5/26/89: An Audience with an Audience

This piece is excerpted from the manuscript of Philip J. Cunningham’s forthcoming book, Tiananmen Moon, part of an on-going China Beat feature of excerpts from Cunningham's book. Interested readers can see more at Cunningham’s website. 


 

Philip J Cunningham with "Commander-in-chief" Chai Ling in front of the student command center 

By Philip J. Cunningham 

On May 26 I got another glimpse of student command central, when Chai Ling was at the height of her power. She was holding court in the broadcast tent, the ideological hothouse of student-occupied Tiananmen Square. It wasn't easy getting in. I had to pass three rings of student security to secure an "audience." 

The BBC had yet to give me any kind of ID, so I learned to talk my way into things. My only "press" pass was my wit, which worked okay because I liked to talk and could do so in Chinese. There were times when the well-known call letters BBC did not suffice to gain entry, while merely saying I was looking for a friend from Shida might do the trick. The closer I got to the student center, the higher the likelihood I’d run into someone who’d seen me before, which also helped expedite entry. I could remember most of the faces, if not names, of the hundreds I’d spoken to in the last few weeks, so overall I had a high degree of mobility on the cordoned-off, people-controlled Square. 

As a provincial student leader, self-appointed or otherwise, Wang Li expected and obtained a certain amount of access to the Beijing student command center at the Broadcast Tent. What Wang Li lacked in social cachet as an unknown provincial student from Xian, I think he started to make up for by speaking on behalf of the BBC, since he was now on the payroll and knew he could impress fellow students with his important international connections. Student security guards were vigilant about keeping ordinary Chinese away from their "leaders," but by becoming a leader, or media person, many of the petty controls could be circumvented. 

Wang Li put in a word for me with the provincial students, but they seemed terribly disorganized and no interviews or memorable conversations came out of that effort. After jointly touring the provincial student outpost near the museum, we cut west and headed towards the broadcast tent in the center of the Square. The amateur security got woollier and woollier as we pushed towards the center, so we temporarily split up when he got permission to enter a controlled area that I couldn’t enter. Wang Li rushed ahead on his own, to see if he could find a student leader willing to talk to me. In the meantime, I decided to wing it, slowly working my way past various student gatekeepers until I ran into a familiar face from the Sports Institute. 

"Hey Jin," yelled a boisterous baritone, "what are you doing here? Good to see you, come over here!" 

It was Crazy Zhang. When he got within arm's length he gave me a few friendly punches that actually hurt. He wasn't called crazy for no reason. The last time I saw him he was wearing a khaki green cap with a red headband around it. 

"Go fight someone else!" I shoved him back. 

"Better not try anything or I'll have to throw you out of here," he said with a straight face. 

The smart-aleck muscle man grabbed me by the arm and led me up the north steps of the monument's marble base past a guarded security rope. He directed me to descend the steps on the east side of the monument to a roped off area from which it was possible to enter the broadcast tent. When I got inside that zone I found Wang Li standing outside the tent. He waved me over with his usual sense of urgency. 

“I'll leave you here,” said Zhang, this time with a gentle pat on the back instead of a threatening punch. “See you later.” 

Wang Li ran over excitedly, barely avoiding a collision with the solidly built Zhang. 

“Jin!” 

"What is it?" I asked. 

"Come now!" he said excitedly, "Chai Ling, she wants to talk to you." 

"Chai Ling? Where is she?" 

"By the tent," he shouted. Since we were both already inside, the innermost perimeter, it was just a matter of turning the corner of the monument to reach the entrance of the broadcast tent. 

There she was, the queen bee in the middle of a humming hive. She was petite and pert, wearing a loose-fitting white sports shirt with sunglasses hanging on her collar. She smiled in greeting when she saw me approach, but didn't say anything. There were people on her left and people on her right and from the looks of it, they all wanted a piece of her. There were excited discussions about some pressing matter or another, but I couldn't hear very well because a noisy diesel generator was roaring a few feet away. Just as I was about to ask her a question she was called away, disappearing for a few minutes into the shadows of the truck-sized tent. 

The petite, bronze-faced leader popped in and out of the broadcast tent a half a dozen times in as many minutes while attending to the minutiae of running the tent city of Tiananmen Square. Behind a well-secured safety rope, there was yet another group of student supplicants bearing urgent requests. There was a small patch of empty ground in front of the broadcast tent where I thought I might hold a quick interview, if one didn’t mind the hundreds of onlookers just a few feet away on the other side of the rope. I could already feel the heat of open-mouthed stares building up. Who is the laowai and what is he doing on the inside? 

This was the command center, where strategic decisions were made and announcements broadcast to tens of thousands on slow days like today; a week ago it had been the center of a swirling human cyclone a million strong. No wonder the student organizers are called leaders, with crowds of that size some kind of structure is necessary. 

Deep in the throng of wannabes who did not have permission to enter the command center were three familiar white faces: Eric, Fred and Brian. Being good journalists, they didn’t take no for an answer, they wanted in. 

When the usual, “We’re BBC!” didn’t work its charm, they started pointing to me, as much as a ruse to slip in as a bid to get my attention. They were turned back, however, and there wasn't much I could do about it. To make matters worse, a student warden asked me to translate, leaving it to me to say, “It is not allowed to go inside the rope without special permission.”

Rather than say that, I just hinted to the crew that I was working on it, and went back to the leadership tent to see if I could arrange something. I stood around, baking in the heat of the sun and soaking up unwanted glances when Chai Ling finally walked over and offered me her hand. 

"Ni hao," she said, stepping forward to greet me. 

"Ni hao. You're at Shida, right?” 

“Yes, graduate student, educational psychology.” 

“Do you know the service building? You know, the Insider Guest House above the campus store. . .” 

“I know that building. You speak Chinese very well.” 

We were interrupted by a young man who whispered to Chai Ling a flurry of messages and handed her some hand-scribbled notes on onionskin paper. The exchange went on for a few minutes, then the young man withdrew back into the tent. She turned around to resume our chat, apologizing with a weak smile. She was sunburned and looked tired, I started to have my doubts about arranging an interview. 

"Maybe I can talk to you somewhere else, some other time" 

"Now is fine, but I only have a few minutes." 

"Is it okay for them, um, you see my BBC friends, over there, for them to come in here? We can set up the camera right here." 

"You can do that," she replied. Wang Li heard the word and went to get the crew. Chai Ling got called to the side with another student matter, and I helped the crew get inside the rope. 

"What's going on Phil?" Brian asked impatiently. 

I explained that one of the top student leaders agreed to talk to us. 

"Why don't we set it up over here?" I pointed to the "front gate" of the tent and Eric and Fred went to work. Held back by a human chain of interlocked arms, student guards and rope, the curious throng strained to get a glimpse of news in the making. It was a relief to have student security handling crowd control this time around.

 

Entry to student-controlled zones was tightly guarded at times 

Allowing a foreign news crew to enter the “VIP” zone just added to the air of intrigue. In a flash, we were the center of attention. Several Europeans with cameras tried to sneak into the command center by following on the coattails of the BBC crew, but they were all stopped by truculent student guards and turned back. Some of them started to make a scene, yelling angrily in English. Just to keep up appearances and to indulge student illusions of control, journalists had in recent days gotten into the habit of flashing any old ID cards before walking into student-controlled areas loaded with cameras and recording equipment. But that gambit didn't work this time. 

"Vie kant vee go in?" pleaded one of the Europeans. 

"Vee also are from zee press!" his companion, added. 

"Vie you let zem in?" the first man complained. "It is not fair is it?" 

Unlike our tension-fraught visit to the water strikers last week, this time BBC was on the inside and our "competition" was left dangling on the other side of the ropes. Among my colleagues, who knew very well what it was like to be excluded, I could detect not an ounce of sympathy for those left on the outside. 

Foreign newsman at Tiananmen were generally supportive of the democratic tide but not one another. By now even student media handlers like Wang Li knew the value of exclusive access, and the access game worked both ways. Some journalists had been to Tiananmen everyday, and not without justification could they feel indignant at being refused access, or having to settle for reduced access. 

After some heated deliberation, the student guards agreed to allowed a single photographer to come in, but not the two complainers with video gear. Instead, a photographer from Vogue, French edition, was respectfully escorted in and started snapping pictures. At one point he turned to me to ask some questions about Chai Ling. He said he was working on a story titled "Role model for a Generation of Women.” 

By the time BBC had set up camera, Chai Ling was back. The generation/gender role model and I did a short pre-interview chat while the French photographer did his thing. She and I talked about the relative merits of Shida and Beida. She liked both campuses, but she had joined Beida's hunger strike committee because she had more friends there. 

Eric gave the signal that the Beeb was ready to roll. I had suggested to Chai Ling that we do an informal interview, hoping we could get a few candid comments on tape without a formal set up, but Brian had different ideas. 

"Move out of the way, Phil!" he said, nudging me to the side to take a stand between the two of us. 

"What do you mean?" I said, trying to regain my footing. "I'm talking to her." 

"I do the talking, Phil!" he said, "Okay Eric, start rolling." 

I stepped back dejected but not defeated. I watched Brian talk, then gesticulate, then resort to primitive pantomime, as Chai Ling was not able or willing to converse in English. Seemingly oblivious to the language gap, he went on doing this for a few minutes, getting lots of puzzled looks but no words in response. Chai Ling looked at me, then at him and back at me again. 

Brian threw up his hands in frustration and walked away."Turn off the camera!" he instructed Eric, then turned to me. "Listen, will you? We need someone who speaks English." 

While the BBC reporter paced about impatiently, apparently looking for another interview, Chai Ling resumed talking to me with rapid-fire delivery, telling me things I hadn’t even asked about. She started to give a very emotional account of her involvement in the movement. I don't think she knew much about video recording and perhaps she did not care, because the camera was not rolling. It wasn’t even mounted on the tripod anymore. I detected pain in her expression and listened intently, trying not to be distracted by the mumbling and grumbling behind me to the right. She kept on talking and I kept on listening. 

