Pictures of 1989: Students Bicycle Rally on May 10, 1989

Students from Peking University start their rally.

Zhou Yongjun, Wang Dan, Wang Chaohua, and Zheng Xuguang (from left to right) join the rally.

Pu Zhiqiang in the rally, calling for press freedom.

Students in bicycle rally.

Students rally through Chang'an Avenue. (Photo by Philip Cunningham)

Students rally through Chang'an Avenue. (Photo by Philip Cunningham)

Students from Beijing Normal University at Chang'an Avenue. (Photo by Philip Cunningham)

Students rally at Tiananmen Square.

Students rally at Tiananmen Square.

Students protest in front of People's Daily, Chai Ling is speaking.

Students protest in front of People's Daily. (Photo by Philip Cunningham)

Pictures of 1989

Pictures of 1989: Students Submit Petition on May 2, 1989

Wang Dan (left front), Wang Chaohua (middle front) and other students on their way to submit a petition on May 2, 1989.

Pictures 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 22, BSAF Lost Control of Tiananmen Square

With the martial law troops blocked by still poised to enter the city any time, Tiananmen Square was in a state of uncertainty and anxiety. During the night of May 21, 1989, leaders of the hunger strike left the Square discreetly into hiding. Yet Wuer Kaixi, who had been banished from the leadership, returned to the Square after midnight. He too had heard "credible" rumors that this would be the night of bloodshed.

At two o'clock in the morning, Wuer Kaixi had to fight for his right to speak at the students' broadcast station at the Square. He eventually succeeded with Wang Chaohua's help. Then he screamed into the microphone to urge everyone to get out of the Square and move to the foreign embassy district for safety. His emotional and incoherent call was not heeled by the thousands of students. As he fainted, many thought he had lost his min

Although Wuer Kaixi had been expelled from the Beijing Students Autonomous Federation earlier for similar erratic behavior, most people still regarded him as the public face of that organization. Wang Chaohua had been working hard in the last couple of days to resurrect the organization as the student leadership. Her effort was now irreparably damaged.

During the day, former hunger strike leaders returned and Zhang Boli suggested that they needed to form a new leadership. He persuaded Wang Chaohua to take her Federation off-site for a reorganization and promised her that she would regain the leadership in 48 hours with a stronger Federation. Meanwhile, he engineered the formation of a "Provisional Headquarters" and installed Chai Ling as the Commander-in-Chief. Indeed, the new headquarters would look exactly the same as the defunct Hunger Strike Headquarters, with Li Lu, Feng Congde, and Zhang Boli acting as the main deputies to Chai Ling.

Wang Chaohua regarded the move as a coup. She left the Square dejected and disheartened. But nevertheless, she returned to Peking University to regroup and reorganize her Beijing Students Autonomous Federation and hope for a return in 48 hours.

Wang Juntao also spent part of this day at the Square observing the power vacuum. He reaffirmed his belief that the movement had gone beyond the students and maturer leadership was required. Yet he struggled with the thought of becoming the leader himself. As someone who was pessimistic on the eventual outcome, he was reluctant to step up and lead.


Days of 1989

This Day in 1989: May 21, Li Lu Stages his Wedding at Tiananmen Square

After failed to enter the city two nights earlier, the martial law troops stayed put on their routes surrounded by students and residents. On May 21, 1989, the city of Beijing returned to a strange normal. Martial law was in effect only on paper. There appeared to be no authoritative governance in the city.

Power vacuum also existed within the ranks of the students. With the end of hunger strike, the Hunger Strike Headquarters was now defunct. There was no clear leadership among the current sit-in at the Square, although Wang Chaohua was making headway with her long-forgotten Beijing Students Autonomous Federation. Seeing the chaotic situation, she felt that her first priority was to find a way for student to withdraw from the Square and end the dangerous standoff. In a meeting of student representatives from 50 colleges in Beijing, she found a clear majority supporting her view.

Yet the chaos at the Square produced one of the more memorable scenes in 1989. Li Lu and his girlfriend staged a wedding at the base of the Monument to People's Heroes, flanked by Chai Ling, Feng Congde, and Zhang Boli. The "new couple" marched and danced around the Square, bringing a surreal happiness to the anxious crowd.

Not too long after the wedding, these former leaders of the hunger strike decided it was time for them to leave, as rumors of a bloody push by the martial law troops that night became more and more credible. They divided up the fund and gave each leader 200 RMB and sneaked out the Square. All except for Li Lu, who decided to stay himself.

Outside of Tiananmen Square, concerned individuals were also springing into action. Hu Jiwei, a high-rank official who was then a member of the National People's Congress Standing Committee, was pushing for a signature drive among his colleagues to open an emergency session of the committee to discuss the legitimacy of the martial law. He was assisted by intellectuals such as Cao Siyuan and Zhou Dou, as well as the private Stone Corp.

Wang Juntao, on the other hand, was mobilizing all his friends and connections to establish a new
leadership structure that went beyond the students. He envisioned an all-inclusive entity to coordinate the workers, residents, intellectuals, students, and alike to steer and strength the movement.


Days of 1989

Book Excerpt: Meeting with Li Peng

The following excerpt is from my book Standoff at Tiananmen, chapter 9, describing the impromptu meeting between student leaders and the Premier Li Peng.

Wuer Kaixi was still dressed in a hospital gown and attached to an oxygen bag as his group was ushered into a large conference room inside the Great Hall of People. The room had high ceilings and vast space like a royal palace. A ring of comfortable sofas was placed in the middle of the room surrounded by circles of chairs. End tables with elegant flowers and tea cups stood between the sofas. There were also microphones on each table to facilitate conversation. Strangely, Wuer Kaixi felt somewhat at home. This was the Xinjiang Hall, named after the northwest Uyghur region where he had spent three years of his adolescence. The room was decorated with giant murals depicting the natural beauty of the region and artifacts of the Uyghur heritage. Typically, this room was used by government officials having audiences with selected visitors from the provinces. Today, it was a group of scratchy and starved students with wide eyes. They were entering a scene they had never dreamed of. Awkwardly, they sat down in the sofas on one side of the circle and waited. They did not know what they were waiting for.

