Last Kiss in Tiananmen Square (29 page)

Tiananmen Square had been cleared somewhat since Marshal Law had been declared. It was a bright sunny day, which reminded everyone that summer was nearly here. Students were running around in shorts and skirts. It is strange that the atmosphere on the square was suddenly so relaxed. It was almost like a festival and a celebration. Students were walking around the square, congratulating each other and signing memorabilia. In the background, students’ stereos were playing popular music once more. Although the trash including sunflower seed shells, peanut shells and apple peels became more visible due to the withdrawing of the people, the newly pitched tents from students from Hong Kong had added color to the square.

Under a large red tent in front of the People’s Congress Meeting Hall, Baiyun and Yumei discovered ten brave hunger strikers. It was hard to believe that ten people could fit in such a small tent. Their small size had made it possible. Most of them crowded together under a very large floral blanket, sleeping or simply lying there with their eyes shut, some of whom had earphones in their ears. There was only one lonely girl sitting in the corner reading a book. Like everyone else, she wore a white headband. Her face was pale but full. Among these cluster of dry-up skinny and grotesque faces, it was amazing how good she looked. Maybe she was a new hunger striker, Baiyun thought. When they crawled into the tent, both Baiyun and Yumei shouted.

“Aaeh, Wenjing, is that you?”

Slowly raising her smooth face, Wenjing looked at them through the top of her glasses like a scholar.

“Hi, Yumei and Baiyun.”

“You, scholar! How did you suddenly become a hero?” Yumei went over and hit her on the shoulder lightly.

“I’m not,” she sounded a little weak, “Don’t tell anyone I have been sneaking in chocolate bars in the first few days. But I’m used to it now. It should be good for my weight loss program.” Yumei and Baiyun laughed. At this moment, Wenjing still had a good sense of humor.

“So you decide to become an activist,” asked Baiyun.

“Nope,” said Wenjing while waving a TOEFL review book, “I can still study the TOEFL exam here.”

“You, rascal!” Yumei hit her again on the shoulder. “As long as you have books to read, you’ll never die of a hungry scholar.”

“And I can be a hunger striker at the same time!” Wenjing smiled. Her small eyes formed into a thin line behind her thick white glasses.

“Now, I represent the Federation to declare that the Martial Law has been declared by the government,” said Yumei, “In order to preserve our strength and save lives, the Federation decides to stop the hunger strike and ask everyone to get ready to withdraw.” Yumei sat with her legs crossed and her back erect, she conveyed her message with authority.

“What Martial Law?” Some of the students started to wake up, rubbing their eyes with the back of their hands.

Yumei repeated the message. After that there were hardly any reactions. Some of the hunger strikers even went back to sleep.

“Did you hear me?” asked Yumei desperately. “Are you still alive? Am I talking to a group of dead people?”

“We have already decided to die several weeks ago,” murmured someone.

“I rather die than give in to the government.” Another one mumbled.

“This is an order. Do you know? We, as an organization, have to work together.”

“Who are you?”

“Ok, I should have introduced myself earlier. My name is Huang Yumei. I’m the Secretary General of the Beijing branch of the Student Federation. I used to work for the dialogue delegation.” Yumei’s voice sounded a little angry.

“I have never heard of the dialogue delegation,” someone snapped back. This was like plug that was stuck into Yumei’s mouth, which made impossible for Yumei to speak.

“Martial Law has been declared today!” The president of China, Yang Shangkun’s voice could be heard in the radio. “Troops are moving into the city. Any organizations, any groups and anyone who still remain in the square will suffer from severe consequences.”

As finally being convinced, some of the students struggled to get up.

“Ok, if you have food, please eat them. We will get the federation’s buses to come and pick you up,” said Yumei urgently.

“Do you have any food,” asked Baiyun.

“No, we haven’t stored food here for a while. We are HUNGER STRIKING here!”

“Ok, we’ll try to get some for you,” said Yumei.

