Ma Jian - Beijing Coma

Shu Tong, Liu Gang and Han Dan moved to the front and tried to reason with the guards again. Old Fu arrived, brandishing a huge red Beijing University flag. He must have got hold of a key to the university’s Communist Youth League committee office. When he unfurled the flag, everyone clapped, and the students who were pushing bicycles rang their bells.

Tian Yi walked up with Mimi. She was holding a camera. ‘Aren’t you afraid?’ I asked.

‘I just want to witness the event with my own eyes, and take some photos,’ she said. As she seemed quite calm, I asked her to try to get Wang Fei out of the girls’ dorm block.

Someone had managed to talk the guards round. The gates were opened, and we filed out into the street.

As we waited there in the dark, everything seemed frighteningly quiet. All I could see on the road ahead were some men squatting down playing cards in a pool of light under a street lamp.

Old Fu and Shu Tong called Ke Xi and Han Dan over to decide on the slogans to be shouted. Each chose one, and scribbled it on a piece of paper. Ke Xi had only gathered about ten education students, so his group was forced to tag along with the science students. He and Shu Tong were to lead the procession. As the appointed head of security, I was to supervise the front of the march, while Zhuzi, who was taller than me, was put in charge of the tail. I told the taller students that they must act as marshals, and form a human chain on either side of the column, protecting the students from attack and preventing outsiders from joining our ranks. Yu Jin walked briskly over to me, his sleeves rolled up as usual, and begged me to let him join my team. Although far too short to be a marshal, he was very keen, so I relented.

‘All right then,’ I said to him. ‘I’ll guard the front, Zhuzi will supervise the back and you can look after the middle. If anything bad happens, we must let each other know straight away.’ Then I spotted Chen Di. He looked very pleased with himself, standing at the front of the crowd with his Russian binoculars hanging around his neck. I asked him to help me out, but he said that Old Fu had told him to lead the slogan-shouting.

I rolled a sheet of paper into a conical tube and shouted through it as I walked back along the column of students: ‘Each department group must march behind its banner. Organise yourselves into rows of four, with the girls on the inside and boys on the outside.’

‘We couldn’t find a Social Science Department flag, so we made up this banner instead,’ Hai Feng said, pointing to the red banner his group was carrying. Since his three-day detention for organising the 1987 demonstration, he’d concentrated on politicising his fellow social science students.

‘How many of you went to the Square yesterday?’ I asked him.

‘About twenty. Most of them were graduate members of my Social Research Student Club.’ The light from the street lamp was bouncing off the thick lenses of Hai Feng’s glasses, so I couldn’t see the expression in his eyes.

‘Shao Jian!’ I called to Shu Tong’s dorm mate. ‘You stay on the left, and I’ll stay on the right.’ I pulled off my red paper armband, tore it in two, then slipped one band onto my arm and gave him the other.

Old Fu came up from the back and said, ‘We’ve got about two thousand students here now. Let’s get moving. The board of governors will probably be coming down here any minute.’

Wang Fei turned up with Bai Ling. He was wearing a blue tracksuit.

Bai Ling said the computer she’d been writing her thesis on had just crashed, so she’d decided that she might as well join the revolution. Nuwa, with her boyish haircut, was standing next to her. Her T-shirt had a low scoop at the front. Her neck was even longer than Tian Yi’s. She was the prettiest arts student in the university. I felt very uncouth standing next to her.

I told her to lead the slogan-shouting at the back and she said, ‘ OK! ’ in English. Mou Sen walked over, pushing his bicycle. I borrowed it from him and rode up and down. The students seemed to have formed quite an orderly column.

Just as we were about to set off, Professor Chen from the Education Department came up and stood in front of us. He and a few other professors had been having a private discussion by the campus gates. He shouted, ‘Students, your patriotic fervour is laudable, but if you walk out onto the streets, the authorities will look upon you in a very different way.’

Tian Yi glanced nervously around her. I said, ‘Cao Ming’s dad is an army general. If Cao Ming has dared join us tonight, it means that the authorities aren’t about to take any strong action.’

No one wanted to listen to Professor Chen’s advice. They shouted, ‘Students from hundreds of universities are already in the Square. Don’t stand in our way!’

‘Ignore the professor!’ Ke Xi yelled. ‘We can’t hang around here any longer. Let’s go!’

Professor Chen got on his knees and sobbed. ‘Students, don’t stir up any more trouble, I beg you! If you march to the Square, it will be the end of the new liberal General Secretary, Zhao Ziyang.’

‘Don’t listen to him!’ Wang Fei shouted. ‘He’s a neoauthoritarian!’

Shu Tong and Ke Xi grabbed the professor’s arms and dragged him back inside the campus. Old Fu said to him, ‘Just stay here, Professor, and think things over for a while.’

Mou Sen whispered into my ear, ‘Perhaps the professor is right. Once we shoot this arrow, there’ll be no going back.’

‘The reform process has reached a critical stage,’ Professor Chen shouted. ‘Don’t start demonstrating now, for God’s sake! Let society progress peacefully.’

Chen Di began shouting the slogans. ‘Beijing University is supported by the people! For the sake of the people we will lay down our lives!’ A wave of excitement swept over us and we set off, echoing Chen Di’s chants.

The dark, empty street stretched before us. Occasionally, someone returning home from a late shift would stop on the pavement and watch us pass.

At the Huangzhang intersection we saw two police vans parked on the side of the road. I became anxious. I knew that if I got arrested a third time, my mother would never forgive me. My detention in 1987 had denied her the opportunity of singing a duet in the opera company’s annual gala.

But our chanting gave us courage. I joined the rest of the marchers in shouting, ‘Oppose official profiteering! Down with corruption!’

Our procession surged forward like a train, rolling straight past the two police vans. The officers standing outside didn’t try to stop us.

When we reached the gates of People’s University, we shouted out to the students inside to join our march. Lights came on in the dorm blocks. Students opened their windows and shouted, ‘We’ll come with you, Beijing University! Just give us a moment to get dressed!’

‘We can’t wait for them, Dai Wei,’ Zhuzi said, walking up to me. ‘We must keep moving. They’ll soon catch up with us.’

‘Yes, we must keep going until we reach Tiananmen Square,’ Cao Ming concurred. The khaki military suit he was wearing boosted our morale.

Yang Tao and Hai Feng, who’d been marching in the centre of the procession, ran over and said, ‘Some of the students are already going back to the campus to get some sleep. We can’t hang around any longer.’

After we crossed the next intersection, we saw about a hundred policemen and ten police vans blocking our path ahead. From a distance, they looked like a black wall. Light from the street lamps flashed off the windscreens and a few of the policemen’s helmets. Chen Di climbed onto a rubbish bin, looked through his binoculars and announced, ‘They’re not holding electric batons. Their hands are empty.’