6/4/89: The Night of No Moon

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.

(June 4, 1989 excerpt from Tiananmen Moon)

You didn't have to be a fortune-teller to know Tiananmen was the target, but what were they going to hit it with and when? The long anticipated crackdown had been postponed so long, getting it over with might resolve the political impasse, but it wouldn't bring justice, it wouldn't buy back the mandate of heaven.

Being part of the teeming mass as the army approached, I had little choice but move in tandem. It was well nigh impossible to stand still, to move against the flow would beg injury. Only when I reached the concrete and steel divider in the middle of Chang’an Boulevard, guided by those in front, pushed by those behind me, could I pause and wring myself free of the seething throng long enough to climb on top of a cement road barrier to get a better view of what was going on.

A military vehicle that looked like a tank came careening recklessly through the sea of people like an icebreaker cracking through thin ice. Tanks on Tiananmen Square! It was crazy, what was the PLA doing, what did they think this could achieve? The armored vehicle roared down thickly people Chang’an Boulevard as fast as its heavy treads would permit, not as a peacekeeper, but provocateur. Then there appeared another metallic monster, begging for a clash, beckoning blood.

The reckless charging of two heavy vehicles in the middle of a crowd of thousands shocked me; the rules of engagement had changed. The military’s admirable discipline and restraint had been abandoned, giving way to reckless, violent acts. The armored vehicle was so unforgiving, so heavy, so hard, the bodies it bolted past so vulnerable and soft.

So far, no one had been hit or run over but it could happen any second now. It was a deadly game of "chicken" in which the winner was the last one to flinch, but the rules were supremely unfair, pitting tank against man. I shuddered in dread of seeing people mowed over, but amazingly the men and women around me seemed emboldened by the prospect of conflict.

It was as if the daredevils possessed a belief in mind-over-matter, like the martial arts warriors of the late Qing Boxer Rebellion who convinced themselves they were invulnerable to bullets. I’d seen plenty of people tempt fate crossing streets in busy traffic, but never did I dream it possible to slow a tank's advance by jumping in front of it!

Numb and immobilized I watched the vanguard dart back and forth in front of the armored vehicle, taunting the unseen driver. The armored continued to penetrate the crowd, slowing to turn around, speeding up on the straightaway, heading directly at the flag and banner-waving provocateurs like a mad bull aiming for a matador. With each sweep, the crowd parted, some running for their lives, others, tempting fate, holding their ground.

The passionate insanity of the moment was contagious, after a second silent signal, which caused the people immediately around me to snap into action, I stumbled, and then without really thinking about it, joined the fray.

The heavy concrete and steel road divider that I had been standing jerked sharply and suddenly lurched into the air. I lost balance fell hard, the shock of my tumble softened by the unfortunate people I landed on. I tried to right myself, feeling like a surfer who had just wiped out only to get caught in the undertow. My first reaction was annoyance at having the ground pulled out from under my feet, and being at the mercy of agitated strangers.

I was floundering below a turbulent crowd that was attempting to yank a heavy road divider from its moorings. A lengthy section of the concrete and iron barrier, once broken free, was rotated 90 degrees, from its original east-west mooring to block traffic on the boulevard. The heavy railing, momentarily made featherlight by hundreds of hands, was dropped to the ground with a thud.

Once I regained my footing, with the unexpectedly attentive assistance of the two young men closest to me, I joined the crowd in its tug of war with the barrier. We rotated it in slow increments, like the jerking second hand on an old clock, lift, drop, lift, drop. Whose idea it had been was impossible to say, for nobody was really in charge. No one had told me what to do either, for that matter, rather it was instinctive, a collective move to slow the arrival of hostile invaders. I doubted it would seriously deter the movement of army vehicles such as the ones we saw buzzing the crowd, but taking fate into one’s hands and doing something felt better than doing nothing.

By the time we had the concrete barrier in place, the offending vehicle had moved on. The men around me breathed a collective sigh of relief.

Only after the intense and immediate sense of danger had subsided did anyone realize, or have the time to react to the unusual fact that there was a foreigner on the team. Several sweaty men in T-shirts, arms and wrists no doubt aching after the sudden bout of weightlifting, offered trembling hands. One man welcomed me, the other called me friend.

“Huanying ni!”

“Pengyou!”

Their words moved me, almost to tears. The verbal embrace was at once formulaic and reassuringly real.

…

Meng, who had been separated from me by the erratic movement of bodies when the APC came streaming through, had closely observed the roadblock incident from the other side of the divider.

"I saw that. They are taunting us,” he muttered bitterly. “They are trying to break our will. They are trying to incite violence."

"So, what's next?" I ask, wanting to know, wanting him to have the answer.

"Nothing will happen, I think. The government is just trying to scare the people."

We backed away from the crew, scanning the swarming multitude for some indication of what might happen next. Suddenly Meng’s face lit up in recognition of some familiar faces coming our way.

Two women were walking their bicycles, weaving through the jumpy crowd in front of Tiananmen Gate. After negotiating the uppity throng gracefully, they parked their bikes next to the BBC's tripod as if it were a parking meter.

Soon they were deep in a whispery conversation with Meng, pouring out words too fast for me to keep up with. I stood back, content to watch the beautiful, expressive faces of three people who knew each other well, baring their souls in the subdued lamplight on the Square.

"Jin Peili," Meng said, pulling me over, trying to include me. "These are my classmates. They study acting at the Central Drama Academy."

We all shook hands, exchanging smiles. Despite the unsettled if frightening outlook of the evening so far, time was had become malleable and that fleeting but somehow poignant encounter was imbued with an enduring beauty. Ordinary life, as we had come to know it, was slipping away by the minute. Nothing would be the same, nothing could be taken for granted. Win or lose, the final showdown was at hand. I observed the drama school comrades as they huddled close, the pale outlines of the Goddess of Democracy glowing behind the trio in the darkness. The night sky was absolutely black –no moon, no stars.

…

Here on the northern periphery of the square, there were no workers manning barricades, or students urging restraint or marchers singing the Internationale, not even the usual idle onlookers.

The unsung, unseen heroes who had kept the peace for over a month could retroactively be appreciated by their absence. Student types were in scant evidence this night. Instead there were warriors with agendas unknown pressing in on us. No overt hostility was directed at the crew, but the seething anger and lust for violence was palpable.

The May Fourth spirit was gone, replaced by something murky and malevolent. There was a new element I hadn't noticed much of before, young punks decidedly less than student-like in appearance. In the place of headbands and signed shirts with university pins they wore cheap, ill-fitting polyester clothes and loose windbreakers. Under our lights, their eyes gleaming with mischief, they brazenly revealed hidden Molotov cocktails.

The camera lights, in this dark and troubling hour, seemed to attract all species of insect.

"Turn off the lights!" I yelled at Wang Li. "This isn't working, turn off the lights! We better get out of here!"

Who were these punks in shorts and sandals, carrying petrol bombs?

Gasoline is tightly rationed, they could not come up with these things spontaneously. Who taught them to make bottle bombs and for whom were the incendiary devices intended?

Lights still blazing, Ingo started shooting from the hip to capture some pictures of the provocateurs. The noose of spectators tightened.

Lights out, the shoving match subsided. But the troublemakers lingered, smiling inappropriately as they stared at us. Frustrated, I led the crew to the most obscure and least crowded spot I could find, aiming for the massive outer wall of the Forbidden City. Not surprisingly, we were jeered for making an apparent retreat.

"Look, foreigners! Ha ha!"

"What are they doing there?"

"The foreigners are scared!"

"Hel-lo? Where are you going?"

"They don't care about China!"

"Cowards!"

"They are running away!"

Some of the comments sounded like veiled threats. I pretended not to understand in order not to have to react. We were not running away, but I didn't owe them an explanation. The technical requirements for a well-lit interview were hard to meet under such agitated conditions.

Could the mass yet turn on us? Were we dealing with rational individuals or an irrational collective? How could one possibly distinguish good from bad in such a vast gathering of people?

We walked with our heads down in silence, a solemn file of five Caucasians and two Chinese. Finally we set up tripod and camera next to some trees along side the majestic vermilion wall lining Worker's Park on the northeast corner of the Square. On the other side of the wall was a potential sanctuary, the entrance courtyard to the Forbidden City.

The relatively secluded location gave us about a minute to tape before things got out of control again. There were ogling onlookers as before, but the random mix of townspeople in our new location was less implicitly threatening than the Molotov cocktail gang. When things got tight, merely switching the lights off sufficed to relax the stranglehold of the instant gaggle that coalesced around us.

Looking at the indecision and fear on the strange faces watching us, I felt we were much alike in our unspoken desperation, looking to one another for cues on how to act, grasping at straws in the wind, trying to figure out what was going on. Given the communal uncertainty, it was easy to understand how an incandescent circle of light on a dark plaza might be mistaken for a meaningful vortex of activity.

