Ma Jian - Beijing Coma

A few Beijing residents had also spent the night in the Square with us. They began jostling through the crowds like shoppers in a busy marketplace. I was very angry at the Beijing Normal students for causing so much disruption.

Hundreds of armed police suddenly charged out of the Great Hall. When the students at the front saw them approach, they tried to move back, but the crowd behind refused to make space for them.

Wang Fei yelled, ‘You rushed to the front, Beijing Normal, and now you’re scared! Don’t move back for them, the rest of you! Just clear a passage in the middle and let them file out, if they want to!’

The crowd dissolved into chaos again.

I squeezed my way through to a lamp post, and stood on its concrete base, shouting at everyone to stop pushing. I told my student marshals to form a human chain around the giant wreath of flowers at the front, but the crowd continued to push past it, knocking more petals to the ground. Zhuzi and Hai Feng pleaded with everyone to stay still. The marshals with megaphones yelled angry commands. Compared to the lines of armed police standing in solemn ranks opposite us, we looked like an undisciplined mob.

When the funeral music came through the loudspeakers above us, the students finally stood still. The mood calmed down and we all began singing the Internationale. The students who were wearing baseball caps removed them out of respect, and suddenly a swathe of black hair stretched out before me.

Some of the students started to weep. Although I was sad, I didn’t cry. I couldn’t shed tears for a man I’d never met. I wondered whether my break-up with A-Mei four years previously had numbed my capacity to feel distress.

By the time the voice of President Yang Shangkun came through the loudspeakers announcing a minute’s silence, I still hadn’t had a chance to look for Tian Yi. This was a historic event. I knew she’d want to witness it. The day before, she’d donated three hundred yuan to the student movement, which was the equivalent of her annual living expenses.

The tens of thousands of people in the Square, the government leaders inside the Great Hall, and the dense lines of armed police in between, respected the silence together. For a moment, everyone seemed united in grief.

The funeral dirge gradually petered out. Some of the students looked indignant, others stared blankly. My mind flashed back to A-Mei. I remembered her saying to me, ‘Think about it, just think about it for a while…’ as we came out from a lecture one day.

The state funeral had come to an end. I looked over to the Great Hall of the People and saw delegates of the National People’s Congress and government leaders walking down the steps and being whisked away in chauffeur-driven cars. Most of them chose to ignore the massive crowd of students sitting before them.

We stared at the two exits of the Great Hall and tried to guess which one the hearse might emerge from. After half an hour there was still no sign of it.

Yet more armed police trooped out of the Great Hall in khaki uniforms, leather belts and white gloves. They sat down on the steps in four orderly rows. From a distance, they looked like a neatly trimmed bamboo fence.

‘Do you think the hearse has left through a back gate?’ Shu Tong asked.

‘It probably left through an underground passage,’ Wang Fei said.

Old Fu jumped up, full of energy. He had spent the night asleep in his dorm, only returning to the Square just before the dawn curfew, so he wasn’t as tired as we were. ‘God knows what those Party leaders have been up to!’ he said. ‘Let’s hurry up and submit our petition!’

‘Come on, let’s storm the Great Hall!’ Wang Fei said, sticking his thumbs up. ‘They must have taken the coffin away by now. If we don’t take action now, the government will ignore us.’ He’d put on a clean pair of jeans today, and looked very smart.

‘We can’t do that. The Great Hall of the People is China’s parliament. America is a democratic country, but it still doesn’t allow its citizens to storm the House of Representatives.’ Old Fu was holding our rolled-up petition. He was wearing a clean white shirt under his jumper.

‘It would be dangerous to storm the Great Hall,’ Shu Tong said. ‘We’ve just had a funeral, and emotions are running high.’ He always ground his teeth when he was nervous, although you couldn’t hear him do it.

‘I don’t think we should storm the building, but we can’t let things end like this,’ Shao Jian said, readjusting his collar and tie.

The students at the back of the crowd began chanting: ‘Dialogue, dialogue, we demand dialogue!’ Another column of armed police marched out and positioned themselves behind the wall of armed police in front of us.

Everyone had left the Great Hall. The only people remaining were the supervisors in white shirts standing on the steps.

‘The guests who left from these gates were lowly officials,’ Shu Tong said. ‘Not one of their cars had a red flag. All the important dignitaries will have left secretly through underground tunnels.’

The police began removing the cordons from Changan Avenue. Beijing residents flooded into the Square and surrounded us, trying to see what was going on. The student marshals held hands and formed a protective ring around us, trying to push back the encroaching hordes. Soon the marshals on the western side of the ring were almost touching noses with the armed police.

‘Ke Xi, didn’t you say that Premier Li Peng has agreed to talk to us?’ Han Dan said, pushing his way through the crowd.

‘I never said that,’ Ke Xi said, pouting his thick lips. ‘It’s a false rumour that’s going around.’

‘But everyone thinks that Li Peng has agreed to meet us,’ Old Fu said. ‘They think we’ve got an audience with him at one o’clock. They’re very excited about it. What are we going to do?’

When a black crow cawed as it flew out from under the eaves of the Great Hall, someone shouted, ‘Look, Li Peng’s come out to see us!’ and the crowd roared with laughter.

‘If they refuse to discuss our demands, we’ll have to charge through the police lines and storm the Great Hall,’ Hai Feng said, pushing his way through to us. The black shirt he was wearing under his sleeveless pullover looked too small for him.

It was midday already.

‘We mustn’t be too heavy-handed,’ Han Dan said, pushing his glasses further up his nose.

‘Why not choose a wreath and take it up to the Great Hall,’ said Liu Gang, surveying the crowd. He’d just arrived in the Square after being trapped behind the police cordons for two hours.

‘That’s a good idea,’ Han Dan said, then he shouted to the students holding the wreaths to bring them over to us. His megaphone was very loud.

But the students holding the wreaths ignored his command and began charging into the lines of armed police. The wreath from the Politics and Law University was so large that the four people holding it had to ask the student marshals to help them pass it over the policemen’s heads.

Liu Gang snatched the megaphone from Han Dan and shouted, ‘We’re in a face-off with armed police, so it’s important not to raise the tension any further. Our plan is to take just one wreath up to the Great Hall of the People, and present it to the officials to convey, on behalf of all the students of Beijing, our deep sadness at the death of Comrade Hu Yaobang.’ At last, everyone stood still.

Han Dan and Hai Feng took the petition and, after a brief discussion with the armed police, were allowed to pass through the first few lines. Wang Fei, Ke Xi and Mou Sen chose a medium-sized wreath and were also allowed to squeeze their way through.

The people who’d climbed onto the bases of the lamp posts cheered excitedly.