After five minutes or so, Premier Li Peng appeared at the entry, along with an entourage of high level officials including Yan Mingfu and Li Tieying. Li Peng was wearing a gray "Mao Suit" and a solemn expression. He walked over to shake hands with each student and tried to make small talk. He was curious about Wang Dan's thick jacket, to which Wang Dan responded that it was cold in the Square at night. Wuer Kaixi's hospital gown also caught his attention. But the premier looked gloomy and uneasy. The only time he managed a half smile was when a student claimed to share the same hometown with him. Finally, he settled into his seat on the other side facing Wuer Kaixi and Wang Dan. He started the meeting by apologizing for being late, explaining that they had been held up by a traffic jam outside. Then he stated that there should be only one item on the agenda for this meeting. That was to stop the hunger strike immediately based on humanitarian principles.

It did not take long for Wuer Kaixi to get impatient. He was upset about Li Peng's apology which implied that the student movement was creating chaos in the streets. As Li Peng went on with a patronizing lecture, Wuer Kaixi cut him off: "Premier Li Peng, I am sorry that I have to interrupt you. Perhaps you thought you were only five minutes late. But I have to say, you are a month late!"

Wuer Kaixi was referring to the time when he led students chanting "Li Peng, Come Out!" outside of Xinhuamen on the evening of April 19. He stated that it was pressure from students that had led Li Peng to this meeting. Therefore, it should be the students who dictated the agenda. He did have a legitimate point. But his emotion was also starting to creep into his delivery.

Wang Dan, who maintained a calmer posture, interjected that the only way to persuade students to stop the hunger strike was to address the two conditions put forward by the student movement, "Not Turmoil, Equal Dialogue."

The rude interruption not withstanding, Wuer Kaixi and Wang Dan apparently started this meeting on a good footing by emphasizing their strengths and issues upfront. Patiently and intently, the premier was listening.

Just then, however, Wuer Kaixi was getting carried away. Without giving the other side a chance to respond, he burst out even more:

"You are much older than we are so I think it is appropriate for me to refer you as Teacher Li. So, Teacher Li, the problem at hand right now is not to convince us who sit here. We also want the students to leave the Square. But the situation at the Square is not one of a minority following the majority, but of 99.9% of the people following 0.01%. That is, if there is one hunger striker who chose not to leave, thousands of others will not leave either."

This was an absurd statement. Not only that he showed disrespect to the premier personally, but he was also misrepresenting his own side. The students at the Square had worked very hard to establish rudimentary democratic procedures. The student parliament led by Li Lu had almost nightly votes on ending the hunger strike, in which ninety percent or so consistently voted for continuing the strike. Wuer Kaixi had not spent enough time at the Square himself to appreciate or perhaps even be aware of these facts. He was painting himself into a corner by representing students as desperate and out of control.

Wang Dan tried to soften the blow. He calmly explained: "After Yan Mingfu's visit to the Square, we had conducted a poll of whether to leave the Square. More than ninety percent of hunger strikers voted not to leave." Sensing that the agenda was going astray, he quickly reaffirmed the two main student demands, "Not Turmoil, Equal Dialogue." If these two conditions were met, he said, they would be able to go to the Square and persuade all of the students to leave.

As other students were invited to express their opinions, Wuer Kaixi urged them to make their points quickly and concretely. But most of them repeated the same sentiments. One student did manage to raise the stakes. With an unusual clarity, Xiong Yan, a student from Peking University who was a member of the Dialogue Delegation, told the officials that it was not entirely up to the government anyway: "No matter whether the government recognizes our movement as patriotic and democratic or not, we believe history will. So, why do we insist on the government recognizing it? That is because it represents the will of the people. The people want to see if the government is still the people's government." Sitting on the other side, the party leader of Peking University could not help but speak up on his students' behalf as well.

Since being interrupted at the start, Premier Li Peng had been sitting quietly with a stone face. It was as if he were waiting for the students to self-destruct, which they did come agonizingly close to doing. After he made sure that all students had had a chance to speak, Li Peng pointedly started with a request that he would not be interrupted.

Perhaps inadvertently, he was immediately interrupted by a student. Li Peng swallowed hard but did not express his displeasure. Instead, he asked his ministers to give the government's response. Li Tieying, Yan Mingfu, and others took their turns with lengthy speeches that toed the party line. Finally, Li Peng spoke again. He emphasized that the only issue he was interested in was getting the hunger strikers off the Square to save their health and lives. Explaining the April 26 People's Daily editorial, he repeated the familiar platitude that they had never blamed the "vast majority" of students as instigating turmoil, which implicitly left the door open for "a small clique."

Then, in a confused attempt to directly address students' two demands, he raised his voice and offered a memorable passage: "We understand your two issues. As the premier and as a Communist Party member, I never hide my own opinions. But I can't express them today. I will find a more appropriate opportunity to express them later. But anyhow I think I have pretty much expressed my opinions anyway."

With that, he appeared to be closing the doors to further discussion. For the last time, he asked the students to stop the hunger strike. Wuer Kaixi, who had been clinging to his oxygen bag and becoming visibly weaker, confronted the premier again. Putting a brave face forward, Wang Dan stressed that, if Premier Li Peng's prospect of turmoil did materialize, it would be the government, not the students, who should be held responsible.

It was Yan Mingfu's job to put the meeting to bed. He told the audience that there was a note from the Square asking for the immediate return of Wang Dan and Wuer Kaixi. As soon as he said "This dialogue is now concluded," one of the students rose to protest: "This is not a dialogue. This is just a meeting." Students wanted to set the record straight that their demand for a dialogue had not yet been satisfied. Disinterested in semantics, Yan Mingfu concurred, "Yes, this was only a meeting."

The meeting, not a dialogue, lasted about an hour.

Avoiding eye contact, Li Peng shook hands with each student once again. He appeared impatient and annoyed. Wuer Kaixi had already slumped into his chair and was being attended to by several student nurses. He was suffering from an asthma attack. As everyone was filing out of the room, Wang Chaohua was still holding onto a slim hope. She shouted across the room to Yan Mingfu: "Please give me another hour, we might still be able to persuade the students to withdraw." Yan Mingfu walked away without acknowledging her. It was too little, too late.

