by Linda Jaivin
On 4 May, the students once more broke through police cordons to march on Tiananmen. This time, they briefly occupied the political heart of the Chinese capital. Marching with them were hundreds of Chinese journalists demanding freedom of the press.
That morning, Hou went to the workers’ dormitory where Xie Yunpeng lived and knocked on his door. It was 9 a.m. Xie was asleep.
‘Xiao Xie! Wake up!’
‘Mmm?’ Xie, rubbing the sleep out of his eyes, let Hou in.
‘Let’s go to Tiananmen Square.’
Xie groaned. ‘You’re not serious.’ He squinted at Hou and ran a pudgy hand through his curly black hair. ‘Okay, okay.’
The two of them sat on the steps of the Monument to the People’s Heroes from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m., chain-smoking cigarettes and listening to the students’ speeches. The square thronged with people. ‘Tai you yisi!’ Hou exclaimed over and over. ‘This is so interesting! I never saw anything like this in Taiwan!’
‘Just don’t go jumping up and making speeches yourself,’ Xie grumbled. ‘If you do, I’ll be the one to get into trouble.’
A massive portrait of Sun Yat-sen, leader of the 1911 revolution that overthrew China’s final dynasty and established the republic, stood tall on the square, part of the decorations for the May Day celebrations three days earlier. Several foreign photographers, in search of good camera angles, scrambled up the portrait’s scaffolding.
‘Fucking foreign devils!’ cried one of the demonstrators, spotting them. ‘How dare they stand on Dr Sun’s head! Let’s beat up the bastards!’
Sheepishly, the reporters clambered back down, surprised by the fuss.
Hou shook his head in disbelief. ‘Why are the students so superstitious? Why are they so xenophobic? I can’t believe their first reaction was not to talk but to beat them up,’ he remarked. ‘That’s not very democratic.’
Before they left, Hou turned to Xie. ‘Donate a few hundred yuan to the students on my behalf, will you? I don’t have any money on me.’
Xie sighed. His forehead was sunburnt and he was several hundred yuan out of pocket. ‘This whole business makes me nervous,’ he grizzled.
‘Xiao Xie,’ Hou laughed. ‘Lighten up.’
Xiao Xie forced a smile. He saw no reason to lighten up.
THE students set a deadline of 8 May 1989 for the government to accede to their demand for a televised dialogue. Though Hu Yaobang’s successor, Zhao Ziyang, had called them ‘patriotic’, the rest of the leadership was resolutely sticking by the line of the 26 April editorial.
That night, Hou and Cheng Lin drove over to the diplomatic compound in the Benz to collect Geremie, who’d just arrived in Beijing, for a midnight meal of Mongolian hotpot at a privately run eatery just south of the square.
‘You know, Xiao Bai,’ Hou said to Geremie. ‘I think all this is going to lead to no good.’
After five more days of protests and standoffs, the students launched a mass hunger strike in Tiananmen Square. The strike galvanised the city. Monks, chefs, authors, foreign affairs officials, doctors, filmmakers and bureaucrats—just about everyone—demonstrated in support. It was rumoured that even the capital’s pickpockets had gone on strike to show solidarity.
The leadership was furious. They’d wanted the square cleared for Gorbachev’s arrival on 15 May; the intractable chaos forced them, in the end, to shift the Soviet leader’s welcoming ceremony from the square to the airport.
The days were hot and sunny. Ambulances, their sirens wailing, raced students who had passed out from exposure and hunger to hospitals around the city. After a dozen students from the drama academy decided to forgo water as well, it seemed more likely with each passing hour that someone would die. Mothers wept and wailed on the square. No one in Beijing was unmoved by the students’ declaration that they would martyr themselves for the cause of democracy, a clean government and a free press. As the news of what was happening in Tiananmen spread throughout China, sympathetic demonstrations and hunger strikes broke out in hundreds of other cities and towns. These events deeply alarmed the leadership, who felt their grip on the nation slipping with every minute.
The atmosphere on the square grew macabre, tense, and yet remained somehow, as Geremie wrote, ‘carnival’-like. Students sang patriotic tunes, rock songs and tunes by Luo Dayou. Peddlers hawked their wares to the tens of thousands of people who came daily to gawk and sympathise. Workers organised themselves into ‘dare-to-die’ squads, pledging to defend the students with their lives.
