A Heart for Freedom (19 page)

As I stood before the crowd, I was overwhelmed with emotion. All at once, the agitation was gone. The rippling ocean waves gave way to a smoother, silky sheen. The crowd became quiet. Even the cries of cicadas behind the tree leaves were subdued. Longing seemed to fill the evening air. They were waiting for me to speak.

“My name is Chai Ling,” I said, “and I would like to share with you my reasons for joining the hunger strike. I understand we are all frustrated with where we are with the movement and confused regarding what to do next. We are infighting about whether to continue boycotting our classes and whether to continue waiting for a dialogue to take place before we take further action on a hunger strike. I understand both sides. If we didn’t like to go to school, we wouldn’t be at Beida; and if we didn’t love our country, we wouldn’t be worrying about demonstrations, dialogues, and hunger strikes. So we are all great students and great patriots. But what is the truth about our country, and what is the truth about our government and people? Why, when we asked for freedom and democracy, were we called
dong luan
? Why do the police beat us up when we shout slogans like, ‘Long Live the People! People’s Police Love the People!,’ and why are the people always the ones to run?

“Some say if we just wait for the dialogue to take place, we can continue our campus democracy movement; but at the same time, we also learned the government is using its Party system to reinforce the verdict of
dong luan
. And we all know that’s a marching order for crackdowns and arrests. As the old saying goes, ‘When a bird’s nest is smashed, it’s hard to expect a whole egg to survive.’

“From the sidelines I have watched carefully how several movements came and disappeared in the past. Each time sacrifices were made, but no progress was achieved and recorded. So each new movement started from square one and met with the same fate. Will this movement in 1989 be different? Will this movement expose the truth and leave a record for history to continue?

“This is why I feel we have only one option left: a hunger strike. Our last freedom is the freedom to starve ourselves. Because the time is short, we should make the goals achievable by narrowing them down to two requests: reverse the verdict of
dong luan
and give us an equal dialogue. If the government won’t reverse the
dong luan
verdict, we will at least have communicated the truth about our movement so history will be clear.

“Dear fellow students, when we sacrifice our health, we want to see the true face of our government. When we were growing up, we were raised to say, ‘We love our country, we love our people.’ Now we want to see if our country loves us and if our people will stand up for us. We want to know if this country is still worth our struggle, our sacrifice, our devotion. I want to use the courage to face death to fight for the right to live life.”

Loud applause interrupted my speech many times. As I was speaking, I observed the change of expression on their faces—from agitation to agreement, from agreement to endorsement, and from endorsement to hearty support. I knew my words had reached their hearts and their hearts were connected to mine. In unison, our feelings rose and fell and rose again to new heights.

I ended my talk with certain specifics about the actual planning of the strike, such as what clothes to wear, how to form support teams, what medical assistance we would require, how to organize communications, and what work the period following the hunger strike might entail. As I closed my address, a new surge of confidence and renewed hope erupted with thunderous applause.

After I finished, another student climbed onto the podium and grabbed the microphone. “I will join the hunger strike!” he declared. “I—I—”

He was so overcome with emotion that he began to stutter. The crowd laughed until I returned to the podium by his side and waved at them without saying a word. My eyes spoke for me. They said,
Be kind, be patient
. The crowd calmed down and then began to applaud. The applause gave the young man courage, and he continued his speech.

“I am a Beida sophomore, and I’ve never cared about politics. My only goal in life is to become a great person, like Chairman Mao. I never joined a movement before this. But today, while I was walking back from the library, I heard the speech. I was truly moved. Now I want to join the hunger strike because I’m a Chinese citizen and I want to do something for our country. I love you, Mom, but I love my country even more.”

His brief speech ended to even greater cheers and applause. One by one, students went up to the podium and declared their decision to join the hunger strike.

That night the number of students who enlisted in the hunger strike rose from 40 to 220. Many of them were like the stuttering student—brilliant and hardworking. They did not care about politics in general, but they signed up for the hunger strike to demonstrate the love and passion they felt for their country.

* * *

I awakened the next morning to confront the realities of the night before. Until that moment, the implications of the hunger strike had not entirely sunk in. I was asked to write a speech that would speak from the heart to the common man on the street to explain what motivated us to take on this crusade and to leave a record for later generations. As I sat in a quiet place to write my speech, the gravity of facing the unknown began to pull on me—saying farewell to the beautiful things of life and all the people I loved. Grandma, Mom and Dad, and my younger sister and brother all came to mind.

Bai Meng, a poet from the Beida writers’ class, found me overcome with emotion and offered to take a look at my draft. An hour later, when he returned the speech to me, something on his face showed how deeply my words had touched his emotions. I hurried back to Dormitory 28, where the broadcast center was stationed.

As I looked out the window from the second floor, the hunger strikers were organizing to march out to the unknown, uniformed with white T-shirts and headbands. Flags were waving, and bicycles were gearing up. I started reading the speech into the microphone. Feng was speaking loudly in the background. Somehow, as I was reading, the crowd became silent. Feng saw the expression on their faces, realized what was going on, and pressed the record button on the tape recorder.

On this glorious, sunny day in May, we are on our way to a hunger strike. In the most beautiful moment of our young lives, we have no other choice. We must put behind us all the beauty and wonder of life. But how we don’t want to; how we are not willing.

However, the country has reached this moment: Inflation is rampant, corruption is raging, the authorities are powerful, the bureaucracy is rotten. Many people with high learning and integrity have drifted overseas. Our social order and security are deteriorating day by day. At this life-and-death moment, fellow countrymen—all fellow countrymen with a conscience—listen to our cry!