The students walked out of the Great Hall of People on their own and informed other leaders that their talk had broken up because of Li Peng's stubbornness. Nobody was surprised. But now everyone was extremely depressed. There appeared to be no more possibility of a peaceful resolution.

This Day in 1989: May14, Dialog with Yan Mingfu

On May 14, 1989, the hunger strikers started to settle in Tianamen Square after spending their first cold night there. Feng Congde brought the giant "Hunger Strike" flag he made the night before and they raised it on the poles in the Square. The visible flag announced the purpose of their presence. Feng Congde also spent the day to build a makeshift broadcasting station there with loudspeakers.

The second day of the hunger strike proved to be rather eventful. Yuan Mingfu finally made the biggest concession on the government's side and agreed to a formal dialogue on the students terms. Yet the harshly organized dialogue collapsed under the weight of emotions, miscommunication, and mistrust, as described in my book excerpt here.

Before she crashed the dialogue, Wang Chaohua had spent a good part of the day soliciting prominent intellectuals to persuade students to end the hunger strike. In that evening, after the collapse of the dialogue, a dozen intellectuals were led into the Square to address the students directly. The intellectuals were cheered on enthusiastically when they expressed admiration and support to students, but were boo-ed when the word withdraw was mentioned. The mood turned sour when students objected Dai Qing's condescending tune and her perceived own agenda.

As the hunger strike continued, a fateful decision was made that the welcome ceremony for Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev was moved from Tiananmen Square to the airport. It was not only a huge slap in the face of the government but also a move by the government in calling the students' bluff, who was using the occasion as their main bargaining chip.


Days of 1989

Book Excerpt: Dialogue with Yan Mingfu

The following excerpt is from my book Standoff at Tiananmen, chapter 8, describing the dramatic failure in a dialogue between student leaders and government officials.

In that same morning Yan Mingfu learned that a decision had already been made to move the welcoming ceremony for Mr. Gorbachev out of Tiananmen Square. He was stunned. The summit was not only a diplomatic milestone for China, it had also attracted a huge crowd of international media. It would be worse than a slap in the face for the government. Visibly angry, he was nonetheless still clinging to hope. Encouraged by the previous meeting, he thought he might still have time. But he had to act even more boldly and quickly.

Yan Mingfu found Wang Dan, Wuer Kaixi, and Wang Chaohua still in the compound of his United Front Department. He gathered them in a small conference room. Calmly but officially, Yan Mingfu told them that the government was now ready for a formal dialogue. Students were free to select their own representatives. Yan Mingfu, and several other minister-level officials would represent the government side.

The students could not believe what they were hearing. It was a major concession to the demands of the students, something Yan Mingfu was not ready to do even the night before. Essentially, he was holding this dialogue completely on the students' terms: not only had he recognized them as legitimate student leaders, he also framed them as an equal party. Only a week earlier, the State Council Spokesman Yuan Mu had sworn to the world that this would never happen. In a state of shock, Wang Dan and Wuer Kaixi murmured that the representation on the government side might not be high enough. They would prefer either General Secretary Zhao Ziyang or Premier Li Peng. Yan Mingfu would have none of that. He cut them off and vigorously defended his own rank. Wisely, the students did not insist.

But they did have another request. The dialogue had to be broadcast live. Because of censorship rules, very few events were broadcast live in China. Everything, from government proceedings to the popular gala for Chinese New Year, was taped and edited before it could be shown to a general audience. The student leaders had no choice however. Rumors of contact with Yan Mingfu had been circulating in Tiananmen Square. The hunger strikers were worried that they might be sold out behind their backs. Without a live broadcast, they told Yan Mingfu, they might never be able to keep the confidence of their own people.

It was Yan Mingfu's turn to be reasonable. He was open to the idea but not sure if it would be technically feasible. Most equipment had been allocated to the summit. They might not be able to set up a live broadcast in time. He proposed an alternative that the dialogue would be videotaped. As soon as each tape was completed, it would be sealed and transported to CCTV under students' monitoring. So, even though it was not live, it would be a faithful delayed feed to be shown in its entirety. In the mean time, students could also make audio tapes on their own and send them to Tiananmen Square for replaying.

While the student leaders were still pondering the idea, Yan Mingfu dropped the bomb: the Gorbachev welcoming ceremony might not be held at Tiananmen Square whether if they withdrew from it or not. That sealed the deal.

The very possibility that the government might call their bluff on such a grand scale weighted heavily on Wang Dan, Wuer Kaixi, and Wang Chaohua. They had never intended to interfere with the nation's diplomatic work and never thought that it could even be possible. Not only would they bear the responsibility of embarrassing the nation, they would also lose the biggest bargaining chip in their hand. Without it, how could all this come to an end?

Wang Chaohua volunteered to find some prominent intellectuals to help persuade students to leave. Yan Mingfu was ready to help. He dispatched an office vehicle for Wang Chaohua to use. Another van was sent out shortly after to the University of Political Science and Law. Its mission was to fetch the Dialogue Delegation.

Wang Chaohua was familiar with the intellectual circle in the capital from her family background. She was particularly fond of Dai Qing, a famous journalist at the intellectual-oriented newspaper Guangming Daily. Ten years younger than Yan Mingfu, Dai Qing was also a child prodigy. After her father was martyred in the early years of revolution, Dai Qing was raised by Ye Jianying, one of the ten marshals of the People's Liberation Army who was instrumental in the coup that deposed the "Gang of Four." Yet Dai Qing had acquired a strong sense of independence. Taking advantage of the protection from her background, she published many daring essays echoing the views of dissidents such as Fang Lizhi. She also made a name for herself with a staunch, Quixotic opposition to the plan of building the Three Gorges Dam on environmental grounds. Wang Chaohua had known Dai Qing since her childhood. The two also worked on the same floor when Wang Chaohua interned at Guangming Daily.

On the night when the hunger strike decision was made, Wang Chaohua had visited Dai Qing and did nothing but cry in her tiny living room. She was hoping Dai Qing, with her name recognition, could provide needed guidance to the much younger students.

