People of 1989: Yu Zhijian (余志坚)

Born in 1963, Yu Zhijian had graduated from a teaching college in Hunan for five years by 1989. He was initially given jobs teaching at local elementary and middle schools. But he soon grew tired of it and resigned in 1988. In his own words, he spent most of this time with his best friends Lu Decheng and Yu Dongyue, enjoying a free lifestyle.

With the breakout of the 1989 student movement, the three started to display banners and make speeches in a couple of cities in Hunan province. By mid May, they decided to go to Beijing and arrived there on May 18.

On May 23, with the movement stalled after two days of martial law, they decided to do something dramatic. In that afternoon, the three came under the Tiananmen and threw egg shells filled with paint onto the giant portrait of Mao Zedong, defacing it.

It happened at the time when most student leaders were off the square at a strategic meeting. The remaining student picket team arrested the three. After a brief discussion, Zhou Yongjun and Guo Haifeng decided to hand them to the government, fearing for lending the government excuse to suppress the movement.

After the massare, Yu Zhijian received a life sentence (Yu Dongyue got 20 years and Lu Decheng 16). After eleven and half years of prison, Yu Zhijian was released early for medical reason. He managed to escape from China into Tailand in 2009 and arrived in US. With a political refugee status, he lived with his family in Indiana. They also have been taking care of Yu Dongyue, who had become mentally incapacitated by the experience.

Yu Zhijaing (right) with his wife and son.

Yu Zhijian died on March 30, 2017, of diebetes. He was 54.

People of 1989

This Day in 1989: January 27, 1991: Wang Dan, Guo Haifeng, et al Sentenced; Liu Xiaobo, Xiong Yan, et al Released

On January 27, 1991, Beijing Intermediate People's Court handed down a series of sentences to 1989 movement leaders:

1. Ren Wanding: 7 years
2. Bao Zunxin: 5 years
3. Wang Dan: 4 years
4. Guo Haifeng: 4 years
5. Yao Junling: 2 years

While another group of leaders were released without prison terms:

1. Liu Xiaobo
2. Chen Lai
3. Li Chenghuan
4. Liu Suli
5. Lv Jiamin
6. Xiong Yan
7. Chen Bo
8. Wen Jie
9. Ding Xiaoping

Days of 1989

Pictures of 1989: Students Participate Funeral at Tiananmen on April 22, 2015

Students from the University of Politics and Law enters Tiananmen Square.

Students from the University of Politics and Law. The tall one by the red flag in back row is Pu Zhiqiang. The one wearing a black sleeve band in front is Wu Renhua.

Students sit down in front of the Great Hall of People waiting for the funeral, under the watchful eyes of police.

Students from Tsinghua University wait for the funeral.

Students waiting for the funeral

Students from University of Politics and Law sing patriotic songs.

Students in the Square observe a moment of silence at the start of the funeral.

At the funeral inside of the Great Hall of People, leaders pay last respect to Hu Yaobang's body.

Students Zhang Zhiyong, Guo Haifeng, and Zhou Yongjun (from left to right) kneel down with their petition.

Other students persuade the kneeling three to give up the petition. 

Pictures of 1989

This Day in 1989, June 4, the Day of Massacre

After a fateful night, the morning of June 4, 1989, was a mixture of anger, despair, and confusion in Beijing. Martial law troops were on all the main streets and intersections and in a trigger happy mood. Gun fires could be heard all over this ancient capital.

At Chang'an Avenue east of Tiananmen Square, hundreds of residents staged a standoff in front of an equal number of soldiers. The civilians shouted "Fascists!" and repeatedly attempted to approach the soldiers. They were met by barrages of gun fire. Many fell to ground. This agonizing scene repeated many times throughout the late morning.

Elsewhere, angry residents were able to hunt down a few soldiers who had been separated from their troops. Several soldiers were beaten to death, burned, and hung on buses or overpasses. At Muxidi, where the most intensive battle was fought the night before, a column of more than seventy armored personnel carriers was mysteriously abandoned on the street. Thousands of residents surrounded and burned them.

In the afternoon, a simple announcement was cladestinately broadcast by Radio Beijing's English broadcast:

Please remember June the Third, 1989. The most tragic event happened in the Chinese capital, Beijing.

