April 27, 1989 is arguably the most glorious day of the 1989 student movement. On this day, hundreds of thousands of college students in Beijing walked out of their campuses, despite that the demonstration was canceled at the last minute under the pressure and in the face of the new People's Daily editorial which accused their movement as a deadly turmoil.
Throughout of years, many people had expressed that this was the date that they remembered most when looking back of the days twenty years ago.
The event of that day is detailed in my book excerpt.
Also on the heels of this demonstration, Liu Xiaobo returned to Beijing from his academic stay in New York. He had heard the editorial while changing planes at Tokyo but decided to carry forward with his plan. Li Lu was on his way to Beijing from his school at Nanjing. Both of them would play significant roles in the latter stage of the movement.
At Shanghai, the outspoken newspaper World Economics Herald was finally shutdown on this day. At Beijing, while the demonstration was still in progress, news broadcast indicated that the government was ready to hold dialogues with students.
Days of 1989
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