I got everyone to cry out to the troops, ‘The People’s Army loves the people! The Chinese people don’t shoot their fellow countrymen!’
Tian Yi went over to the colonel, pointed to her university badge and said, ‘I’m a Beijing University student. We follow a policy of non-resistance. You saw how we went to the aid of that soldier just now.’
‘If you shoot us, history will never forgive you!’ I butted in. The colonel lowered his head and remained silent. The boy saw a tricycle cart pass by and chased after it.
‘That kid has gone mad…’
‘Perhaps that was his brother’s cart,’ I said. ‘Tian Yi, we must go back and tell Bai Ling what’s happening.’ Wang Fei had got hold of an army machine gun and had hidden it in one of the tents. He had set up his own secret suicide squad. I knew that if he got out the gun and deployed the squad, it would provoke a massacre.
Tian Yi and I ran towards the Monument. Students holding wooden sticks ran past us, heading for an armoured vehicle that had caught fire. An old man was shouting out to some members of the Workers’ Federation’s Dare-to-Die Squad, ‘Do as the students have asked and put down your weapons…’ Then he knelt on the ground and wept.
Another prolonged burst of machine-gun fire erupted in Changan Avenue. The noise numbed my ears. Tian Yi and I stood still. The gunfire stopped. I heard a crowd yelling angry slogans, then saw someone carrying the limp body of the young boy we’d just seen. There was blood dripping from him. It looked like he’d been shot dead.
I broke into a cold sweat. ‘It’s too dangerous out here!’ I said, pulling Tian Yi towards the underpass. I thought we’d be safer in there. But as we approached the entrance, another round of gunfire rang out, and in a panic we threw ourselves to the ground.
I looked up to see what was going on. The troops and tanks had sealed Changan Avenue at the north-east corner of the Square. A small crowd of people were crouching behind the low cement wall of the underpass’s entrance. I couldn’t tell whether they were civilians or students. I guessed they were within range of the machine guns’ bullets, and were too afraid to move.
Two workers holding metal rods crept over to us and said, ‘You’ll be killed if you lie here any longer. Those bastards are shooting everyone in sight! If you don’t have weapons, get out of here!’
‘Is there anyone in the underpass?’ I asked.
‘If you go inside, you’ll never get out again. There are thousands of people down there already. Run south to Qianmen Road. The army hasn’t sealed it off yet.’
I couldn’t believe it. This was one of the thugs who’d swindled us in the woods of the Old Summer Palace. I recognised his voice instantly, but fortunately Tian Yi didn’t. I stared at his back as he walked away.
That expression, caught in mid-flow, lies immersed in coagulated blood.
More tanks approached the Square from the east, followed by line after line of soldiers advancing like rows of moving walls.
I saw a girl who looked like Nuwa walk towards the martial law troops, her red skirt fluttering behind her as she went. The people squatting behind the cement wall of the underpass entrance stood up and followed her, shouting, ‘The People’s Army loves the people!’ There were now twenty or thirty people standing in front of the troops in the north-east corner of the Square. Among the crowd, I spotted a gangly Provincial Students’ Federation marshal who’d attempted to depose Tang Guoxian the day before. His fist was raised high in the air.
The gunfire resumed again. Several people were hit. Some of them staggered backwards, some fell and rolled about in agony. Others dropped flat on their stomachs and lay still. But the girl in the red skirt was unscathed. She continued to walk towards the guns that were pointing straight at her. Then, when she was just two or three metres away from them, a shot was fired… Her left foot stepped backwards, her arms and body tilted forward, then she lost balance and crumpled onto the ground.
‘Fucking hell! They’re executing people in cold blood!’ I looked away. I couldn’t bear to watch. My heart was thumping. I turned to look at Tian Yi. She was sitting down, her eyes tightly closed and her teeth clamped over her lower lip. She looked as though she was about to faint. I knelt down and put my arm around her.
‘I’ll take you over to the Red Cross tent. It’s just over there.’ I wanted to find a doctor and ask him to give her a tranquilliser.
‘The monsters! They’re killing people!’ she said, her body trembling all over.
Nurses in white coats ran past us to tend to the students lying on Changan Avenue. I pulled Tian Yi up and tried to drag her towards the Red Cross tent, but she couldn’t move her legs, so I heaved her onto my back and carried her. A wailing ambulance was parked outside the tent. The blue-andwhite light of its rotating beacon dazzled my eyes. When we got there, two nurses and a student arrived carrying the girl in the red skirt by her arms and legs. I looked down. It was Nuwa. She’d been shot in the thigh. Blood was gushing from the wound. Her blood-drenched toes were as clenched as bird claws. One of her red sandals was dangling from her foot by a thin leather strap.
A nurse squatted on the ground and shouted, ‘Quick, bandage her leg! We must get her into the ambulance as soon as possible! Put her down. She needs to lie flat on her back.’
Tian Yi pushed me away, untied the towel from her arm, leaned down and put it over Nuwa’s thigh. The nurse pressed the towel deep into the bullet wound and wrapped a long strip of gauze around it to hold it in place. Then Tian Yi and I took Nuwa’s feet, the nurse took her arms and we carefully lifted her up. Steam rose from the drops of blood that dripped onto the concrete paving stones.
‘Don’t let her die!’ Tian Yi cried out suddenly.
‘She wanted to tell the soldiers to stop shooting,’ the nurse said. ‘The guns were pointing straight at her, but she kept walking towards them. She was helping me drag away the wounded just a few minutes before.’
When the nurse looked up, I realised it was Wen Niao. The cap above her thick eyebrows was smeared with blood. She wiped the blood from her hands onto her white coat. ‘Quickly, let’s put her into the ambulance. You’re the security chief, aren’t you? Tell your student marshals to move away from the troops. There’s a massacre taking place!’
‘We know this girl. She’s a Beijing University student.’ I could hardly breathe. My vision blurred. We carried Nuwa into the ambulance and tied her to a stretcher. ‘What about him?’ I said, spotting another body lying outside the rescue tent.
‘He’s dead already,’ Wen Niao said, breathing heavily. ‘He got hit by two bullets.’
I knelt down and took a closer look. A jolt of horror ran through me. He looked like Mou Sen, but I didn’t dare believe it was him. One of his eyes had been blown out and his face was covered in hair and blood. I slipped my hand into his pocket and found my packet of cigarettes.
‘Mou Sen! Mou Sen! It’s too much!’ I howled at the top of my voice. My legs shook as though struck by bullets.
I heard Wen Niao shouting, ‘Hurry up, we’re leaving!’ I turned round and saw her pushing Tian Yi into the ambulance. She banged twice on the door and shouted, ‘Go, go!’
‘Take care, Dai Wei…’ Tian Yi said, stretching her hand towards me. As she unfurled her fingers, the shiny bullet cartridge she’d been clasping flew into the night sky. I watched the ambulance speed off, its siren wailing loudly again, and felt my chest tighten.