Thousands of people, most of them innocent civilians, were killed by fully-armed soldiers when they forced their way into city. Among the killed are our colleagues at Radio Beijing. The soldiers were riding on armored vehicles and used machine guns against thousands of local residents and students who tried to block their way. When the army convoys made the breakthrough, soldiers continued to spray their bullets indiscriminately at crowds in the street. Eyewitnesses say some armored vehicles even crushed foot soldiers who hesitated in front of the resisting civilians. [The] Radio Beijing English Department deeply mourns those who died in the tragic incident and appeals to all its listeners to join our protest for the gross violation of human rights and the most barbarous suppression of the people.

Because of the abnormal situation here in Beijing there is no other news we could bring to you. We sincerely ask for your understanding and thank you for joining us at this most tragic moment.

Most students who were at Tiananmen Square the night before had safely retreated to the campus area, where there was no military in sight. Bodies crashed by tanks at Liubuko were displayed at the University of Political Science and Law. Impromptu memorial services were held at many schools.

At Peking University, student leaders held a last meeting before they dispersed into hiding or on the run. The Preparatory Committee there issued a series of statements in the name of Beijing Students Autonomous Federation and dispatched student reporters to hospitals and other campuses to collect the names and numbers of the dead. They would soon cease their operation as well.

The student leaders were missing Guo Haifeng, who was arrested the night before at Tiananmen, the only student leader captured thus far.

Separately, Fang Lizhi and his family are seeking contacts with the American Embassy for refuge. After being turned away on the first contact, they would spend the night hiding in a hotel.


Days of 1989

This Day in 1989: April 22, Students Participate Hu Yaobang Funeral at Tiananmen Square

On April 22, 1989, tens of thousands of students participated in Hu Yaobang's state funeral after staying in Tiananmen Square for the whole night. After the funeral, three students, Zhang Zhiyong, Guo Haifeng, and Zhou Yongjun staged a spontaneous kneeling down petition at the steps of the Great Hall of People. These dramatic scenes are described in my book excerpt.

Among the very few students who did not participate in the funeral demonstration were Shen Tong and his friends in a little club called Olympic Institute. They stayed in Peking University and started to plan for an independent media center for the student movement.


Days of 1989

Book Excerpt: Hu Yaobang's Funeral

The following excerpt is from my book Standoff at Tiananmen, chapter 4, describing the scene of students participating in Hu Yaobang's state funeral on April 22, 1989. The same excerpt had previously appeared on Danwei.

Substantial police forces did show up at daybreak. They built up a human barrier in front of the Great Hall of People. From there they watched the students intently but otherwise showed no desire to evict them out of the Square.

Just before sunrise, a platoon of honor guards marched out of Tiananmen, crossed Chang'an Avenue, and entered the Square from its northern edge. It was the time for the traditional flag-raising ceremony. As they stopped at the giant National Flag Pole, the hundreds of thousands of students stood at attention. They turned to face the rising Five-Starred Red Flag, singing the national anthem at the top of their lungs:

Arise! All who refuse to be slaves!
Let our flesh and blood
Become our new Great Wall!
As the Chinese nation faces its greatest peril,
All forcefully expend their last cries.
Arise! Arise! Arise!
May our million hearts beat as one,
Brave the enemy's fire,
March on!
Brave the enemy's fire,
March on!
March on! March on! On!

Originally composed as the theme song for a patriotic movie during the anti-Japanese war era, "March of Volunteers" was a rousing anthem inspired by "La Marseillaise". Even in peacetime, the sense of grandiosity, urgency, and even desperation of the song was enough to cause one's blood to boil. Now, at the center of the nation, defying their own government, hundreds of thousands of students were singing the anthem in one voice. It was a moment of great crisis, uncertainty, and hope. Most of them had tears in their eyes. Looking at the rising flag, they wondered how this day would end.

The anthem finished just as the flag reached the top of the pole. Then, it began an agonizingly slow decent. As it settled into a half-staff position in honor of Hu Yaobang, students sang the somber L'Internationale. The aggressive fighting spirit was replaced by a strong sense of sadness as more tears were shed.

In the crowd, Chai Ling was feeling an unprecedented sense of togetherness. She made a mental note of how many of her friends were present. She also spotted an unexpected figure: a die-hard Communist Party member who had worked hard to prevent students from protesting. But there he was, participating in this historical event with nothing but sincerity.

