Qiu Fa grabbed his arm and said, ‘Where’ve you been?’
‘They killed Mou Sen,’ he replied blankly. ‘I was right next to him when it happened. We were in the north-east corner…’
‘Did you see whether there were any students left in the underpass?’ I was relieved I hadn’t hidden Tian Yi down there.
‘We walked towards the troops shouting “The People’s Army love the people!” They opened fire, and Mou Sen was struck by two bullets… Hai Feng and I jumped onto a bus with some other students and drove it down Changan Avenue to block the troops. But as the bus swivelled round, the soldiers showered us with bullets. The guy who was driving got hit. The bus was a wreck. Hai Feng and I jumped off. A soldier grabbed Hai Feng by the hair and flung him to the ground. I went down on my knees and held up my hands. The troops marched straight past me.’ His eyes glazed over.
‘One day we’ll get our revenge for this. I fucking swear it!’ Qiu Fa was usually immaculately groomed, but now the only clean part of him was his left ear. Both his shoes had been dragged off in the rushed evacuation. His feet were bleeding.
Xiao Li squatted down on the ground and stared blankly at the road ahead.
Wang Fei pressed the buttons of his walkie-talkie even though he knew the batteries were dead.
Hou Dejian staggered towards us, a student supporting him on either side. He looked shell-shocked. We stood scattered like detritus across the wide empty road on the south of the Square.
‘Down with Fascism! Down with Li Peng!’ someone shouted through a megaphone.
A Beijing resident walked up with a large basket of trainers and handed them out to students who’d lost their shoes. I checked the sizes. They were all too small for me. I went back into the bushes that some of the students had escaped through, picked up a plimsoll and a flip-flop that were nearer my size, and made do with those.
Bai Ling’s eyes were so swollen, they were now just two narrow slits. Wang Fei walked beside her, gripping her shoulders.
We began to rearrange ourselves into university groups. Flags and banners were brought out again and held aloft. Many of the girls were sobbing. The boys took their hands and led them on. Mimi was crying uncontrollably. Yu Jin heaved her onto his back and carried her. Old Fu shouted into his megaphone, ‘We will be back. Tiananmen Square belongs to the people!’
We walked west past Qianmen Gate, skirting the southern edge of the Square. Wu Bin’s eyes were blood red. He tied a bullet belt he’d stolen from a soldier to the end of a wooden stick and marched in the middle of our procession, waving it above his head. Big Chan was limping in front of me. His feet were badly cut too. Little Chan was holding his guitar for him, as the shoulder strap had broken. Mimi went over to walk beside Bai Ling. Her pale-blue dress was filthy.
‘They make us buy state bonds, and then spend the funds on ammunition to kill us with!’ Big Chan shouted. It looked as though he’d had to crawl through the bushes during the evacuation. His short-sleeved shirt had large green stains. The words HEIR OF THE DRAGON, which Hou Dejian had calligraphed across the back, were smeared with soil.
‘Fucking bastards!’ Little Chan shouted, lifting Big Chan’s guitar into the air. ‘I’ll go to the mountains of Yunnan and return with an army of peasants who will rid us of these bloody tyrants.’
‘Be careful,’ Dong Rong said, rushing up to us. ‘The army fired a round of shots at the public toilets back there a moment ago, after they saw someone take a flash photograph from the roof.’ He swept his hair back. He’d lost his sunglasses.
‘Butchers! Butchers!’ everyone shouted in unison as an army truck approached.
We walked slowly, in scattered ranks, occupying only one side of the road. Soon, we came to a stop to inspect a pool of blood on the ground. A pair of trainers lay in the sticky fluid that was bisected by a thick red wheel mark. Local residents told us that tanks had driven down this road shooting randomly into the crowd and that a young man was hit. His blood was spurting everywhere, but the army wouldn’t let anyone go to his rescue. If his wife hadn’t got on her knees and begged them to let her go to him, he would have died there on the street…
The floodlight shining outside makes the night as bright as day. The labourers are trying to demolish the balcony of the flat next door. There’s a deafening noise of drilling and hammering. The whole building shakes, then seconds later, I hear the balcony crash to the ground. The steel bars that run through to our balcony are bent so badly that the metal window frames twist, shattering the glass panes. Clouds of dust shoot into my room. ‘That’s my balcony!’ my mother yells. ‘You’ve no right to touch it!’ She coughs into her sleeve, grabs a torch and opens the front door. When she steps outside, the labourers shout, ‘Get back in! The roof’s about to come down. Get back into your flat now!’
‘How dare you take that roof down! My son is still lying in bed…’
‘We’re leaving the section of roof that covers your flat,’ the head labourer says. ‘Now go back inside. It’s not safe to stand there. Look, the landing’s been removed…’
Now my mother won’t be able to fetch any more of the flattened boxes she hangs outside the front door and uses to fuel the stove.
They start drilling into the water and sewer pipes. The noise is unbearable. The building judders so much that my body is tossed up and down. The iron bed slowly slides across the floor. I feel my eardrums are about to explode… Ten years ago, I promised my mother I’d take her to America and fulfil my father’s wish to be buried in free soil. She should be spending her days in the sunlight, chatting with her retired or laid-off friends, performing fan dances with her neighbours in the park… When the sun shines, even the dust is transparent. I want ultraviolet waves to fall on my face, on the palms and backs of my hands, on my clothes, my hair, my shoes. I don’t care if I’m inside a cage or outside, as long as the sunlight can reach me. When the sun comes out, there will be a warm breeze. A few leaves will fall from the trees. It will be the beginning of a new day…
‘Do you dare violate the rights of a Chinese citizen when the national flag is flying?’ I imagine she’s brought out the national flag I took on a march ten years ago and is waving it at them. She must have put it on a pole some time ago, waiting for this moment to arrive.
‘Put that flag down and get back inside! You’re illegally occupying state property. And you have no right to fly the national flag…’
‘The people will be victorious!’ my mother yells. ‘Down with Fascism!’
In the Land of the Nobles there is a plant called the xunhua. Its life is very short. It sprouts in the morning and dies the same evening.
As dawn approached, the air filled with a smell of scorched tyres and khaki uniforms.
A huge convoy of army trucks drove past, packed with soldiers. A crowd of about thirty men in white underwear passed us on the opposite side of the street and gave us the victory sign. Tang Guoxian said they were armed police who had thrown away their uniforms and refused to follow government orders.
Big Chan and Little Chan attached our university banner to some twigs and held it aloft, which made our group seem a little less bedraggled. But I was so exhausted by now I could hardly walk, let alone find the energy to cry out slogans. One restaurant we passed had already hung up a banner that said RESOLUTELY PROTECT THE GREAT LEADERS OF THE PARTY’S CENTRAL COMMITTEE. When Wu Bin saw it, he snatched his cigarette lighter from Tang Guoxian’s pocket, rushed over and set it alight.
About two thousand of us had left the Square, but our crowd seemed to dwindle the further we went, like a stream of water flowing into dry land. Yu Jin was carrying Mimi’s backpack. Mimi and Bai Ling were walking hand in hand. Xiao Li was traipsing barefoot behind Chen Di. The flags we’d brought with us from the Square were tattered and torn.