But Dai Qing had her own agenda in mind. This had been a couple of very good weeks for journalists. With Zhao Ziyang's blessing, the decades-old censorship policy melted away over night. With much personal nagging, Dai Qing had managed to get Hu Qili's approval for Guangming Daily to publish a full page of opinions by prominent but controversial intellectuals, an opportunity that was unthinkable just weeks earlier. She was busy assembling them into a symposium. Her invitees included many big names, such as Yan Jiaqi, a political scientist who had written a book on the history of the Cultural Revolution, and Bao Zunxin, who had spearheaded a series of enlightening books introducing ideas from the west. A month earlier, a similar but unauthorized symposium with many of the same attendees had convened to commemorate Hu Yaobang's death. The proceedings were published in the Shanghai-based World Economic Herald and resulted in its shutdown. Now, Dai Qing had the approval from a Politburo standing committee member to do the very same thing.

Wang Chaohua arrived at Guangming Daily just as Dai Qing was greeting her distinguished guests in a conference room. Dai Qing was in an exhilarated mood. She could see the paper, carrying the words of these people, causing a storm in its readership. She was not, however, prepared to see Wang Chaohua.

With one look at Wang Chaohua's tired and sad face, Dai Qing knew why she was here. Although sympathetic, Dai Qing was not about to have her little symposium hijacked by the student movement. Nonetheless, she invited Wang Chaohua into the room and introduced her as a student leader from the Square. But before Wang Chaohua could say anything or even shed a tear, Dai Qing laid out the purpose and importance of their symposium. With great excitement, she announced the deal she had struck with Hu Qili. A full page on Guangming Daily! Her enthusiasm was shared. To her audience, this was a tremendous breakthrough.

One by one, the intellectuals in their fifties and sixties read through their prepared speeches. There was little discussion or interruption. Wang Chaohua felt excruciating pain with the slow and dull pace of their lofty words with no substance. But she had to bite her tongue. She was raised with the greatest respect and deference for learned scholars. Hours were ticking away.

Finally, all of them finished what they had planned to say. As a courtesy, they asked Wang Chaohua for a few words. That was when she choked up. Tears streamed down her cheeks before she could utter a single word. In a rambling, bumbling voice, she told the meeting that the situation at Tiananmen Square was not the glorious and historical event the intellectuals had been fantasizing in their talks. Rather, it was extremely dire. As she went on, she was getting more and more upset because she knew her words were incoherent. She felt panic because she was failing to express what she needed to say. But through her teary eyes, she sensed that many in the room were also crying. As she begged the intellectuals that they must go to the Square and persuade students to withdraw, everyone echoed, "Yes, we have to go. We can't just sit and watch."

As Wang Chaohua was regaining her composure, the intellectuals set out to do what they did best. In a matter of minutes, they came up with a draft statement. Addressing the students in a parental manner, it expressed that the authors were "very understanding, very sad, and very worried" after hearing the news of the hunger strike. Since democracy could not be achieved in one day, and for the sake of long-term interests of China's reform and the Sino-Soviet summit, it appealed to students "to carry on the spirit of rationality and temporarily withdraw from Tiananmen Square."

It was not clear what the term "temporarily" meant. But it would not matter anyway, as the statement changed its tone right after that and spelled out its own demands of the government. It asked top leaders to make a public speech praising the student movement as patriotic and democratic and promise not to punish student leaders after the dust settled. It also demanded that the government recognize the autonomous organizations and pledge never to use force against students engaged in hunger strikes or sit-ins. If the government could not fulfill these demands, the statement said, its authors pledged to "fight to the end along with the students."

Perhaps the ending statement was just an empty slogan thrown in to appease students or to satisfy the authors' own egos. But it appeared that these intellectuals were ready to join the movement, thereby negating the appeal for students to withdraw. Their demands actually went beyond of those of the students, who had already consolidated theirs into two core items: "Not Turmoil, Equal Dialogue."

Wang Chaohua knew something was not right with this statement. But with her state of mind she could not quite put her finger on the flaw. It started to dawn on her that her hopes with these intellectuals might have been misplaced. They were hopelessly out of touch with reality. Reluctantly, she expressed her worry that a statement like this would not be able to persuade students to withdraw. Her voice was weak. She knew that she was not convincing anyone. Yan Jiaqi was already frustrated with the statement as it was. He smashed his palm on the table and declared that they were barking up the wrong tree. It was the government, not the students, he shouted angrily, that they should appeal to.

Wang Chaohua held a last bit of hope. Maybe she could get these intellectuals in a room with the hunger strike leaders. If they could persuade Chai Ling privately, the mission could become more hopeful. Dai Qing called the United Front Department, a natural place for such a meeting. She only heard a frantic voice on the other end claiming that nothing was available. After a few more phone calls, Dai Qing secured a small place for the meeting. Wang Chaohua took off in her designated car toward the United Front Department. She thought she would find Chai Ling there at the dialogue with Yan Mingfu.

But she was not prepared for what she would encounter.


It was finally the time for the Dialogue Delegation to shine. They were founded for this very purpose and had been preparing for several weeks. They had assigned designated speakers, each with a supporting team, to address specific issues. They had practiced and rehearsed. They felt confident and even comfortable to sit across a table with government officials to voice their issues reasonably and rationally.

In order for that to happen, though, Xiang Xiaoji and Shen Tong understood that they had to control the crowd on their own side, especially the hunger strikers. Yet they did not have much leverage. It was the hunger strike that had finally brought Yan Mingfu to the table. It would be impossible to exclude the hunger strikers, who distrusted the Dialogue Delegation, at this point.

The hunger strikers, on the other hand, had their own ideas. The prospect of a national broadcast, even with tape delay, had gotten them excited. What a great opportunity to get their voices heard! Chai Ling hurriedly collected banners from Tiananmen Square, including the one saying "Mom, I am Hungry" and rushed to the United Front Department. She placed them in the conference room as a backdrop on the students' side. She also brought a tape of her reading the Hunger Strike Manifesto. If they got to play the tape during the session, it would be broadcast nationwide and recorded permanently in history.