The sheer size and determination of the students must have impressed the authorities as well. Several officers came down from the long flights of stairs of the Great Hall to meet with student leaders in the early morning. As a good-will gesture, they allowed the students to remain in the Square for the duration of the funeral service. The service would also be broadcast live through the loudspeakers in the Square for their benefit. Predictably, however, they denied students' request to have their own representatives attending the service inside the Great Hall. Finally, the officials requested students to back away to make room for arriving vehicles. Under the guidance of Wuer Kaixi's bullhorn, the huge crowd grudgingly complied with discipline. Wishful but unfounded rumors were spreading that Premier Li Peng had agreed to meet with students after the funeral.

The Great Hall of People was one of the cornerstone masterpieces constructed during the renovation of Tiananmen Square in the 1950s. It was designed to host mass conferences typical in the communist political scene. It consisted of an auditorium that could seat ten thousand people and many palace-style meeting halls for receiving foreign dignitaries as well as domestic visitors. Symbolically, it was also the site of the National People's Congress which met here annually in the spring. It was built with an architecture of Stalinist grandiosity and covered an area of forty three acres. A dozen solemn pillars, each eighty-two feet high, dominated the front face. They supported an expanded eave decorated with a National Emblem, establishing the building as the symbol of the highest power of the land. Underneath, a long and majestic set of stairs, divided into three tiers, led to its front gates.

The memorial service commenced inside the Great Hall as the clock struck ten. Curiously, all top officials wore traditional "Mao Suits" to bid farewell to the man who had abolished the attire. Zhao Ziyang delivered a eulogy filled with familiar and impersonal praises. As the National Anthem was played inside and broadcast on the loudspeakers outside, students sang once again. They sang with their greatest devotion and force, hoping that their collective voice could carry enough power to penetrate the granite walls of the Great Hall. Then, they bowed their heads to observe a moment of silence.

Although their voices might not have been heard, their presence was undoubtedly felt by everyone inside. Ge Yang, a prominent magazine editor, observed:

After Zhao Ziyang delivered the eulogy for Hu Yaobang, we filed past to pay our last respects. As we walked by the glass doors of the Great Hall of People, many lingered for a moment to observe the many thousands of students sitting outside on the Square. Rows of soldiers stood with arms linked to separate the students from us. I felt rage as I stood there silently watching them. The atmosphere was tense. Some of the officials feared that the students might try to force their way into the Great Hall. A soldier came over and asked me politely to move on.

My driver walked up to me and took my arm. I replied, "I just want to stand here for a while. I belong to the Communist Party, and I was wounded serving the Party during the war. I have seen much, but I have never before seen such abuse of students by Party members like yourself."

The soldier listened and then left.

Referring to the rows of soldiers separating the students from the dignitaries inside the Great Hall, Ge Yang noted in a poem that "a wall of brute force" had split the land into two sides. "On one side lay Hu Yaobang's body, but on the other side was his soul."

Inside the Great Hall, Hu Yaobang's body was lying in state covered with the flag of the Communist Party. Officials and dignitaries walked past slowly to pay their last respects. At the end of the service, as tradition dictated, the funeral procession carrying the body would exit the Great Hall, circle Tiananmen Square, and then head west on Chang'an Avenue for the crematorium in the suburb. As funeral music played endlessly from the loudspeakers, students in the Square eagerly but patiently waited for the sight of the hearse. It was their own chance to bid farewell to Hu Yaobang.

It had been a long night and morning. As the farewell process dragged on inside, many decided that they had fulfilled their desire and mission. They trickled out of the Square for food and rest. But a few thousand persisted. They crowded toward the Great Hall of People to get a peek of the hearse.

It was after another long wait when word came that the funeral possession had already been spotted on Chang'an Avenue heading west. Along the boulevard, millions of residents lined the sidewalks to give Hu Yaobang a dignified send-off. Tens of thousands of bicycles followed the hearse on the side, ringing their bells. It was a scene reminiscent of that for late Premier Zhou Enlai in 1976. But this time, the hearse had skipped Tiananmen Square where thousands of students had been waiting.

A small chant emerged from the angry crowd and gradually grew into a roar:

"Li Peng! Come out!"

"Li Peng! Come out!"

