A small group of students were smashing up weapons on the stone steps at the edge of the terrace. Shan Bo and Fan Yuan, who was still wearing a red armband, were taking it in turns to bash the machine gun. Others were dismantling crude Molotov cocktails. A strong smell of petrol wafted through the air.
Malignant cells gnaw at the lining of your stomach. The tissue looks as ravaged as the walls of a ruined city.
‘Where is it, where is it?’ my mother groans, rifling through sheets of paper.
She has begun to lose her memory. When Master Yao’s son knocked on the door and called out to her, she didn’t let him in. I presumed she didn’t recognise his voice. But maybe she did, and she didn’t want to have to talk about the upsetting matter of Master Yao’s arrest. Or perhaps she thought it was the relocation officer come to persuade her to move out.
I suddenly remember an argument my parents once had.
‘… Where have you hidden my photographs?’ my father said angrily.
I was ten years old at the time, and had just come home from school. My elasticated trousers were too big for me. My classmates had pulled them down twice to embarrass me. I was very upset.
‘I want a belt!’ I said, interrupting their argument.
‘If your trousers are loose, it’s easier to pull them down when you need to pee,’ my mother said, then turned back to my father. ‘I burnt the photographs years ago.’
‘They ran up behind me and pulled my trousers down. Dad, I want a belt!’
‘You haven’t got a belly. What do you need a belt for?’ My father looked down at me and puffed on his cigarette. His face was as mottled as the old mirror hanging on our wall.
‘Go and play in the yard with your brother,’ my mother said, walking out of the kitchen in her green slippers.
‘I’m sick of wearing elasticated trousers. Can’t you buy me some proper ones?’
My mother grabbed me by the collar and spanked me hard, then pushed me out onto the landing.
That father of mine, who entered the crematorium’s furnace holding a wall calendar of foreign landscapes, never once applied to join the Party after he returned from America. That showed what a courageous man he was.
Three hundred li south across the shifting sands lie the Ge Mountains. Their bare slopes are scattered with stones that can be used to sharpen knives. With just one of these stones you can sharpen all the knives in the land.
It was about one in the morning already. Most of the girls had gone off to Qinghua University in the vans, but about a hundred had chosen to remain in the Square. I returned to the upper terrace. I wanted to fetch Tian Yi and take her to a safe place. I knew she wouldn’t come with me if I told her my plan, so I said, ‘My old Southern University classmate, Shi Ye, wants to speak to me. Will you help me find her?’
‘Shi Ye is A-Mei’s old classmate, not yours,’ she said, following me back down to the Square. Big Chan and Little Chan were dunking brushes into a bowl of ink and painting onto the stone wall of the Monument: 4 JUNE IS THE BLACKEST DAY IN CHINESE HISTORY…
Tian Yi gripped my arm. I could tell she was as afraid as Bai Ling.
Suddenly, in the north-western corner of the Square, I caught sight of an armoured vehicle. It was ramming into a wall of bollards that residents had placed across Changan Avenue, a few metres from where Mou Sen had staged the Democracy University’s opening ceremony. A small crowd of students ran over and tossed stones and petrol bombs at it, and soon flames darted across its roof as it continued to bash into the barricade. Reflected firelight danced across the Goddess of Democracy and the rows of nylon tents nearby.
‘Hurry! There’s an armoured vehicle trying to force its way into the Square.’ I grabbed Tian Yi’s arm and we sprinted off in the opposite direction. Before we’d gone very far, I looked up and saw a black mass of soldiers in combat gear, armed with long truncheons, line up on the steps of the Museum of Chinese History.
Tian Yi stood still. ‘Stop!’ she cried, pulling me back. ‘Don’t go any further.’
It suddenly occurred to me that the soldiers must have been lurking inside the Museum of Chinese History all along.
I tried to think of somewhere else for Tian Yi to hide, but realised it would be too dangerous to go running through the Square now.
Some of the Beijing residents scattered around us were holding metal rods and beer bottles, and were about to hurl them at the soldiers on the steps. I rushed over and said, ‘I’m Dai Wei, head of security. The Defend Tiananmen Square Headquarters has requested that everyone discard their weapons and maintain our policy of peaceful resistance.’ Then I told Tian Yi to return to the Monument and tell Bai Ling that the army was now standing right opposite us.
As she turned to leave, she saw a girl sitting under a lamp post reading a book. ‘What are you doing?’ Tian Yi cried. ‘Can’t you see the army’s here?’
‘If they turf us out of the Square, we’ll go back to the campus,’ the girl said, looking up. ‘What’s the big deal?’
‘Look, this is a bullet cartridge,’ Tian Yi said. ‘The army are shooting to kill. I need you to help me. Go and tell the Headquarters that there’s a huge battalion of troops standing on the steps of the Museum of Chinese History. Give the message to Bai Ling. Say it’s from Tian Yi.’
The girl got up reluctantly and stared at the cartridge in Tian Yi’s hand.
Tian Yi then came back to my side and shouted, ‘Fellow students, let’s sing the PLA song, “Three Rules of Discipline and Eight Points of Attention”.’
Just at that moment, a signal flare shot through the sky. Its pale glow looked like the ghostly light that illuminates the dead souls’ path to hell.
A sound of gunfire rang out from the north-east corner of the Square. The bangs echoed against the northern walls of the Museum of Chinese History. The thousands of soldiers outside the Museum could hear it too, but they remained completely still, standing packed on the steps like a swarm of green bats.
‘We’re done for, we’re done for,’ I muttered to myself, my body clenching with fear. I thought of taking Tian Yi down into the underpass below Changan Avenue, but before I had time to move, a frantic crowd came running down from the north-east corner and raced to the ambulance parked outside the Square’s emergency tent. A wounded man, covered in blood from head to toe, was being wheeled along on a bicycle. A younger man with blood pouring from his thigh walked beside him. As he was carried onto the ambulance, he shook his head from side to side and shouted, ‘Did you see that? Did you see that?’ then closed his eyes and fell silent.
Someone shouted madly, ‘You butchers! How could you turn your guns on the people! The gods will punish you!’ Others ran over to the Museum to hurl stones and beer bottles at the soldiers sitting on the steps. The soldiers jumped to their feet and looked as though they were about to strike back, but the colonel standing in front waved his hand, and they all stood still. Then three soldiers in Changan Avenue ran towards us, pursued by an enraged crowd. One of them was knocked to the ground, the other two sprinted over to the Museum’s steps. The troops were furious, and seemed ready to attack. Four students went to help the fallen soldier. As they lifted him to his feet, some angry civilians leaned down, punched the soldier’s face and pulled off his helmet.
A boy who looked about ten years old ran past us. Tian Yi tried to grab hold of him, but he slipped through her fingers and ran off towards the Museum. ‘My brother has been killed!’ he shouted, then raced towards the troops on the steps. A small crowd wielding branches and metal rods followed behind him. Tian Yi caught up with him and managed to hold him back. A few female students surrounded the colonel and pleaded with him to tell the soldiers not to shoot. A short student from Hong Kong fell to her knees and sobbed, ‘You can’t fire your guns at the students!’