the conductor might charge me double. Instead, as I looked at him, I detected a smile. I knew he was on our side when he waved off my money and went on to the next row. “No tickets needed.”

For the next eight hours, the countryside flew by our windows and I became lost in thought. It was my first trip to Beijing. I smiled as I remembered the day I worried my mother by pouting over not getting into any of my Beijing school choices. I wished I hadn’t put her through so much anxiety, though I was still deeply disappointed at being forced into a teacher’s college. So far, everything was going as planned. For now, I had to concentrate on getting good grades, establishing strategic relationships, and studying international affairs every night for a couple of hours. I’d figured out a way to exist in the system, and maybe even beat it. Even though both the train car and my mind were crowded, I drifted off to sleep, lulled by the sound and the gentle rocking of the train. I awoke when my friend Sam reached over and nudged me.

“Xiqiu,” he said. “What is that?”

He pressed his face against the glass, and I wiped my eyes to see what had his attention. There, on the border of Beijing, we saw a long train filled with soldiers wearing camouflage and carrying heavy weapons. On the back of the train there were tanks covered with military green blankets. They appeared to be preparing for a strike.

“That doesn’t look good,” he said, under his breath. “I’ve heard they were going to declare martial law.”

“Oh, that’s just a psychological threat,” I said.

“Maybe we should go back.”

“Not after we’ve come this far!” I encouraged him. “They know these trains are full of students going to protest and they want to dissuade us before we even get there.”

By the time we arrived at the train station, we’d pushed aside our fears and had a very deep hope that something good might happen in Beijing. We stretched our stiff legs, got our backpacks, and made it to the place the entire world was watching: Tiananmen Square.

Thanks to Chairman Mao, Tiananmen Square was one of the largest city squares in the world. Approximately the size of nine football fields, it was full of tents and makeshift student villages. People walked around carrying signs that read, “Hunger strike to survive!” and “Democracy.”

“Look at that,” Sam said, almost to himself. Heidi, our other friends, and I looked and saw a statue of a woman holding up a torch that stood between the Monument to the People’s Heroes and the Tiananmen Gate. She was the “goddess of democracy,” and towered about thirty feet in the air, directly facing a large photograph of Mao.

“It’s like they’re having a silent confrontation,” I said. Though she was just made of plaster, we longed for the everlasting freedom she embodied.

We stood and took in the whole scene for a few moments before we found a nice little area with enough space to accommodate our group. The Square was full of tents, some donated by a sympathetic computer business. These looked almost military-like, simple, utilitarian, and olive green. Others seemed to be thrown together, made with red, white, and blue striped plastic. All of them were aligned carefully in little rows, and everything was ordered and calm. We unpacked our belongings in our tents and placed our university flag over our encampment. The scene almost looked cheerful and festive.

When we got settled, we immediately began walking around shouting various slogans. It was easy to be engulfed by the excitement and the energy. We made fun of the senior Communist Party leaders, using their names and mocking them at the top of our lungs. “Anti-corruption! Freedom! Democracy!”

We cheered, we marched, we sang songs of freedom. Occasionally, someone would approach us holding small baskets of food. “Would you like a bread roll?” People came from the city to give the protestors all kinds of food and other items of necessity. Vendors handed out snacks to those who weren’t on hunger strikes. Water was more difficult to safely acquire. We got ours from an emergency management system that ran water out of the ground.

“Does this taste strange?” Heidi asked, frowning, after gulping down a cup.

Over the course of a few days, the atmosphere changed. It began to feel more ominous. The air was foul, full of the collective perspiration of thousands of protestors and rotting trash baking in the sun. The portable toilets were overflowing. Tension grew. Every night, before we bedded down, the loudspeaker in the Tiananmen Square called for people to come to different corners of the street.

“We need thirty students to block tanks over there,” the voice pleaded. One day, we noticed troops amassed near the People’s Great Hall.

“Something’s going to happen,” Sam said to me, worry filling his voice. But none of us believed there’d be a real crackdown. We knew the military had made a decision to find the best time to conduct a military strike. The military vehicles, so far, had all been blocked by students.

“What’s the worst that could happen?” another friend asked.

“Yeah, maybe one day the soldiers will penetrate into the crowd and possibly grab us,” I said. “But surely freedom is worth an arrest.”

Even as we brushed off the fears, some in our group grew afraid.

“We heard the Communists have won over some old party loyalists,” our friends said. “This protest isn’t going to last forever. If we end up on the losing side of things, it will be bad for us.”