All were drawn to what Geremie called the ‘magnetic pull’ of the square. ‘Sometimes,’ he wrote, ‘rising at night, half-fearful, crazed with curiosity, people would be attracted to the vast open space as if sleep-walking, filled now with hunger-wracked bodies, screeching ambulances, milling crowds, peddlers, piles of garbage, weary onlookers anxious yet fearful of government action.’ Even the resolutely apolitical Xie felt moved to action and led a group of about twenty fellow musicians to the square to support the students.
Hou Dejian went frequently to the square, but if he’d always felt like an outsider—a mainlander in Taiwan, a ‘Taiwan compatriot’ on the mainland—he was now a non-student in the midst of a movement that the students had claimed for their own.
When Li Peng finally agreed to meet with student leaders on 18 May, Wuer Kaixi shot to national and international fame. Wearing hospital pyjamas and clutching an oxygen pillow, the brashly confident young student addressed the premier with a rudeness no other Chinese had ever publicly displayed to the face of a Communist leader, and concluded by fainting on camera.
That night, Hou and Cheng Lin collected Geremie for another late meal. The day before, more than one million people had taken part in a demonstration in support of the students. A new slogan called for the government to ‘sell the Benzes to repay the national debt’. Leaving theirs locked in the garage, they drove the Russian-produced Lada that Hou had bought for Cheng Lin’s brother Cheng Yu, now in his late teens. After dinner, they parked the Lada behind the Great Hall of the People and headed into the square. It was around 2 a.m.
Some students recognised Hou. ‘Mr Hou!’ they called out. ‘Can we have your autograph? Are you on our side?’ Hou, who agreed with their goals but had reservations about their methods, tried to be noncommittal. A second group of students came along and yelled out at the first, ‘Why are you talking to that sort of person?’ Hou didn’t know if they meant a non-student, a pop star or something else entirely.
As they strolled along, skirting festering piles of garbage, Hou commented despairingly to Geremie that the Chinese ‘were like a great tribe of crabs thrown together in a bottle. Every move they make leads to disorder and possibly injury. The only solution is if the crab population is markedly reduced. As that’s impossible, the confused struggle goes on.’
The behind-the-scenes tussle between Zhao Ziyang, who advocated a moderate approach to the students, and the hard-liners, including Li Peng, came to a head. Early on the morning of Friday, 19 May, Zhao, haggard and puffy-eyed, climbed into one of the buses in which the hunger strikers were sheltering. Close to tears, he addressed the students through a loudspeaker. He apologised for ‘coming too late’ and asked for the students’ forgiveness. Zhao, unable either to influence the course of events or save his own career, had tendered his resignation. To the Party, he announced he was taking three days sick leave and disappeared from the scene.
As the drama on Tiananmen intensified, Hou was forced to deal with a more personal crisis. Hou Guobang had returned to China one month earlier, deeply miserable. ‘My neighbours laugh at me,’ he’d wailed, slurping from a cup of tea in Hou’s living room. ‘And I can’t go live with your brothers because your mother is always dropping in over there. I don’t know where to go.’
‘Why not stay here on the mainland?’ Hou had proposed.
‘How? I don’t have money or anywhere to live.’
Hou made a few phone calls. The manager of a small hotel in Jingzhou
, in Hubei province where his cousin Hou Dechen lived, was looking to buy a car. Hou offered him the 1985 Peugeot 505 that he kept in Guangzhou. It was valued at 180,000 yuan. The deal, to which the manager readily agreed, was that the manager would build a house for Hou Guobang in Jingzhou, look after him as he settled in, and even help him find a new wife. The house would only cost 80,000 yuan. Hou immediately agreed. It solved his father’s problem, and he’d still come out 100,000 yuan on top—the equivalent of almost a century of wages for the average Chinese worker. The deal done, he told Cheng Lin about it and handed her the hundred grand.
She flew into a rage. Why hadn’t he consulted her first? She slapped him across the face. He was stunned. ‘I didn’t hit her back,’ he told me, ‘but I was furious. I couldn’t see why she was so unhappy. I’d given her most of the money and, anyway, I’d bought the car with royalties from my first album. Never once while we were together did I say to her, this is my money, this is yours. I’d always shared everything with her.’
He threw some clothes and medicines into a bag, grabbed his Ovation guitar and stormed out.