While Simpson brushed his hair, Clayton made notations on her producer’s sheet, Ingo unwrapped his camera, Wang Li fumbled with the lights and Mark readied the sound gear, I would try to explain to the usual knot of people closing in on us what we were doing in order not to excite too much attention.

"We are the BBC, English television, we’re just doing a random interview, please step back, we appreciate your cooperation, thank you."

In no time at all, interviewer became interviewee.

"What do you think will happen?"

"What information do you have?"

"How many killed at Muxudi?"

While I was trying to cope with such questions, Simpson shouted that another APC was heading our way. Everyone dropped what they were doing, immobilized by fright as the green monster bore down upon us.

As before, the horde parted only reluctantly from the path of the careening vehicle, and usually not a second too soon, leaping away left and right, defiantly till the last possible moment. The BBC crew swiftly backed onto the sidewalk, wisely regrouping behind some trees that offered a modicum of protection. The threatening vehicle then lurched to the left, veering away.

…

My pace quickened as I approached the stalled vehicle, infected by the toxic glee of the mob, but then I caught myself. Why was I rushing towards trouble? Because everyone else was? I slowed down to a trot in the wake of a thundering herd of one mass mind.

Breaking with the pack, I stopped running, exerting the effort necessary to free myself from the unspoken imperative to follow others forward.

Someone tossed a Molotov cocktail, setting the APC on fire. Flames spread quickly over the top of the vehicle and spilled onto the pavement. The throng roared victoriously and moved in closer, enraged faces illuminated in the orange glow.

But wait! I thought, there's somebody still inside of that, it's not just a machine! There must be people inside. This is not man against dinosaur, but man against man!

Meng protectively pulled me away to join a handful of head-banded students who sought to exert some control. Expending what little moral capital his hunger strike signature saturated shirt still exerted, he spoke up for the soldier.

"Let the man out," he cried. "Help the soldier, help him get out!"

The agitated congregation was in no mood for mercy. Angry, blood-curdling voices ricocheted around us.

"Kill the mother fucker!" one said. Then another voice, even more chilling than the first screamed, "He is not human, he is a thing."

“Kill it, kill it!" shouted bystanders, bloody enthusiasm now whipped up to a high pitch.

"Stop! Don't hurt him!" Meng pleaded, leaving me behind as he tried to reason with the vigilantes. "Stop, he is just a soldier!"

"He is not human, kill him, kill him!" said a voice.

"Get back, get back!" Meng started screaming on the top of his lungs.

"Leave him alone, the soldiers are not our enemy, the government is the enemy!"

The former hunger striker howled until his lungs failed him, his voice weak, raspy and hoarse. Meng’s head-banded comrades descended on the stricken vehicle but were unable to placate vigilantes keyed up for action.

"Make room for the ambulance," one of the students yelled. "Please cooperate, please step back!"

I watched from 20-30 feet away as the students tried to extract from the burning vehicle the driver who had nearly killed them. He had trouble walking, he appeared to be injured and in serious pain, but the quality of crowd mercy was uneven.

"He's not a person, he's a thing, kill him!" voices continued to shout out. Hotheads were deliberately instigating violence, putting them at odds with conscientious demonstrators who had no intention of hurting anyone.

The assembly surrounding the armored vehicle shared a paroxysm of joy in stopping it, but was of more than one mind about what to do next. At least one surrendering soldier was safely evacuated to a waiting ambulance, but then the ambulance itself was attacked, the back door almost ripped off by protesters determined to punish the man in uniform.

Up until now, the volunteer ambulances were symbols of the movement’s caring side, carting collapsed hunger strikers away from Tiananmen to hospitals for physical restoration. Until this night, city ambulances, plying slowly through the pack with that familiar, almost reassuring up-and-down wail, had been sacrosanct and untouchable.

A man with a metal pipe smashed the rear of the ambulance, breaking the tail-light. Two or three other men pounded on the back door demanding that the limp body of the soldier be handed over. The driver desperately begged the vigilantes to leave the injured man alone, to let him be taken to the hospital.

The back door of the ambulance swung open and the injured soldier was about to be extracted for a bout of “people’s” justice when the vehicle lurched forward, and raced off in the direction of the Beijing Hotel. Student traffic directors trying to impose a semblance of order did their best to hold back those seeking blood long enough for the ambulance to escape.

So it had come to this. The dream was over, people were killing each other. The mutual restraint, one of the things I admired so much about all parties in this monumental conflict of wills, was breaking down.

The students lost control, the crowd started cracking, and the movement was breaking up into splintered mobs. There were calls for cooperation and shouts for vengeance, the blood thirst made me nauseous.

Meng was distraught. "Don't use violence!" he yelled, straining his voice to persuade anyone who would listen. "Don't fight!" he cried hoarsely, over and over. But whipped up into a state of true turmoil, few cared to listen.

The ambulance was gone, the APC was now a flaming hulk, billowing black smoke that masked the sky. The ghoulish glow of distant fires – one could only imagine what might be going on --reinforced the gloom of this moonless night.

The BBC crew reassembled, shaken but unhurt. Before we could gather our wits, however, the sky was suddenly pierced with red shooting stars.

"What in the world?" I had never seen anything like it before.

"Tracer bullets," shouted Simpson. "We better get out of here!"

The red traces of speeding projectiles crisscrossed Chang’an Boulevard. The cracking sound of gunfire was steadily audible in the distance. The now seething mass was not easily intimidated, and became only further enraged. Empty-handed civilians cursed the government, venting violent epithets.

I looked at the anguish in Meng’s face, tears welling in his eyes.

"This is no longer a student movement, he said. “This is. . ." He paused, fists clenched with rage, face lined with resignation. "This is a people's uprising.”

As the fighting worsened, with gunfire close by, I had to physically drag Meng; so reluctant was he to leave the street, towards the Beijing Hotel for shelter. There he joined the BBC crew, along with Wang Li and myself, in room 1413 to sit out the lethal madness. Patricia, the Hong Kong journalist, joined us shortly afterwards.

But the Beijing Hotel was no longer a safe haven. "What are you doing here?" one of the guards had barked at Meng as we crossed the threshold. In our haste we had failed to notice the gatekeepers were in place again, guard posts fully operational.

"He's with me!" I answered firmly. Not wanting to get stuck at the guarded elevators, I took Meng by the arm and led him away from the heavily monitored entrance into the long central corridor ringed with dimly-lit lounges. The guards did not follow us, so we first lingered there, taking comfort in the incongruous fact that the deserted coffee lounge was still operational.

We gathered up an armful of yogurts and soft drinks for the crew and went up to 1413 by a less guarded passage. From my balcony high above Chang’an Boulevard, we surveyed the horizon. It looked like nothing less than war as I had imagined it as a child; fire and flares in every direction. Burning vehicles emitted an oily smoke that funneled upward, linking with its long black columns the murky sky and the ground.

Screams and gunfire could be heard almost directly below, more distant cries and rumbles intermittently carried by the breeze. Tracer bullets fired from somewhere across the street arched upwards along a parabolic path and fell behind the hotel. The frequency of gunfire intensified.

We watched in stunned silence as the tanks rolled in. As bodies were rolled out on carts. As the once defiant crowd was bent, then broken. Sporadic gunfire could be heard all night long.

China’s Growing Cage: The Legacy of Tiananmen

A much shorter version of this piece originally appeared in the New York Times, part of a series there on "Tiananmen Square, 20 Years Later," which also features pieces by Ha Jin, Yu Hua and others.

By Zhang Lijia

Whenever “1989” is mentioned, people in the West instantly think about the protesting students in Tiananmen Square. In fact, although it started in Beijing and was led by the students there, the democratic movement was a nationwide event, drawing together people from all walks of life.

Twenty years on, I remember vividly every detail of that day when I organized a demonstration among the workers from my Nanjing factory in support of the movement. It was Sunday, May 28, a week before the crackdown in Beijing.

The death of Hu Yaobang had triggered the spontaneous democratic movement. The popular former Communist Party secretary-general had been ousted, in part for his sympathetic view towards students’ protests. When the government rejected their request for his rehabilitation, Beijing students marched towards Tiananmen, demanding greater freedom and democracy. Like a match thrown onto kindling, students from all over the country took to the streets. They were soon joined by ordinary citizens who were disgusted by widespread corruption, rising inflation, and lack of personal freedom.

By then I had been working for a factory, a missile producer, for nine years in Nanjing, my hometown. The factory was a mini-Communist state, housing us in identical block buildings, feeding us at dining halls, indoctrinating us at meeting rooms and controlling our lives with strict rules: no lipsticks; no high heel shoes or flared trousers; no dating for the first three years at the factory. Every month, all women had to go to the hygiene room to show blood to the so-called ‘period police’ to prove that we were not pregnant.

