Beijing Coma (30 page)

Big Chan and Little Chan stopped to listen as they walked back to the dorm with their lunch boxes, and were nearly knocked to the ground by a student who cycled up behind them.

A couple walking hand in hand wandered slowly towards Ke Xi. As the rain petered out, a few more students gathered round him.

Chen Di opened our window and cried out, ‘Beijing University has lost its balls!’

‘Stop shouting!’ Qiu Fa said, lying on his peony-printed cotton sheet. ‘And you’d better pay me back for those empty bottles.’ Before we’d set off for the march, Chen Di had gone to the window and thrown out all the bottles Qiu Fa had been keeping under his bed.

‘I didn’t touch your bottles,’ Chen Di said, snatching his binoculars out of my hands.

‘Why couldn’t you have thrown your tumbler out instead?’ Qiu Fa moaned, removing a folded shirt from under his pillow. ‘The shopkeeper gives me two jiao for each returned bottle, and I had seven of them.’

‘You’re such a liar! They were Erguotou bottles, not beer bottles – no one gives money for those.’

‘I stick Yanjing Beer labels on them, and no one can tell the difference. So cut the bullshit and hand over the money. At least give me a couple of jiao . . .’

I went next door to wake up Wang Fei. A few minutes later we all went outside. There was to be a meeting to discuss the formation of an organising committee. We’d pasted up notices and were hoping that many students would attend.

‘Ke Xi is a general without an army,’ Wang Fei said, staring at him through Chen Di’s binoculars. ‘Look! He’s standing there all on his own, shouting to the heavens. No one’s paying any attention!’

I thought of the poet, Haizi, who despaired of China’s future. If he’d known the students would rise again, he might not have thrown himself in front of a train.

‘He doesn’t want Shu Tong to gain the upper hand,’ I said. ‘He won’t get much support from his classmates in the Education Department, though. Those girls are such conformists. Wang Fei, that girl Nuwa hasn’t been to visit you for a couple of days. Why’s that?’

‘Because I haven’t asked her to, that’s why,’ Wang Fei replied, sounding pleased with himself.

‘You’ve gone and got yourself the prettiest arts student,’ I said, my mind suddenly returning to Lulu, the girl I fell in love with in middle school.

‘Jealous, are you? And the general consensus is that she’s not just the prettiest arts student, she’s the prettiest girl in the university.’ Wang Fei had recently been spending more time in front of the mirror. He’d washed his hair twice and bought himself a new jacket at the farmers’ market. It was a cheap tailored jacket made of dark-blue nylon and lined with face-mask fabric.

Students who were on their way to the library wandered over to the two tables on which Ke Xi was standing. Shao Jian arranged the chairs he’d carried out from the dorm block. Liu Gang pulled out a megaphone and explained to the students how crucial it was to set up an independent student organisation and launch a new wave of protests.

When the students broke into applause, hundreds of people streamed over.

By the time it was Old Fu’s turn to speak, a crowd of about two thousand had gathered. Old Fu talked about the 1987 demonstrations, and said we should now set up an organising committee. He emphasised that it would only be a temporary body, and would be disbanded as soon as the student movement came to an end in order to prevent any opportunists from taking it over and using it for their own political purposes.

‘The movement hasn’t yet started and already you’re talking about what’s going to happen when it ends,’ Zhuzi muttered into his ear. ‘We managed to get a few rounds of applause a minute ago. Don’t spoil the mood. Dai Wei, it’s your turn to say something.’

I climbed onto the tables. I hadn’t prepared a speech, so I spouted the first thing that came to mind. ‘Fellow students!’ I shouted. ‘The government is very crafty, so we must organise ourselves if we want to put up a fight.’ Then my mind went blank, and I forgot what point I was trying to make. I could hear people sniggering at the back. ‘But of course, the government is very clever as well . . .’ I quickly added, but that only made people laugh louder.

‘Are they crafty or clever? Make up your mind!’ students shouted, waving their lunch boxes in the air.

Before I had a chance to reply, Ke Xi intervened and said, ‘The government is an unelected, illegal organisation. The official student bodies it has appointed are therefore illegal too. Who is in favour of forming a democratically elected student union?’

The crowd went silent. The question needed serious thought.