Out of the corner of my eye I could sense the crew was busy, probably packing up, but I did not break eye contact because I wanted to hear what this intense young woman had to say. There was something dark and troubling in her countenance. 

She continued to pour her heart out. After a few minutes I realized that the film crew had definitely not just stepped back to change tapes or put in a new battery. Going, going, gone. They wrapped in a huff and disappeared without saying a word. 

Chai Ling and I shared the mutual embarrassment of having an interview fall apart even as we spoke, leading us both to shrug our shoulders and laugh. She continued talking politics, in a low voice but with great energy and emotion, telling me the student movement had come to a crucial turning point, the future was full of uncertainty. There were serious conflicts between rival student groups. The Beijing students were tired but tempered from weeks of demos and the hunger strike. It was the provincial students, relatively late arrivals, who were pushing for action. Chai Ling said there was a plot to destroy the movement and she didn't know who to trust anymore. She spoke of betrayal, of fear, and of her sense of responsibility as a leader. We were interrupted again, this time by a student messenger. Upon the receipt of some urgent communique, she turned to me and said she had to go, asking how to get in touch. 

“Bei-jing Fan-dian, 1-4-1-3,” I said, giving her my room number at the hotel. 

"I want to talk more," she said with a soft-spoken intensity. "Can I trust you?" 

I waited for her to say more, trying to understand. 

"I want to run away. . ." she said. 

"What?" 

"It is getting very dangerous!" 

"Yes, you should be more careful," I said. "But what did you say, run away?" 

"A Chinese person told me that the British Embassy is offering political asylum to student activists. What do you think about that?" 

"I don't know," I said. "It's possible, but not likely. Who told you that?" 

"I think it may be a trap." 

"I just don't know." 

"Can you ask about that for me?" 

I told her I didn't know anyone at the British Embassy but I said that maybe one of my "good friends" at the BBC did. Then I added my own advice. "Be careful about dealing with foreign embassies. If you go to a big embassy, it could be used against you politically. Maybe the embassy of a small, neutral country is better." If she went to the US Embassy I was afraid she would become a political pawn in US-China relations. I didn't think that the British Embassy would be any better. Worse yet, what if it was a trap? What if the asylum offer had been made by an undercover agent, a trap set by Chinese police to discredit the nationalism of the students? 

"Jin, I must go now," she said. “See you again!"

5/22/89: The Hunger of Provincials

This piece is excerpted from the manuscript of Philip J. Cunningham’s forthcoming book, Tiananmen Moon, part of an on-going China Beat feature of excerpts from Cunningham's book. Interested readers can see more at Cunningham’s website. 

By Philip J. Cunningham

On the evening of May 22, BBC asked me to take one of the crews to the Square for a closer look at the protest, which was thought to be on the wane now that martial law was coming into force. We did the usual look-see, I conducted a few spot interviews and the talented camera crew captured ironic and iconic visuals. Then we took a break in front of the History Museum, parking the hotel van near the camp of the provincial students. 

The protesters around us didn't seem to mind our presence, until we decided to crack out the beverages. It was hard to enjoy the hotel-bought drinks we had kept stored in an icebox in the back of the van while in the midst of so many under-nourished, homeless students from the countryside. 

The problem of eating well in front of people who had less access to food was a familiar one, something I had experienced on the set of The Last Emperor and Empire of the Sun. We almost had a riot one day on the during a location shot on the Bund for the Spielberg film, as the cast and crew ate a hotel-catered lunch in the midst of 5000 hungry extras whose food had been duly paid for but never arrived, due to some sticky-fingered comprador or official intermediary. 

Thus it was with some reluctance that I extracted a can of iced cold soda from the icebox. Just then I noticed a young man in dusty clothes staring at me through thick black-rimmed glasses, eyeing the Coke I had in my hand. He had a wiry build and sported a flattop crew cut that made him look more a police cadet than student. But there was something extremely sympathetic about him too, he had a wide-eyed but vulnerable expression on his face, as if he wanted to talk but was afraid. I offered him a can of soda from the BBC icebox. 

"Thank you, man!" he said nervously in English. He smiled like a baby who had just gotten his bottle. He downed the bubbly drink so fast I felt sorry for him. 

"Here you go, friend." I said, tossing him another. 

"Do you know about the fighting outside the city?" He asked, face drawn with earnest tension until he burped. 

"What? Fighting? Tell me about it." 

"The troops starting beating the common people," he said, rushing into a description of the incident. 

"How do you know about this?" 

"I was there!" he said authoritatively. "Do you want to know about it? Are you a reporter?" 

"Sort of. An interpreter. A freelancer, actually. For the BBC. That's the crew," I said, pointing to the tailgate party. 

"Nice vehicle, what model is that?" he asked. 

"I don't have the slightest idea," I answered honestly. He looked me over from head to toe as if to say how could you not know what model of car you have? 

"I'm Wang Li," he said. "I'm from Xian. I give you this information." He handed me some scribbled ideographs on a crumpled sheet of paper. 

"Listen, little Wang, you can call me Jin, ‘jin’ as in gold. Jin Peili," 

Taking a closer look at his notes, I could barely make out his writing, but there was a list of some place names, times and dates. 

"Thanks for the information, but the BBC probably won't have the time to look into such a specific incident, even recorded in detail such as this." 

"But isn't this news?" 

"It may be," I said. "But TV news is, um, different. There's a lot of information that never makes it on air." He looked as disappointed as a puppy that had just returned a stick that its owner didn't want to throw anymore. 

"This might be useful for a newspaper, but TV news is, well, forget it." 

"Do you want more information?" he asked. 

"Sure, let's keep in touch," I said, not sure if I meant it or not. I had met too many unusual characters lately, and some of them were so weird I had lost confidence in the cliché that a stranger was a friend I hadn't met yet. 

"Okay, I tell you what," I said, trying not to sound too encouraging, "if you have some interesting news, you can call me at the Beijing Hotel, my room number is 1413. And how can I get in touch with you?" 

"I am always here, on Tiananmen Square, with the provincial students," he said. "Just ask for Wang Li from Xian." 

Later that evening he telephoned my room, waking me up. 

"I'm Wang Li," the husky voice says, "I met you on the Square, I have something very important to tell you." 

"What time is it now?" 

"12:15, I'm in the downstairs coffee shop waiting for you." 

"Okay, okay, I'll be right down." 

Coffee shop? At this time of night? Not in the Beijing Hotel. This place closes down early. So what does he want? Food, I could offer him, a place to stay? Well. Anticipating his request, I opened the refrigerator and stuffed all the food and drink I could squeeze into my shoulder bag.

 

The lobby is dark and forbidding. The red carpet is inky, almost black. There are no attendants anywhere in sight. When I pass the decorative screen that is designed to keep ghosts out of the lobby I can see some people sitting in the empty coffee lounge. Four young men, no, it's three men and a woman sitting around a low round table masked in shadow. At an adjacent table I can make out the silhouette of two young men. One of them leaps up and waves me over excitedly. It is Wang Li. 

"Jin, ni hao," Wang Li says in greeting, approaching me with outstretched hands. "This is my friend Hu, he is also a student from Xian," he says. Hu and I say hello and shake hands while Wang Li fumbles nervously in his pockets for something. "Here are our student ID cards, I want you to trust us." 

I scan the cards briefly in the dim light and give them back. I put the fruit juice and snacks on the table and take a seat. 

"Jin, there is so much I have to tell you," Wang Li erupts, as if we were old friends. 

"Have something to drink first," I insist, trying to pre-empt his request. I hand him some food and drink. He hands me a jagged piece of paper with notes scribbled on it. I can't help but notice that the coffee shop menu that lay open on the table had part of a page ripped out of it that matched the angular shape of his note like a jigsaw puzzle piece. 

Written in the coffee-stained margins next to "CHILLED LYCHEES IN SYRUP" and "YOGHURT WITH HONEY" are scribbled the words: "Liuliqiao, army troops, 70 civilians receive injury, tomorrow huge demonstration in protest." 

Wang Li and Hu gulp down the juice and ravage the snacks as if they had just ended a private hunger strike. While they eat, I look at the other table where a group of four young people are talking in low whispers next to the ornate ghost screen that blocked view from the entrance. 

"Listen, troops have arrived northeast of Beijing. There are thousands of soldiers, tanks, and I heard there are trucks full of ammunition," Wang Li says, as if trying to earn his keep. 

"How do you know?" 

"We were there," he says with a hint of pride. And then anticipating further questions, he adds, "We know a journalist needs evidence, so we want to go back and take pictures." 

"Isn't that kind of risky?" 

"No, we must do it, Jin. Can I borrow your camera?" He reads the doubt on my face. "You can keep my ID card until I return with the camera." 

"No, no, that's not necessary. I trust you," I respond, using the immortal words of someone about to be conned. Actually I didn’t trust him. If anything his offer of the ID made me a little suspicious. If he were really a student why was he flashing his ID around? No one else did that. 

"Thank you," he says, looking greatly relieved. "You are a friend." 

"Where have you been sleeping?" 

"On the Square," he answers. 

"What about tonight?" 

"No sleep. We will be out all night looking for troops." 

“You have to get some sleep some time,” I answer, playing the role of older brother. I didn’t have that kind of stamina or drive. 

I was starting to admire this guy’s dedication to the cause. 

"I'll tell you what, tomorrow you can shower and nap in my room if you want, okay?" 

Even as the words left my mouth I wasn’t sure why I made the offer, but it got me off the hook tonight. And I did feel for these ragamuffins. We shared a powerful curiosity in common; we were interested in finding out what was really going on, but we weren’t journalists, not them, not me. I couldn’t forget how I was almost reduced to sleeping on the streets during the early vigils at Tiananmen. 