“No, no, no,” I said, sensing a weakening of resolve. “We’re doing good things here—not bad things. We aren’t calling for violence. We are peacefully protesting,” I said. “As long as we have the chance, we should continue.”

Heidi, who hadn’t felt quite right since drinking the water, agreed with me. But she was also nervous. A natural rule follower, she was apprehensive that the military was planning a move. Seeing so many likeminded, passionate, principled people, however, filled us with joy and hope. I’d lived long enough to realize that true change could only be achieved through democracy. I really felt this was a moment in which China would—must—change, no matter what the military threatened. In spite of the less than perfect conditions, I could’ve stayed there forever.

However, on the morning of May 29, I woke up, looked at Heidi, and noticed that she was pale and listless.

“We have to get you out of here,” I said.

She could barely respond.

Though I was upset over leaving the protest, my love and concern for Heidi far outweighed any apprehension I had about our departure. We said goodbye to our friends and began our long journey to the hospital.

“Stay strong,” I called out to my friends as I left. “Stay strong,” I whispered to Heidi as I walked her to the train. The only way to get her medical care was to take her on the train, then the bus, all the way back to the hospital near our college. I assisted her, worried that the water she drank might’ve been contaminated. She was dehydrated but couldn’t keep liquids down. I held her hands, negotiated the transportation system, and finally checked her into the hospital. My heart swelled at seeing her so ill. I feared she might die, and when the doctors finally examined her, I could tell her situation was pretty dire.

Thankfully, we’d done the right thing. The doctors confirmed that she had a very serious intestinal problem due to the unsanitary water from the Square. We’d gotten her medical treatment, even if it meant leaving our friends to carry on without us. Heidi was released from the hospital after only a couple of days, and she was revived and refreshed. I wondered if there’d be time for us to return to the protest.

Six days after we left, on June 4, we were in the center of campus, next to a loudspeaker the independent student leaders had set up. It was a bright, sunny day, and students played sports around us. Others had brought picnic lunches and ate happily on the grounds. A radio station from overseas called the Voice of America emanated from the speakers.

“Breaking news,” said the voice on the radio. “The Chinese military has gone into the crowds of protestors. Many have been killed.”

“I don’t believe that,” I said to Heidi. “The military wouldn’t fire on its own people.”

Another student said, “I heard the protestors turned on the soldiers. Don’t listen to that American propaganda.” He pointed to our radio. “The government wouldn’t kill innocent students.”

For hours, we heard rumors and desperately tried to figure out what had actually transpired. Then I noticed our friend Sam emerge into the quad, out of breath. He was wearing no shoes, and his hair was mussed and pressed down on his face. When he made it to the center of the school sports field, where all the students gathered, he fell to the ground and covered his face with his hands.

“What happened?” we asked. “What did you see?”

We wanted to believe in the ideas of democracy. We wanted to believe in China. We wanted to believe that our government would protect students who only wanted to strive for a better future.

But as we looked at Sam, his body crumpled in grief and fear, we knew everything was about to change. Because covering his shirt was confirmation of the radio program’s report.

Blood.

“They really killed people,” he said, gasping for air through his sobs. “They really did it.”

Apparently, after we’d left, the government had classified all of the protestors as “counterrevolutionaries,” enemies of the nation.

“What happened?” I asked, gently trying to pull his head up from the grass.

“They almost killed me. I had to crawl over dead bodies,” he sobbed. “There were fires everywhere. I didn’t know what to do, so I just ran. I ran so fast I lost my shoes.”

“That’s not what the government is saying,” a student from the crowd said. “They said the counterrevolutionaries turned on the peaceful soldiers and attacked them.”

Sam moaned at this, and began to tell his story again and again, to all who would listen. “They killed, they really did it!”

As images of tanks facing down unarmed students were broadcast around the world, China clamped down on the media. The time of a relatively free media was over, and information was more tightly controlled than ever. Initially, the state media outlets reported on the massacre sympathetically to the student protestors, but the government moved in quickly to rectify the reports. Those responsible for the sympathetic broadcasts were removed, as were two China Central Television news anchors who got choked up as they reported on the deaths in Tiananmen Square. Several editors sympathetic to the students were arrested, journalists were fired, and foreign correspondents were sent back to their countries and blacklisted from ever coming back to China.

