by Linda Jaivin
Hou Dejian would head the negotiating team. Television appearances and album covers made his face familiar to many Chinese, including soldiers. ‘Heirs of the Dragon’ established his credentials as a patriot. That might just mean he wouldn’t be shot on sight. Zhou Duo would go with him. They’d leave behind the stuttering Liu Xiaobo and the excitable Gao Xin, who had the runs from a sausage with which he’d broken his fast, too hungry to notice the meat in it was off. Xiaobo and Gao Xin would continue to oversee the collection and destruction of weapons. Besides, if all four went, the students might think they were running away and panic.
To establish their legitimacy with the army, they wanted a student leader to go as well. ‘I’m the commander-in-chief here,’ Chai Ling said, refusing. ‘I can’t leave my command post.’ Wuer Kaixi was long gone, and other prominent leaders were nowhere to be seen, or at least Hou and Liu were unable to find them in the growing chaos. It was already 3.30 a.m. From all sides came sharp cracks and heavy thuds of gunfire. Time was running out.
Hou, Zhou, two doctors from the Red Cross station and a few student marshals jumped into a van that had earlier served as an ambulance. They sped off to the northeastern perimeter near the Museum of the Chinese Revolution, where the square meets the Avenue of Eternal Peace.
Political Commissar and Colonel Ji Xinguo looked up to see the van weaving crazily through the square towards his troops. ‘Quick! Stop that van!’ the commander of his regiment cried.
Several soldiers pointed their guns at the van, screaming, ‘Halt!’ The van screeched to a halt about fifty metres from where the troops stood.
Half-expecting to be gunned down on the spot, Hou jumped out with his hands up. ‘Don’t shoot! Don’t shoot! I’m Hou Dejian!’ he yelled. The others leaped out as well. ‘We’re Hou Dejian!’ they chorused.
One of the soldiers walked over and shone a torch in Hou’s face.
‘Could we speak to someone in charge?’ asked Hou. The soldiers crowded round to get a glimpse of the famous pop star.
One of the soldiers went to fetch Ji Xinguo, who approached with four or five aides. Colonel Ji, a man of about forty, greeted Hou, shaking his hand. The palm that Hou’s cold, bony hand shook was surprisingly plump, soft and warm. Ji’s firm and amiable grasp made it seem as though they were meeting at a social occasion.
‘I had a good look at Hou Dejian,’ Ji later wrote in his published account of the negotiations. ‘He was very skinny. He wore a jacket and jeans, had glasses and long hair—he definitely had the look of someone from overseas…Funny thing was, he looked a lot better on TV singing “Heirs of the Dragon”.’
As the two sized each other up, a few of the soldiers pushed in close to Hou. One asked, ‘What are you doing here?’
The officer turned to the soldier. ‘Get back in line and shut up.’
Hou explained what they hoped to do.
Someone not far away shouted, ‘The soldiers want to wash the square in blood, but we will fight to the last!’
‘Don’t get us wrong,’ Hou quickly countered, ‘we want a peaceful evacuation.’
Another officer broke in. ‘You people should have been off the square a long time ago.’
‘Yes, yes, we’re getting ready to leave.’
‘We’re running out of patience. If you don’t evacuate, we won’t hold back.’
‘That’s just we want to do, to evacuate,’ Hou repeated.
A soldier standing nearby interrupted, ‘So piss off already.’
‘All I have to do,’ Hou replied from between gritted teeth, ‘is run and I’m outta here. But there are thousands of students on the square, and it wouldn’t be right for me to abandon them. A lot of them want to leave, but they need you to designate a route and promise them safe passage.’
A few other officers approached. After a quick conference, they decided to ask for instructions from the general command at the Bridge of Golden Waters, just in front of Tiananmen Gate. Ji went with them. He told Hou and the others to wait there.
Several minutes later, at 4 a.m., the lights that illuminated the square were suddenly extinguished, plunging the entire area into pitch blackness. Was this a signal for the mopping-up to begin? The troops facing Hou began making eerie, howling noises, grinding shards of glass under their heels. Some hurled glass bottles in the direction of the square; they shattered on the paving stones behind the little group. Gunfire rang out from not far away.
Hou had never been so frightened in his life. His first urge was to flee. One of the doctors standing by his side grabbed his arm. ‘Don’t run,’ he whispered. ‘It’s too dangerous.’
Hou’s knees nearly buckled with fear. Raising his trembling hands, he joined the others in shouting, ‘Don’t shoot! Please come and negotiate!’
Several minutes later, to their vast relief, Colonel Ji reappeared to say that headquarters had approved their request. The troops would open a corridor by the southeastern corner of the square by which the students could leave.
There was just one thing: the square had to be cleared by dawn.
Hou and Zhou raced back across the square on foot. The lights had come back on, and they could see clearly again. Hou grabbed a megaphone. ‘We’ve won an enormous victory. I fully believe that you are the best and brightest of our nation.’ The students applauded. Gunfire sounded in the background. ‘No one here is a coward; no one here is afraid of death.’ More applause. ‘But, death must be meaningful.’ He took a deep breath. ‘I’ve just negotiated with the army for a withdrawal. I didn’t consult with you all first and I apologise.’