To escape, I decided to teach myself English in the hope of getting a job as an interpreter outside the factory with one of the foreign companies. What I learnt, of course, wasn’t just the ABCs but the whole cultural package. I dared to be different: wearing short skirts and having boyfriends. After I mastered enough English I became obsessed with listening to the BBC, which broadcast news very different from our propaganda. I attended politically-charged lectures at Nanjing University, debating if Western-style democracy was the answer for China.

On that Sunday in May, after watching televised images of workers in Guangzhou marching in the rain, I decided to organize a protest. I telephoned all my friends at the factory, and some of them informed their friends. We got the banners and placards ready in just a few hours.

Under the wary eyes of our factory leaders, about 300 of us set off, as if for battle, defending a noble cause. Walking at the very front, I held a red flag and felt a sense of liberation that I had never experienced before. Behind me two workers carried a cloth banner that read, “Here come the workers!” The little strips of bright red cloth tied to our arms and heads flamed in the wind.

We marched toward the Drum Tower, Nanjing’s version of Tiananmen. On the main street, our group melted into a flow of marchers. Before us walked students from a technical school; at our tail were several dozen workers from a glass-making factory. We chanted slogans like “Long live democracy!” “Down with the repressive government!” “Anyone who dares to crack down on the democracy movement will be condemned for 10,000 years!” Onlookers cheered us on. Along the way, hundreds more workers from our factory joined in, which made ours the largest demonstrations among workers in Nanjing during the movement.

During that time, my ear was glued to my shortwave radio, and I learned about the crackdown at Tiananmen from foreign broadcasts. The following year, I left for England, feeling defeated and pessimistic about my country’s future. In 1993, when I returned, I was surprise by China’s booming economy. Many commentators had predicted that the authoritarian regime would have collapsed, especially after the massacre. It lacked political legitimacy and had an over-centralized power structure.

Over the past twenty years, apart from short spells living abroad, I have been more or less based in Beijing. I’ve witnessed and reported, as a freelance journalist and writer, China’s remarkable transformation: the economy has charged ahead like a steed without a reign; foreign trade and investment have expanded greatly; and China, with its successful foreign policy, has become a more important player on the world stage.

One might argue that China still has no real democracy or it has not made fundamental improvements in civil or political rights. Many topics are off-limits, such as the Communist Party’s monopoly on power. Of course, discussion of ‘June 4 Movement’ remains a taboo. But that doesn’t mean the Party has not learnt some lessons from those events two decades past.

Over the years, amid overwhelming economic and social changes, it has navigated its way forward, proving to be more flexible and adaptive than ever before and very resilient.
The leaders make it clear to citizens that that it is futile to pursue political reforms. Political debates that once buzzed at university campus in the 80s and excited me and my fellow idealistic youth are nowhere to be found.

The country’s paternalistic rulers consciously channel people’s energy into making money. The Chinese people have indeed embraced the consumer culture whole-heartedly.

The authority has been crushing hard on potential threats: Falungong was outlawed and dissidents were thrown in jail. On the other hand, it has loosened certain controls and granted people more personal freedom. We can now choose our own life styles. Lipsticks, high heel shoes, the width of trousers, and one’s period, dating and sex life all fall into a place called ‘privacy’ which didn’t really existed before.

These improvements shouldn’t be lightly dismissed. Personal freedoms and the emergence of an urban middle class can potentially lead to democratic processes, as seen in other Asian countries.

However, China seems to be different. The urban professionals and the business people have been absorbed by the Party as a new “elite” class. The entrepreneurs are welcomed into the realm of politics, and Party members have flowed to the private sectors. The mixture of power and business makes it hard to distinguish private from state-owned in today’s hybrid economy.

Back in 1989, the educated urban elites enthusiastically took part in the democratic movement not only because they felt that economic change required political relaxation but also because they were bitter about their low salaries, their poor living conditions and lack of opportunities while the children of the high-ranking leaders made easy and vast profits. In a TV interview, when asked what they wanted, Wu’er Kaixi, one of the leading students leaders at the Tiananmen replied, somehow flippantly: “Nike shoes. Lots of free time to take our girlfriends to a bar. The freedom to discuss an issue with someone.”

And it is not just Nike shoes or other designer goods that Chinese have gained. Many urban professionals are now proud owners of cars as well as their own homes. They find themselves the beneficiaries of the government’s strategic generosity policy, enjoying higher salary and other perks. Academics now can travel abroad freely. And most choose to return after their study abroad.

My sworn sister, who works for Nanjing government, has an enviable lifestyle, living in a flat she bought at a knock-down price, enjoying medical care and being driven around everywhere. She was sympathetic to us protesters back in 1989. But why would she want to protest against the government now?

Ever since the “May 4 Movement” in 1919, intellectuals and students have always been the frontrunners of mass demonstrations. In recent years, public protests have occurred all over the country like mushrooms after a spring rain, mostly by victims of land seizure or laid-off workers. With the economic downturn, 2009 will probably see more protests. But without the participants of intellectuals, such outbursts of discontentment are unlikely to grow into a national movement or cause large scale social turmoil. The urban elites are too content with their lives to upset anything, though they’d describe themselves as liberal and pro-democracy if asked.

As for today’s university students, they grew up in an affluent society. China’s growing wealth and rising position in the world have made them assertive and nationalistic. The outburst of nationalism in the wake of ‘Tibetan Unrest’ last March was just an example. At least for the time being, if the students go out to demonstrate, it will more likely be against some foreign power rather than its own government.

There’s still a cage in China. But for many, my fellow marchers from Nanjing included, the cage has grown so big that they can’t feel its limitations. The movement in 1989 didn’t reach its final goal – to bring democracy to China. But I wouldn’t describe it as a total failure. Without the effort by the hot-blooded students and all those who participated, the rulers might not have expanded the cage.

Lijia Zhang is a Beijing-based writer and the author of "Socialism is Great!" A Worker’s Memoir of the New China, which came out in May in paperback.

Another Anniversary

In Taiwan, June 4 marks another anniversary, namely the 185th day of Chen Shuibian's detention without having been convicted of a crime. Chen was first ordered to be held in custody on the night of November 11, 2008, with actual detention beginning on November 12. Taking into account the few days during which he was released in December, Chen's incarceration has lasted almost 200 days now, with no end in sight. In principle, he can be held in detention indefinitely due to the fact that he has been charged with a felony, and because prosecutors have expressed concerns that Chen might flee the country, engage in collusion with other suspects, or tamper with evidence and witnesses. If a judge agrees with these arguments, an extension can be granted every two months. Efforts by Chen and his legal team to challenge prosecutorial evidence in court have also served to lengthen the term of his detention.

Despite the fact that his detention started on November 12, the Supreme Prosecutors' Office did not indict Chen until December 12, charging him with accepting bribes, laundering political donations, and looting public funds. The extent of Chen's corruption (as well as that of his family members) is said to have extended to the tens of millions of U.S. dollars, and lasted throughout his 2000-2008 presidency. Legal proceedings are currently underway to determine the guilt or innocence of those accused. Chen's wife has also been indicted, while just yesterday his son and daughter were listed as defendants and may be charged with perjury.

When the state decides to break an individual, it can draw on an array of weapons in its arsenal, including torture, imprisonment, harassment (often extending to loved ones and friends), confiscation of property, and the denial of citizen's privileges, all of which involve the stripping away of an individual's human rights. Another form of this abrogation is detention, with its resulting loss of freedom and daily humiliations.

This is not to deny the legitimacy of detention in democratic nations. It is certainly justified when suspects are hardened and violent criminals who threaten society, but this is clearly not an issue in Chen's case. Detention can also be viewed as legitimate if it is regularly utilized in certain types of cases (such as corruption and tax-evasion). In Taiwan, however, detention of politicians on such charges is almost unprecedented. Over the years, numerous politicians of all stripes have been accused of corruption. Some have been found guilty and sent to prison, while others have been proven innocent. Only a small percentage has been subjected to detention (most are allowed the right to bail), although many suspects have fled the country and are currently living high on the hog (swine flu notwithstanding) in China and the U.S. Apart from Chen, however, no Taiwanese politician has been detained for such a long period of time on corruption charges without having first been convicted of a crime.

Regardless of whether Chen is found guilty as charged, Taiwan's judiciary has come under considerable criticism for its handling of the detention process, and in particular the decision to change judges during Chen's detention hearings. Following his indictment on December 12, the three-judge district court panel originally presiding over the case decided to order Chen's release (without bail), something that is often allowed once suspects accused of non-violent crimes are indicted. In Chen's case, however, this ruling prompted prosecutors to appeal twice to the Taiwan High Court. During the second appeal, the original panel was replaced (amidst rumors of pressure from ruling KMT lawmakers), and the new panel ruled on December 30 that Chen's detention could continue.

