God's Double Agent (10 page)

“Well, what are we going to do?” someone asked. “Go around with a megaphone and ask them to fill the streets again? They’ve already done that, and they’re ready to study and work on their futures.”

“This is their future,” I said. “We have to make them see that this affects their future as much as whether they get into grad school.”

We talked for a bit more when an idea came to me. “Does anyone have access to a great deal of tape?”

That afternoon, we went to a classroom and closed its door, then taped it shut. “Attention, everyone,” I said. “This is what we’re calling the new ‘conscience seals.’ Whoever dares to break this seal,” I explained, “has no conscience. We need to be in solidarity with the Beijing students by continuing to participate in the classroom boycott.”

We went from class to class, and—once again—caused all of
the classes in the English department to be shut down. While this was another incremental victory in the fight for freedom, Liaocheng Teacher’s College wasn’t where the real battle was being fought. Our president, professors, and students were all philosophically on board with the Beijing protestors, though our distance from Beijing lessened the urgency. I’d heard the students at Tiananmen Square had grown exhausted from the weeks of living in hot, humid conditions. They’d become weak from hunger strikes and weary of fighting the government.

Suddenly, my efforts there in Liaocheng City didn’t seem enough. I didn’t want to sit idly on my hands while my fellow students were mounting the largest peaceful protest in China’s history. And so, at the next student union meeting, I asked a simple but life-changing question.

“Anyone want to take a trip?”

6

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Xiqiu,” he said. “What is that?”

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

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

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

“Maybe we should go back.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

She could barely respond.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Blood.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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