"Can you give me some film, too?" he pleads, revealing sharper bargaining skills as my skepticism softened. 

"Yeah, okay. By the way," I ask, pointing to the figures in the shadows about 20 feet away, "Who are those people sitting at the table over there?" 

"They're our student leaders. That's Wang Dan, Wuerkaixi, Chai Ling and Feng Congde." 

"The student leaders?" I ask in disbelief. Isn’t this a government hotel? 

We got up to leave. I walked past the other table to get a closer look. The quiet conference in progress momentarily went silent as we walked by. On the way out, I give my camera to Wang Li, not sure if I'd see it or him again. Even so I felt a pang of guilt. Is it right for me to encourage him to go running after troops? 

And what are the student leaders doing in the Beijing Hotel in the middle of the night? Is someone protecting them, do they have a powerful benefactor in the building? It’s close to Tiananmen Square, and in a way, it's a good hideout. After all, who would expect to find them here? Like Shanghai in the ‘30s where the underground communists frequented the same bars, brothels and hotels as the anti-communist city bosses, Beijing was becoming a city of shadowy intrigue.

5/18/89: Working Class Heroes

This piece is excerpted from the manuscript of Philip J. Cunningham’s forthcoming book, Tiananmen Moon, part of an on-going China Beat feature of excerpts from Cunningham's book. Interested readers can see more atCunningham’s website. 

By Philip J. Cunningham

New, creative links were being made, reflected in the flags and slogans draped on industrial strength trucks with factory logos packed to the brim with red-sashed workers. 

WORKERS SUPPORT BRIGADE! 

WORKERS UNITED WITH STUDENTS IN SUPPORT! 

But the really eye-catching, breath-stopping slogans took aim at the most powerful man in China. 

XIAOPING GAODE RENREN FENFEN BU PING 

"Wow! You see that Lotus? It says Xiaoping is ruining it for all of us!" 

Quite a few posters and political cartoons were openly critical of Deng, representing a logical but politically dangerous turn of heart. But the most novel element today was the large number of Mao portraits. Militant workers proudly held portraits of Mao aloft. Mao? Where did they dig Mao up from? Was this Cultural Revolution nostalgia or an oblique way of insulting Deng, who was thrice-purged under Mao? 

Open-back trucks crammed with factory workers were festooned with flags. Nearly all the banners proclaimed "shengyuan xuesheng" in one form or another, it was the orthodox and politically correct way of mouthing support for the students. 

"It's like a second Cultural Revolution!" I suggested. Lotus who had visited China during the middle of that turbulent period, found some validity with my hyperbolic statement. The crew was unconvinced. 

"The workers, the Mao posters," I said, letting the hot sun and the steamy heat get to me, as the last of the puddles from the morning’s rain evaporated. "This might even be the work of the old leftists, who resent the capitalist tendencies of Deng’s China. Deng’s the target. It's unbelievable!" 

A few feet away, the drivers were involved in a noisy argument about matters less abstract. The bald-headed tout, a bully if there ever was one, was intimidating the vendors who he claimed had overcharged him for the price of the yogurt and orange drink. To a seasoned operator such as he, bargaining down a price was clearly a one-way street. Pay less when paying others, demand more when getting paid. 

My sudden appearance quieted the argument. I asked each man present what he thought of the huge gathering around us. 

"Very good," said the bald, burly driver, answering in English, sticking his thick thumb up in the air. "Like this!" 

His cohort, whose suspicious darting eyes and unshaven, unkempt appearance gave him the air of a character who had just escaped from a mental hospital, turned to the lead tout for a cue, then shook his head up and down in hearty agreement. "Like this," he said, thumbs up. "Good money and no police!" 

The good money was obviously a reference to us. As for the police, I guess he was right. I hadn't seen a man in uniform in days. 

"Shut up, you fool!" the bald man said in reprimand to his mate. 

A short distance away the BBC guys chatted with Lotus, and through her, with my driver, a paragon of politeness in contrast to the two foul-mouthed touts who had glommed onto the crew at the hotel entrance. The lead tout, pleading lunchtime, had made it clear we were going nowhere fast, so I decided to walk around a bit." 

The ground was getting dirty underfoot, the Square had an air of neglect, litter everywhere, the air redolent of urine and the stench of chemical disinfectant. It smelled like a disaster waiting to happen. How many rotations involving how many millions of footsteps could this huge, human cyclone undergo before people got hurt, sick or trampled? 

The morning rain was the first of several bad omens for the demonstrators of Tiananmen who had enjoyed fresh air and cooperative, sunny skies for several weeks now. The protester’s resourcefulness seemed to know no limits, however, and a fleet of buses were soon driven to the Square, providing a safe, dry shelter for the weakened hunger strikers. In a way that was strangely consonant with radical Christianity, it was the weakest people who were most important; the sick, meek and emaciated were the VIP's in this world of tables turned, temples spurned. 

As the movement grew more complex, simple slogans seemed to suffice: 

PEOPLE’S CRY! 

PEOPLE’S VOICE! 

PEOPLE’S TORMENT! 

Hidden dangers abounded. The pavement prone strikers lowered their resistance to infection, and not a few people still on their feet also were walking time bombs due to stress, long hours, poor hygiene, forced proximity to countless germs and exposure to the elements. Rumors of a cholera outbreak were taken seriously, as were rumors that the sanitation complaints were a government ploy to get people off the Square. With such a dense mass of people living in slum-like conditions with no running water, a contagious illness could reach epidemic proportions in no time. 

The Square was thickly carpeted with people, but with water strikers nearing death, the celebratory element was gone, even the chants sounded rote and annoying. The movement of masses of people wasn’t as fluidly cooperative as before. You couldn't walk without annoying others, sometimes you couldn’t walk at all, but had to endure being pressed against strangers, shoulder to shoulder, belly to back, stepping on and being stepped on. At one point, frustrated by the jostling movement, and foul air, I stretched up on my toes to see what was causing the delay when I suddenly found myself lifted off my feet, pinned and suspended an inch or two off the ground. 

…

I crawled under the rope and the human chain momentarily lifted their tightly interlocked arms to let me in. As soon as I passed, the arms interlocked again. The crew, good friends who worked together on a regular basis, watched with stunned indignation. 

"Can he come in too?" I asked my student guide, feeling sorry for Brian. He was a good journalist, the first person at BBC to befriend me. His gregarious warmth and generosity compensated for his temper. 

"Yes, if he is with you,” he consented. 

"Brian? You can come in now," I said. "We can talk to them for five minutes, but no cameras." 

"No cameras? What's the bloody point of going in if we can't take our gear?" he yelled. "Tell him that's nonsense! How come ITN could bring their cameras in?" Brian's face reddened again. He threw his hands in the air in exasperation and stomped away. 

"Let's get out of here!" he yelled to the camera crew. 

His words were followed by the murmur of equally indignant voices saying things about a laowai that I didn’t want to hear. Lotus took it all in with her usual smiling equanimity. 

I stepped forward, careful not to trod on any of the blankets and sleeping bags. Before me were sprawled a dozen limp bodies that belonged in a hospital. 

A thin, handsome man with a high-cheeked, angular face caught my attention. His body was motionless and emaciated but his eyes were bright and alert. He wore a green shirt. 

"You suffer. I admire your courage," I said, respectfully, lacking the chutzpah to scold him and his fellow strikers for their stupidity. Instead of telling them to go home and have some hot chicken soup, I told them a little about myself. 

"My name is Jin Peili, I study Chinese, do you know the Insider Guest House at Shida?" Not knowing whom to talk to, I addressed them as a group, but my eyes kept going back to the man with the bright eyes. 

A young man in the middle of the row of fatigued bodies, smudged-up glasses dangling low off his gaunt, angular face, was the first to answer. "I am Han. Where did you learn Chinese?" 

"I learned Chinese from my friends." 

"Please tell others about what you see. We seek dialogue with the government" 

"I understand." 

"We are willing to die for our country," he whispered. 

That gave me the chills and I was unable to respond with a sensible comment. A deja-vu refrain of I can't believe this is happening to me raced through my mind. This is my life, is this is really happening? 

"Can you hear the cry?" Han asked. "Can you hear the cry of China?" 

His plaintive call gave me a lump in the throat and I remained speechless. Seeing his arm reach upward, I took his hand in mine. The sharp-eyed student guards looked on, smiling weakly. Some strikers watched us, attentively, while others, though awake and conscious, stared blankly as before. I was greeted by yet another striker who asked me how long it took me to learn Chinese, a familiar and friendly question that seemed outright absurd coming from a student who wouldn’t be studying anything anymore if he followed his act of sacrifice to its brutal conclusion. 

I continued to field questions, the familiar set of questions a foreigner learns to deal with like it or not, and as I spoke, I could detect a few smiles out of the corner of my eye. Maybe I said something wrong or mispronounced something with a funny accent. Even in their dismal emaciated state, they could get a kick out of hearing a “laowai” speak Chinese. 

Did the death wish of the water strikers ennoble the student movement or darken it with disrespect for life? Did widespread popular support, the non-stop swirl of sympathizers and admirers unwittingly put pressure on the elect heroes to do themselves in? If making jokes at my expense got them back on a more normal track of thinking, I couldn’t begrudge them that. 

The peer pressure was palpable on May 13 when the hunger strike began, how much greater it must be now, with a nation electrified and millions marching in their name? 

There is no graceful exit from a hunger strike that does not achieve its aims. Dui-hua, or "dialogue" is the stated aim now. But what constitutes dialogue and who is to say whether or dialogue has been achieved? The whole hunger strike struck me as a form of political poker, each side trying to bluff the other into making a concession first. I am sure at least some of the students joined the strike impulsively and felt for them. They might have second thoughts or regrets but no easy way out given the immense peer pressure. It was scary. 