Fortunately, Tian Yi had left the campus to collect donations, so hadn’t witnessed my humiliation. I swore to myself that I would never speak in public again.

Zhuzi jumped onto the tables and shouted, ‘Fellow students! What we need most is rule of law. Only that is going to save China. When we say that we oppose dictatorship, that doesn’t mean we want to overturn the government.’ Before he had a chance to say more, the crowd broke into applause. As he stepped down, I shouted out, ‘Give us rule of law! Down with corruption! Down with bureaucracy!’

Wang Fei asked to speak, but Chen Di complained that only the students from Sichuan would be able to understand his accent. This annoyed him so much, he jumped straight onto the tables and launched into his speech. He started off in standard Mandarin, but soon slipped back into Sichuanese. Although few of the students could make out what he was saying, they listened courteously.

‘If you support these views, have the guts to raise your hands and volunteer to join our organising committee,’ Old Fu shouted.

Two or three minutes went by without anyone raising a hand. They were talking among themselves. They were afraid. Joining an unofficial organisation was held by the government to be a counter-revolutionary crime. When we were arrested in Tiananmen Square two years before, the first thing the police wanted to know was which organisation had coordinated the protest. Fortunately, there were no organisations back then. The protests had flared up spontaneously.

Old Fu heaved himself up onto the tables and said, ‘Let’s ask the chairmen of the student union to lead this initial stage of the movement. If any of these chairmen are present, please come forward and speak!’

There were now about four thousand people. It was the largest crowd I’d seen on the campus, but there was no way of knowing whether any of the student union chairmen were present. Although Old Fu and Cao Ming belonged to various official associations, they were now only low-ranking members. Mao Da, who was chancellor of the student union, hadn’t been seen for two days.

Ke Xi grabbed the megaphone and shouted, ‘If there’s anyone here from the student union, they should have the balls to stand up and take over the leadership! Students from People’s University and the Politics and Law University have gathered at the Xinhua Gate of the Zhongnanhai government compound demanding that the Party leaders come out and speak with them. We can’t delay any longer. The student movement is under way. It’s here now. Those who fail to join it will be condemned by history!’

Liu Gang climbed onto the tables and said, ‘Everyone shout after me: “Leaders of the student union, come up and give us your leadership!”’

The huge crowd shouted out in unison, but no one came up.

‘All right, shall we disband those official unions then?’ Liu Gang yelled.

‘Yes! Disband them!’ The crowd was growing larger and noisier all the time.

A group of students poured through the campus gates and walked towards us. Old Fu said they were from Qinghua University.

Zhuzi went to greet them. One of them was a dark, rugged guy called Zhou Suo. He said that no one at Qinghua University was prepared to lead them, so they’d decided to come and join forces with us.

‘So are we going to set up our own student body?’ Old Fu yelled impatiently to the crowd. The cheers became quieter.

Ke Xi shouted through his cupped hands, ‘If no one else wants to step forward, then those of us who’ve spoken during this meeting will become the founding members of the organising committee. Do you agree to this?’ The crowd cheered and clapped their hands.

‘I hope you will all attend our meetings and lend us your support!’ Old Fu shouted. ‘I hereby announce that for the next two weeks our committee will lead Beijing University’s democracy movement. After that, we must set up an independent student union and let it take charge.’

Although I hadn’t intended to join any organisation, I was standing by the tables with the other speakers, so I had no choice.

Shu Tong returned from Xinhua Gate just as the meeting was drawing to a close. Ke Xi told me to draw up a list of the people who’d spoken. Not wanting Shu Tong to be excluded from the committee, I dragged him over and told him to address the crowd. Old Fu handed him a megaphone and pushed him up onto the tables, saying, ‘Don’t lift your chin when you speak. Keep your head down.’ He was afraid the students might find Shu Tong’s manner arrogant.

In his gravelly voice, Shu Tong told the crowd that thousands of students were staging a peaceful sit-in outside Xinhua Gate, the southern entrance to the Zhongnanhai compound in which the government leaders live and work. He said that the student movement had kicked off and would soon spread to the rest of the country, and he urged Beijing University to join it at once.