The crowd surged forward. Soldiers, with their arms interlocked, struggled to hold their lines. At the forefront was Wuer Kaixi, still with the bullhorn in his hand, calling for Premier Li Peng.

"Look," screamed Wuer Kaixi, "so many students have starved for a whole day just for the opportunity to talk to you." He shouted, "after forty years of the People's Republic, this is the first time a man has stood under the National Emblem, in front of the Great Hall of People, in front of the highest authority of the land, and demanded a dialogue with you. I protest! You are shameless!"

Wuer Kaixi's statement was not historically accurate. Calling out national leaders in front of the Great Hall of People was far from an invention of this new generation. It had happened many times during the turmoil of the Cultural Revolution. Even more recently, Chen Ziming and Wang Juntao had witnessed the same scene during the April Fifth Movement in 1976. Yet Wuer Kaixi was certainly sincere in his sentiment. The young students never had the chance to receive a proper education of this part of history and they believed without a doubt that they were making an effort that nobody had ever made before.

It did not take long for some hot heads to suggest that they could push through the soldiers and storm the Great Hall. Surveying the numbers, Wuer Kaixi thought that they had a decent chance. But fortunately, just as he was going to yell into his bullhorn, others prevailed in stopping him. After a heated discussion, they decided to send in representatives with their Seven-Point Petition, to which they still had not received any response. "If they still ignore us, we will just kneel down in front of them!" suggested an emotional Zhang Boli. Kneeling, of course, was the traditional protocol for meeting an emperor. Zhang Boli proposed the dramatic gesture as a symbolic protest.

"No way! I don't want to kneel down in front of the communists!" replied a terse Wuer Kaixi.

"If you don't, I will!" Guo Haifeng, who had been a part of the previous petitions with Wang Dan and then Li Jinjin, grabbed the petition paper and headed to the Great Hall of People. Two others, Zhou Yongjun and Zhang Zhiyong, followed him. Perhaps caught by surprise, the soldiers let them sneak through.

It was about half past noon. The three of them marched onto the middle tier of the long flight of stairs. They looked around. There was nobody nearby. Down below at a distance that seemed far away, thousands of students stood behind lines of soldiers. Most of the students were not aware of the plan but their attention was fixed after spotting three figures ascending the stairs. Still ahead and higher up, the giant doors to the Great Hall of People remained closed. There were only a few guards at the top of the stairs looking down at them.

Slowly, Guo Haifeng lowered himself to his knees. On his left, Zhou Yongjun followed reluctantly but only knelt with his right leg. On his right, Zhang Zhiyong knelt down with both knees and buried his head into his chest. But Guo Haifeng looked up in defiance despite his body position. He raised both arms holding the long scroll of petition paper over his head toward the National Emblem high above.

A shock wave propagated down the stairs and through the student body in the Square. A brief silence was immediately overcome by horrified cries and screams.

"No!" "No!"

"You can't kneel down! Stand up!!!"

Perhaps for the first time in their young lives, this new generation vividly felt that they and their government were not on the same side. The drama was so intense that nobody knew how to react to it. The three of them knelt there for as long as half an hour. Nobody came out of the Hall to receive or reject them. It felt like an eternity.

This Day in 1989: April 18, Students Sit-in at Great Hall of People and Xinhuamen

After spending the night in Tiananmen Square guarding the flowers and wreaths at the Monument to People's Heroes, the crowd from Peking University shrank to about two hundreds in the early morning of April 18, 1989. They had come up with a Seven-Point Petition which they intended to submit to the National People's Congress.

Wang Dan and Guo Haifeng led the remaining crowd onto the steps of the Great Hall of People. When it opened the door in the morning, they went in and submitted the petition to an office. Wang Dan obtained a receipt and then left the scene. But the crowd was not satisfied and remained at the site. They wanted to have People's Representatives to receive the petition in person. Another copy of the peitition was made and Li Jinjin took the lead to organize a day-long sit-in. It was by the evening hour when three People's Representatives finally agreed to appear and receive the petition in front of the students. Li Jinjin met them on the steps and handed the paper in a scene resembling a formal diplomatic manuver.

Li Jinjin left the scene and returned to Peking University, where to his horror he saw large groups of students rushing out of the campus to reinforce the crowd at Tiananmen.