The large conference room on the second-floor was now set up like a diplomatic meeting with a long oval table. Yan Mingfu was not at the head of the table this time. Rather, he sat in the middle on the government side, flanked by the State Education Commissioner Li Tieying and ten other minister-level officials. Across the table, Shen Tong sat down directly facing Yan Mingfu. Xiang Xiaoji sat opposite Li Tieying. They were flanked by the assigned speakers from the Dialogue Delegation. Xiang Xiaoji had made sure that the arrangement demonstrated the equality of the two sides in the dialogue.

Wang Juntao was sitting in another room in the same compound. He and other young intellectuals were not invited to this formal dialogue. Perhaps in Yan Mingfu's mind, they had already served his purpose.

In the conference room, the formal, diplomatic atmosphere was broken by a group of hunger strikers standing right behind the Dialogue Delegation. They wore signatory headbands and solemn expressions. Xiang Xiaoji had made a compromise to allow a limited number of them in the room, presumably only to listen in. Many tape recorders were scattered about on the conference table. They were already running. In one corner of the room was a video camera with a CCTV logo. Shen Tong made sure that he saw a little red light blinking on the camera as he opened the meeting.

Initially, the dialogue was cordial and gracious. Speakers from the Dialogue Delegation presented their prepared cases. Yan Mingfu and Li Tieying listened intently and answered most questions with sincerity. But pretty soon Xiang Xiaoji and Shen Tong were flooded with little paper notes passed in from the hunger strikers behind them, who were getting impatient and wanted to raise their own concerns instead. It did not take long for the session to deviate from a focused theme. Both sides at the table tried to be patient but the discussion was getting more and more scattered.

Soon the hunger strikers were dissatisfied with simply passing the notes. Someone spoke up and suggested that the meeting hear them directly. Wuer Kaixi volunteered that he had a letter from a hunger striker with him. Without asking for permission, Cheng Zhen, a female student from Beijing Normal University and one of the initiators of the hunger strike, read the letter aloud.

Chai Ling had been quiet as usual. But she was upset about Wuer Kaixi's unilateral move. The letter was moving but lacked substance. She thought that Wuer Kaixi had wasted a golden opportunity. As the session moved on, Chai Ling could not wait any longer. Jumping on an opening, she asked Yan Mingfu pointedly: "What do you really think of the student movement?" Being put on the spot, Yan Mingfu struggled with being honest but not crossing the party line: "Personally, I would very much like to say that you are patriotic. But I can't say that."

Some more heated arguments erupted. A finger finally pressed down the play button on a tape recorder. All of sudden, Chai Ling's emotional voice, reading the Hunger Strike Manifesto, filled up the room:

We would like to ask all upright citizens of this country, ask every worker, peasant, soldier, resident, intellectual, celebrity, official, police, and those who made up the labels for us, place your hand over your heart and ask your conscience: what crimes had we commit? Did we cause turmoil? We boycott classes. We march and protest. We go on hunger strike. We give our lives. For what? But our emotions have been repeatedly played by others. We suffer through hunger to pursue the truth but only get beaten by soldiers and police. Our representatives knelt down to appeal for democracy but were ignored. Our requests for an equal dialogue are being delayed again and again. Our student leaders are facing grave danger.

As if another button had also been pushed, the rowdy room fell silent. For ten mesmerizing minutes, nobody made any sound or move. Everyone in the room, including Yan Mingfu himself, was in tears. At the table, Xiang Xiaoji and Shen Tong held hands.

We do not want to die. We want to live nicely because we are at the most beautiful age of our lifetime. We do not want to die. We want to study hard because our motherland is still so poor and we can't just die like this and leave her behind. Death is definitely not our desire. But if the death of one or a few could make the lives of many better, make the motherland rich and prosper, then we have no right to live shamelessly.

As soon as the recording was finished, a voice came from the hunger strikers: "The only thing we ask for is that the government stop calling us instigators of turmoil."


It had been more than an hour into the dialogue session. Students at Tiananmen Square were becoming restless. They had been told of the compromise that they would hear the proceedings with an hour delay. But there was no sign of any broadcast.

Feng Congde had completed a new broadcasting station in the Square with their own loudspeakers rigged up on flag poles. With others at the dialogue session, he became the de facto leader there. Anxious, he dispatched runner after runner to the United Front Department for updates. None of them had come back.

Another hour passed. It was now seven o'clock, time for the regular evening news broadcast on CCTV. There was no mention of the dialogue in the news. That was the last straw. Spontaneously, all hunger strikers in the Square gathered up and marched toward the United Front Department, which was only two to three miles away. They chanted "Stop the dialogue," "Direct Broadcast!" along the way.

Wang Chaohua arrived at the United Front Department and immediately found her car blocked by the raging hunger strikers on the street. She ran inside and saw Xiang Xiaoji stepping out of the conference room. They were separated by a throng of hunger strikers, some of whom were runners dispatched by Feng Congde. More and more of them were pouring in. It was at the verge of a disaster. Xiang Xiaoji was doing everything he could to dissuade the crowd from storming the conference room. He was obviously fighting a losing battle. In desperation, he proposed to have Wang Chaohua, who he had known as a mature and rational leader, into the room as a representative for everyone outside. The crowd did not really know or trust Wang Chaohua either. They demanded to have two of their own to accompany her.

Xiang Xiaoji was not aware that Wang Chaohua was already in a daze herself. After an exhausting day, she could no longer comprehend what was going on. In a rush, the three of them burst through the door and startled everyone inside. Without missing a beat, Wang Chaohua declared, "Stop the dialogue! There is no Broadcast!" We students must stay together as a whole, she explained, the dialogue could not go on without the approval of the hunger strikers.

It was the second time the room fell into a dead silence. Shen Tong lost his cool. He stood up, slammed his palm on the table, and pointed his finger directly to Yan Mingfu's face: "Why aren't you broadcasting this? You knew full well that we can't continue if there is no broadcast!"

Yan Mingfu's face turned ashy pale. He appeared to be genuinely puzzled. Surveying the ministers on his side, he got no answers. After a painful while, he muttered: "If we can't continue, then we can't."

He stood up and slowly walked out of the room.