His description of the sit-in surprised the crowd, because a few hours before, the state television had reported that the students at Xinhua Gate had demanded to speak to the government leaders and that, when their request was refused, had attempted to storm the gate. The report showed shots of armed officers with blood pouring down their faces, and claimed that the students had hurled empty bottles at them. But Shu Tong insisted that the mood was peaceful, and accused the government of fabricating lies. He admitted that there had been some pushing and shoving and that a few students and officers had got hurt, but denied that the students attempted to storm the gate. He said all they wanted was to submit their petition.

When the meeting came to an end, Ke Xi asked Shu Tong to join our committee too. He agreed, but suggested that we change the name to the Beijing University Solidarity Student Union Preparatory Committee, to make clear our spiritual links with the Polish democracy movement.

But we stuck to the name ‘Organising Committee of Beijing University Independent Student Union’ and drew up a list of founding members: Old Fu, Ke Xi, Liu Gang, Wang Fei, Zhuzi, Yang Tao, Shu Tong, Shao Jian and myself. We appointed Old Fu convenor, made up a batch of armbands and began printing off flyers and leaflets. Yang Tao was sent to Qinghua University to help them set up a committee of their own. At ten o’clock we convened a meeting to formulate an action plan. Then most of the guys set off for Xinhua Gate to join the sit-in. I hadn’t slept properly for two days, so I staggered back to my dorm and went to bed.

At five in the morning, I was woken by a loud commotion. I rushed out into the corridor and heard students climbing up the stairs shouting, ‘We were at the sit-in at Xinhua Gate. The police beat us up. They attacked us with electric batons. Lots of students have been rushed to hospital!’

I flung on some clothes and followed everyone else out to the Triangle. Wang Fei was there. ‘Hundreds of policemen charged at us,’ he yelled, his voice as hoarse as a cockerel’s. ‘They pushed students into their vans, beating anyone who resisted. Girls who didn’t manage to run away fast enough were kicked and beaten too!’

‘At three o’clock, ten police officers rammed a student from Wuhan against the wall,’ Shao Jian continued. ‘They whipped him about the face with leather belts. There was blood everywhere. One of his eyes was beaten out. It was horrible.’ His usually calm voice was shaking. He told everyone to shout with him as he cried: ‘Boycott classes! Save our nation! Punish the violent assailants!’

‘The students are innocent! Patriotism isn’t a crime!’ the crowd yelled. Students were waking up and joining us in the Triangle. There were hundreds of us gathered there now.

‘We must stage a mass march to tell the public what happened,’ I said angrily.

Although not all the members of Organising Committee were present, Old Fu gave the go-ahead for the march and Shu Tong agreed. I dashed off ten posters attacking the police violence and calling for a class boycott. Chen Di and I then stuck them onto the bulletin boards, the campus gates and even the sides of public buses.

Han Dan hobbled back, weak and panting for breath. He told us that undercover agents had infiltrated the sit-in. They had walkie-talkies. They stole some of the students’ shoes and flung them at Xinhua Gate to give the police a pretext to attack the crowd. ‘Punish the perpetrators of violence! Boycott classes!’ he shouted indignantly. None of us could go back to sleep after we heard this news, so we set to work on organising the march.

Now that the student movement had taken off, we felt a weight of responsibility fall heavily on our shoulders.

At dawn we went to the corner shop and bought paper, black ink and a large roll of red cloth – long enough to make five ten-metre-long banners. Chen Di’s girlfriend had collected two thousand yuan in donations, which was much more than Tian Yi had managed. Although the girl spoke with an annoying nasal twang, she had a persuasive manner.

I carried the roll of cloth to Sister Gao’s dorm. Tian Yi and Bai Ling helped cut it into banners and armbands. I wrote
PUNISH THE POLICE
! and
LET THE TRUTH BE KNOWN
! onto the banners while the girls wrote slogans on the paper pennants I’d prepared.

Thousands of students gathered in the Triangle, ready to set off on our march. I rushed to the canteen with Tian Yi and wolfed down a plate of steamed dumplings, then raced back to Wang Fei and Shu Tong’s dorm, which had now become the Organising Committee’s stronghold. When I arrived, Wang Fei was arguing with Old Fu, who’d changed his mind and now thought that we should cancel the march and focus on building up democracy within the campus.