Last Kiss in Tiananmen Square

LAST KISS

IN

TIANANMEN SQUARE

Lisa Zhang Wharton

Copyright © 2011 Lisa Zhang Wharton

All rights reserved. Except as permitted under the U.S. Copyright Act of 1976, no part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed or transmitted in any form or by any means, or stored in a database or retrieval system without the prior written permission of the publisher.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, organizations, or persons, living or deceased, is entirely coincidental.

(Fantasy Island Book Publishing)

Credits

Front Cover © Lisa Zhang Wharton

Senior Editor: Pamela Brennan

Structural Editor: J. Darroll Hall

Front Cover Artist: Jake Riggle

Contact us at:
www.fantasyislandbookpublishing.com

Dedicated to my husband, Eric Wharton who has provided invaluable support

To my son William Wharton who has provided constant amusement and his confidence in me has prompted me to finish this book

To my parents (Kaiming Zhang and Meizhen Cheng) who have raised me in an unusual and story-worthy environment 

Tables of Contents

Tables of Contents iv

Prologue 1

Chapter 1 3

Chapter 2 19

Chapter 3 31

Chapter 4 49

Chapter 5 55

Chapter 6 66

Chapter 7 74

Chapter 8 88

Chapter 9 100

Chapter 10 116

Chapter 11 128

Chapter 12 134

Chapter 13 152

Chapter 14 158

Chapter 15 165

Chapter 16 175

Chapter 17 190

Chapter 18 200

Chapter 19 216

Chapter 20 231

Epilogue 246

Except from “Chinese Lolita” 250

Dear Reader,

Please note that throughout this novel Beijing University will be colloquially know as Beida.
 

Prologue

At dawn on April 22, 1989, Tiananmen Square awakened as the sun lit the sky. Hundreds of students who had camped in the square overnight came to life. They were waiting to pay their last respects to Hu Yaobang, a member of political bureau, and former Secretary General of the Communist Party. The students wanted to voice their demands for a more free and open society. They wanted to continue what Hu Yaobang had started campaigning for three years earlier: a free press and a multi-party system of government.

Police soon systematically cleared the vast space in front of the Great Hall of the People, where the memorial service was going to be held. More and more citizens joined the peaceful demonstration as the rising sun shone in the eastern sky. They remained silent and watched with some contempt as the police stopped traffic to let a dozen red-flagged passenger cars that carried the top communist leaders solemnly enter the square. The radios in some students’ hands announced the start of the service, and the crowd began inching forward. More police rushed out of the gate of the Great Hall of the People, brandishing clubs. The crowd shouted and cursed at the police, who linked their arms and barely managed to stop the sea of angry people.

“Wait, be quiet, please! We are sending our representatives in first,” announced an apparent student leader through a megaphone.

Three student representatives, wearing white shirts and black arm bands on their left arms (following the Chinese tradition: of a black arm band on the left arm indicating the deceased was a male, with band on the right arm meaning a female) for the death of Hu Yaobang, appeared and knelt in the middle of the steps leading to the gate of the Great Hall of the People, waiting to be led in. Each carried a piece of folded black cloth, which contained a list of their requests:

Authorities guarantee their safety

Let them enter the Great hall of the People to pay their last respects to Hu Yaobang.

Allow the Free Press

Install a multi-party system of government

Hours passed before the first representative, a young woman with short hair, fell down from heat and hunger. Then the tall and thin teenage girl collapsed. The last one, a short but muscular young man held up until the service finished. The gate of the Great Hall of the People did not open. No one came out to take their requests. It was rumored that the officials had escaped through the back doors after the memorial service.

“If I had cannon, I would have destroyed that Hall,” said one student.

Chapter 1

The day Baiyun heard that Hu Yaobang was dead; she knew a volcano would erupt.

It was Sunday afternoon. Baiyun’s forty-six year old mother, Meiling, had shut herself in the bedroom with her boyfriend. Baiyun was initially unaware of the activity in the next room when she came home, until she recognized their loud voices behind Meiling’s bedroom door.

Meiling’s voice penetrated through the door “Am I right? Did that little bitch try to seduce you yesterday? Don’t think I am blind!”