Book Excerpt: Hunger Strike Decision

The following excerpt is from my book Standoff at Tiananmen, chapter 7, describing how the students reached the decision to launch a hunger strike.

On the same day as Shen Tong made his speech at The Triangle, a Big Poster showed up there. Signed by "a few graduate students," it called for an immediate hunger strike. It did not provide specific rationale for the proposal but it mentioned that the Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev was coming for a state visit within a week. So, it would be a good time to stage a protest at Tiananmen Square for the biggest impact.

The idea of a hunger strike was, of course, nothing new. Within every student movement in the past, the cry of "Hunger Strike" had always been heard, together with "Protest," "March," "Boycott Class," etc. But it had always been more of a menacing outburst than a serious proposal. Yet, this time it felt different.

More than a week earlier, the famous author Zheng Yi had found himself with a roomful of young, exhausted, and angry students who had just returned from Hu Yaobang's funeral. Having failed his earlier attempt in calling for a hunger strike at Xinhuamen, Zheng Yi found this audience, which included Wang Dan, Guo Haifeng, and other active student organizers, more receptive to his ideas. With a flare of drama from a seasoned writer, Zheng Yi laid out his personal experience during the Cultural Revolution: "Hunger strike is the most powerful and tested weapon in a mass movement." He advised the younger generation, "Should the government impose martial law, should they disallow Big Posters and demonstrations, you could immediately declare a hunger strike." He painted a vivid picture of how a hunger strike would develop: "As soon as there are dozens of people declaring a hunger strike, there will be hundreds joining in to support. Thousands will gather and watch. There will be donations and great attention paid to hunger strikers' petitions. In twenty four hours, the weaker ones will start to faint. Within forty eight hours, many will collapse. Seventy-two hours will be a critical juncture, there will be ambulances taking strikers to hospitals every minute. The shuttling ambulances will be the most dramatic scene in the city. The whole society will erupt!"

Zheng Yi did not say anything about what would happen after the seventy-two hour limit. The strikes he had experienced were resolved within that time frame. It did not occur to the students to ask that question either. They were the new generation, the best and the brightest, and the future of the nation. There could be no way for the government to allow a hunger strike to go past seventy two hours, when their health could be seriously compromised. Surely a dialogue would have commenced by then. Besides, there was an international law that required a government to intervene in a public hunger strike within seventy-two hours, or the government would be considered illegitimate.

The student leaders were excited about the possibilities. But, at the time, they were not fully convinced that the situation had warranted such a dramatic tactic. It should be attempted only as a last resort.

Three weeks had passed since that night. Their patience started to run short. At Beijing Normal University, Wuer Kaixi had also been talking about a hunger strike as early as May 8 to give the stalled movement a new push.

Liu Gang had been having the nagging feeling that he had overstayed his welcome in Beijing Students Autonomous Federation, the organization he had founded almost single-handedly. As a non-student, he knew his presence was awkward. So he stayed behind the scenes as much as possible and worked hard in providing logistical support for the endless meetings. When he needed to advance an idea, he relied on friendly delegates as surrogates. But more and more, he felt that his words, along with his presence, were being ignored. On the eve of the April 27 demonstration, he had strongly advised students to stay inside their campuses. The huge success thereafter, in the eyes of exuberant student leaders, had proved his conservative attitude wrong. The movement, although only weeks old, was slipping out of his grasp.

As the idea of a hunger strike was gaining traction, Liu Gang made a strong case to stop it. The Federation agreed with him this time. But the debate got so heated that it deteriorated into a shouting match. Ma Shaofang, who had come back from his earlier resignation, pounded on tables and claimed that he had confirmed intelligence that the "reform wing" in the government was hoping for an escalation of the student movement. A hunger strike should help the reformers at the top to gain the upper hand. He was not convincing enough. Wang Chaohua cautioned that they should not base their decisions on unfounded rumors. With a vote, the Federation reached a resolution that, based on the government's softened attitude toward the Dialogue Delegation, they would not organize any large-scale event in the near future. Rather, it instructed schools to follow the guideline of "denouncing the April 26 People's Daily editorial and supporting Zhao Ziyang's May Fourth speech."

The idea of a large-scale hunger strike, however, was too tempting for some to pass on. Right after the Federation meeting, Wuer Kaixi, Wang Dan, Ma Shaofang, along with several other delegates, went along for dinner at a little restaurant near Peking University. Over the meal and after much persuasion, they made their own decision to go ahead with a hunger strike. They would launch and lead it as individuals unaffiliated with Beijing Students Autonomous Federation. The federation, they were sure, would have to come around once they had the momentum going.

They were not alone. That same evening, Chai Ling reached the same conclusion on her own. She came to see her husband Feng Congde in a very excited mood. She could not stop talking about a chat she had with Zhang Boli and his classmates in the "authors class." They had mapped out a strategy to pursue a hunger strike. With a mischievous smile, she said that they planned to sneak in bread and chocolate once they got started. It was, after all, just a show to pressure the government. It was not that serious of a deal.

Chai Ling had already left Peking University a year earlier and was now a graduate student in psychology at Beijing Normal University. But living with her husband, she continued to spend most of her time at Peking University rather than her new school. Both of them got involved in the Preparatory Committee early on. Although not a central figure herself, Chai Ling had been in charge of the organization's secretarial work.

In the early morning of May 12, Wang Dan found Chai Ling at Peking University and they immediately joined forces on the hunger strike. But the Preparatory Committee, the leadership in the school, was not on board. Just as Beijing Students Autonomous Federation, the committee had decided several days earlier that it was not time for hunger strike. However, the committee did not want to, and could not, stand in the way of Wang Dan and Chai Ling as they were taking the initiatives on their own.

Wang Chaohua, on the other hand, was furious when she found that Wang Dan and Wuer Kaixi, the public faces of Beijing Students Autonomous Federation, had signed on to a hunger strike as individuals despite the resolution they had passed. Yet she was also keenly aware of the predicament she was in. If a hunger strike did take place and her Federation chose to oppose it publicly, it might be the end of the Federation itself as a student leadership organization. With great reservations, she agreed to organize student marshals to protect the hunger strikers per their request. Without a strong picket line, the dozens of hunger strikers could be easily hustled away by police.