Later that night, a sizable crowd gathered in front of Xinhuamen, the site of the central government and engaged a push-and-shove match with the guards there. They demanded for the Premier Li Peng to appear in person for a dialogue. The situation was tense.

Eventually, however, the crowd dispersed in the early morning hours with the combined efforts of rational persuasion and the appearrance of more and more police force. No violence broke out that night, but the same could not be said for the next night.


Days of 1989

Document of 1989: Seven-Point Petition

In the early morning of April 18, 1989, hundreds of students from Peking University gathered around the Monument to People's Heroes at Tiananmen Square. They had spent the previous night there guarding the wreaths and flowers dedicated to the newly deceased Hu Yaobang. Wang Dan, Guo Haifeng, Li Jinjin, and Zhang Boli were all among the crowd. They proposed to draft a formal petition to the government.

After much discussion, a "Seven-Point Petition" was drafted:

1. Reevaluate and praise Hu Yaobang's contributions
2. Negate the previous anti-"spiritual pollution" and anti-"Bourgeois Liberation" movements
3. Allow unofficial press and freedom of speech
4. Publish government leaders' income and holdings
5. Abolish the "Beijing Ten-Points" [restricting public assembly and demonstrations]
6. Increase education funding and enhance the compensation for intellectuals
7. Report this movement faithfully

The petition was first written as big posters. Wang Dan and Li Jinjin made separate attempts to submit them to People's Representatives in the Great Hall of People that day. The list was also widely circulated among the campuses in Beijing and became the focal point in the early stages of the student movement. The government never responded directly to the petition.

On April 22, at the end of the state funeral for Hu Yaobang, three students made the most dramatic scene of kneeling down at the steps of the Great Hall of People and lifting a copy of the Seven-Point Petition over their head.


Documents of 1989

This Day in 1989: April 17, Students March to Tiananmen Square

After spending the entire previous day making a huge wreath, Chen Xiaoping and Wu Renhua were pleasantly surprised that their note had garnered a few hundreds of students at their University of Political Science and Law. At 1pm, April 17, 1989, they headed out of the campus toward Tiananmen Square. It was the first demonstration of 1989, also a first since the Beijing government outlawed such activities two years earlier.

They arrived in late afternoon and placed the wreath on the base of the Monument to People's Heroes. Wu Renhua placed a small bottle of Maotai as a traditional dedication to the deceased. (It was later interpreted as a protest against Deng Xiaoping as "small bottle" is a homophone of "Xiaoping" in Chinese.)


At Peking University, Wang Dan and about 40 students delivered a wrath to Hu Yaobang's residence in the afternoon. But that evening, thousands of students were milling around The Triangle when the news of the demonstration came and shocked the crowd. They could not believe the tiny University of Political Science and Law could have gone ahead of Peking University, the traditional school in leading student movements.

In the darkness, they grabbed a giant banner, dedicated to Hu Yaobang as "China's Soul," and organized a march of their own. Wang Dan and his friends from the Democracy Salon were among the leaders.

They arrived at Tiananmen Square around midnight. The place was empty and quiet. The Monument to People's Heroes was now decorated with quite a bit of flowers and wreaths, including the giant one from University of Political Science and Law. Guo Haifeng climbed up the base of the Monument and placed the "China's Soul" banner in the middle.

Fearing that the dedications could be removed by the authorities during the night as it had happened during the April Fifth Movement in 1976, the Peking University students decided to stay the night in the Square to guard the wreaths.


Days of 1989

NYT Archive 1989: Massive Arrests in Beijing

On June 11, 1989, New York Times reported that the Chinese government had announced that 400 people had been arrested for participating in the democracy movement. The only one named was student leader Guo Haifeng:

The television news program said that student leaders had been arrested, although it named only one student from Beijing University. The news tonight reported the apprehension of Guo Haifeng, a member of the standing committee of the recently formed independent student union.

''He was arrested just as he and a group of rioters were about to burn an armored personnel carrier,'' the announcer said, without indicating on which day the arrest took place. Nor did he say what kind of punishment the students would receive, and called upon other student leaders to turn themselves in.

''Those leaders who have not been arrested should go to the public security organization and surrender themselves so that they may be dealt with leniently,'' the state television broadcast said. ''Those who refuse to surrender themselves will be arrested and dealt with seriously.''

