The world I used to live in has been transformed, like flour that has been baked into bread. I have to chew on it very slowly before I can recapture any sense of what it once was.
You are a passenger on a stricken plane, hurtling towards death at a terrifying speed.
‘The martial law troops have begun to force their way through the barricades!’ Wang Fei shouted into his walkie-talkie as he headed off with some students to the Liubukou intersection just west of the Zhongnanhai compound. I’d been there an hour before, constructing a roadblock of cement bollards and empty buses. The Beijing Students’ Federation had been urging students who’d returned to the campuses to come out onto the streets and help the citizens man the barricades.
Lin Lu ran into the broadcast station and shouted into the microphone: ‘This is an emergency! We need more students to go to the intersections immediately and help block the army’s advance!’ He then turned to Yu Jin and told him to take the few marshals remaining in the Square to the Jianguomen intersection in the east. He’d just received a report that an army truck there had been overturned and set on fire.
All the telephones lines we’d been using had been cut off, and most of the journalists and television crews had left the Square. The festive, carefree atmosphere of the previous few days had gone.
The announcements broadcast from the Beijing Workers’ Federation’s tent on the other side of Changan Avenue were usually drowned out by louder noises, but now I could hear their leaders calling out for Beijing citizens to join their Dare-to-Die Squad. ‘The situation has taken a grave turn for the worse. The military are tightening their circle around Beijing…’
‘Dai Wei, muster your marshals and set up a security line,’ Old Fu said. ‘The four intellectuals want to enter the Square and start their hunger strike. I’ve just found out that one of them is the Taiwanese rock star Hou Dejian. He’s a university graduate, so I suppose that makes him an intellectual. The crowds will go mad when they see him.’
‘You sort it out,’ I said. ‘I’m looking after the broadcast station. And anyway, all my marshals have gone to the intersections.’
‘Ke Xi mentioned they were coming yesterday, but I forgot all about it,’ said Lin Lu. ‘We should erect a hunger strike tent for them up on the Monument.’ He then began gabbling into his walkie-talkie, trying to muster more reinforcements.
‘You’re supposed to be in charge of crowd control, Dai Wei,’ Old Fu said, popping a stomach pill into his mouth. ‘I can’t set up the security line. I’m in the middle of moving my finance office into another tent. This couldn’t be worse timing.’
‘The only marshals still here are a small group from Lanzhou University. I’ll see if Tang Guoxian will let us borrow them. He’s asked them to man the security cordons during the Democracy University’s opening ceremony.’
The four intellectuals walked into the Square. Lin Lu shook hands with one of them and said, ‘Welcome! We’re just getting someone to put up a tent for you. Come and wait inside our broadcast station.’ It was Shan Bo, the Beijing Normal teacher and literary critic who’d been active in the Capital Joint Liaison Group. Behind him was Gao Xin, another lecturer from Beijing Normal, the economist Zi Duo and the rock star Hou Dejian, who was dressed in faded jeans and a white T-shirt.
All the students in the Square were desperate to catch a glimpse of Hou Dejian, so after the four men entered our tent, I quickly blocked the entrance. The only marshals guarding us now were twelve social science students Hai Feng had sent from the campus. Five of them were girls.
A huge crowd surrounded the broadcast station. A pack of journalists appeared from nowhere, waving their reporters’ cards and requesting to interview Hou Dejian.
When we received word that the hunger strike tent had been erected, Shao Jian, a student marshal and I linked hands around the four men and pushed them through the excited crowds to the Monument’s upper terrace. Lin Lu hurried them into the tent then told the student officials to sit in a protective circle around it.
‘My ribs feel as though they’ve been crushed to pieces,’ Shao Jian moaned as we leaned against the balustrades, trying to catch our breath. My shirt was soaking wet. It was a designer one that I’d borrowed from Dong Rong. I noticed that the top button had been ripped off in the scrum.
The arrival of the hunger strikers had sent a wave of excitement through the Square. The students below stood about expectantly, like a crowd outside a cinema the night a new film is released. Books, T-shirts and hats were passed up continually for the men to sign. The crowd was now larger than it had been the day the Beijing rock star Cui Jian came to sing in the Square. Hundreds of people tried to squeeze their way onto the Monument shouting, ‘Come out of your tent, Hou Dejian! Sing us a song!’
The terrace below was now packed. A student in a T-shirt that said I LOVE TIANANMEN! climbed up and swung himself over the balustrades, almost kicking me in the face. A stream of people followed behind him. The student officials around the tent jumped up and were immediately shoved back by the invading hordes. The tent wobbled. Fearing it was about to collapse, I squeezed through and said to the intellectuals, ‘I think you’d better come out. We can’t hold the crowds back any longer.’
Zi Duo sat up, readjusted his glasses and said, ‘It’s you they want to see, Hou Dejian, not us. You go outside. We’ll stay here.’
Shan Bo took an anxious drag from his cigarette and stuttered, ‘Wh-what’s the point of coming here if we’re just going to s-s-stay in the tent?’
‘Well, come out too, if you want,’ I said. Then I stepped outside and shouted through the megaphone: ‘Fellow students, please stop pushing. Step back a few metres. Our guests are coming out to greet you.’ The crowd fell silent.
As soon as Hou Dejian stepped out, everyone applauded. Someone shouted, ‘Hou Dejian! You’re great! Sing us a song!’
I looked down at the crowds that were scrambling towards the Monument, knocking down banners and flags on their way. Hou Dejian held hands with Shan Bo and Gao Xin and began singing his most famous anthem, ‘Children of the Dragon’.
I passed my megaphone to Shao Jian, and seized my chance to sneak off to the toilets. I wasn’t in the mood to listen to the song.
The song seemed to bring the Square back to life. The banners, flags and students swayed in time to the music.
As I was pushing my way across the Square, I bumped into Mou Sen and Nuwa. ‘Look what a reaction your two lecturers up there are getting!’ I said grumpily. ‘When twenty Beijing University professors joined our hunger strike, no one paid them any attention. They forgot to bring a rock star with them, that’s why!’
‘Hurry up, my darling!’ Nuwa said to Mou Sen in English. ‘I want to see Hou Dejian!’ Mou Sen was hoping to push Nuwa to the front so that she could get a better view, but I knew he wouldn’t be strong enough to propel her through that crowd.
As I moved away, I could hear Shan Bo in the distance, shouting through my megaphone: ‘We’ll get you in the end, Li Peng! You bastard! We’ll get you!…’
I continued north towards Tiananmen Gate. The dirty paper and fruit-peel trampled onto the paving stones smelt only of dust. All odours of rot and decay had dissipated in the hot air. Chairman Mao was smiling wryly at the Goddess of Democracy, whose eyes were at the same level and were staring straight back at him.
Like an old-fashioned radar receiver, your wound picks up electromagnetic waves reflected by the bird as it flutters past.
The sparrow’s arrival has given me a clearer sense of where I am. Perhaps the bird is A-Mei’s soul come to visit me. It reminds me of the sacred bird in The Book of Mountains and Seas which lays square eggs and resembles a flame of fire when it flies through the sky. Ever since it first landed on my head, I have felt the warmth of its glow.