The campus, reeling from the massacre, went into shock. For a couple of days, students milled around, compared notes, and comforted each other as the death tally rose. The official tally never was officially settled and figures vary from several hundred to several thousand. It was such a substantial blow to the students in our nation that we suddenly had a new language to connote time: there was before the incident on June 4, and after it. The students stuck close to campus in the immediate aftermath of the massacre, but classes were canceled due to the boycott or the shock of the tragedy. After a few days most people packed their bags and went back to their respective hometowns, since nothing was going on academically. Gradually, the campus became a ghost town, and I couldn’t wait to get home to tell my dad all that happened. Maybe he could help me make sense of it all.

As I was leaving, I noticed one of my American teachers, a guy named Dan from San Francisco, sitting in the courtyard.

“What are you doing?” I asked, sensing he was listless from being so far from home and without students to teach.

“Just watching everyone skip town,” he said, smiling.

“Why don’t you come with me? I can show you around my hometown and we can think about setting up a summer English camp for high school students there.”

It didn’t take much to convince him. He threw some clothes in a bag and we jumped on a train. When we arrived, however, he caused quite a commotion.

“Yang guizi!” the villagers called out, using the sarcastic and affectionate nickname Chinese people call all foreigners. It meant “foreign devil.” Dan was tall, had brown hair, blue eyes, and fair skin, and was very obviously not from around there. Because he was the first yang guizi to come to our peasant village, he was treated like a panda in the zoo. No matter where he went, he was encircled with villagers asking him the same three questions: Where are you from, how old are you, and are you married?

“Let’s have some fun,” I said, pulling him aside after detecting this pattern.

“Oh,” Dan said. “Suddenly, the student has become the teacher!”

After a little coaching, Dan dazzled the villagers by preemptively telling everyone he met three pertinent facts.

Every time someone came up to him, he said, “Wo shi meiguo ren” (I am an American), “San shi sui” (I’m thirty years old), and “Guang gun” (I am a bachelor). Actually, the last was a local saying that means, literally, “I am a piece of single stick,” but the notion was communicated: he was available. This caused quite a stir, because the villagers were amazed at the single foreign devil who could speak fluent Chinese and also read their minds! In spite of the grievous circumstances of our return home, his presence in my village was a fun—if temporary—distraction.

A week after we’d arrived, however, a police car pulled up to my home, stirring up a cloud of dust.

“What’s going on out there?” my dad asked, peering through the window at the somber-looking officers who banged on our door.

I looked at Dan, who’d broken out into a complete sweat, and then rushed to the door, hoping perhaps they’d come to the wrong house.

“What’s the matter?” I asked, shocked at the grave expressions that met me when I opened the door.

“You.” One of police officers pointed to Dan, who was standing behind me. “You have to leave this area voluntarily.”

“What’s so ‘voluntarily’ about it if you’re forcing me out?”

“You obviously have a choice. You can leave voluntarily now, or stay here and face serious consequences.”

“Could we leave in a few days?” I protested. The journey had taken us a great deal of time, money, and effort. Plus, there was no reason to go back to a desolate college.

The officer opened his mouth, as if he was about to explain the tense political environment, then thought better of it. Instead, he simply said a cold, harsh, “No!”

Another officer said, “In fact, you must go now, without delay. We can give you a ride to the train station in the county headquarters of Gaomi County.”

“How far away is that?”

“Fifty miles,” the officer responded. “So, let’s get going.” They gave us about three minutes to grab our things before placing us in their police car. To our surprise, they “asked” us to sit on the back box of the car where criminals were forced to sit. Dan’s presence in the village had caused so much commotion independently of any sort of scandal. However, when we were whisked away like hardened criminals, the villagers stood along the main road terrified, wondering what we’d done. My family believed we were being taken away to prison, but the officers did take us to the train station.

“Don’t come back,” the officer said to Dan as we got on the train to go back to the university.

When we arrived back at college, we walked through campus a little shaken. My entire life, I had wanted to help better my nation. At first, I believed being wealthy would help me have enough influence to meaningfully change things. Then I began to think that reform would only occur through government influence. If only I could become a leader in the Communist Party, then I could issue changes that could make things more equitable and fair. After being faced with communism’s corruption, however, democracy seemed like my only hope of reform. But if my own nation’s government would turn their tanks on their own citizens—what hope was there?

Dan grabbed my arm, and stopped me right there on the sidewalk next to the campus’s official message board.

“This isn’t good,” he said, pointing to a newly posted white sign.

“The Communist Party has made a decisive decision to crack down on counterrevolutionaries,” I read aloud. “We urge these leaders of the illegal organization to surrender.”