A short while later, when Xie phoned for Hou, Cheng Lin’s mother answered. ‘He’s not here!’ She slammed down the phone. Xie tracked his friend down to the actor Hou Yaohua’s place, where he found him sitting in a funk, playing his guitar.
‘What’s going on?’ Xie asked.
No answer.
Hou Yaohua explained.
After dinner, Xie and Hou went to a small hotel called the Jimen and checked into Suite 301. It was close to midnight on 19 May. Hou flopped down on one of the twin beds, and switched on the TV.
Premier Li Peng was delivering a speech. ‘The anarchic state of affairs is going from bad to worse,’ he stated in a strained and high-pitched voice, jabbing the air with his fist for emphasis. ‘Law and discipline have been seriously undermined…The fate and future of the People’s Republic of China, built with the blood of so many revolutionary martyrs, is under serious threat…The Communist Party of China…is forced to take resolute and decisive measures to put an end to the turmoil.’
President Yang Shangkun came on the tube next. ‘To restore normal order and stabilise the situation,’ he declared, ‘we’ve no choice but to move a contingent of the People’s Liberation Army to the vicinity of Beijing.’
Hou sat bolt upright. ‘Fuck! They’re declaring martial law!’
‘Who cares?’ Xie sighed, exhausted. ‘I’m going to bed.’
Hou couldn’t fall asleep. He smoked, played his guitar, watched TV and kept Xie awake speculating whether the PLA soldiers would go so far as to hit students with clubs.
The army never made it in. Having surrounded the city, it was blocked from entering it by the masses of indignant citizens who flocked onto the streets and erected barricades everywhere the troops were likely to pass.
Hou spent most of the next day arranging to get the car back from Jingzhou. He was extremely stressed by the thought of how his father would react to the news. That evening, however, he insisted on going to Tiananmen.
‘That’s not a great idea,’ Xie pointed out. ‘It’s under martial law.’
‘How many chances in your life do you get to witness such a thing?’ Hou replied. Besides, he’d heard that Liu Xiaobo was back in China and on the square. Xie, Sancho Panza to Hou’s Don Quixote, dutifully arranged to borrow some bicycles and they pedalled to the square.
Even on this night, Hou was mobbed for autographs. One fan pressed a cotton surgical mask on him, saying he’d need it to protect himself from tear gas.
‘Mr Hou.’ A Chinese reporter, pen hovering over his notepad, addressed him next. ‘What are your views on this movement?’
‘Frankly, I don’t think the official press could print my opinions.’
‘Leave that to me,’ the reporter insisted.
‘Well, I oppose martial law, of course. The students are absolutely within their rights and the government ought to enter into a dialogue with them.’ As he finished speaking, a crowd of bystanders applauded. Hou felt embarrassed. I haven’t done anything to earn that applause, he thought guiltily.
As the onlookers drifted away, Xie pulled on Hou’s sleeve. ‘Dejian! Let’s get out of here,’ he pleaded. ‘Let’s at least get out of the middle of the square, all right? If the students want to get themselves killed, that’s their business. But why should we die? What are we doing here?’
‘All right, all right.’ Hou indulged his friend and moved with him to the edge of the square.
All night, the tension built. At dawn, when nothing had happened— no paratroopers, no tear gas, nothing at all—the students played Beethoven’s ‘Ode to Joy’ over their loudspeakers. Elated, Hou felt as though he’d shared in their victory. Xie, his stomach grumbling, thought about how hungry, tired and cold he was.
They had some breakfast and returned to the hotel about nine, sleeping through the day and returning to the square around four to look for Xiaobo.
Sleeping by day, square-crawling by night, was becoming a way of life for the whole city. All night every night the people crowded the square and manned the barricades until the nocturnal tension and fear once more dissolved in the uneasy peace of the morning.
With the explicit threat of violence in the air, all restraint disappeared from the rhetoric of the protesters. Listening to a student accuse Li Peng of being a venereal-disease-infested hooligan, Hou Dejian burst out laughing.
Wuer Kaixi’s voice came over the students’ public address system. ‘I am Wuer Kaixi,’ he began. ‘I am Wuer Kaixi.’ Claiming that Deng Xiaoping’s son, Deng Pufang, had told him that the government planned to crush the protest by sending in tanks, he urged the students to seek refuge in foreign embassies.