The events described above have prompted questions about the circumstances and motivations underlying Chen's on-going incarceration. Concerns have been raised about other aspects of Chen's case as well, including a skit performed by prosecutors at a Justice Ministry party that appeared to mock Chen's behavior when he was placed under arrest. As President Ma Ying-jeou's Harvard Law School mentor, Professor Jerome Cohen, has observed, ''At what point does the presumption of innocence becoming meaningless and pre-conviction detention morph into punishment for a crime not finally proved?''

And that is the tragedy of the current situation, for having a top-ranking politician found guilty after a trial deemed fair and impartial would constitute an immense boost in prestige for Taiwan's judicial system, while also sending a crystal-clear message to all politicians facing similar forms of temptation. However, a conviction following proceedings that suggest Chen is presumed guilty and likely to be found guilty as well would represent a major step backwards, and risk causing a reversion to traditional views of the law as being simply a tool to enhance state interests.

The other tragedy involves Taiwan's human rights record. The detention of a former president who may have committed at least some of the crimes he stands accused of hardly compares to the violence that took place in Beijing 20 years ago, not to mention the horrific abuses of human rights (and especially those of women and children) that ravage our world every day. Nonetheless, the deprival of any individual's liberty and dignity constitutes a challenge to the values that people hold dear. Understandably, Taiwan's judicial trials rank rather low on most leaders' ''to do'' lists, and after the Abu Ghraib and Guantánamo fiascos it is hardly our place to lecture others about human rights. Nonetheless, indifference would not seem to be the answer, for only when people effectively question the state's authority does it grudgingly relinquish the assertion of its might over the rights of its citizens.

Tsingtao Beer: A Complex Brew

By Robert Bickers

‘What are we to drink?’ asked a British doctor in Shanghai in 1867, reflecting on the precautions needed to maintain health in the sweltering city. His answer, as Shanghai water was too filthy a solution, was simple: beer. For ‘7 or 8 months of the year’ he wrote, bitter was ‘as wholesome a drink as we could have’. Its medicinal properties were, I rather suspect, far from the minds of the inhabitants of the new military garrisons established in north China after the late 1890s ‘scramble for concessions’, and the Boxer rising and war. They wanted the relief only a cool pilsener could bring them. To slate that thirst, a new brewery was established in the German naval colony at Qingdao, and therein lie the roots of China’s favourite tipple, and its most visible global brand: Tsingtao Beer.

The original brewery

Therein too, lie the roots of current anxieties in China about the sale of a 19 per cent stake in the Tsingtao Brewery Co. by Anheuser-Busch InBev to Japanese brewers Asahi, giving them an almost 27% stake in the firm (and a relatively easy springboard from which to take full control). Sketches of the firm nearly always note that its origins were as a German company, and it’s a badge of pride in the company’s own publicity materials, not least those around its centenary celebrations in 2003. But it’s actually more interesting than that, and more revealing of the earlier world of transnational business activity in pre-communist China.

For Tsingtao Beer was never formally German (in fact, until 1915 it was not even Tsingtao Beer). The Anglo-German Brewery Co. Ltd was established in August 1903 as a British company, under Hong Kong ordinances, and was chaired at Shanghai by a Scotsman, with (by 1915) 60 per cent German, 40 per cent British and other share ownership (including 5 per cent owned by the French religious orders). Of course, the Manager and the Brewmaster were German, and the inability to run the brewery without a German brewmaster was why it failed to present it as entire free of German interests in 1915, and so fell into Japanese hands with the blessing of British diplomats. Those diplomats were fed up with dealing with the difficulties of separating out such very often closely (and cosily) intertwined British and German interests in the treaty ports. Although hundreds flocked home to fight, many other Britons and Germans in China mostly found the Great War a Great Inconvenience. Who had hosted the members of the (British) Shanghai Club while it was being rebuilt? The German Club Concordia. Whose nationals formed the second largest cohort of European staff in the Chinese Maritime customs: the Germans. Disentangling these ties – of habit, sentiment, capital -- and encouraging proper wartime hate, proved tricky.

A fountain at the current brewery

So Tsingtao Beer’s early history is a classic case of the transnational nature of the foreign enterprise in treaty-era China, in this case, the match of German expertise, German and British capital, and British law (and thirsty German soldiers and sailors in Qingdao). The old brewery is now a museum, and well worth a visit – and you don’t need to leave thirsty.

Robert Bickers, a professor of history at the University of Bristol, is currently working on The Scramble for China, a history of the foreign presence in China from the 1830s onwards, which has involved fieldwork at the Qingdao brewery, amongst other places.

It's so French

When we first saw the Shanghai Daily's headline on "Covering the China Beat," we thought it might be a piece about us, instead it was a review of (lively and acerbic Access Asia's) Paul French's new book, Through the Looking Glass: China's Foreign Journalists from Opium Wars to Mao. During June, French will be on the road in China flogging the book (check out the schedule of appearances here). French also keeps a personal blog at China Rhyming.

(Also, it should be noted that, in the spirit of headlines with multiple references, we chose this piece's headline from this book.)

By Paul French

Five foreign correspondents of the past I never tired of reading while doing my research for this book:

1) JOP Bland – the man who (about 1906) complained there were too many books on China being written and then promptly wrote about half a dozen himself (can’t not feel a kindred spirit there).

2) BL Putnam Weale – who decided mocking the pompous was not enough and dedicated his life to getting involved in one warlord intrigue after another until he got himself butchered and assassinated in Tianjin in some dodgy deal.

3) Aleko Lilius – who came to China with no other ambition than to find the most ruthless, cutthroat and down and dirty pirates of the South China Seas and hang out with them, did and wrote some great reports and a book about it

4) Edna Lee Booker – the first “girl reporter” on the China Press who famously disregarded the advice of the old China Hands and got the first interview ever given to a woman by the Old Marshal Zhang Zuolin, at the time China’s most feared Warlord before doing it again securing an interview with Wu “Jade Marshal” Peifu.

5) Peter Fleming – for the sheer gall of writing a book called One’s Company when he was never alone and went everywhere immaculately attired and for creating the image in his books of travelling light while always carrying with him a typewriter, a box of books, a gramophone, multiple bottles of brandy and his essential supplies of potted grouse and Stilton from Fortnum and Mason.

Five foreign correspondents I found myself wishing had written less:

1) G.E Morrison – a nasty and vicious man at heart who used people, stole their thunder and employed gossip and rumour to destroy careers.

2) George Bronson Rea – a notorious, vindictive and nasty right winger – wrote a book called the The Case for Manchoukuo – ‘nough said I hope.

3) Freda Utley – basically Utley divided everyone she worked with in the foreign press corps into two groups – those that she claims fancied her and those that refused to flirt with her. If you refused to flirt you got trashed pure and simple. She was a total narcissist.

4) Issachar Jacox Roberts - the Southern Baptist missionary preacher from Tennessee who had originally taught Hong Xiuquan, the leader of the Taiping, Christianity in Guangzhou. Roberts wrote in the Chinese Missionary Gleaner: “Behold, what God hath wrought! Not only opened China externally for the reception of the teachers of the gospel, but now one has risen up among themselves, who presents the true God for their adoration, and casts down idols with a mighty hand, to whom thousands and tens of thousands of people are collecting!” If he’d stayed at home and kept quiet it could have saved everyone a lot of trouble.

5) The entire Japanese Press Corps in Nanjing in 1937 – who virtually all to a man denied any atrocities had taken place until a few grudgingly changed their tune in the 1970s and 1980s and admitted what they had seen.

Five of the best by now totally forgotten China books from the early-to-mid 1900s:

1) Jay Denby, (1910) Letters of a Shanghai Griffin, Shanghai: Kelly and Walsh – China books are all so horrendously serious and self-important these days – Denby just made fun of taipans, pompous Shanghailanders and stupid diplomats, venal businessmen, etc. – we need a bit more of that.

2) Jacques Marcuse, (1968) The Peking Papers: Leaves from the Notebook of a China Correspondent, London: Arthur Barker. – a lot of memoirs these days are written by people who spent a year or three in China. Marcuse originally arrived in Shanghai in the 1930s to work for Le Monde and was still representing AFP in Peking in the 1960s. He was a member of the Chunking Contingent during the war but never became a fellow-traveller; though he was not slow to comment on those who did, describing Rewi Alley as “eminently useable rather than eminently useful”, the best description of him to date I think.

3) Ralph Shaw, (1973) Sin City, London: Everest Books – they’ll never be another memoir of Shanghai like Shaw’s – he switches from some useful analysis of the Japan invasion of Shanghai to his wild nightlife and sexual shenanigans in the space of a couple of paragraphs. This really should be reprinted to show all those hacks that write about Shanghai returning to the riotous thirties why they’re talking nonsense.

4) Ilona Ralf Sues, (1944) Shark’s Fin and Millet, New York: Garden City Publishing. – her politics went a bit dodgy towards the end but she has some great stories – interviewing Big Eared Du for instance and getting down among the opium smugglers.

