Recorder caught history in the making

Editor’s note: This column is being reprinted from June 11, 2004. Jack was in China during the series of protests in Tiananmen Square. The government’s response to the protests led to nearly 250 deaths with more than 7,000 wounded as troops opened fire on or crushed those who tried to block them.

The tape is a time machine.

Friday afternoon, alone in my office, I push the play button and Tiananmen Square erupts all over again.

It was 1989, only a few days before the massacre which would bring the Chinese student democracy demonstrations to a halt. For reasons that are still hard to explain, I’d found myself in Beijing that critical week, attending a conference on international economic development. And for much of the week, I’d played hooky, skipping out on conference sessions to spend time at Tiananmen, talking with the young people and taking pictures.

The tape — a microcassette recorded on a Radio Shack machine purchased from Strohl’s — was made sometime after midnight. Most of my visits to Tiananmen had been during daylight hours, but I’d returned late at night accompanied by a graduate student who was willing to translate for me.

Even now, 15 years later, I get a chill when I press the play button.

Loudspeakers, placed around the perimeter of the huge square by the government, broadcast a nasal, hectoring voice of a woman, telling the students to stop their nonsense and go back to their classrooms. There’s a hypnotic, surreal quality to the sound.

I’d tucked the tape recorder in a pocket so that its built-in mic was clear and could record all the ambient sounds. People jostling, competing conversations, and my own discussion with the grad student.

At one point, I hear my own voice saying to him, “I owe you very much already.”

It’s about then that the singing is heard.

We’d come across a group of workers, ordinary people who didn’t dare to take part in the demonstrations during the day but who had come to Tiananmen after midnight to show their support.

They were singing as we approached. Slowly their voices become audible on the tape over the sound of the nagging woman on the loudspeaker.

I didn’t recognize the song, but it was clearly one of those socialist expressions of solidarity. And when they finished, their performance was greeted with hearty applause.

It was a scene too good to pass up, and a few moments later I had climbed atop a small wagon and was raising my camera to my eyes, hoping to take a picture.

Now, on the tape, the voices change. The applause and singing give way to shouts. I can’t understand a word. But I understand their meaning instantly: Put the camera down.

Hundreds of faces were looking up at me from the gloom. Solidarity had been replaced by paranoia, legitimate paranoia. My camera might just as well have been one of the rifles brought onto the square by troops a few nights later.

The tape is interrupted at that point. I think I accidentally turned it off when I jumped down from the wagon.

And the singing — to my dismay — was over.

Fear had swept it away.