The country is our country.

The people are our people.

The government is our government.

If we don’t shout, who will?

If we don’t act, who will?

Our shoulders are still tender. Death still seems too heavy for us. But we go on. We must go on. History has called upon us.

Our passion and loyalty for our country have been labeled
dong luan
, a “chaotic disturbance” with “hidden motivations manipulated by a small gang.”

We ask every honest Chinese citizen—every worker, peasant, soldier, intellectual, government official, policeman, and those who have fabricated our crimes—to place your hand over your heart and ask your conscience: What crimes have we committed? Have we caused turmoil? We boycott classes. We march and protest. We go on a hunger strike. We give our lives. But our emotions have been repeatedly played. We suffer through hunger to pursue the truth, but in return we get beatings from soldiers and the police. When we kneel down to beg for democracy, we are ignored. When we ask for dialogue on equal terms, we are met with delay after delay. Our student leaders face grave danger.

What are we to do?

Democracy is the noblest human aspiration. Freedom is a sacred human right, granted at birth. Today, both must be bought with our lives. Is this fact something about which the Chinese people can be proud?

This hunger strike has been forced upon us. It is our last resort. We will use the spirit of facing death to fight for the right to live. But we are children, still children! Mother China, look at your sons and daughters. Hunger is destroying our youth. Will you not be moved when you see death approach us?

We don’t want to die. We want to live, and live fully, because we are in the prime of our lives. We don’t want to die; we want to learn all we can. Our nation is wretchedly poor. We do not have the heart to abandon our motherland through death. That is not what we seek. But if the death of one or a few can make the lives of many better, if these deaths can make our homeland stronger and more prosperous, then we have no right to live on in disgrace.

Fathers and mothers, don’t feel sad that we are hungry. Uncles and aunts, don’t be heartbroken when we die. We have only one wish, that the lives of everyone will be better. We have only one request, that you not forget that death is absolutely not our desire! Democracy is not a private matter, and the enterprise of democracy will not be accomplished in a single generation.

Good-bye, my fellow students, take care! The departed hold the same loyalty as those who stay alive.

Good-bye, my love, take care! I can’t bear to leave you, yet I have to bid farewell.

Good-bye, my parents! Please forgive me; your child could not fulfill her duties to both you and our country.

Good-bye, my people! Please allow us to show our loyalty in such an unnatural manner.

Our pledge, written with our lives, will eventually brighten the skies of the Republic!

This speech became the manifesto of the hunger strike. It was copied onto thousands of cassette tapes and sent to many universities in Beijing and other cities across the country. It inspired thousands of students to join our hunger strike.

* * *

If my stomach hadn’t hurt so much, I might have enjoyed spending the night on Tiananmen Square. The hunger strike officially began at six o’clock on the evening of May 13. Earlier that day, I’d been so busy with last-minute preparations that I had missed the lunch some teachers had hosted at a restaurant near campus for students who had signed up for the hunger strike. I bade farewell to Feng, who promised to join me later at the Square, though he didn’t know when. He was on his way to the Soviet embassy to deliver a petition for Gorbachev, inviting him to visit Peking University. He’d managed to get some three thousand names on the petition.

On the Square, it was well past the dinner hour, and I’d been too busy all day to notice hunger creeping up on me. It hit me once I sat down on the concrete. My stomach felt so empty that the cool evening breeze seemed to go right through me.

Students from several other universities in Beijing had also joined the hunger strike, including students from Beijing Normal University, led by the charming and extremely popular Wu’er Kaixi, who joined forces with Wang Dan to work with the press and deal with the government on issues related to the dialogue we wanted to arrange. I undertook the tasks of helping the hunger strikers settle in and organizing picket lines to protect the strikers. By nightfall, eight hundred hunger strikers and two thousand supporting students were spread out in front of the Monument to the People’s Heroes.

The cool evening breeze and the swath of brilliant stars in the heavens above bestowed on the scene a calm and quiet joy. Students clustered in small groups, chatted quietly, or sang, or read, while others told stories. It was like being at summer camp.

The beautiful monument was bathed in the light of the early summer night. It seemed to radiate bluish rays under the starlight. I had never taken a close look at this national monument, which was built to commemorate martyrs who had laid down their lives for the motherland.

I gazed upward at the structure for a long time until it seemed to come to life, swaying slightly in the night breeze. Sealed within, beneath its smooth alabaster surface, the monument enshrined the souls of hundreds upon thousands of heroes who had fought and given their lives for the better place where we now lived. I felt small yet inspired. The monument, in all its potent grandeur, reminded us that tonight a new chapter of history would be written.

Someone nudged me and pointed to the sky. A comet was falling through the heavens into the Forbidden City. Was this a bad omen? Some said it meant the beginning of disaster. Others said it signaled the end of an era. Whatever the fates may have decided, our young lives had arrived at the crossroads of history and the future.

It was past midnight. The temperature had dropped, and hunger and cold kept everyone awake. The strikers had long since walked off that earlier meal. We wore our white T-shirts over our springtime outerwear. On the back of my shirt, I had written from top to bottom on the left side, “A Heart Is Set to Save the Country.” On the right side I had written, “Powerless to Turn Back the Ruler,” and in the middle, “Grief.” Some strikers wore white cloth headbands bearing the legend, “Give Me Liberty or Give Me Death.”