While I was talking to Han, a delirious young man who had been propped up against the door slumped over, head hitting the ground. White-shirted medics put him on a stretcher rushed him into the waiting ambulance. A few minutes ago, my parched throat craved water, now I felt like throwing up. Watching the medics attend to the most recent victim of dehydration, I felt some consolation in the fact that he would be raced to the hospital along the roped off lifeline and force-fed intravenously, diminishing the chance of death. 

…

I gave up any thoughts of further exploration and slowly worked my way back to the BBC rest spot across the road from the entrance to Zhongnanhai where the water strikers had staked their ground. 

Sweaty and disheveled, the BBC crew was biding their time in the shade of a tree. My driver was by himself, keeping a deliberate distance from the other two. He greeted me warmly, though I had hardly spoken to him, and offered me a hand as I clambered up into the passenger seat of his cart. He took a position facing me, reversing his position on his bicycle seat and leaning back on the handlebars to strike a delicate balance. 

"You know much about China, don't you?" he said, using the disarming compliment, “zhongguo tong.” 

"Sometimes I wonder. So, what do you think of all this?" I asked. 

"I was in the Tiananmen incident in 1976," he said. "I know all about such demonstrations. At that time, the crowd was truly of one mind, we spoke the truth. But soon after the demonstration I got arrested. They herded us across the Square and locked us up in the Worker's Park next to the Forbidden City." 

"Over there?" I pointed to a tree-lined wall far in the distance. 

"Yes. I was lucky, I only went to jail. Some disappeared, some were executed. The government decides life and death," he intoned with a whisper, looking around before going on, "I spent the next five years in prison. After prison I could not get a job; that is why I drive a trishaw today." 

"What about the other drivers?" I asked. "Had they been political prisoners too?" 

"Ha, those two jokers?" he said with disbelief. "They don't know the first thing about politics. They are nothing but common criminals." 

"What kind of crimes did they commit?" 

"The fat, bald one, he raped a woman. The one with the beard is a robber, he beat up someone, almost killed him," he explained. "They both just got let out of jail." 

The Open Door was one thing, but opening the doors to prisons was not necessarily in the interests of liberalization. It made me wonder if the Square was being deliberately sowed with social deviants to whip up some trouble. Governments have done stranger things to manipulate crowds and create pretexts for iron-fisted rule. Eyeing the tout and his sidekick with a new appreciation, I thought it a good idea to get the crew back to the hotel before things got really weird. 

We plotted a roundabout route to the hotel, edging along a long pedestrian-choked avenue, going south to head north, essentially circling the Square for expediency. 

We cut close to the sidewalk in front of the Great Hall. Here crowd density was uneven, allowing for spurts of movement followed by pile-ups. Perhaps drawn by the symbolic power of the Great Hall, there were assorted curbside speakers addressing the sensation-hungry throng. A man in a neat suit stood on top of an abandoned car, sharing articulate thoughts with bystanders. An older unshaven man wearing a ragged Mao jacket commanded a rapt audience of his own with boisterous nostalgia for the good old days. A few times the delay was sufficient to prompt the crew to whip out their gear. Subsequently our presence would then serve to augment public interest in whichever speaker was lucky, or unlucky enough, to fall under the focus of our lens. 

The gray-haired soap box orator in the tattered Mao jacket responded to the gaze of our camera by climbing up on the top of a trishaw, waving his hands at us in a ritualized, almost theatrical way, not unlike the way officials did on TV. 

"Foreign friends. My greetings,” his voice boomed. “Where are you from?" 

"We are England television," I hollered back, self-conscious with so many eyes on me. 

"I thank you for being here. You are a good friend of the Chinese people," he said, in slow, simple Chinese of the sort used for children and foreigners. 

A few random bystanders cheered and clapped. 

"I will take you anywhere you want to go, for free," he offered, pointing to his flimsy vehicle. "I don't want any money!" 

The lead driver, who I now knew to be a dangerous criminal, moved closer to me to see what all the commotion was about. I tried looking the other way but he gave me a ten-pound tap on the shoulder to command my immediate attention. 

"Don't listen to that guy," he growled, "He's a lunatic!" 

"How do you know?" 

"Just look at that mother-effing driver preaching up there," the burly man added, poking me in the ribs. "The guy's definitely crazy!" 

Eric took his eye from the viewfinder to look up, sensing trouble, but I told him to keep on filming. 

"I may be….but…a-common-maaaan," the orator in the Mao suit up front said with a vibrato worthy of Martin Luther King, "but I have the dreams of an em-peh-ror!" 

He repeated this refrain, priming the audience. Each time his voice reached a crescendo, he raised his arms to the sky and those gathered round him cheered wildly. 

"Our foreign friend here, right there, he can speak Chinese," he announced, pointing at me. "Tell us, friend. What is your name" 

I mumbled shyly in Chinese. He told me to shout it louder. "Jin Peili!" I said, reluctant to be drawn into his performance. It was like being tapped by a magician looking for volunteers. 

"Jin Peili, --I will work for you! All day! For nothing!" the man sputtered, with emphatic flourish and impeccable timing. "We want the world, the people of the world, to know about the generous spirit of the Chinese people!" 

The man in the Mao jacket served up a string of platitudes with verve, plainspoken enough to find receptive listeners, compelling enough to stir the spectators gathered in our favor, though an angry racist rant, delivered with similar panache might also find a ready audience. 

Both the dumb foreigner treatment and the honored foreign guest routine reminded me what a cultural tightrope we walked, working such an anarchic crush. We were lightning rods for all kinds of touts and taunts. 

The greedy tout insisted we move on, as if the lofty talk of volunteerism might hurt business. He coaxed our convoy of rickshaws to pick up speed, careening this way and that. Twice the lead driver and his sidekick got in arguments with pedestrians and cyclists who had almost been knocked down. One time the bald man slapped a protestor pointblank because he had the temerity not to move out of his way fast enough. 

Yet for all his impatience, the same tout also demanded frequent rest stops and cigarette breaks, all the while cooking up angles to up the fare. As a result, the unassociated cart I shared with Lotus, got way ahead of the others because our driver was content to peddle slowly but steadily without a break. 

We passed incoming delegations of farmers, workers, intellectuals and merchants parading in support of the students, even military supply factories got into the act. One key stratum of Chinese society that had not yet joined in, however, was the military. If that happened, it would be as good as setting off a chain reaction, signaling that the overthrow was all over but for the shouting. The people would truly love an army that loved the people.

5/16/89: To Serve the People

This piece is excerpted from the manuscript of Philip J. Cunningham’s forthcoming book, Tiananmen Moon, part of an on-going China Beat feature of excerpts from Cunningham's book. Interested readers can see more at Cunningham’s website.

By Philip J. Cunningham

The term “democracy” was gaining a certain purchase on the popular imagination, though it was not without its slippery side. Given the predictable confusion about what the students were really up to, given the abstraction and ambiguity inherent in political term minzhu, particularly within the confines of a communist society which fancied itself to be democratic in a roundabout sort of way, “democracy” meant very different things to different people. It had such a bafflingly wide range of meaning, it was so easily co-opted and distorted, that one could better appreciate the efficacy of a banal but concrete cry.

Thus “support the students” became one of those rare phrases, polished and spit out by the crowd, that a million voices could safely agree to say in unison.

SUPPORT THE STUDENTS!

The frictionless interactions I was enjoying with Bright, Jenny, Lily and other friends from Shida also bolstered my confidence, my sense of being part of a giant, magnificent sort of drama that had a role for everyone and anyone willing to step up on stage.

The spirit of the day permitted ample interaction of the sort I liked best. Not above, not below, just side by side with everyone else. No big fuss about obvious differences, nor any need to elaborate obvious commonalities, just people getting along. All afternoon I moved through the congregation feeling very much a person, and not much a laowai.
…

It was long after lunch hour but the kitchen staff continued to stand stoically on the grease splattered cement, tending boiling huge vats of broth, kneading dough and ladling out portions to impatient eaters, restoring the flagging spirits of tired protesters and nurturing the dehydrated bodies of sun-exposed men and women weary of foot. Cooks, cashiers and cleaners who toiled in low-rent, ramshackle shops such as this had no illusions about their social status. They were among the losers in Deng’s new hybrid system of socialism mixed with capitalism.

Such work wasn’t entrepreneurial, with all possible risks and benefits that entailed, but it was not much of a socialist sinecure either. They worked long hours for low pay in a job both physically demanding and accident-prone. Deng Xiaoping famously said to get rich is glorious but that was for other people, special people. The workers in the “iron rice bowl” trades could at best look forward to sipping tea and reading newspapers in between shifts, a life of low productivity punctuated by long stretches of boredom.

But the Wonton Place met the needs of cash-starved, dialect-shouting rural pilgrims visiting the capital, diners who might only dream about eating in Quan Ju De, where duck was served up according to social class, with VIP rooms for wining and dining foreign dignitaries such as Kim Il Sung, along with less efficiently air-conditioned rooms for local hotshots and, as a gesture to the hoi polloi, a fast food style canteen on the ground level where the tables, and floor, were never free of cigarette butts, discarded bones and duck bits.

Here, in contrast, the menu was simple and there was but one class of service; deliveries were made by bicycle and the coal-fired kitchen hummed along with a hardy functionality, so low-tech it could operate at full blast even during a black-out.

A worker in a food-stained white uniform takes a break from infernal heat of the kitchen, stepping outside to wipe her brow, then briefly survey the insatiable army that she was helping to feed. Transfixed by the enormity of the crowd assembling on the square, her eyes brightened with pride and amazement, as if it had just dawned on her that even she had a part to play in much the unfolding drama.


The words, “It is important for people like that to be here” came to mind. The neglected wageworker, who made a bare-bones living by slopping out soupy servings to day tourists on the edge of a plaza that memorialized revolutions past, was she not also an inheritor of the revolutionary tradition? The sudden upsurge in the spirit to “serve the people” was transformational.

The men and women in their soiled aprons were working class heroes, playing an appreciated role, feeding pass-by revolutionaries and slaking the thirst of the throng.

