Tiananmen diary

It is sun-up in Tiananmen Square. The day is May 30, 1989.
Smoggy haze filters the sun as it climbs above the Museum of the Chinese Revolution.
Thousands of students and their supporters sleep in hundreds of fragile tents scattered throughout the 100-acre square. Some slumber on cots, some on plastic foam panels, which keep off the chill of the night. Others seem to be sleeping on nothing more than blankets put down over the stone pavers.
Most of the tents are concentrated in the area of the Monument to the People’s Heroes, an obelisk rising from a series of steps just south of the center of the square. Each campsite flies the banner of its university or school. Lines of cord mark off each group’s territory, and the boundaries are observed politely.
Sun catches the golden calligraphy on the monument, said to be a duplicate of Mao’s own handwriting. Its message: “The people’s heroes are immortal.”
A disagreeable smell, fecal but with an odor of decay, hangs over the square in the early morning like the smog of Beijing. There is little breeze this morning to stir the flags and banners.
Early risers move between the tents, talking politics or dealing with the more mundane matters of trash control.
To the north of the monument, one group is working around a large white object that wasn’t on the square the day before. It arrived at midnight in three pieces brought in by art students from Beijing University.
Now, with the sun moving up in the sky and more of the students stirring in their tents, a crew labors around the white object on shaky scaffolding.
Approached from the south, it looks like nothing more than a white pillar. But as it gets closer, the shape begins to make sense.
A right arm raised high, reaching forward. A left arm, reaching up to provide support. A torch held skyward with defiant resolution. A face not unlike thousands on socialist world sculptures elsewhere, but this one is the face of Liberty.
And this one is looking directly across Chang’An Jie, the main thoroughfare, at the giant color portrait of Chairman Mao centered on the Gate of Heavenly Peace.
The statue will stand for just five days.
Beijing is not China, just as New York City isn’t America.
And Tiananmen Square is not Beijing.
Normally.
The exception is the past month, in which Tiananmen has become the emotional epicenter of China, and perhaps the world.
It’s not the first time that history has been made on this spot.
On May 4, 1919, more than 3,000 students demonstrated here against imperialism and the military. On Oct. 1, 1949, Mao proclaimed the founding of the People’s Republic.
In mid-April, Tiananmen moved back into history when students launched a demonstration for democracy, reform, and freedom of expression in China.
And in the early morning hours of June 4, the square would make the history books again as the site of a bloody massacre.
•••
The mood at Tiananmen is bright this morning, May 31. It even seems cleaner, although that would be difficult to prove.
The euphoria stems from the events of the night before. Overnight, hundreds of thousands of Beijing citizens flooded into the square to see what one Chinese student called “the freedom lady.” The Liberty statue — not a replication of the Statue of Liberty, but a uniquely Chinese statement — seems to have reinvigorated the students.
Rumors — a constant in this city that lacks a free press — had indicated the students might leave the square today in a compromise reached with the government.
Asked if they are leaving, students say, “No,” with a smile.
What has happened in the past 24 hours is that the students have once again seized the initiative from the government. The Liberty statue has continued to attract crowds all night long, and has already provoked an angry response from the government.
“An insult to this solemn site of national celebrations and state ceremonies” is the verdict of the Beijing Tiananmen Square Administration, as quoted in China Daily, the Communist Party organ.
The crowds think otherwise. A constant stream of amateur photographers snaps pictures of the 30-foot high, plastic-plaster-and-wood creation.
One group of students has drawn an overnight supporter offering solidarity, a middle-aged man dressed in a business suit who has clearly spent the night huddled with others in a makeshift tent. A student in the group identifies the man as a “senator,” struggling to find the right word in English. In the meantime, the older man vanishes into the crowd.
The mood may have improved, but the paranoia hasn’t disappeared.
By the second half of the week, students and officials willing to discuss the Tiananmen movement insist: “Don’t use my name.”
And at the end of every interview, they urge: “Be careful.”
•••
Tiananmen at night is a sea of sound. The messages from dozens of loudspeakers overlap, and the voices of tens of thousands of individuals create a dull roar at ground level.
This morning, June 1, China Daily did its best to paint the students as “the Grinch that stole Children’s Day.” Because of the demonstrations, the party newspaper solemnly reported, International Children’s Day festivities usually held at Tiananmen Square had to be canceled.
The propaganda ploy has done nothing to deter the crowds. It is now 11 p.m. and the square is busier than at mid-day. Strobe flashes illuminate the Liberty statue at irregular intervals.
Amplified speeches denouncing Premier Li Peng and others in the government drown out the sound of the government’s own loudspeaker on the other side of Chang’An Jie which asks the students to go back to their classrooms.
“The government does not really want to give democracy to the whole Chinese people,” says one of the students over a loudspeaker.
Around one cluster of tents northwest of the Monument to the People’s Heroes a knot of about five hundred demonstrators has formed. In the center, workers who have come to the square to show solidarity with the students sing a song together about carrying on the struggle against the government.
When an American photographer climbs upon a wagon and raises his camera to his eyes, the singing stops. All faces turn in his direction. The message in their shouts is clear: No picture. The American complies.
“They should be very careful,” says a Chinese graduate student of the workers. It is clear they have more at risk than the students themselves.
•••
In a dank tunnel under Chang’An Jie, crowds move to and from Tiananmen. The stench is worse here; some students have been living and sleeping in the tunnels for weeks. Above one group of dozing students a poster has been pasted to the wall of the tunnel. It’s a cartoon of Li Peng. There is a noose around his neck.
•••
The music is out of place. There has been no music to speak of on the square all week.
And yet tonight (June 3), when police have already beaten students in a confrontation near the Great Hall of the People, when ambulances are ferrying injured demonstrators away to hospitals about every 15 minutes, there is music coming from a low tent pitched east of the Monument to the People’s Heroes.
A tape player is putting out a jaunty pop instrumental with an oriental flavor. As it plays, two students in the tent play along. One has a pair of plastic buckets set up in front of him like drums. The other has two bottles which he clicks together with the beat.
Sitting on a hard pallet of plastic foam, huddled together with a half dozen students, one doesn’t think of danger. But the troops will come before dawn.
A young student with good English explains that it was difficult for her to travel to Tiananmen because there are security forces near her home.
She’s proud of herself for having made it, and says she hopes to be a freshman in college next fall.
She is 17 years old. And she is a threat to those in control of her government.
•••
By the time the sun came up June 4, the unthinkable had happened.
Troops and tanks had stormed the square, shooting indiscriminately at demonstrators and bystanders. The toll of dead and wounded will never be known. At barricades outside Zhongnanhai, the party headquarters, and at key intersections throughout the city, citizen supporters were fired upon by troops. Rumors spread rapidly that innocent children and elderly bystanders had been killed by the army, sending rage through the civilian populace.
As martial law clamped down with a fury, the only news making its way through Beijing came from word of mouth. Foreigners at the city’s hotels who were able to watch American television broadcasts had a better idea what was going on than the Chinese people did.
Traffic, which normally pumps through daytime Beijing in a constant flow, disappeared. Taxi drivers refused to take fares farther than a few blocks; they would not risk running into either troops or citizen barricades. The only buses in evidence were those still in place at barricades such as the one on Dongzhimenwai Dajie at the cloverleaf intersection. The subways had shut down, and citizens were being urged to stay home.
Those who ventured outside saw troop convoys; 15 to 20 trucks at time were commonplace.
Citizens watched glumly from the curb, gathered in bunches to share the troublesome news, trying to sort out what it means for China. As a convoy passed one group of citizens, a soldier waved. No one waved back.

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