5) Teddy White and Annalee Jacoby, (1946), Thunder Out of China, New York: William Sloane. – Thunder out of China sold by the bucket-load when it was published - over half a million copies at its first printing. White and Jacoby were under intense pressure throughout the war from Henry Luce to big up the Generalissimo and ignore the corruption – after the war they wrote what they’d really seen.

Do I Still Love China?

In Sunday’s New York Times, Ha Jin reflected on his decision to remain in the West after graduate school and to write primarily in English:

That was when I started to think about staying in America and writing exclusively in English, even if China was my only subject, even if Chinese was my native tongue. It took me almost a year to decide to follow the road of Conrad and Nabokov and write in a language that was not my own. I knew I might fail. I was also aware that I was forgoing an opportunity: the Chinese language had been so polluted by revolutionary movements and political jargon that there was great room for improvement.

His piece resonated with another we’d just read at Xujun Eberlein’s blog Inside-Out China, particularly since Eberlein mentions Ha Jin in her piece. She agreed to allow us to republish it in its entirety here:

By Xujun Eberlein

Last week, Singapore reader Drifting Leaf asked how I see myself. If you read her letter, you will see this question was about cultural identity. She says:

When I see old CCTV/HK/Taiwan TV programs, it brings me back to my childhood. I’m not sure how far I should identify with or support Chinathough. I love classical Chinese culture but the present China/government has quite a negative image.

And:

When we watched the 2008 Olympics, we were uncertain whether we should feel proud of Chinaor not because we are foreign citizens and am not sure if we can lay claim to Chineseness. I believe you still love China despite all its political problems.

Her questions took me through some soul-searching. I moved to theUS as an adult and I've been living here for 21 years; my American-born daughter has turned 20 this year. I'm used to the way of life inNew England: to pull weeds and plant flowers in the summer garden, or to have five months of winter solitude in a snow-besieged colonial house. Looking back, I seldom thought of the question "What am I?" except that when I visited China in recent years I often felt like a foreigner. Occasionally I had to provide information on my ethnic background ("American Chinese" or "Asian American") when filling out forms, however I don't consider ethnic background the same thing as cultural identity.

In short, I've never really suffered the anxiety of identity loss. Drifting Leaf's questions made me wonder why.

A couple of weeks ago during a library presentation on my book, someone in the audience asked if I'd like to move back to China. Without thinking I replied, "No, my home is here now."

So, what role does Chinese culture play in my daily life in Americathen? Perhaps the answer lies in a corner of my garden (and yes, that's where my blog hearder comes from):

This is what my husband and I call our "Chinese wall." After we moved to our current home in the summer of 1998, the two of us spent three years of summer weekends building this garden wall with our own hands. Its style was modeled from the gardens of Sichuan, and the patterns of the reticulated windows were taken from the Ming Dynasty garden book <园冶>, which I found in a bookstore in Boston's Chinatown. The inscribed characters on the maroon wooden board above the moon gate are "思蜀", meaning "long for Shu," where "Shu" is the ancient name for Sichuan.

Readers who are familiar with the Three Kingdoms period (220-280 AD) might be able to see this inscription makes a reverse use of the classical allusion "乐不思蜀" – "here is too enjoyable to long for Shu."After the Shu Kingdom was conquered by Wei, the brainless last King of Shu, Liu Chan, was taken to Wei Kingdom's capital Luoyang. During a banquet with Shu dancers performing, all the captured Shu officials began to weep, only Liu Chan giggled as usual. The King of Wei asked him, "Don't you long for Shu?" "Here is so enjoyable, I don't long for Shu," Liu Chan replied. Thus, "too enjoyable to long for Shu" became an adage admonishing those forgetting their roots.

The inscription in my garden, however, is not an admonishment. It simply reflects my sentiment: whenever I see a Sichuan style garden, I'm emotional – thus the painstaking effort at building the garden wall shown above with the moon gate and the inscribed board. I had never gardened in China, yet in New England I became a diligent gardener. This emotional reaction is rooted in my upbringing in Sichuan, not much different from Drifting Leaf's nostalgic sentiment when she sees traditional Chinese programs on TV.

I'm also fond of Japanese and English gardens, and have tried to make a corner with each style in my yard. However I long for "Shu" more than anything else, and only that part of the garden has sentimental value, thus deeper meaning, to me.

This is to say, the cultural elements from one's upbringing are always there, in the chemistry of your blood, no matter which corner of the world you land in, no matter what you call yourself. That, to me, is cultural identity. It is quite independent from political stance or nationality, as my friend Chiew-Siah pointed out.

I can't help but mention again Ha Jin's latest book, A Free Life, which is regarded as the author's most autobiographic novel. Anyone who has read it can't possibly miss the protagonist's (thus likely the author's) grudge against China and laud for America, which was why such a boring book was – quite amusingly – hailed by a NYT book reviewer as "a serious [American] patriotic novel" badly needed at a time of Americans' serious protests against the invasion of Iraq.

Ha Jin's book actually provides a good example of "乐不思蜀" – "here is too enjoyable to long for Shu." Its political attitude is not really a surprise given that Ha Jin left China shortly after its most painful time, and his departure to the New World has fixed that old impression in a freeze-frame. Apparently he has been unable to update his view of China as the country updates itself. Despite the political grudge that confused the author, who in turn was confusing politics and cultural identity in his novel, as a realistic writer Ha Jin, perhaps involuntarily, illustrated the independence of the two: while the protagonist is determined to cut ties with anything Chinese, he involuntarily thinks in a Chinese way and applies the traditional Chinese value system in handling business, family and relationships.

Here is another little interlude: recently a library invited several of us to talk about our books. Among the speakers, another woman and I were Chinese. The order of speech was by last name alphabetically; as such I was the first to speak. In introducing my background, I mentioned how all schools were closed and books burned during the Cultural Revolution. When it was the turn for the other Chinese woman, who was originally from Hong Kong, she talked about the Chinese tradition of respecting teachers and books. "Even in mainlandChina, the CCP only chose the most diligent students as its members," she said. I sort of expected her to acknowledge the practice in the Cultural Revolution as an exception, but she didn't touch anything like that. I wondered if the two of us, each presenting a different aspect of China, had confused the audience. As if she had read my mind, when we were all finished and about to leave, she said to me out of the blue, "You have to talk positive to young readers." Her book was a young-adult novel. Though disagreeing, I nodded understanding.

One could say both she and I share a cultural identity: the Chinese culture. But she had her upbringing in Hong Kong. I'm pretty sure that, had she also experienced the Cultural Revolution, she would have talked quite differently that night. This is to say, the culture one identifies with is more closely related to personal experiences than ethnicity.

Now, do I still love China despite all its political problems? This depends on what one means by the term "China." When I think ofChina, what comes to mind are familiar shade of trees, fragrance of flowers, shape of landscape, smell of Sichuan cuisine, peculiar expressions of the Chinese language and intimate faces of relatives and friends. Those, I love. I care. Thinking of them makes me emotional. Thus, China is not an abstract concept to me.

This is also to say, I no longer have an abstract love of China, especially when the name means the state. And that's okay with me. When I was a child, we were taught from the first grade on to "Love the Party, love the people, love the motherland," as if the three were one thing. I had taken the concept of the three abstract and unconditional "loves" as granted, until the Cultural Revolution and my "insert" into the countryside disillusioned me and made me realize how those abstract concepts compromised individuals. In the early 1980s, there was a popular saying among those who were actively seeking migration abroad: "I love the motherland, but the motherland does not love me." (This background might also help to understand the grudge in Ha Jin's aforementioned novel.) I suspect Drifting Leaf's situation now is quite similar to those people's then.

Since my youth in the countryside I've grown averse to abstract political concepts. Having lived in two opposite countries has taught me many things, one of which is it's often less wrong to go for the particular rather than the abstract. The world is being destroyed by abstract concepts and exclusive ideologies. But this is the topic of another long post so I won't keep ranting here, but I, too, would like to cite the Beijing Olympics as an example: I enjoyed very much watching the Olympics, not because it lifted China's international image, but because the performance was superb. On the other hand, I still hold the opinion that the huge government spending on the Games could have found a better use in improving conditions for the Chinese population still in poverty.

So, unlike many "angry youths," I don't unconditionally advocate nationalism, though it had also once been my position in my youth, and I still respect the many great nationalists in China's history. But I will not let nationalism stand in the way of my issuing a critical opinion as a honest writer.

Before I end this piece, let me say a few more words about the style of my garden. Isn't a Chinese garden wall absurd, or 不伦不类, as a companion to a New England Colonial house? Coincidentally, I find answers from a book I'm reading titled Has Man a Future? The book is a transcript of conversations between "The Last Confucian" Liang Shuming and Chicago University professor Guy Alitto. In the Foreword written by Prof. Alitto, he mentions that when he interviewed Mr. Liang in 1980, Liang often talked with assent about Buddhism and Daoism, and also praised Christianity and some parts of Marxism. At first Alitto found it hard to understand: how could one be a Confucian and Buddhist at the same time? How can one identify with both Christianity and Marxism? Eventually he realized that, to be able to fuse many seemly conflicting thought schools, is a distinctive characteristic of traditional Chinese intellectuals. An excellent observation.