“Isn’t that you?” he asked. “You’re the main leader. They’re going to arrest you!” Dan and I both were a little rattled after our incident with the police.

“Don’t jump to conclusions,” I assured him. “It just says I need to surrender. If they’d wanted to arrest me, they would’ve done it back home.”

And so, I scurried off to find if the other student leaders were still around or if they’d gone home. I found about six others, and we made the trek to the police station, walking slowly as we tried to figure out what would happen. Would we be arrested? Would we be interrogated? Would they try to deny the truth of what some of our group had seen with their own eyes?

“So what did you see?” I asked the others to make sure I understood the basic outline of the story. As they had done when I was there, the students had set up barricades to block the tanks from entering the square. At about 10:30 p.m. on June 3, the army fired live bullets at the protestors. Later that night, after midnight, they completely broke through using tanks and armored personnel carriers. Many people were killed. Reports from the government were that no one had died. I knew for a fact that Heidi’s graduate school advisor had an eighteen-year-old son who was at the protest. He was shot to death on his mother’s birthday. I also knew that a tank pushed over the goddess of democracy statue, its hand and torch breaking off when it struck the ground. We knew the military had been watching the protests, but we never anticipated this. Not an actual massacre.

“Looks like they’re ready for us,” a friend said, nodding to a sign that read, “Illegal Organization Leaders Surrender This Way.”

In spite of the grave circumstances, we nervously chuckled. That was not the kind of sign we saw every day.

Obediently, we followed the markings, and I tried to calm myself. I was in a better position than most. First of all, I wasn’t even there at the time of the massacre. Second of all, I had acted in accordance with my school’s administration and our student body. I’d defied no one locally, and I hadn’t done anything wrong. After all, we were simply advocating for truth.

“Sit down,” a policeman barked when we walked in. “What have you done?” he said to our group collectively, without waiting for a response. I’d come in ready to defend myself, but apparently the police were not interested in negotiating.

“You all need to register as counterrevolutionaries,” he explained. First, he took our fingerprints, and I felt like a criminal. Then he slammed a form in front of each of us. “Fill these out.”

I picked up the pen, and began to carefully fill in the blanks—my name, age, hometown, parents’ names. It was the first time I’d filled in a form since my mother’s death, and I felt a pang in my heart as I wrote her name on the piece of paper. What would she think of this? I wondered. For a couple of silent hours, we were left with these forms staring at us in the face. We were forced to write general descriptions of how we were involved in the protests, when we started, and why. Finally, the agent came back into the room, collected our papers, and told us to stand.

“Go back to your school,” he said. But I had a feeling this was far from over. “Your administors will give you further instruction.”

The walk back to school was like a funeral procession.

“What have we done?” a friend lamented.

“What if they yank us from school?” another asked.

I almost tripped over the sidewalk when I heard that. The thought had never occurred to me. Getting removed from school would be devastating. After all, my family sacrificed so much for me. They placed their hopes on me alone. Had I just placed my entire family’s future in jeopardy?

The grim-faced deputy secretary of the Communist disciplinary party met me at the administration building. “I’ll be watching you,” he said. “This is your special agent from the Public Security Bureau.” He pointed to one of the other two men. “And this is the director of the investigation.” They wore plain clothes and were of similar height. Their eyes were dark and seemed to stare right through me.

“Our job is to monitor your progress,” he said. Only the next day would I begin to understand what this “monitoring” would entail. The next day, my interrogator showed up at my dorm at around eight o’clock in the morning. “Let’s go,” he said.

I assumed he’d take me to the English department and watch me sit there during class. Perhaps my activities would be restricted, but I’d still generally be living my normal life.

However, we didn’t head toward the English department.

“Here’s your area,” he said, opening the door to an empty classroom with one desk and nothing else but paper and a pencil. “Write your confession.”

“For how long?” I asked.

The officer looked at his watch. “You only have until six in the evening,” he said.

“That’s ten hours!” I said.

“You have a lot to confess,” he said. “Write what you’ve done, with all the details. Where did you go? When did you start your insurrection? Who are your witnesses? What happened when you got to Beijing?” Then he smirked at me and slammed the door shut.

But I knew he was standing on the other side of it.

I took the paper and positioned it correctly on the desk, trying not to panic. Why was I not allowed in class? What would Heidi do when she noticed I didn’t show up?

“My name is Xiqiu Fu,” I wrote, tears filling my eyes. “And I’m an enemy of the Chinese people.”