“Come on. That’s absolutely not true. Don’t be suspicious all the time.” Baiyun recognized the deep voice as that of Meiling’s new boyfriend, Lao Zheng. Meiling and Lao Zheng purchased an industrial construction business last year and had been working together ever since.

“I just want to keep an eye on you,” said Meiling.

Baiyun did not like Lao Zheng. Ever since Meiling had broken up with her long time boyfriend, uncle Weiming seven years earlier, a factory worker, whom Baiyun considered her real father, Baiyun had had a hard time accepting anyone else. She was too old to think of her mother’s new boyfriends as adults or stepparents, especially as most of them were younger than her mother was. To Meiling, Baiyun had become a rival. But Baiyun could deal with Meiling’s new boyfriends diplomatically. After all, they had added some spice to the family’s dull life after her real father was injured twenty years ago after coming back from a labor camp during the Cultural Revolution.

In order not to disturb Meiling, Baiyun tiptoed to the refrigerator and took out a square of Spam, a dishful of stir-fried liver and a few steamed sesame buns. While she was heating the food in the kitchen, Meiling stuck her head outside her bedroom door and yelled, “Hey, my college girl is home.”

“Hi, Mother. Is it all right if I eat this food in the fridge?”

“Oh, yes. Your uncle Lao Zheng made that especially for you. You should eat it up so you’ll be big and strong.”

“Mother, stop! My classmates are calling me little fat girl. I need to lose weight.”

“Nonsense. Who says fat is ugly? Look at those American movie stars,” Meiling pointed to the movie star calendar on the wall, “They all have full bodies and beautiful big breasts. Skinny means sexless. And which of your classmates can afford such nice food at home. They are jealous of you!” Meiling disappeared behind the bedroom door.

Baiyun carried the heated food to the room served both as her father’s bedroom and the family living-room, which looked just the same as when Baiyun left for college three years before. Her parents had added only one piece of furniture - a tall dresser with a full-sized mirror, which was in the corner of the room by the window. A heavy wooden desk located at the other corner of the room by the window and a round glass dining table dominated the center of the room.

On the far side of the room, an old man with a head of snowy hair lay on a single bed. A corner of a large dirty floral blanket covered his belly. His head tilted toward one side of the pillow where his dripping saliva created a dark water stain. His face was red and wrinkled and resembled a rotten apple. An arm hung loosely over the side of the bed. He wore a faded green sweat-stained shirt and gray cotton underwear. On the bed rail, rested his two extraordinarily ugly feet, dry and covered with blisters.

"Meow! Meow!" Father mumbled as though still enjoying the taste of wine in his dream.

Baiyun didn’t like her family much, especially after she found out that most of her classmates in college had far more normal family lives than she had. Lately her father had started making cat noises, which felt like a knife cutting through her nerves every time she heard it. She often thought of running away. But how could she do it? The country was vast but the people were mostly caged like chickens. Recently the government allowed people to leave the country and go to America if they could pass the TOFEL exam (an entrance exam for foreign students to get into an American college) and get accepted at American colleges. Baiyun had been studying English and getting ready to leave as soon as she could. America was definitely a place far enough to escape, she often told herself.

Baiyun ignored her father and sat down at the round dining table. First she put two spoonful of fried liver, tender and delicious, and a thin piece of Spam into a bowl, and then spread out the “China Daily”, the only English language newspaper in Beijing, next to it. She began to indulge her two biggest joys in life, eating and reading. She read about Hu Yaobang’s memorial service and the students’ peaceful demonstration in Tiananmen Square. Even though she was away from her school, Beijing University, her heart was stirred. A desire was burning in her heart. She wanted to get back to school immediately to witness the new student movement first-hand.

After finishing the liver in the bowl, Baiyun cut a small corner of the Spam and added another spoonful of liver. She paused, deciding if she should to eat more or not. She patted her little round belly pushing up from her tight blue jeans and touched her puffy cheeks with her palms. She pushed the dish and bowl aside, staring at her dull reflection in the mirror-like table surface. She still had an almond-shaped face, a pair of big dark brown eyes behind her white-framed glasses, and a black spot on the right side of her straight nose. Some of her friends called it a beauty spot, but others said it was a misery spot. Sometimes she agreed with the second opinion. She gulped down the last of the Spam in two bites and finished the fried liver.