6/4 Reader

A set of links to readings about 6/4 from various sources:

1. A short and straightforward documentary from Al Jazeera (in English), posted at YouTube in two parts: Part I and Part II. This documentary has notably less emphasis on the influence of Western-style democracy than the average (Western) doc on the subject, and more on the opposition to authoritarianism…

2. Mara Hvistendahl has written a piece for The Chronicle of Higher Education on a well-trod topic—the shifts in China post-89, particularly among those of the 6/4 generation. Yet, Hvistendahl, in addition to getting the basics right (unlike others we could—okay, we will mention), phrases the current tensions between those who want to remember 1989 and those who have already forgotten it in a compelling way:

Even the staunchest critics of China's regime acknowledge it now allows discussion in areas that were once off limits. After his release from prison, Zhou became an investigative journalist, tackling sensitive issues like food safety, and only sometimes encountering government intervention. At the same time, some contend that economic growth has merely allowed the Chinese government to fine-tune its control of dissent. As the government's spending power grew, so did the carrots it could offer for obedience. "The government has great ambition for scholarly work that can make considerable breakthroughs, like shooting satellites into outer space," says Wang Chaohua, who edited a volume of work by Chinese intellectuals titled One China, Many Paths(Verso, 2003). "But to do work in the social sciences and humanities, you need to have a real independent spirit, and that isn't what the government wants to see. So you have a lot of political intervention."

Intellectuals who follow the state line are rewarded with trips abroad and generous research grants, critics say. "There are many research programs now that are sponsored by the government," says Wang Tiancheng, a former law professor at Peking University. "It's a type of corruption. They're buying scholars."

Wang, now a visiting scholar at Columbia University's Center for the Study of Human Rights, knows that power play firsthand. He spent five years in prison in the 1990s as one of the "Beijing Fifteen," a group of intellectuals persecuted for their opposition to one-party rule. When he was released from prison in 1997, no university would hire him. "If you don't go along with the Communist Party, if you don't censor yourself, you'll lose out on many benefits, including promotions and honors," he says.

If the Chronicle version is not available (usually their content is only available to those with subscriptions), the full text was reposted at Howard French’s blog.

3. One of the most extensive profiles of the 1989 leaders that we have seen in the press: at The Guardian, Isabel Hilton profiles not just Wuer Kaixi and Wang Dan but also Wang Chaohua, Shen Tong, Diane Wei Liang, Wang Juntao, Chen Ziming, Ma Jian, and Shao Jiang.

4. Hat tip to Danwei (a long time ago), for pointing to “Standoff at Tiananmen,” which is chronicling the events of 1989 day-by-day.

5. James Miles, who was the BBC’s China correspondent in 1989, recalls the events in an audio recording.

6. Jeff Wasserstrom published a piece in The Nation last week, “Tiananmen at Twenty”:

One reason to keep dwelling on 1989 is that common misunderstandings about that year persist, in China and in the West. For example, many Americans still think protesting students were the main victims of the massacre, even though the majority of the dead were workers who had turned out to support the educated youths. Many Americans also misremember those students as people who wanted to bring Western-style democracy to China. The reality was much more complex.

The students did celebrate the virtues of minzhu (democracy), but they spent even more energy denouncing corruption. And while their outlook was cosmopolitan, they were intensely patriotic. They presented themselves as carrying forward a longstanding Chinese tradition: that of intellectuals speaking out against selfish officials whose actions were harming the nation. In addition, the students' grievances were not all purely political. They complained about the party's interferences in their private lives and about its failure to make good on economic promises (Wuer Kaixi, a leader of the student movement, noted that a desire to be able to buy Nike shoes and other consumer goods was among the things that inspired members of his generation to act).

China specialists have another reason to revisit 1989: to stay humble. We pride ourselves on our deep understanding of China, but each of us was surprised by what happened twenty years ago--if not by the fact that a massacre occurred then by how long it took for the tanks to roll; if not by how many people risked their lives to fight for change then by the role rock music played in the protests.

7. NPR recently broadcast an interview by Louisa Lim with Jiang Rong (the author of Wolf Totem), which touches on the events of 1989 as well.

8. The Economist examines memories and remembrances of 6/4’s anniversary:

The party has also tried to deflect attention from the army’s contribution to the slaughter. Twenty years ago the official media repeatedly sang the praises of dozens of soldiers killed during the “counterrevolutionary rebellion”—and posthumously considered “guardians of the republic”. Now they are all but forgotten. Meanwhile, public support for the armed forces, which was badly damaged in 1989, appears to have rebounded. The army’s rapid response to the deadly earthquake in Sichuan Province a year ago, a gift to party propagandists, played a part in this. When tanks roar through Tiananmen Square on October 1st in a grand parade to celebrate China’s national day (the second such display since 1989), they will be greeted with widespread approval from a nation hungry for symbols of China’s growing power.

Shanghai Girls

A few months ago, we ran an interview with Lisa See about her new novel, Shanghai Girls. The book was released last week and See is in the middle of a series of talks and readings, including one that China Beat is co-sponsoring on June 6 in Corona del Mar.

For those interested in learning more about Shanghai Girls or Lisa See, you can check out this link to a few of her favorite books, an early review of the novel, and an autobiographical piece in this Sunday’s Los Angeles Times.

See talks frequently about the historical research that undergirds her novels. Here are a few of the historians she acknowledged drawing on for Shanghai Girls: Selling Happiness, by Ellen Johnston Laing; Beyond the Neon Lights, by Hanchao Lu; and Old Shanghai: Gangsters in Paradise, by Pan Ling.

5/28/09: Chai Ling's Last Will and Testament

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, and describes the set-up for one of the most famous interviews of the final days of the student movement. Interested readers can see more at Cunningham’s website.

A petite sun-bronzed woman wearing a stained white tennis shirt and dusty beige trousers sits next to me in the back of the taxi, grimacing as if in pain, weeping quietly to herself. Named to the police blacklist, she says she fears imminent arrest. Up front the driver sullenly surveys the streets, scanning the road for Public Security vehicles.

As the car glides down a leafy thoroughfare in the diplomatic district, Wang Li, who had been chatting quietly with the driver, turns around to make an announcement.

"Driver supports the students,” he says. “He will help us."

"How do you know?" I ask.

"I know. Where you go?" he asks, switching into English.

"Tell him, let's see… I don’t know, I just don’t know."

Chai Ling, the so-called Commander in Chief of Tiananmen Square, had come to me this morning saying she wanted to “talk,” but for the moment I couldn’t get a word out of her. I had brought along a small tape recorder and camera along as part of my hasty response to the startling and unsolicited request for an interview, but we had yet to find a safe place to talk.

A graduate student from Shandong studying psychology at Shida, she rose to sudden prominence during the world’s biggest hunger strike. This morning she had approached me in the hallway of the Beijing Hotel as I was on my way to breakfast. It was so weird seeing her there, a fugitive from the police hiding in plain sight in a government hotel lobby. I naively invited her to join Bright, Wang Li and myself for breakfast in the Western Restaurant in the old wing of the hotel. But this wasn’t a Long Island kind of problem that could be worked out in a diner over a cup of coffee, bacon, eggs and toast.

Face drawn with tension, almost morbidly silent, the famous hunger striker, who barely gave her food a second glance, explained in a low whisper that she wanted to record some kind of final statement, a sort of last will and testament. I looked at Bright, who declined to offer an opinion, though her eyes implored me not to get involved.

I got involved, mostly out of curiosity. It didn’t make for a leisurely breakfast, and it left Bright, who had just come to see me, in the lurch, for in no time I was trying to secure a taxi at the front door of the hotel. Chai Ling had so far escaped the notice of the police, but not a group of hawk-eyed journalists from Hong Kong, one of whom recognized her as the Tiananmen commander and begged to join us. There wasn’t enough room in the taxi, so Bright, who was already less than enthused about radical student politics, offered her seat to Patricia, the Hong Kong journalist, and then we were off.

Now we were on the road. Where to, nobody knew.

"Let's go northeast,” I suggest. “Take the road by Worker’s Stadium, then go to the Great Wall Hotel, you know, around there. Do a big circle around the whole embassy district, okay, we just want to drive around for a while, okay?”

What should we do now? If the fugitive pressing against me in the back seat was truly in danger of arrest, maybe we should go further out of town. In any case, we could stay on the road for a while. The taxi is not cheap, but if no place Is safe, Is it not better to keep moving?

"If policeman follow,” Wang Li says, turning around to peer at us, “I tell you, okay?"

He was speaking English again. What was it with his sudden switch? Who was he trying to impress?