I had seen a similar transformation of kitchen crew and menial workers on campus, even the sassy rural attendants in the Insider Guest House, who, far from being critical of the students, were proud to be proximate to history in the making. The nervy defiance of the students, however opaque and abstract their goals might be in political terms, was seductive to bored ordinary folk, for it offered both spectacle and a hint of better things to come. Egalitarianism and self-sacrifice were back in circulation with a vengeance after a decade that saw socialist values eroded by a get-rich-quick mentality.

Bright finds me and hurries over just in time to help me carry our bowls of hot soup while Jenny looks for a seat. We thank the kitchen staff for the food they ladle out, and we are not alone in doing so, others too, express admiration for the way the kitchen crew efficiently filled so many hungry stomachs.

By a stroke of luck, two seats opened up just as we had resigned ourselves to eating on our feet. There was no table, but two sturdy stools were available along the railing on the edge of the earthen promontory. We swiftly took possession of the coveted seats, taking turns to rest our legs and greedily slurping down hot soup in full view of the Square.

The outdoor eating area of the Wonton Place was like a rough-hewn balcony, offering a rare unobstructed view of the drum flat plaza in front of us. Beyond the railing and a mass of entangled bicycles, a pent-up political procession unscrolled before our eyes.

Given the elevation of our humble perch, we could see not only the south to north pattern of flow of the demonstrators treading closest to us, but detect an equal and opposite movement clear across the Square where the other side of the human cyclone moved north to south.

We gobbled up the dumplings and savored the hot broth to the last drop. I was proud to have been a tiny cog in that giant rotating human clockwork out there but at the same time it was a relief to be a more or less autonomous individual again, a few paces apart from the hypnotic beat of other footsteps.

I needed space and distance to order my thoughts, a quiet timeout to jot down some notes. For some reason I found it hard to think in the midst of the crowd, it was as if some ancient communal subconscious ruled when I was walled in on all sides by thick human traffic; it was hard to reflect with any clarity from the inside out. But then again, I would not have much to reflect on afterwards, from the sidelines, had I not first lost myself on the inside. To me the two emerging sweet spots in a rotating vortex of protesters pushing a million were to be either in the center of the crowd or on its outer edge. There was a crunching intensity in one view, an aloof clarity in the other. The two poles were buffered by an in-between zone of halfhearted student agitators and partially politicized townspeople.

BBC's tussle with militant onlookers last night had been in just such an ill-defined location; tellingly it had taken place at a time of day when fears about a nocturnal crackdown were mounting.

This morning I had seen little such volatility or even the everyday tensions I normally associated with tight knots of people on the street, where loud arguments, even shoving matches and fist fights routinely took place in full public view. It was not so much ironclad discipline that enabled the crowd out there to enjoy such an unusual degree of freedom from untoward incident or petty fights, rather it was a kind of mass elation combined with a collapse of individual boundaries; the mass somehow pulled itself together and sedated itself.

Several times I tried taking pictures of the kinetic marching with my fixed lens Olympus, but only a wide-angle could do the broad panorama real justice, and even then, the result would be too static to convey the constant motion. I settled for a series of snaps in succession, thinking I might be able to fit them together like pieces of a puzzle later.

The spectacle of so many people in constant motion was so mesmerizing, the effect of delicious noodles and a warm beer on empty stomachs so soporific, that we lingered in our ringside seats overlooking the Square even after lunch hour ended. Eyes locked in a hundred yard stare, body immobile with fatigue and slightly off balance from a touch of inebriation, I felt myself being tugged and transported back into the thick of it without lifting a finger. I was overwhelmed with a sense of awe and an ecstatic sense of well-being to see so many people moving together with so much spirit and so little friction. The Square had become a font of revolutionary renewal tempered, mercifully, by an all-encompassing harmony.

The marchers at Tiananmen moved to the drumbeat of the Chinese language hypnotically, almost in unison. Did the rhythmic repetition of slogans have a mantra-like calming effect? Or was it the simple unalloyed delight of the warm spring breeze that blew under the embrace of a blue sky? Or was it perhaps the cool, silvery light of a moon on the rise, daring to follow in the trail of the scorching sun. There was a communal joy in being part of something so much bigger than oneself, but there was also a rare assertion of self, the realization of a long-suppressed need to take the helm of one's life.

I crouched forward and leaned on the railing, the warm restorative broth and warm beer having some effect, not to mention the delayed onset of drowsiness from a sleepless night on the Square.

Although many of the things going on right before my eyes eluded easy intellectual comprehension, I was moved by the spirit of the day. It was thrilling to be in a nation waking up to a new dawn, it was empowering to witness the empowerment of the downtrodden. Something important was going on, touching all levels of society and I wanted to be close to the beating heart of it.

5/15/89: Looking for Gorbachev

This piece is excerpted from Philip J. Cunningham’s manuscript of his forthcoming book, Tiananmen Moon, part of an on-going China Beat feature of excerpts from Cunningham's book. Interested readers can see more at Cunningham’s website.

By Philip J. Cunningham

Setting up a shot in a methodical manner--tripods incrementally adjusted, white balance achieved, illumination enhanced--allowed for the recording of clean, well-lit images worthy of prime time TV, but much of it came at the price of spontaneity. That which we sought to observe was constantly reacting to us and regrouping due to our presence. Cameramen know all about this of course, and a long lens can, with some foreshortening, capture unadulterated spontaneity, but more than once we simply scrapped the shot when members of the crowd seized up or returned our curiosity in an obvious way.

Which brought us back full circle to the solipsism of the TV standup; one of the few tasks we could do convincingly was a phony setup in which one member of our crew talked to the red light of the camera hoping to simulate an intimate conversation with unseen viewers in faraway land in the not too distant future.

It was hard to get away from the feeling that television news was at least as much about “television” as it was about “news.” The starving students and their rowdy supporters on Tiananmen Square were, for our current purposes, but a colorful backdrop; BBC wanted to shine light on one of its own. But even that proved an elusive task.

To get the angle necessary to see both the correspondent and the crowd, and, if humanly possible, Mao’s distant portrait floating somewhere in the foggy night air, we had to find some way to put the solidly built, silver-haired John Simpson head and shoulders above everyone else. But a plaza as wide and unadorned as Tiananmen Square offers few natural promontories other than the monument, which was already staked out by students and at this juncture off-limits to the crew.

After Eric, the cameraman, made it clear he needed something, anything, to elevate the correspondent, I procured, at length, two flatbed bicycle carts to serve as platforms, one for the correspondent, one for the cameraman.

The cameraman signaled he was ready to roll, which was John Simpson’s cue to mount the flatbed cart and commence his standup. He squeezed past curious spectators in a reasonably dignified manner, but he had to step out of the dignity of his persona in order to clamber up on the cart, one knee at a time, and rise, tentatively and awkwardly, to a standing position on the top of the slightly wobbly cart.

Eric was perched atop the other bicycle cart, which he and his soundman Fred had expertly aligned with John Simpson’s temporary pedestal to obtain optimal background visuals, effective depth of field and a precise focal length for the standup shot. Yet even they, despite their workaday clothing and self-effacing work style, created through their silent labors enough commotion to draw a circle of onlookers.

As eager onlookers inched forward to see what was going on, they pressed against one cart or the other. Even the slightest wobble or shift in position caused the shot to fall out of alignment, ruining the setup, creating a new delay.

Fred, curly blond hair sprouting every which way from the black frames of his glasses and big black headphones, attended to technical difficulties in his usual calm and unruffled way, expertly handling both sound and illumination, while trying to detect the source of the trouble. He adjusted the lights, hoisting the sound boom in place while Eric and I tried to re-align the carts. The “talent” remained aloft, only slightly ruffled from two near-miss tumbles, his shiny, neatly groomed hair now mussed up from the effects of a light breeze.


Simpson did what any conscientious television anchor or on-air reporter would do, which was to focus on making himself as presentable as possible while silently practicing his lines for the unforgiving eye of his intended audience in television land, but in doing so, he made himself look, to his unintended local audience at least, like a madman on a soapbox.

The correspondent got about halfway through his stentorian address to an unseen audience when peals of laughter ruined the sound and a shake of the cart ruined the shot. Eric called “cut” and requested another take. Again the cart was bumped or shaken, again it was hard to keep the spectators quiet. What was an imperceptible movement to the rest of us, Eric saw magnified through the shaking viewfinder and concluded to be intentional sabotage. He made a grimace, turned off the camera, pleaded with me to address the onlookers, to demand that everyone be still.

Wary of issuing orders with no authority, at an illegal gathering where, to put it lightly, the forces of law and order were neither in view nor on our side, I super-politely requested those around me for their cooperation. Satisfied, Eric gave the correspondent the signal to start over again.

On the third take, a young Chinese man, perhaps inspired by sight of foreign journalists taping what appeared to be an important speech, lifted his own tape recorder, a cheap cassette player, high over his head, his outstretched arm mimicking Fred’s boom mike, shoving the tape recorder right in front of the important white man to better capture his important, if indecipherable, words.

“Cut!”

The subsequent take was also ruined, this time by a comically aggressive onlooker who was straining to smile for the camera. The take after that was nixed by the soundman, as two of the standers-by next to him started a loud, animated conversation the minute the lights went on.

Seeing the exasperated faces of the BBC crew, I formally addressed the crush of bodies around us, hoping to win some cooperation. In response I was told that we foreigners were offending the dignity of the Chinese people due to our arrogance.

“Tongzhimen…Comrades,” I said out of textbook habit, then softened it to reflect changing times.

“Peng-you-men. Friends. Please help us here tonight,” I offered, desperately trying to strike the right tone. “We are making a news report for BBC English television. Would it be possible for everyone to be quiet and still for just a minute?"

"We can talk if we want to!" A voice shot out from the back.

"Of course you can,” I sallied back. “But please, talk quietly."