Incredulous, Hou asked Xie, ‘Wasn’t this supposed to be a democracy movement? How can he just tell everyone to leave like that?’ He was amused when, soon after, another broadcast repudiated Wuer Kaixi’s proposal.
Xie, on the other hand, had been so terrified by Wuer’s words that his hair stood on end. Trembling with fear, he once again begged Hou to leave the square. ‘We don’t belong here,’ he insisted.
Hou saw how frightened Xie was. He led him to the western edge of the square where they found someone selling jianbing, egg pancakes with shallots and hot pepper sauce. They sat under a tree in front of the Great Hall to eat.
‘Humph,’ Xie grumbled, holding up his jianbing. ‘Not even properly cooked.’
‘Xiaobo!’ Hou found his friend at last. They embraced.
‘This is such a f-f-fuckup!’ Xiaobo exclaimed. ‘These little b-b-bastards don’t give a sh-shit about d-d-democracy! I’ve got enough m-material to write a book, and I’m g-going to write one t-too!’ he declared.
Hou was dismayed by Xiaobo’s tales from behind the scenes—the student leaders’ power struggles, misuse of donated funds, and disregard of democratic processes. Xiaobo said he’d been shocked when Wuer Kaixi insisted to him that ‘dictatorial methods’ were needed for the students to win.
The next day, Xiaobo drafted a paper called ‘Our Suggestions’, which would be released on 23 May in the name of the Autonomous Student Union of Beijing Normal University. ‘Democracy has nothing to do with the psychology of hatred,’ he wrote. ‘Hatred can only lead to violence and dictatorship…Democratisation in China cannot be achieved on the basis of popular dissatisfaction, hatred, or the overthrowing of an unpopular leader, but only through a rational and peaceful process.’
Xiaobo introduced Hou to Wuer Kaixi. Believing that he and Hou Dejian could help steer Wuer towards a more democratic way of working, Xiaobo had decided to take him under his wing. The first thing that Wuer said to Hou Dejian so startled him that he would never forget it: ‘It took you ten years to get as famous as you are. It’s only taken me a few days.’
Hou invited Xiaobo and Wuer to lunch at the pricy Pearl of the Orient restaurant near the square. By now the students had abandoned their hunger strike. Naturally, Hou had
no cash on him. He phoned Xie, who was resting at the hotel, and told him to jump in a cab with some money. Xie’s cab was caught up in more demonstrations, but he got through by waving a white cloth and flashing the V-for-victory sign that was by now the universal password. Arriving at the restaurant, Xie was introduced to Wuer and took an instant dislike to him.
Xiaobo thought they ought to give Wuer some extra money. Many people were giving the students donations at that time; it was one way of aiding the movement. Hou turned to Xie. ‘How much did you bring?’
Xie glared at Hou.
‘Well?’
‘Ten thousand,’ Xie muttered.
‘Okay,’ Hou said. ‘Give it to Wuer Kaixi. Half is from you, and half from me.’
‘Dejian.’
‘C’mon, Xiao Xie.’
Sullenly, Xie did as he was told. Later, he protested.
‘Don’t be so hard on the guy,’ Hou urged. ‘He’s just a kid.’
Not long afterwards, Hou and Xiaobo met up again with Wuer Kaixi. Hou and Xiaobo suggested that the students would go far towards legitimising their movement if they held a city-wide student election to determine its leadership. Wuer’s response was immediate. ‘But what if I’m not elected?’ Hou was dumbstruck.
When Esquire profiled Wuer Kaixi the following year, he told journalist Joseph F. Kahn that he’d been inspired by both Cui Jian and Hou Dejian. ‘The parable of Hou Dejian,’ Kahn wrote, ‘as recounted by Wuer Kaixi, is as follows: Hou Dejian goes everywhere by his Mercedes. One day a friend said, “I like your car very much.” Hou said, “Okay, you can have it.” He handed over the keys and walked home ten miles to tell his wife.” This profligacy, so opposed to the calculating, cheese-paring life prescribed by Chinese socialism, represented everything Wuer Kaixi aspired to: to have a Mercedes and to give it away…’
It’s a good story, and worthy of Hou Dejian. Unfortunately, according to Hou, it wasn’t true.
I RETURNED to Beijing a few days after martial law was declared with the mini-series’ associate producer Wayne Barry and designer Murray Picknett. We checked into the four-star Palace Hotel, which was close to the square, and met the scriptwriter, who’d flown in from California.