When Yumei and Baiyun got out of the tent, the whole square was stirred up again.

“New hunger strike! New hunger strike organized by Professor Chen Ninyuan! We need 200,000 people, the largest in the history to protest the government’s outrageous decision!”

“Comrades, keep the good work!” Someone ran over and poked his head into the tent and yelled.

Students in the tent flopped back to their blankets. Yumei and Baiyun stared at each other.

“Ok, at least we will tell Federation to transfer you into a bus,” said Yumei before leaving the “Dare to Death” hunger strikers.

Yumei and Baiyun could feel the newly heated atmosphere in the square through the cool breeze around them. Although the number of people on the square had decreased, every one of them (mostly students) was as energetic as before. They followed the crowd to the Monument of People’s Hero where the main Hunger Striker stage was still centered.

There were twenty to fifty vehicles around the Monument of People’s Hero, most of which were buses filled with student hunger strikers. It was an unusual situation here. The monument, which was a sacred place and used to be a place where people came to pay tribute to people’s heroes, now had become a Rock & Roll concert stage. People ran around, wearing white headbands and arm bands which said, “Long Live Democracy”, “Rather Die than Give Up” and “Fighting to the Last Drop of Blood”. People were not fixing the buses but were rather taking them apart. Tires were punctured flat, and the steering wheels were pulled off. The place was more like a junkyard. On the other side of the monument, there was a Rock & Roll concert with the famous singer Cui Jian on stage. People were cheering and roaring. Immersed in this moving atmosphere, Yumei and Baiyun strolled around the monument and absorbed everything. Yumei, a good singer and dancer, was humming the current song along with the crowd while Baiyun could not help but write her news article about this spectacle in her head.

“Yumei, have you noticed this?” Baiyun pulled Yumei’s arm to go through a narrow avenue between buses. They approached the neatly trimmed pine trees around the monument. Instead of green, the trees were white because they were covered with white cloth. This very much resembled the time when Premier Zhou died fifteen years ago when the same trees were covered with white paper flowers decorated by millions of Beijing citizens to mourn the death of Premier Zhou.

“It looks so sad,” said Baiyun.

“They were some of the hunger striker’s death wills.” Yumei stopped humming and started examining the white strips of cloth carefully.

“Look at this one.” Yumei pulled Baiyun closer.

Dear Mom,

When you see this message, I probably do not exist anymore. Please don’t feel sad. Your son doesn’t have time to pay back your love because his motherland needs him for an even more important mission. Mother, stop crying. Look around you. You can see your son smiling among hundreds of smiling faces. Mother, stop weeping. You should be proud of your son who contributes to the happiness of millions.

“It was written in blood,” said Baiyun. “Don’t you think we should join the Hunger Strike again?”

“I have been thinking about it,” said Yumei while looking at the hundreds of white strips on the square-cut pine shrubs around the monument.

“I don’t think the News Center needs me now. I used to think that I’m a writer so my job is to observe life and record it. Now I want more. I want to experience life fully using my blood or even my life,” said Baiyun. Her voice was getting louder. “Besides, this maybe our last chance to join the Hunger Strike.”

“You really think so?” Yumei couldn’t believe her ears. She would never imagine Baiyun would go this far. It was such a big change for Baiyun from a bookish and selfish intellectual to a committed activist and hunger striker. But who could understand any of the events that happened recently? Disaster or danger could often bring the best out of people. Maybe this side of Baiyun just had been hidden until the opportunity came recently.

“I don’t really know. I tried not to think about it too much. Sometimes I wish this movement would go on forever. It is very hard for me to imagine going back to school and sitting in the library all day long or going back to my strange family. Now even Dagong has gone back to his wife. What do I have left?”

Baiyun’s confession had surprised Yumei because she had never talked so much about herself to others.”

“Dagong will come back to you,” Yumei tried to comfort Baiyun.

“I’m so happy that you are my friend,” said Baiyun and gave Yumei a hug.