Wang Chaohua still had hopes for personal persuasion. She thought she could talk some sense into the hunger strikers. But it was Chai Ling who sought her out first to question the Federation's stand. Their conversation turned sour immediately. Chai Ling spoke emotionally and made it abundantly clear that the hunger strike would go ahead with or without the Federation's support. A strong sense of helplessness submerged Wang Chaohua.

The hunger strikers decided to formally launch their action in Tiananmen Square the next day, two days before the scheduled visit of Mikhail Gorbachev. It should give the government enough time to respond. The stakes would be too high for the government not to.

The Soviet Union and China, two giants in the communist block, famously broke up their brotherly alliance amid an ugly spat of verbal barrages, accusations, and ideological confrontations. It culminated in a long freeze interrupted only by small-scale border battles between the two armies. It was only after Gorbachev's glasnost and perestroika and Deng Xiaoping's reform in their respective countries that they found a reconciliation possible and necessary. It would be the first summit of these neighbors in forty years to normalize the relationships between the two communist parties and the two nations. It had been billed as one of the crown jewels in Deng Xiaoping's reform.

The public enthusiasm for the hunger strike was however less than anticipated even at Peking University, the hot spot of the movement. During the day, only forty students signed up. Other campuses fared much worse, as their numbers failed to reach double digits. By dusk, hundreds of students crowded The Triangle as usual. They were debating the merits of a hunger strike and the opposing voices appeared to prevail. Above all, nobody was able to come up with a solid reason for this desperate action.

As darkness fell, Chai Ling got hold of the microphone. It was the very first time she gave a public speech. Her voice was low but determined. Her flow was frequently interrupted by emotional chokes and tears. The spontaneous speech jumped randomly from one train of thought to another. Yet somehow it was a gripping voice that demanded everyone's full attention. As she went on, The Triangle, always a rowdy locale, fell into a silence it had never experienced before.

Chai Ling started with her own personal story. Like many other students, she had plans to go abroad to study and was feeling a deep sense of guilt and confusion. She was not sure if going abroad at this time of the student movement could constitute a traitorous act. On the other hand, she could not decide if it was worthwhile to stay in China either. Seemingly getting carried away by her personal struggle, she framed the hunger strike as her last ditch effort to see if China, as a country, still had any hope at all:

For several years, we have had student movement after student movement, but we got nothing. Why? We ask for democracy and freedom from the government. But why could we never get it? We chant "Long Live the People" all the time. But why do people always run away when the police come? We chant "Police Love People" all the time. But why do police always beat us up? Why should we go on a hunger strike? Because we want to use this method, the only freedom we have left, to see the true face of our country and the true face of our people. I want to see if this country is worth our sacrifice and contribution.

We are fortunate to have parents who raised us to become college students. But it is time for us to stop eating. The government has time and again lied to us, ignored us. We only want the government to talk with us and to say that we are not traitors. We, the children, are ready to die. We, the children, are ready to use our lives to pursue the truth. We, the children, are ready to sacrifice ourselves.

We want to fight to live. We want to fight to live with the resolve of death.

Upstairs in his room, Shen Tong had turned off the lights and tried to catch some sleep after a long day at the media center. As he lay in darkness, Chai Ling's voice, out of the loudspeakers just outside of his window, penetrated his ears and into his heart. As the co-leader of the Dialogue Delegation, Shen Tong was against the hunger strike and had argued with Chai Ling during the day. But this night, Chai Ling's voice hit him hard. He found tears rushing out of his eyes, the first time he had cried during the movement. He could not stay in bed any longer. He rushed downstairs. He wanted to get closer to Chai Ling but an equally emotional crowd was in his way.

Indeed, most in the crowd were crying, including grown up teachers and graduate students. Among them was a writer by the name of Bai Meng from the "authors class". With tears streaming down his face, Bai Meng rushed out of the campus and bought dumplings for Chai Ling. He made Chai Ling write down her spontaneous speech as much as she could remember. Bai Meng would spend the whole night polishing it off. An "official" Hunger Strike Manifesto was thus born. Meanwhile, the tally of hunger strikers swelled past a hundred. It was a sleepless night for many students.

Two hours past midnight, Xiang Xiaoji, Shen Tong and other Dialogue Delegation members were simultaneously and quietly informed that the government was now ready to have a dialogue with them, six days after their petition.

This Day in 1989: May 11, Reporters Got Dialogue, Student Leaders Decide on Hunger Strike

May 11, 1989 was a subtle turning point in the student movement. At the time, most student in the city had thought that the movement was already over. Classes had resumed everywhere except for Peking University and Beijing Normal University. Even at those two schools, many were expressing the need to resume classes.

The government had adopted a much more conciliatory tone in its handling of the movement. The harsh language in the April 26 People's Daily editorial had disappeared. Officials from General Secretary Zhao Ziyang, Premier Li Peng, on down were visiting factories and institutes to conduct dialogues with the masses. However, despite daily inquiries by the students' Dialogue Delegation, nobody had come in official contact with students. Most notably, Hu Qili held a dialogue with the petitioning young reporters and promised more press freedom.


On this day in 1989, posters were appearing at Peking University calling for a hunger strike. It mentioned that the Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev was scheduled for a state visit in a few days, great timing for launching a dramatic action.

In the afternoon, the Beijing Students Autonomous Federation had a meeting. Tempers flared on the issue of hunger strike. Wang Chaohua, Liang Qingdun, and other leaders rejected the tactic while Ma Shaofang strongly advocated it. Eventually, the Federation reached a resolution that they would not launch any significant action in near future but rather hold a "wait and see" position on evaluating the government's next move.

After the heated meeting, Wang Dan, Wuer Kaixi, Ma Shaofang, Cheng Zhen, Wang Zhaohui, Wang Wen gathered in a small restaurant by the campus of Peking University. They were not happy with the Federation's stance and decided to launch the hunger strike on their own.

On that same day, Chai Ling also appeared to have reached the same conclusion after talking to her friends in the "authors class" at Peking University. She came back to her husband Feng Congde and was very happy about the decision. In a joking mode, she told him that they could sneak in bread. It would be a symbolic gesture, not that serious.


