Pictures of 1989: Headquarters for Defending Tiananmen on May 24, 1989

Banners on the Monument of People's Heroes spell out demands of the movement.

Wang Dan (left) announces the new Headquarters for Defending Tiananmen, with him is Lao Mu (center) and Liu Suli (right).

Reporters gather for the press conference.

Student broadcast center at Tiananmen Square.

Posters denouncing Li Peng at Peking University.

Pictures of 1989

This Day in 1989: May 26, Students Vote to Continue Occupying Tiananmen Square

Along with the new Headquarters for Defending Tiananmen Square, Li Lu had organized a new student parliament in the Square as a deliberate and decision-making entity. In the night between May 25 and 26, 1989, the parliament had an overnight session debating the merits of continued occupation in the Square. A vote was cast at 5 o'clock in the morning on four options:

1. Defending the Square with a confrontational stance (坚守广场，主动出击): 162, 56%
2. Persisting in the Square while seeking a dialogue (积极对话，坚持广场): 80, 27%
3. Keeping the purity of the movement, no withdraw, no dialogue （保持纯洁，不撤不谈), 38, 13%
4. Keeping the status quo, let chips fall where it may (维持现状，自生自灭), 8, 3%

It was not clear what the real differences between some of the choices, but the voting result clearly demonstrated that the overwhelming majority of the delegates to this parliament favored an aggressive and continued occupation of the Square. Li Lu would later use this result as his mandate to defeat various proposals of withdrawing.

In this afternoon, Yang Tao arrived at the Square from Peking University with his "empty campus" proposal, in which all students leave the city altogether. He appeared to have the ears of Chai Ling and Feng Congde but not Li Lu, who regarded it as just another attempt to get the students to withdraw.

Feng Congde continued to struggle with the chaotic financial situation in the Square. He had learned that the Beijing Students Autonomous Federation had taken a sizable donation fund with them when they were forced out.

At Tiananmen Square, a new red banner was installed on the Monument to People's Heroes, spelling out the new goals for the movement under martial law: "Commerce the National People's Congress, Improve democracy; Impeach Li Peng, End the Military Rule." (召开人大，推进民主；罢免李鹏，结束军管). Wang Dan posted a poster at Peking University with an urgent appeal for students to reinforce their comrades at the Square.


Days of 1989

This Day in 1989: May 24, Headquarters for Defending Tiananmen is in Charge

The newly established Headquarters for Defending Tiananmen Square made its first public appearance on May 24, 1989. In an elaborated ceremony, Wang Dan read a prepared statement grandiosely titled The Final Decisive Struggle between the Brightness and Darkness (光明与黑暗的最后决斗). The statement declared that the students had nowhere to retreat by will persist with their occupation of Tiananmen Square until the "Li Peng regime" was toppled.

Chai Ling, once again the Commander-in-Chief, led the rest of the officers and the crowd with a solemn oath:

I swear: I will protect the republic and Tiananmen Square with my young life. Heads can roll, blood can flow, but the People's Square can never be lost! We are willing to fight until the last person.

Officers designated for various tasks sprang into action to organize the occupation. They consolidated media operations, started to publish their own daily newspapers, launched a clean-up effort, and reorganized the student marshals. It was the beginning of what would later become half-jokingly referred as the "People's Republic of Tiananmen Square."

Lost in the shuffle was Wang Chaohua and her Beijing Students Autonomous Federation. They had lost their chance of returning to the Square and any leadership role.


Days of 1989

This Day in 1989: May 23, Mao's Portrait Defaced

On May 23, 1989, Wang Juntao put his vision of a new movement leadership into motion by rounding up all existing leaders and put them into a large conference room at the Institute of Marxism, Leninism, and Mao Zedong Thought a couple miles off Tiananmen Square. There, they formed a new coordination group that became known as the Joint Conference. Bao Zunxin was selected as the nominal leader but it was clear that Wang Juntao was running the show.

Among the many decisions they made to consolidate power and impose order to the chaotic occupation of Tiananmen Square, the most critical one was to endorse the provisional headquarters formed the day before and formally chastised it as the Headquarters for Defending Tiananmen Square. Chai Ling and her lieutenants remained as the leaders of the new headquarters, much to the dismay of Liu Gang and others who resented her leadership styles.

It was also a hot day at the Square, as massive demonstrations continued. In the early afternoon, three men at the base of Tiananmen threw plastic shells filled with paint onto the giant portrait of Mao Zedong and left a few visible stains on the holy picture. Students, suspecting it as a government conspiracy act, detained the three men immediately. With most of their leaders absent from the scene, students made a quick decision to hand the three to police.

The three men, Yu Zhijian (余志坚), Yu Dongxiao (喻东晓), and Lu Decheng (鲁德成), turned out not to be government agents but from Mao Zedong's home Hunan Province. They were a teacher, a local newspaper art editor, and a truck driver, respectively. For their act of defacing the portrait, Yu Zhijian received a life sentence, Yu Dongxiao 20 years, and Lu Decheng 16 years in jail.

Shortly after the defacing incident, a severe thunderstorm mixed with sand and hail belted the Tiananmen Square.

Also on this day, Wan Li, the chairman of the National People's Congress Standing Committee, cut short of his state visit in North America and returned to China. Wang Juntao, Hu Jiwei, and others had high hopes for Wan Li to open an emergency meeting of his committee to reevaluate the martial law. But Wan Li did not make it all the way to Beijing. He stopped, or was stopped, at Shanghai "for health reasons."


Days of 1989