"This is China!" he said indignantly. "You're foreigners."

Because this xenophobic line of thought, with its unhappy echoes of foiled past encounters truly irritated me, I turned my back on the man, which riled him up all the more.

"I demand that you translate everything the “old Whitey” is saying," a man in a cheap Mao jacket said, giving us the look-over with a jaundiced eye. "Otherwise we, that is, we Chinese, we will not cooperate!"

"Hey listen, friend.” I said sarcastically, my patience straining. “I will translate for you, but after we are finished filming, okay?"

"We demand you tell us now!" he shouted, rallying for support.

"Where are you from?" asked another young man.

"It will only take a few minutes and then we will have lots of time to talk," I promised. "Okay?"

"Foreigners!" a new voice rang out.

"Look at old Whitey up on the cart!" shouted another, followed by a caustic laugh.

With at least a hundred people now pressing in on us in a deeply congested corner of a plaza containing, all told, over a hundred thousand demonstrators, we were vulnerable, at the complete mercy of the illegal assembly.

…

"Today a crowd gathers in peaceful protest at Tian-an…” Simpson started. “Hello! Hey, --who’s shaking the cart?" After almost getting knocked over by a particularly violent thrust, Simpson regained his balance but not his composure.

The deliberate thrust against our man felt like an attack on all of us. "Who did that?" I asked sternly, studying the faces closest to the cart. My interrogative glance was met with indignant protestations of innocence, sullen stares, and a few weak smiles.

"What is your relationship with the foreigners?" I overheard someone quizzing the bicycle cart drivers. The vigilante-style interrogation that followed left both drivers looking shaken and worried. One driver approached me sheepishly, saying he’d like to get his cart back. I indicated I understood. The other driver sportingly agreed to wait, and even went so far as to ask the trouble-makers for their cooperation. He did so in a culturally sensitive way, asking his fellow citizens to quiet down so that the laowai would get done already and he could go home to eat, but it didn’t placate everyone.

"Oh, you're a fine one, telling us to shut-up because you are in the pay of the foreigners," challenged a young man with an unruly mop of hair.

"That’s it,” chimed another. “How much are the laowai paying you?"

"How much, traitor? That's what we want to know!" another unfriendly voice cried out.

The almost magical, all-encompassing harmony I had experienced moving amidst the student-dominated crowd in the past two days had evaporated, causing me to wonder how much of the harmony had been in my mind.

…

"So, how much is the foreign boss paying?” shouted a threatening voice.

“Yes! How much? How much?" echoed several others.

Oblivious to the content of the arguments storming around them but hyper-sensitive to vibrations as perceived through the lens and microphone, the crew gamely tried to accelerate the shoot, attempting to race through the short standup while I worked the crowd. At last, Eric, who struck me as being a most sensible and patient man, started cursing under his breath.

"Phil," he whispered, "There's someone doing it on purpose. They wait until the lights are on and then they deliberately shake the cart. Can you find out who it is?"

I carefully watched both carts, but honestly couldn’t pin down the culprit. As it was, I was hearing pre-emptive pleas of innocence.

"It wasn't me. Nope, wasn't me. Wasn't me either."

It was on the ninth or tenth take that I heard a shockingly stupid rumor going around. The distinguished-looking Caucasian man up on the cart was said to be a famous politician. A really famous one.

"That's Gor-ba-chev!" a voice cried out, as if in confirmation. "Look, they're interviewing the leader of the Soviet Union!" A momentary hush was followed by a wave of excited murmurs and a forward thrust of onlookers. Then there was a sudden, total breakdown in order as the Soviet leader’s name was chanted in Chinese.

"Ge-er-ba-qiao-fu! Ge-er-ba-qiao-fu! Ge-er-ba-qiao-fu!”

Something hit the cart hard, knocking John Simpson off balance. He broke his fall with an outstretched arm, tumbling safely into the arms of the crew. Pale and shaken, he tried to regain his sangfroid by batting the dust off his jacket. "Can someone tell me what is going on?"

I didn’t want to say that the rumor of the Soviet leader appearing on the Square to mix with Chinese protesters was a positively explosive development, plus Simpson wouldn’t understand how he could possibly be confused with another white man who looked so different from him, so I let it go.

The rhythmic incantation about Gorbachev, though apparently incomprehensible to the crew, was alarming enough that they knew it was time to beat a quick exit. I emptied my pocket, handing each of the drivers a wad of small bills, crisp FEC notes mixed with wrinkled renminbi.

"Are you trying to buy us Chinese with your foreign money?" an eagle-eyed spokesman for the masses asked maliciously. "Foreigners! Imperialists. Ha!"

The drivers, now completely intimidated, refused all money, hastily mounted their bikes and slid away into the darkness, begging cooperation as they pedaled against the inward push of the throng. It was terrifying to realize that just a handful of malicious hangers-on could put so many decent people in jeopardy. At a time of uncertain political outcome such as this, it didn’t take much to manipulate the mood of listless bystanders, and I despaired to see how a small misunderstanding could trump the overall mood of solidarity.

"You see that? The arrogant foreigners used the cart," one of the more devious troublemakers said in accusatory tone, after scaring the drivers away. "And didn't even pay!"

"They are taking advantage of the Chinese people!" yelled his co-conspirator.

"Who the hell are you?" I shot back in rude Chinese. By now I had had it. I didn't want to fight, but gambled that a strong response might get the wise guys off our backs and stop the conflict from escalating. We were surrounded, so if the crush got any more hostile, it might be hard to extract ourselves without a bloody fight.

"Don't you dare talk to me like that," the man steamed angrily. "This is China!"

"China? China has nothing to do with it," I shouted back. “The problem is you. What kind of thing are you?"

I had really lost my cool, and it was wrong to use such a coarse expression, even though I heard Chinese use it among themselves. The situation had deteriorated in a way that needed no translation. The BBC crew wasted no time in packing up and packing off while I tried to hold my ground in an intemperate verbal exchange.

Just as my crew was on the verge of extracting themselves from the scene, a middle-aged man with a thin beard came up to me, effectively blocking my exit. He spoke fluent, educated English with a soft American accent.

"You should not have talked to that man like that!" he chided me.

"He shouldn't have made so much trouble for us!" I answered in Chinese. "Who does he think he is?" And who do you think you are, I might have asked.

"Your Chinese is very good, but you must be careful," the soft-spoken man said, continuing to speak in impeccable English. "This is a very special night for the Chinese people."

"What do you mean? That guy was bothering us.”

"It is very important that people like him be here," he said. "They may seem rude to you, but they support the students. It is especially dangerous for common Chinese to be here."

Who deemed it important for the "common people" to be here tonight? The man passed for what in China is called a “knowledgeable element” or intellectual. He was clearly educated, confident, and had something of a superior air.

Who was he? He reminded me of Zhu Jiaming, a Zhao protégé I had met at the University of Michigan, and was not unlike other brilliant young intellectuals in government think tanks such as the Academy of Social Sciences, many of whom had studied on American campuses. Was he one of those reformist intellectuals working behind the scenes for Zhao Ziyang?

"And if I may, just what unit are you with?" I asked in Chinese, to the apparent delight of a few in the now momentarily subdued mob who had been straining to understand the exchange in English. The soft-spoken man had a definable presence, an unassailable font of self-assurance, almost a cockiness that reminded me of film director Chen Kaige. His erudition and elitist élan could not be completely disguised by his untended facial hair or his baggy trousers and plain shirt.

"Never you mind that," he said dismissively, steering the conversation back into English, "But I know your country, I did research at the University of Chicago."

"Why are you talking to me in English?"

"I don't want them to understand."

"So where do you work?"

"The Academy of Sciences," he said. "And you? Tell me about yourself."

"Well, we're from BBC," I said, turning only to discover that my colleagues were out of sight. It was my responsibility to get them back to the Great Wall Hotel, after which we could safely commiserate about the dangers of the mob over cold beer in the lobby bar.

A familiar feeling swept over me, pulling me two ways at once. I wanted to talk more to this enigmatic man who had been observing us and the people’s reaction to us with insight and attention.

But I had agreed to take the crew to the Square and worried, probably unnecessarily given their finely-honed vocational resourcefulness, about them finding their back to the hotel without a word of Chinese between them, so I pulled myself away.

"It’s interesting talking to you,” I told the self-possessed intellectual. “And I’d love to chat more, but I gotta catch up with the crew. See ya."

On the way back, I explained to the crew that John Simpson had been mistaken for Gorbachev, and we all got a good laugh out of an otherwise harrowing experience. If our ace reporter had been frustrated by the failure to do a proper standup, or if his ego had in any way been bruised by the public humiliation of being forced off the cart, at least he could console himself with the thought that he had been mistaken for a great man.

The Hunger Strike Begins

This piece is excerpted from Philip J. Cunningham’s manuscript of his forthcoming book, Tiananmen Moon, part of an on-going China Beat feature of excerpts from Cunningham's book. Interested readers can see more at Cunningham’s website. 

By Philip J. Cunningham

The idea that the campus was under student control struck me as a dangerous illusion. Bright and others said campus life had changed for the better, and in the aftermath of May 4, I could see evidence of the soaring change in spirit. But what if the whiff of freedom turned into a mockery of the same, a transient window of openness that served to make people implicate themselves? It had happened before in the 1950s, when Mao urged “a hundred schools of thought to contend,” only to punish those who expressed themselves too freely.

…


To date, the campus strike was having its desired effect of keeping people out of class, but cutting class does not a revolution make. Sleeping late and not doing homework is a temptation few students can easily refuse. The non-action implicit in not going to class had to be accompanied by some kind of action to have any meaning at all.

The courtyard was abuzz with loud announcements blurting out of the hijacked, jerry-rigged amplification system. What might in theory be freewheeling talk akin to the ramblings of a college radio station was instead sounding uncompromising and strident, like a new party line. The drive to convince the moderate student body not to attend class, having largely succeeded, cleared the way for more radical action. The buzz was all about a big hunger strike.