"Where is camera?" he asks a moment later, and then I understand. He, a mere student at some kind of culinary school in the provinces, is trying to impress Chai Ling, the radical diva from Shida, who has already bagged a degree from Beida.

No sooner had I handed him my pocket-sized Olympus, than he started snapping away with dramatic flair, as if he were a hotshot photojournalist.

While the driver patiently snaked up and down the leafy boulevards of Sanlitun, I suggested to the conspicuously silent woman warrior sitting next to me that we talk now, in the car, but she recoiled from the idea. True, some taxis were bugged, but the odds of that were slim. True, the car was probably too noisy to make a decent recording, but what was all this about anyway? Even if the driver was later quizzed about suspicious passengers and duly filed a report on us, we would be somewhere else, sight unseen.

Despite Wang Li’s suspicious examination of cars going our way, he didn’t think we were being followed. For the last few weeks, Beijing’s secret police had been slacking off on the job, at least it seemed that way. It was enough to make one believe in rumors; either Politburo member Qiao Shi and his Public Security Bureau were sympathetic to the students or the pullback of policing was a deliberate trap.

Chai Ling, lost in a silence so deep that she seemed almost voiceless, quietly vetoed the idea of doing an interview in the car. Instead of talking, she penned a stark message on a piece of scrap paper:

This may be my last chance to talk, I entrust (Jin Peili) Philip Cunningham to tell my story to the Chinese people of the world. --Chai Ling, MAY 28, 1989 10:25 AM

Her extended silence gave me time to contemplate the import of the note. I was both moved and disturbed that someone in fear of her life wanted me to speak “to the Chinese people of the world” on her behalf.

Holding in my sweaty palm what was essentially a last will and testament made me realize how quickly the tables had turned. Was this the same defiant young rebel who had risen to prominence during the hunger strike, supported by enthusiastic crowds of a million or more? Was this leader of the Square, the strident voice of the public address system, the Joan of Arc of the movement who refused to talk to journalists?

Little of that was evident now. The intense young woman sidled up next to me in the back of the taxi was in a deep funk, vulnerable, isolated in her own heavy thoughts; the only ambition she betrayed was her quiet persistence in trying to arrange an interview.

“So, where are you going?” The taxi driver asks, shooting me an impatient look in the mirror. For all of Wang Li’s shenanigans, he has failed to impress even the driver. It was also safe to assume that the driver expected me to do the paying, in FEC of course. But if he were greedy, he wouldn’t have minded the last half an hour of going in circles. What he minds is the lack of clarity about our destination.

“I’m thinking,” I answer. “Just go north for a while.”

All I knew is that we had to get away from the omnipresent gaze of the state security apparatus. I gave the driver some seemingly firm coordinates, north, east, north, east, as I needed to keep him busy until I could up with a safe destination. It was against the rules of martial law for journalists to interview student leaders and I wasn’t even on a work visa. I’d been arrested before, for activities inappropriate for a foreigner, and didn’t relish being taken into custody again. Where could we do such an interview? I leaned forward, face in my hands, unsure of what to do next.

The temporary BBC office in the fancy hotel came to mind, but it was a day too late because yesterday was my last day working for them. And BBC’s London-centric producers were not exactly sensitive to things I cared about. For one, they struck me as nonchalant if not naïve about the degree of government surveillance that they themselves were under and the possible impact it might have on any Chinese who visited their well-watched offices. I knew better than to bring apolitical friends into such a fishbowl environment, let alone a student rebel on the police blacklist.

The American TV news outfits had similar security problems. Although I knew Eric Baculinao, a former student radical from the Philippines would be interested, NBC’s office was no place to bring a fugitive from the police; they were located in the belly of the beast, renting facilities inside the state-run CCTV television center. CBS News had chosen to set up camp way out in the west Beijing boondocks, ensconced in comfortable but remote the Shangri-La Hotel, while CNN and ABC at least had the advantage of being on this side of town. But taking Chai Ling to a news bureau full of official snoopers and electronic surveillance was risky if not stupid. We had to go somewhere unofficial, somewhere off the map. The kind of place I’d take a friend, the kind of place I’d be comfortable taking a date.

"That's it! I know a place! " I announce, giving the driver directions to an expatriate apartment complex out on Airport Road. If we got past the front gate and then past the doorman in my friend’s apartment block, we'd be okay.

The car picked up speed. After half an hour of random turns and amateur plotting on the part of the unusual collection of passengers, the driver was relieved to get some concrete instructions so he could be rid of us.

Finding an unmonitored residential location where foreigners and Chinese could mix without being carded and closely observed by guards at the door was a habitual problem in Beijing, especially vexing for stubborn believers in free cultural exchange like myself. Things were basically set up so that foreigners could socialize with other foreigners, tourists with tourists and Chinese with Chinese. Maybe we could make that work for us.

On this day our group defied easy categorization, composed as it was of two Chinese citizens; one a fugitive listed on a police most wanted list, the other a young rebel not nearly as well-known as he wanted to be, and two non-Chinese; an aggressive Hong Kong reporter and an American freelancer less than enthusiastic about playing journalist with police on our tail.

In a way I was the most obvious problem, being the only laowai made me a lightning rod for attention. Caucasians in China, whether newly arrived or resident for decades did not have the option of disappearing like a fish in the sea of the people. We were rather more akin to lighthouses, forever emitting signals that revealed our presence.

So, the best way to become less glaringly obvious was to find an enclave where there were lots of other equally distracting people, such as a suburban hotel designated for foreigners, or an expatriate residential compound.

I chose the latter. Living in gritty Beijing had given me some practical experience in seeking out comfort zones. Wanting to avoid the watchful gaze of the police rarely had anything to do with politics, it was more a question of pride; an effort to establish a sense of human dignity and to lead a half-normal social life. While I was aware that even native Chinese couples had problems of their own finding privacy, at least they could meet with relative anonymity in an apartment block or even in a gated park, whereas a mixed couple was an easy target for neighborhood snoops and zealous watchmen.

One place where I had found a semblance of normalcy on previous occasions was the Lido Hotel and its associated apartment complex, located on the northeast edge of town. Though the Lido was technically restricted to foreign passport holders, it had a large ethnic Chinese population from overseas and it was easy enough to bring Chinese friends inside to use the pool and eat in the restaurants there. Bright and Jenny both liked it; they found it less intimidating than the grander hotels. But it was still a hotel.

As the driver approached the Lido, I advised him not to enter by the hotel gate but instead to go around to the back in order to directly enter the apartment complex. The driver paused at the rear gate while the sleepy guard gave us a brief visual inspection. Waved through without incident, we all breathed a bit easier once inside the compound. I had the driver follow the meandering course of a private drive that led us past a pair of empty tennis courts adjacent to a low-rise apartment block.

Wang Li and I briefly discussed the merits of keeping the car, since taxis were a rarity except at the big hotels and a new one might be hard to find. But the driver had no interest in waiting, so I paid him and he sped off. If were to be questioned, he could always plead ignorance.

I lead the way, taking a deliberately roundabout course to make sure we weren’t being followed, detouring past some well-stocked shops, including a pharmacy and a grocery carrying pricey imported goods from Europe, Hong Kong and America. As we walked past window displays and shelves stocked with consumer items that most Chinese could only dream about, Wang Li paused to clean his smudged glasses for a better look. I could tell he liked the place already.

Adjacent to the shopping wing of the Lido was a quiet path leading to the low-rise tower where Lotus and Albert lived. Wang Li came up to me as he surveyed the premises with interest. "Almost no Chinese around," he exclaims, nodding his head in approval. Chai Ling and the Hong Kong journalist, both about the same height with hair about the same length, followed silently a few steps behind, like traditional women.

I shepherd our group past the front desk of the "foreigners-only" apartment building, hoping it won’t be necessary to answer any questions, but if it is, it will fall on me to do all the talking.

As luck has it, the doorman is not at his station so we easily slip into the dark lobby and hurry into a waiting elevator. I hear the guard returning to his post just as the elevator door closes. So far, so good. By force of habit, I check the ceiling of the elevator for the familiar protruding lens of the surveillance camera, usually wedged in the corner, but there was no sign of that.

We get out on the top floor and I run ahead to the door of Lotus and Albert’s apartment, knocking excitedly. The door opens a crack.

"Who's there?" asks Lotus, clearly not expecting company.

"It's me, the homeless traveler," I say, joking so as to not raise alarm. The chain was undone and the door opened wide.

Lotus smiles warmly. "Philip! Good to see you!" she exclaims buoyantly. "I see you brought some friends. Come in. Welcome everyone. Come in!"

She greets me with her customary bear hug. "You just missed Al, he went out to play basketball with Justin."

"Lotus," I start. "I gotta talk to you. We have an unusual situation here."

"That can wait, Philip, first things first." Lotus was possessed with the angelic patience of motherhood, the non-stop experience in dealing with unusual situations.