“Hi, girls. What are you doing here?” A well-dressed man walked toward them with his hand touching the white cloth on the pine shrubs. “Which school are you from?” He continued.

“Beida.” Yumei found him strange.

“Oh, great. You are local. I’m from Shanghai.” He attempted to shake hands with Hongmai. Yumei refused.

“You don’t sound like Shanghainese,” said Baiyun whose mother was from Shanghai.

“I grew up in Shan Dong province,” said he leisurely. He looked as though he had the whole day to chat.

“Do you enjoy staying in Beijing?” Yumei asked but her eyes were looking elsewhere.

“Yes. I wish that I could spend the summer here. The summer in Shanghai is like hell.” He said as though he was living in a hotel in Beijing with air conditioning twenty four hours a day. “Do you know who I really am?” His eyes formed a thin line. He moved closer toward Yumei. His head with crew cut hair glimmered under the streetlight.

“No.” Backed a few steps, Yumei and Baiyun were waiting for him to say that he was the Devil from Hell.

“Ha, ha. I know you can’t figure me out. Let me tell you. I’m a plainclothes police officer. There are a lot of us around here. You’d better get out of here as soon as possible. Otherwise it will be too late. I know exactly what is going to happen tonight. You can’t even imagine how fast the troops are moving in.” Approaching the girls even closer, he boasted out the secret, “You’d better run if you could!” He waved as though trying to chase the chickens away.

Yumei and Baiyun turned around and ran away as fast as they could. It was not that they were afraid of the policeman. It was because they felt the information was urgent and they wanted to find someone in charge. They wanted to go back to the headquarters to find Longfe and Xia Nan.

Xia Nan, the head of the student organization in the economic department, had switched from an anti-movement advocate to one of the Beijing Student Hunger Strike leaders. Especially now when the hunger strikers took control of the Tiananmen Square, he became even more powerful. He was in many news conferences with the foreign press, and formed new alliances with some most powerful student leaders around. He seemed always to be able at the right place at the right time. Yumei and Baiyun hoped to find him in the new Hunger Strike Headquarters in one of the buses around the monument.

People still enjoyed the frenzy of destroying the buses. Now they were jabbing holes on the already flattened tires. Their actions made sense since the tires had been destroyed to such a degree that they were impossible to repair. The Rock & Roll concert still went on and the cheering was louder than ever.

As they checked from bus to bus for Longfe and Xia Nan, suddenly Baiyun noticed two familiar people standing next to a motorcycle under a streetlight. It was her mother Meiling and boyfriend Lao Zheng in an intimate position. Too embarrassed to tell Yumei, she had kept quiet. Actually she wished that she could dig a hole that was deep enough to hide in. This was not the first time when she was so embarrassed by her parents that she pretended that she didn’t see them.

In 1975, in the midst of the Cultural Revolution, she was 9 years old. One day when she was playing jump rope with her friends outside of their apartment, one of her friends pointed to an old man walking toward the apartment.

“Look, who is that?” said her friend.

He wore old faded pants and wrinkled shirt. His hair and stubby beard were gray. There was a rolled-up quilted blanket hanging on his back weighing him down yet his head was only slightly bent down. In his hand there was a beaten up duffle bag. It took a moment before Baiyun realized that it was her father, Professor Yang. But how could she admit that was her father? He just came back from the labor camp and he still looked like a prisoner. He had caused her enough trouble already at school. Because of his political problems, she didn’t have any friends at school for a long time. She was not allowed to perform in any plays or musicals because of him. Kids chased her and threw stones at her because of him. Now finally she had a couple of neighbor girls to play with. He was here again to ruin it. She was determined not to admit that he was his dad.

“I don’t know him.” Baiyun kept playing.

Fortunately Professor Yang didn’t notice her either when he walked by them. Since he was busy looking down, he seemed not to notice anyone or he, too, was too embarrassed to say hello. When he finally went inside of the apartment, Baiyun was so relieved that she almost fell.