As the BBC crew continued to track down colorful visuals, I approached a forlorn-looking young man who was sitting alone amidst the swirl of activity kicking up in the middle of the dusty courtyard. He was wearing a white headband with two black characters inked on: *JUE-SHI.*

"Why do you write ‘refuse food’ on your headband?" I asked, adopting the tone of a reporter without really thinking about it.

"The government just ignores us. We want dialogue. Maybe if we starve ourselves they will pay attention," he said.

There was something off-putting about his explanation. It was unfathomable to me that a young person would starve to death as an attention-grabbing stunt. Here the stated cause was laughably hollow--risking the ultimate sacrifice for a chance to talk with Li Peng. I pressed the would-be martyr on the matter, curious about his personal reason for joining.

"I don't know," he said dully, no doubt taken aback by the volley of questions from the inquisitive foreigner. "It's not personal."

"What if the government ignores you?" I moved closer to him and lowered my voice, aware that our conversation was attracting curious ears.

"We demand dialogue and a reversal of the unjust April twenty-sixth editorial!" he declared with unexpected volume, to the approval of his contemporaries who were now tightly squeezing in around us.

"What if there is no dialogue?"

"Then we die," he said, winning somber nods of approval. His performance gave me the goose bumps.

I moved on, but subsequent conversations with other individuals quickly turned into group affairs. It was sad and frustrating to meet such earnest young men and women, all apparently willing to put their lives on the line, only to hear them give pat answers, sometimes even grandiose answers, magnified by peer pressure. Did those nodding in approval realize they were urging psychologically confused, approval-hungry classmates to court death? To what end?

Things were polarizing rapidly, making me feel hopelessly lost in the middle. Overturning the unjust verdict of an incendiary newspaper editorial was an aim both discreet and desirable, but what could possibly be the end goal of “dialogue?” Who was to say that dialogue had been achieved, or not? If hunger strikers started to drop, where would it all end?

The May 4 rally and the May 10 protest were framed largely in the name of free speech. Both events were peaceful, good-spirited and I supported them wholeheartedly. I had plunged into a turbulent sea of confusion in both instances, trusting the instincts and judgment of friends. The result was uplifting; I was pleased to lend moral support to a movement driven by good cheer and an idealistic outlook. But now things were taking a potentially destructive turn, for a hunger strike implied a kind of self-inflicted violence.

A hunger strike also introduced a ticking time bomb into the equation; things must be resolved in less time than it takes to die of starvation. It subjected both supporters and “the enemy” to emotional blackmail, not unlike a person who threatens suicide to manipulate or punish others for their lack of attention. Short of capitulation, terms of which were left dangerously undefined, on the government side, the unspoken end result would be death. This was no celebratory parade calling for free speech and cultural revival; it was a veritable death march.

Sitting on the steps of the small monument in the middle of the courtyard I watched as more and more grim-looking young men emerged from the residence hall wearing white headbands emblazoned with *JUE-SHI* painted in black. The strikers gathered around the monument in the middle of the rectangular quad, bringing to mind the way the protesters in recent days had gravitated to the Monument of the People’s Heroes, which commemorated martyrdom in Mao’s calligraphy, in the very heart of Tiananmen Square.

Headbanded delegations of students from other colleges began to arrive, giving Shida the doom and gloom of a kamikaze camp. Whither the joyous, life-affirming spirit of May Fourth?

We had stumbled upon this radical stab for attention quite fortuitously, a combination of BBC's search for a non-existant "Democracy Wall at Xidan," Min's erratic driving and my curiosity to see what was happening on my home campus. I mingled with the strikers and their supporters, aware I was being watched more closely than before, but curious to see where the idea of a hunger strike came from. I couldn’t think of any examples in Chinese history, though India had elevated the hunger strike to an almost spiritual art. I had just seen some quotes by the progressive Indian writer Rabindranath Tagore in one of the student posters but no mention of Mahatma Gandhi. Where the student admirers of Tagore aware of his famous criticism of Gandhi, saying that even non-violent tactics were a hurtful weapon of sorts?

None of those queried could point to a precedent for this type of protest in China. The strikers I talked to tended to give knee-jerk answers to my questions, to the tune of dialogue or death, unwilling to consider the implications of the strike in honest terms or even begin to question decisions made by their “leaders.” It bothered me to see such courage coupled with an unquestioning attitude. To me, these young patriots had lost perspective and were fired up by peer pressure to take part in a dangerous "quest."

As with the kamikaze pilots of Japan and the daring guerilla martyrs of the Chinese Revolution, extreme devotion coupled with intense social pressure made it possible to cast a false glow on pointlessly suicidal activities. But I was baffled that otherwise privileged students in a nation that had known much too much hunger should starve themselves for any abstraction, let alone such a poorly conceived one.

Brian found me, asking if I had lined up some students to interview.

"Well, it’s hard to say. I just talked with a few students over there. They are on a hunger strike," I explained. “They demand dialogue with the government. There one of them, see, with the headband?”

"How good is his English?" he asked.

"I don't know. I wasn't speaking English."

"What's the point of talking to someone in Chinese?" he said, which I thought was a pretty incredible statement to make in China. But he had a job to do, an overseas audience in mind, whereas I was indulging my own curiosity.

"Well, I say we have enough. We're finished doing the posters, that's what we came for, isn't it?"

"But I think this is a good chance to talk to some of the hunger strikers."

"Phil? We can talk to them later."

We were on the verge of going back to the hotel for lunch when I learned that the hunger strikers were signing "wills" and making pledges to maintain group unity, to be unswerving in their determination to the death. The courtyard was now swirling with students wearing the ominous white headbands. Then I saw a familiar face among the hard-core strikers.

Lily! What was she doing with the radical contingent?

My gut reaction was that Lily, a simple honest soul from a small farming village, an appreciative young woman who didn’t hide her thrill to be attending a university in the national capital, was caving in to peer pressure. Bright and Jenny had the self-esteem and instincts of self-preservation to avoid the trap of something like a hunger strike, but Lily? I approached her stealthily, aware that she was surrounded by strike organizers. When she spotted me she couldn't suppress a cordial smile, but watchful stares from her peers signaled that she ought to assume a less communicative, more appropriately solemn demeanor. She wasn’t free to be the Lily, the delightful woman of an impoverished province who I liked and knew. She was now an anonymous comrade, a patriotic hunger striker.

We talked briefly, but the conversation was limited to platitudes. She had never been particularly articulate about politics to begin with, and my presence, a foreign male hanging out with a TV crew of unknown provenance made her extremely self-conscious. I made reference to people and places we both enjoyed, hoping to jump-start a conversation, but she had lost her normal playfulness and sense of humor. When I pressed her as to why she was going on a hunger strike, she gave me the same pat answers as everybody else.

"We want open dialogue with the government."

"Oh, come on, what do you really want?"

"Hmm, I'm not sure, but. . ."

One of Lily's head-banded comrades intervened silently, poking his head into our conversation with the precision of a directional mike. I gave him an exasperated look, hoping to continue a bit longer.

"What were you saying?" I pressed for an answer.

"We want a reversal of the April twenty-sixth verdict!"

I had to wonder if she was fearful or if she already felt the effects of fasting since breakfast. Most Chinese students I knew couldn’t even skip a meal without feeling ill effects, already her lips were parched and dry. I really felt bad for her and tried to “reach” her but couldn’t get through.

There was some kind of indoctrination going on, but that’s not to say there was a mastermind or the process was coercive in any way. Rather, for students such as her who had endured years of rote-learning, and considered it a privilege to be in the city, there was readiness to take cues from the environment and allow a kind of auto-indoctrination to kick in. In the end, all I could do was wish her luck as she went back to her group and I went back to mine.


A short while later there were excited shouts.

"Beida is here!"

"Political Science and Law is here!"

"Shida! Get ready for the march," a cheerleader shouted. "Assemble into your groups!"

The hunger strikers and supporters from other schools came pouring onto campus. Once again a mass of students converged on the sports ground. Once again the dusty basketball court was transformed into a sea of enthusiastic young people waving red flags to the singsong rhythm of rote slogans, redundant chants and crackling voices on megaphones. Beida, Qinghua, Political Science and Law and People's University contingents gathered and joined forces to map out a joint strategy.


The final march to the Square was about to begin.

May 10, 1989: Demonstration of Ten Thousand Bicycles

This piece is excerpted from Philip J. Cunningham’s manuscript of his forthcoming book, Tiananmen Moon. Interested readers can see more at Cunningham’s website.

By Philip J. Cunningham

For a few days there it seemed that the successful student march of May 4 would be the last of the big demos and soon everyone would be back on campus attending classes again. Railing against this rather pleasant and natural inclination, strident wall posters at Shida and Beida called for continuing the student strike. One of the more florid campus wall posters that I managed to snap a photo of was a florid eulogy to the Great Hall of the People as a symbol of representative rule. The dark message, written on May 5, 1989 was at odds with the general euphoria in the wake of the May 4 March, for it predicted an outcome with blood flowing down Chang’an Boulevard. Brushed in ink on a large sheet of paper, written with such literary flourish that I needed help to decipher it, the poem was signed by an anonymous author who went by the name, “The Wild One.”

“*Drawing blood on Chang’an Jie until the dawn dawns red, smashing to bits the bona fide dream of the people*.”

On the morning of May 10, the student-rigged loudspeakers at the center of the Beijing University campus started crackling with a call to action. A Beida physics student explained they were calling on other schools to join Beida students in a new form of protest with Chinese characteristics: the bicycle demonstration!

We sat on our bikes under a tree near the front gate of Beida to observe the hatching of this new and unusual type of protest. The "marchers" rolled in from all directions, mostly walking their bicycles due to the utter congestion. Like earlier protests, which used patriotic anthems as a cover for covert political action, the demo on wheels could hide in plain sight in a city of a million tinkling bicycles.