Guo Haifeng was one of the three students who had staged a kneeling-down petition at Hu Yaobang's funeral. In the early morning of June 4, he was in a bus with several people making Motolov bombs when the bus driver was shot dead and all of them captured by soldiers. He was initially charged for attempting to burn an armed personnel carrier and even destroy Tiananmen itself. But these were eventually dropped for lack of evidence. He was later sentenced for four years on lesser charges.

Presumably, the vast majority of the unnamed arrestees were "rioters and hooligans", who had bravely resisted the advance of the martial law troops. They received much more severe punishments than the students.

Hu Yaobang's Funeral

Hu Yaobang's funeral on April 22, 1989, was one of the most dramatic event in the 1989 movement. However, the report on New York Times that day was disappointedly simple and flat and missed most of the drama:

A crowd defying a ban on public protests swelled to more than 100,000 Friday night in Beijing's central square to press demands for more democracy. It was by far the biggest protest in China since the end of the Maoist era more than a dozen years ago.
Tens of thousands of university students later camped all night in the square, to foiling Government plans to close off the area in the morning and keep them from holding a mass rally today.
As the students chanted for democracy, China's top officials, guarded by the military, entered the Great Hall of the People this morning for memorial ceremonies for the former Communist Party leader, Hu Yaobang, whose death last week touched off the demonstrations.
The sheer size of the crowd and the level of dissatisfaction it reflected seemed certain to put new pressure on the Government, although no one seemed to know whether China's leaders are more likely to react with concessions or with a crackdown.

The day before, it had been publicly announced that the Tiananmen Square would be sealed off at 8am for the funeral possession. On the same day, Big Posters bearing the signature of the "Provisional Action Committee", concocted by Liu Gang and Wuer Kaixi in the rain, showed up in all campuses in Beijing. It announced that all students should march to Beijing Normal University by 9pm, each person with enough food and drink to stay the night in the Square.

So they came, at Beijing Normal University, student possessions, with their school flags, kept pouring in from 7pm, almost like the parade of nation in the opening ceremony of the Olympics Games. Wuer Kaixi displayed his remarkable leadership skill for the first time in public. Riding on a bicycle with a bullhorn, he zigzagged throughout the field and managed to arrange all the schools in an orderly formation. Then, at 9pm, he climbed on top of a pair of parallel bars abd made a brief speech. He declared the establishment of a "Beijing Provisional Student Union", although no such thing actually existed. But it was okay, he was greeted by a thundering applause.

Then the students marched out, in five columns, with picket lines on each side. They reached the Square just after midnight. Caught off guard, police there couldn't do anything but let them marching into the Square. As the night turning into dawn, more and more students and even residents joined in.

As the funeral started at 10am, the 100,000 strong students in the Square stood in attention, listening to the broadcast from loudspeakers. A thick wall of police stood in front of them, guarding the entrance of the Great Hall of People. Ge Yang, a prominent magazine editor who attended the service inside remarked later that "a wall of brute force" had split the land into two sides, on one side laid Hu Yaobang's body, but on the other side was "his soul".

The "wall" of security was not necessary, as the students never planed to rush the funeral. They stood there waited, and waited. The custom of such funeral was that the funeral possession carrying Hu Yaobang's body would slowly drive around the Square before heading for the crematorium. The students waited for that to pay their last respect. But they waited in vain. Finally they learned that the hearse had skipped the Square all together and already left.

That's when the anger and chaos took over. The idea of storming the Hall crossed Wuer Kaixi's mind. But other student leaders nearby stopped him just in time. Three of them, Guo Haifeng, Zhou Yongjun, and Zhang Ziyong, took a copy of their 7-point petition and somehow walked through the police line and got on the stairs of the Great Hall of People.

Right there, with nobody from inside to greet them, Guo Haifeng knelt down and raised the petition high above his head with both hands. The other two followed suite. The three of them froze in their pose, right under the national emblem on top of the Great Hall.

A shock wave swept through the crowd in the Square. Everyone was in tears. Wuer Kaixi was screaming, to no one in particular, "I did not kneel down! They did!! But I did not kneel down!!!" He later remembered:

The soldiers began to beat us when we tried to leave the steps of the Great Hall. They really beat us, too. When we were finally out of Tiananmen Square, I fainted from hunger and exhaustion.