Days of 1989

Guardian Profiles Tiananmen Student Leaders

In an article titled "Tiananmen: the flame burns on," Guardian profiled several prominent leaders of the 1989 student movement. Each story provides the current whereabouts of them and their reflections of the events twenty years ago. The byline of the story states:

Twenty years ago tanks rolled into Beijing's Tiananmen Square to crush the biggest pro-democracy movement in history. Hundreds were killed, thousands jailed and many fled to escape persecution. Here exiled leaders of the student revolution tell their remarkable stories and reveal how, after being forced to build new lives, they remain haunted by its bloody legacy

The profiled include Wuer Kaixi, Wang Chaohua, Shen Tong, Wang Juntao, Wang Dan, Chen Ziming, and Shao Jiang.

This Day in 1989: May 2, Students Submit Petition with Ultimatum

On May 2, 1989, the Beijing Students Autonomous Federation, emboldened by their huge success in the great demonstration of April 27, announced a formal dialogue demand. The demand included twelve comprehensive pre-conditions ranging from the make-up of student delegates, the rank of government officials, the equality of location, speaking time, and the press coverage, etc. It was accompanied by a statement that if the students did not receive an adequate response by noon the next day, they would launch a mass demonstration on May 4, the seventieth anniversary of the historical May Fourth Movement.

Wang Dan, Wang Chaohua, and dozens of delegates to the Federation delivered this ultimatum to government offices in the afternoon, accompanied by many foreign reporters.


Days of 1989

This Day in 1989: April 28, First Major Change in BSAF Leadership

April 28, 1989, was a quiet day after the dramatic demonstration the day before. Most students slept in and rested. It was not until the afternoon when campuses came back alive with more Big Posters recounting the excitement. In the official media, a couple of small newspapers broke ranks and reported the demonstration.

In the late afternoon, delegates of the Beijing Students Autonomous Federation convened for a general meeting. They deposed Zhou Yongjun, who as the president had canceled the demonstration in the last minute, and elected the charismatic Wuer Kaixi as the new president. There were other personnel changes in its standing committee as well. Ma Shaofang resigned. Several more were elected into the committee, including Wang Chaohua, a thirty-seven year old female graduate student from the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences. She would eventually play a critical role in the leadership of this organization.

That night, Wang Dan and Wuer Kaixi held a surprise private press conference of their own at the Shangri-la Hotel in downtown, attended mostly by foreign reporters. They declared that their lives were in danger and would go underground.

At Peking University, the graduate students held a formal meeting and disbanded the official Graduate Student Union following legal procedures. It was one of the rare occasions during the movement that an action such as this was taken in orderly fashion. Feng Congde briefed Beijing Students Autonomous Federation on the development and encouraged other schools to follow suit. Privately, he was upset with Wang Dan and Wuer Kaixi for their behavior in seeking personal publicity.


Days of 1989

NYT Archive 1989: Sino-Soviet Summit

On May 16, 1989, New York Times reported the long-awaited Sino-Soviet summit in a matter-of-fact manner:

Deng Xiaoping and Mikhail S. Gorbachev shook hands today to signal the formal end of three decades of hostility between China and the Soviet Union.

The two leaders then met for two and a half hours. Afterward, Mr. Deng was the host at a banquet for the Soviet President.

Just as any other media at the time, both domestic and foreign, it did not occur to NYT that it might need to explain why Deng Xiaoping, whose only official title was the Chairman of the Military Committee, was considered the supreme leader of China and warranted the summit statue.

If one would follow a strict protocol, there should be two separate summits for Mr. Gorbachev: one with Zhao Ziyang, who as the General Secretary was the top leader of the Chinese Communist Party; and another with Yang Shangkun, who held the symbolic title of the President of the country.

While nobody questioned the summit at the time, when Zhao Ziyang unexpectedly made it public, during his meeting with Gorbachev later, that Deng Xiaoping was indeed the supreme leader of China, it actually created a huge event that marked a turning-point of the 1989 movement.

Zhao Ziyang's meeting with Gorbachev probably missed the deadline for NYT on this day, as it was not mentioned. Apparently shadowing Gorbachev's entourage all day, NYT detailed how much the guest's itinerary had to be changed due to the interruptions caused by students in the Tiananmen Square. Not only had the welcoming ceremony be moved to the airport, they had to scrap a planed wreath-laying at the Monument of People's Heroes and have Mr. Gorbachev enter the Great Hall of People through a back door.

In a separate report, Sheryl WuDunn described how Beijing residents gathered at Tiananmen Square to stage their own welcoming for Mr. Gorbachev:

One after another today, groups of teachers, professors, museum workers, factory workers, writers, artists, scholars, entrepreneurs, low-level officials, middle-school students, and even journalists from the official People's Daily paraded into Tiananmen Square behind their own wide, colorful banners.

They sang the ''Internationale'' and chanted anti-Government slogans, while inside in the adjacent Great Hall of the People, President Yang Shangkun held a banquet this evening for the Soviet leader, Mikhail S. Gorbachev.

The ebullient crowd of about 150,000 protesters and spectators rallied to show support for a hunger strike on the opening day of the first Chinese-Soviet summit meeting in 30 years.

The crowd was significant not only for its size and the shadow it cast over the summit meeting, but also because it marked the first time that intellectuals and workers organized themselves to join the students in a demonstration. Previously, workers frequently took part in demonstrations, but not in any organized way.

Later in the story, a female leader by the name Wang Chao was mentioned. Although it can't be certain, but it is very likely the leader is actually Wang Chaohua (王超华), who by now was left in charge of the Beijing Students Autonomous Union:

A team of medical students dispersed salt tablets and glucose. But by late this evening more than 100 strikers who had fainted or lost consciousness had been taken to hospitals.
''Tomorrow, we will continue with our hunger strike as we did today, until we have a real dialogue with the Government,'' said Wang Chao, a once-fiery student leader who spoke in faltering whispers as she hunched under a jacket to escape the blazing sun.
Miss Wang continued to give orders on the students' next moves. Some of the movement's other leaders have not taken part in the hunger strike so that they can continue to act as negotiators with the Government.