The tree-lined road leading to the main gate on campus was by now attracting black bicycles like crows, watching and waiting for a sign to take flight en masse.

The long-legged Chen Li shifted restlessly on her bicycle as her mind wrestled with indecision. It seemed that she had almost made up her mind to join the demonstration when some annoying static over the student broadcast system brought to mind another problem.

Just who were the so-called student leaders? They hadn’t been voted into office. They had just sort of seized the initiative. Chen Li bristled at the idea of taking the lead from such presumptuous peers, wondering instead what her teachers would counsel. The problem with the student movement, it seemed to her, was that it was run by students.

It was one o'clock, at least a thousand bicycles were amassed on the tree-lined road leading to South Gate, but there was no discernible movement in a forward direction. Then a few minutes after the hour, a sudden crescendo of tinkling bicycle bells alerted us that the pent-up energy of the waiting cyclists was about to be unleashed. To the background of jangling rings, screeching brakes, flopping pedals and soft thud of rubber tires bumping into the spokes of other bicycle wheels, the demonstration creakily commenced.

Beida professors, some of whom lived in apartments near South Gate, were on the scene, talking to students and in some cases actively cheering them on, much to Chen Li’s delight. But most of the older campus residents kept their distance. Whether it was the wisdom of age or bitter memories of the Cultural Revolution not yet faded, many of them watched wistfully from the windows and balconies of the ramshackle teacher's dormitories.

All at once, the mass of a million spokes and wheels, greasy chains and kickstands heaved into motion again. Enmeshed in a traffic jam at the starting gate, the metallic parade of creaking, entangled bicycles slowly lurched forward, balanced and propelled by feet, more often on the ground than on pedal. Because it took just a few wobbly bicycles to block a narrow path, the campus gate became a bottleneck, slowing egress even though the security guards did nothing to stop the flow.

Once we rolled off campus and hit the lightly-trafficked streets of Haidian district, the mass of bicycles speeded up in concert, a forward movement that felt truly liberating. All demonstrators, from flag bearers to group leaders, were on mount, so when we finally hit open road, it was possible to race en masse at a flag-whipping speed.

The plan as we understood it was to go around Beijing following the perimeter of the circuitous ring road, to breach Tiananmen Square and then to stage a protest at the People’s Daily compound on Chaoyang Road, but first we had to join forces with allies from other campuses.

"It's a 40-kilometer circle," I heard someone say, "When we get downtown, just follow the old city wall of Beijing."

Chen Li was well aware of the iconic importance of the route, but she was no hot-headed activist. Unlike some late-joiners who pedaled with double the enthusiasm, she continued to show hesitation and review her options at each main juncture along the way. Twice we pulled out from the convoy at her insistence when it looked like there might be trouble from the police. I appreciated her caution, I was a bit worried myself. But what impressed me more was that she did not fall into lockstep behind the bossy “student leaders” up front who were by now commanding the metaphorical ten thousand troops. The only thing more surprising than the speed with which a handful of rash students took control was the willingness of so many intelligent individuals to become followers.

True, the march would not have taken wing if everyone adopted the cautious wait-and-see attitude the two of us did. And some of the students leaders at Beida, Wang Dan in particular, were considered to be thoughtful and reasonable, but the rapidity with which Chinese students fell into line and accepted group think troubled me nonetheless.

But as we cruised breezily down the car-free streets, meeting up with other wheeled university contingents, a kind of ragtag mass euphoria built with each addition to the ranks.

…


When at last we got close to Chang’an Boulevard, the turn to Tiananmen was blocked by police. Word had it that the police had been firm but not unfriendly, and we saw no fighting or confrontation. The traffic police were just doing their job, cordoning off the section of Chang'an Boulevard that ran past the leadership headquarters at Zhongnanhai on the way to Tiananmen. If the men in uniform had been sticklers about not allowing a left turn towards the Square, they showed little concern for what we demonstrators might do elsewhere. That was someone else's responsibility.

Beijing's grid-like layout of large east/west avenues criss-crossed by north/south roads made it nearly impossible to lose one's bearings. It became immediately obvious when we turned south after a feint to the west that we were still headed for Tiananmen after all, only in a roundabout way.

The snakelike chain of cycles doubled back to head for our unspoken destination. Successfully overcoming the police roadblock doubled the good spirits; the collective mood was ecstatic and electric. The indirect route to the Square offered no obstacle to our forward motion. It was hard to believe that the traffic police were so dim-witted as to fall for the ruse, it seems more likely they were following orders to the letter without enthusiasm. Once they had stopped us from turning east onto Chang'an Boulevard, they didn’t seem to care where we went. It was as if they put up a perfunctory show of opposition to the march, not in real opposition, but so as not to get in trouble for not doing their job. Bureaucracy at its best!

When we got to broad Qianmen Avenue we veered east, making a nosedive to Tiananmen, as inexorably as if pulled by gravity. It was here, as the rows of onlookers thickened, as the cyclists pedaled harder, that Chen Li heard a variation of *laowai paobu* that she was kind enough to share with me. What were people saying at the sight of me today? *Laowai qi zixingche! * --Whitey rides the bike!

As we picked up speed, spirits soared. The flying wedge leading the pack thinned out to about five bicycles abreast, stretching the malleable procession in length. It was a race to beat the police to the Square, or so it felt as we hit our clunky bike pedals at an accelerating clip. This kinetic frenzy got the adrenaline going, there was no stopping our unauthorized procession now. Whatever residual indecisiveness my companion might have had was largely overcome by the inspiring sight of fellow cyclists boldly careening forward. Butterflies in the stomach took flight as we made the final invigorating plunge towards the Square.

As the bicycle procession reached the southwestern outskirts of the Tiananmen area, I couldn't imagine pulling out, even if there were police waiting. I didn't want to miss the thrill of streaming across the symbolic plaza in this swift, fluid convoy of thousands, holding aloft fluttering flags, wheeling it for free speech.

The mad dash across Tiananmen Square was the high point, a defiant burst of energy propelled us clear across the forbidden ground in a giant, diagonal slash. There were pockets of urban well-wishers and curious rural tourists who out of friendly support, or fear of speeding bicycles, stepped back from the bicycle course to form a line of observers on both sides. We sped along like chessboard knights across the graph-like matrix of the Square, starting in the lower left hand corner going two steps north, one step east, then one step north and two steps east, finally exiting on the upper right hand side.

The vivid pathway cut by us cyclists swooshing across the Square was volatile and transient; it lasted only as long as the last bicycle in the procession. Banners strapped to bicycles and some huge red flags were held high in the air, balanced deftly by skilled cyclists. The way the flags whipped in the wind created an air of excitement. The red headbands, representing blood, rebellion and speed, were perfect for the course. How else could we identify our cyclists in a city of several million bicycles?

From the vantage point of a gliding bicycle, it was a magnificent scene. Before us and behind us, red flags and school banners lashed the air and unfurled in the jet stream of rushing cycles. This gave the illusion that flags and banners, some strapped to bicycles, others held aloft by skilled cyclists, were flying above the crowd under their own power, like the magical brooms of the sorcerer's apprentice.

As the vanguard zig-zagged in search of openings through the crowd ahead of us, I suddenly had to wonder. Where did all the spectators come from, anyway? At least some of the onlookers appeared to be supporters because they lined up, deliberately holding up traffic it seemed, to create a protective corridor for the demonstrators to slip through. By the time we reached the northeast quadrant of the Square, the banks of spectators were four or five deep on each side, shouting in unison and clapping in support.

The mood was defiant but confident, not only because the police had backed off, but because there was a sense of safety due to the tacit support of townspeople and the growing camaraderie of fellow cyclists. Thanks to the exhilarating movement across the square, all my doubts, and I think those of Chen Li, about whether or not one should get involved in such an event vanished. I, for one, was exactly where I wanted to be.

The speedy rivulet of bicycles got dammed up at Nanchizi intersection just beyond the Square, while the vanguard of group facilitators dealt with some obstruction and conferred on which way to go. Tires bumped against tires, and the mobile procession slowed, scrunched up into a immobile mass of protesters, some dismounting, others resting with feet on the ground for balance. Then the signal to continue reached us and was duly passed along, one voice at a time until what seemed like a million shiny spokes were soon creaking back in motion, revolving down Chang'an Boulevard, transporting the saddled riders to the diplomatic section of town.

And that’s when we realized we weren’t alone.

“Look, over there! Foreign journalists!”

As we rolled past the Beijing Hotel we could see foreign film crews scrambling to set up their cameras to capture this unusual and uniquely Chinese demonstration on film. Unlike the well-documented marches of April 27 and May 4, it seemed as if the foreign press had been caught unprepared by this one. But that was a relief in a way, for cameras have an unnatural effect on people on both sides of the lens. As the brusque men with big cameras scrambled up their ladders, taking aim at us, I could sense a kind of shy pride laced with a touch of humiliation. We were targets being hunted by big roving lenses, reduced to a kind of native wildlife.

It was hard to determine if being on TV was good news or bad news. Had the press been tipped off by the government about an imminent crackdown, or had they been tipped off by the students about the illegal rally?

We kept our eyes on the road, generally ignoring the cameras and sped along on our way. I heard student cyclists complain that a bunch of journalists had shown up the other day at the last minute, when it looked like the police might stage a crackdown, and had they left just as quickly when the crisis passed. To see newsmen arrive on the scene was a bit like sighting vultures; they were just doing their job, of course, but their appearance was often a sign of trouble.

So what was I to make of BBC’s offer of a few days freelance work--interpreting, taking news crews around Beijing— in preparation for the Gorbachev visit a few days hence? I had no press accreditation, so it was a strictly off the books arrangement, a few days work at the local hire rate. I had to wonder if running around with the foreign media was a worthwhile opportunity or mere opportunistic voyeurism, a professional way of looking for trouble.