She gave my disheveled friends an approving look and greeted each of them warmly in Chinese. She knew the face of someone in trouble when she saw it, putting her arm around the gaunt, almost catatonic Chai Ling, as if to comfort her, before I even had a chance to make introductions.

"Come on, come on inside!” she said. “Don't be so polite! You all look so hot and tired, let me fix you something to drink."

"Lotus, this is Chai Ling, a student leader from Tiananmen…”

To Lotus the name or fame of a person mattered not a bit. But the fact that I brought along a protester from Tiananmen Square did. Lotus, still a 60’s activist at heart, and a true believer in people power, the power of ordinary, everyday people that is, had been an enthusiastic observer of the demonstrations since the students started marching.

She had us sit down in the American-style dining room while she scurried about the kitchen, putting the kettle on and preparing some snacks. Wang Li scrutinized the apartment intently. Was he judging it for security features, or just trying to sate his unquenchable curiosity about the world of luxury and privilege behind high walls, a world from which ordinary Chinese were normally barred? Unable to remain still for long, he leapt up and joined Lotus in the kitchen to get a closer look at some of the modern, imported appliances.

When Lotus tried to make some small talk in Chinese, she used a motherly tone of voice that reminded me of the way she spoke to her daughter in front of guests.

"Philip has many Chinese friends, even though he is a foreigner, a white foreigner, he likes to be with Chinese people.” She went on and on, sometimes switching to Mandarin, her accent even more heavily Cantonese-inflected than that of the junior journalist from Hong Kong.

"Lotus, come on already!" I was impatient, not only because I'd heard this description a dozen times before, but because we had more important things to worry about. "This girl, I mean this woman, is on the run,” I explain, imploring Lotus to give me her full attention. “She wants to talk about something, something serious.”

Lotus looked at me with a quizzical smile, not fully comprehending.

“Sorry, I don't know if it was a good idea to bring her here, but we are really in a bind. I hope this doesn't get you into trouble, at least I don't think we were followed."

My friend in need reads between the lines expertly. "Are you asking me if this place bugged? The apartment I don't know, probably not. But the telephone? Yes."

"I don't want to get you and Al in trouble, I mean he works for a big company, you've got your family here, this could be a bit risky."

Lotus and Al, like many of their peers from the top of the baby-boomer generation enjoyed a solid income from the corporate world but still had a lingering fondness for radical causes. And they were sincere about it.

"Look, what are friends for? I want you to relax with your friends for a minute, I will talk to Al when he gets back."

"Where can we talk?"

"Just make yourselves at home," she answered. "Boy it's noisy here, what's that outside? Construction or something?" As I pulled the small handheld tape recorder out of my bag I realize with some disappointment that we had traveled a long way only to find a noisy location. "I want to do a taped interview."

"Nia's room is quiet," Lotus volunteered. Nia, whose name was inspired by the word Tanzania, in recognition of early Chinese communist efforts at diplomatic outreach to Africa, was just getting into her teenage years.

Lotus knocked tentatively on the door of her daughter's room. "Nia? Can you come out for a minute? I'd like you to say hello to Uncle Philip and his friends."

Nia reluctantly emerged, mumbled a shy hello and ran back into her room, closing the door.

"Uncle Philip and his friends would like to talk in your room," Lotus adds, trying to coax her pretty teenager out of her private fortress. "Is that okay, honey?"

The door pops open a crack and Nia peeks out, as if in partial acquiescence to her mother’s request, but the look on her face indicated it was anything but okay. She was probably wondering why Uncle Philip and the visitors couldn’t just talk in the living room like regular grownups did.

"Nia, please come into the kitchen. I want to talk with you about something," Lotus insists. As soon as the teenager was pried from her room, we got the green light. "Okay, guys, go ahead. Sit down inside, sit down! Nia said you can borrow her room. Right, Nia?"

We awkwardly filed into the small bedroom, acutely aware we were invading the private realm of a teenage princess. There were dolls and teddy bears, a McDonald's poster, an unmade bed of pastel sheets and an armchair.

"Everything okay?" Lotus inquires.

"I guess so, um-huh."

"Just a minute!" Lotus disappears, seeking to placate Nia who is understandably confused.

After getting Nia settled in the living room to watch TV, Lotus busies herself in the kitchen. "That's a good girl,” I hear her say to her daughter before she come back to us with a tray of sliced oranges. "Sorry I don't have anything better than this.”

“Oh, thanks,” I said, taking the tray and putting it down.

“Philip?” Lotus says with a touch of admonishment. “Why don't you serve these to your friends?"

"Thanks, of course,” I pass the orange slices around, then ask Lotus if I could borrow her video camera.

"You want the Handycam? You're lucky. I just charged the batteries, they will last for two hours, is that long enough?"

"I certainly hope so," I answer with a laugh. I figured this thing, whatever it was, would be over in five, ten minutes, max. While Lotus went to get the camera, I examined the room.

With the window closed and the air conditioner off, the room was quiet enough for an interview, but with four of us in there it was already starting to get quite stuffy. I decide to open the Venetian blinds open for light, inviting in the dry heat of the sun.

Wang Li peers out the window to survey the surrounding courtyards before settling next to Patricia on the floor at the foot of the bed.

Lotus comes back in and snuggles into the armchair, fidgeting with the dials and buttons of her camera. I move some stuffed animals out of the way so that Chai Ling and I could sit down next to each other on bed facing Lotus and the camera. I confer quietly with Chai Ling in Chinese, instructing her to introduce herself and tell us about the student movement.

"Do you have enough light, Lotus?” I ask, switching to English. “How's the sound?"

For some reason Chai Ling takes my comments to Lotus as a cue to begin talking.

"The police are looking for me," Chai Ling starts, breaking her long silence. "My name is on a blacklist. If I am caught, I will get fifteen years in prison."

I got the tape recorder rolling, but Lotus was still fiddling with the camera. Meanwhile the cramped, poorly-ventilated room was starting to feel like a sauna.

"I'm sorry, just a minute please, I say, trying to cue Chai Ling to the camera. “Lotus are you ready?"

Our hostess has finally found a reasonably comfortable way to film without a tripod by scrunching up in the armchair, balancing the camera on her knees.

"Okay, Chai Ling," I say, signaling the start of the interview. "Why don't you tell us who you are and how you got involved in the student movement?"

My interview subject is slow to react, as if weighted down by her own thoughts. She looks away from the camera, staring blankly at the wall.

"No, I think it's better if you look this way." I say, pointing to the blinking red light of the camera. "Here, hold the tape recorder yourself."

The student leader takes the compact cassette recorder and holds it in front of her mouth, as if she was addressing her followers with a megaphone. I motion for her to keep it down, away from her face, to put it in her lap.

"Okay, let's start, what do you want to say?"

"I think these might be my last words, the situation is getting grim," she says, words emerging slow and methodically at first. "My name is Chai Ling, I am 23 years old. Isn't it strange, my birthday was on April 15, the same day that Hu Yaobang died?”

Geithner in Beijing--What to Read (or Perhaps Re-Read)

With press reports circulating about Timothy Geithner's plan to speak at Peking University/Beida tomorrow, this might be the perfect time to dip into China in 2008: A Year of Great Significance and read Geremie Barmé's "Facing Up to Friendship" (pages 212-214), a smart look at the talk Kevin Rudd gave at the same campus on April 9, 2008. (If you don't have the book, check out the earlier and slightly shorter version of it that appeared in the April 12, 2009, edition of the Sydney Morning Herald, under the title "Rudd Rewrites the Rules of Engagement.")

For two typically smart wrap-ups of readings about Geithner's visit (what he'll be doing, how the trip is being covered, you name it), see this by Sky Canaves of the Wall Street Journal's "China Journal" blog, and this at the China Digital Times.

In Search of Old Shanghai (Buildings)

Earlier this week, the Washington Post published a fascinating article by Maureen Fan, paired with a very effective video that the same reporter narrates (hat tip to Shanghaiist for bringing both to my attention), that combines architectural and family history. This is because the grandfather of the Post's Beijing bureau chief was Robert Fan, a leading local architect who designed, among many other buildings, the one pictured here.

I won't try to summarize her piece, which is part memoir and part analysis of the fate of buildings her grandfather designed (some of which are shown in the accompanying video), as it is well worth reading in its entirety. I will just note that the video is a nice one to pair with the two-part "Jews in Shanghai" episode from the "Sexy Beijing" series that's been recommended on this site before (and been lauded by NPR). In this episode, the American filmmaker Anna Sophie Loewenberg (who goes by "Su Fei") and her father seek out the house in Shanghai that he lived in as a child.

A final note is that there's a link between the two videocasts provided by the wonderful Shanghai historian Lynn Pan. The "Jews in Shanghai" episode opens with Su Fei shown reading one of Pan's early books (In Search of Old Shanghai) and Robert Fan's life and contributions to the city's built environment are discussed in Pan's latest publication (Shanghai Style).