Disapproval pullulated through the crowd.
‘If you agree to leave now, the army will let you go safely,’ he continued. ‘I know I can’t make this decision for you. But we can only contribute to the cause of democracy in China if we live. Only if we live will there be hope.’
‘Chickenshit!’
‘Defeatist!’
‘Traitor!’
‘Fascist running dog!’ As Hou pushed on with his argument for an evacuation, students hurled curses at him.
‘Okay,’ he responded, ‘blame me, blame us all you like! As long as you all survive, we don’t care what you call us, now or later.’
A line of armoured personnel carriers and troop convoy trucks rolled up the road alongside the square; the sound of the APCs crunching over makeshift roadblocks as well as the thick, rubbery grinding of tank treads on asphalt made it harder for Hou to make himself heard. Shouting, he pleaded, ‘There’s been enough bloodshed. Let’s not allow any more people to die. If we all wait here to die then we will have committed a great crime against the nation. I beg all of you, live for the sake of the country, for the Chinese people, and for the democratic work ahead of us. I propose,’ he concluded, ‘that everyone organise themselves according to schools and prepare to withdraw right now.’
At this moment, the Taiwan reporter who’d spoken to Hou earlier was standing on the steps of the Museum of the Chinese Revolution that flanked the eastern side of the square. He turned in surprise when, at Hou’s final plea, a line of soldiers just behind him broke into applause.
Back on the monument, the other three—Liu Xiaobo, Gao Xin and Zhou Duo—took turns trying to persuade the students to leave. They could see it wasn’t going to be easy.
Meanwhile, on the western side of the monument the fusillade grew louder; the troops were moving in. Tear gas canisters exploded close by.
Hou Dejian, Zhou Duo, Gao Xin and Liu Xiaobo promised the students that they would wait till all of them had evacuated before they left the square themselves.
The gunfire grew louder. Hou saw troops approaching from behind the monument in the south, some on foot and some in APCs. Fearing that this new development would make it even less likely that the students would trust the army to let them leave safely, he, Zhou Duo and the doctors took off once more for the north-eastern corner of the square to see if Ji could stop the troops and give the students a bit more time.
; They had just left the monument when they ran into Ji and a handful of his men.
This time, Colonel Ji was less personable. ‘What the hell is going on? Why isn’t there anyone evacuating yet?’ he demanded. ‘Time’s up. The troops must complete their mission. Mr Hou,’ he said, ‘if you don’t get off the square immediately, I’m afraid that we can’t guarantee your personal safety.’
‘If we were only worried about ourselves,’ Hou shot back, ‘we’d have left here long ago.’ A soldier standing next to Ji didn’t like Hou’s attitude. Muttering angrily, his face and neck flushed red, his eyes bulging, he lifted the barrel of his AK-47 and would have struck Hou with it if others hadn’t restrained him.
‘Shit! Let’s get outta here!’ Hou, Zhou and the doctors ran for their lives, back to the monument once more. The troops continued their advance. They reached the rows of pup tents which until a few hours earlier had been occupied by the student demonstrators.
They arrived back at the monument just in time to hear another student leader, Li Lu, conducting a voice vote among the students as to whether or not they would withdraw.
‘CHE!’ (Withdraw!)
‘LIU!’ (Stay!)
It was impossible to tell which was louder. Li Lu and Liu Xiaobo insisted the decision had been for a withdrawal.
A small clutch of soldiers on the third tier opened fire on the student loudspeaker above their heads with their semi-automatics.
‘Go! Hurry!’ shouted Hou, dashing up the steps of the monument.
But the students took their time, organising themselves by schools, raising their flags. As they went, some called out ‘Fascists’ at the troops; some waved the V-sign; some sang the ‘Internationale’ and ‘Heirs of the Dragon’. Others just wept.
Soldiers pressed in from behind, their guns pointed at the students’ backs. Hou hurried over. Desperately, he gestured for them to aim their weapons in the air. Some did, others didn’t.
Someone called out in a Sichuan accent, ‘Teacher Hou!’
Hou looked around.
The speaker was a young soldier who, using the polite form of address ‘teacher’, begged him to clear out. ‘It’s for your own good, Teacher Hou.’
Was he a fan? Would he go back and listen to Hou’s records when this was all over and boast that he’d met Hou Dejian on Tiananmen?
From the first tier of the monument, Hou watched the students making their final march out of the square. One group was just standing there. ‘Go on,’ he shouted. ‘Hurry.’
They were waiting for him. He waved them on ahead. They went reluctantly. Then, together with Zhou Duo and two of the student marshals who had stayed by his side from the beginning, Hou went to check on what was happening on the north side of the monument.
To their horror, they discovered a group sitting stubbornly on the ground, determined to martyr themselves. Frantically, Hou began pulling people up and pushing them towards the others. ‘Listen,’ he pleaded, ‘say what you like, say it’s all my fault you had to leave. Just go!’ This time, there were no replies of ‘chickenshit’ or ‘defeatist’.
One student took Hou’s hand and held it, saying nothing. His voice cracking with anxiety, Hou cried out, ‘What’s the point? Why do you want to die here?’
No reply.
‘All right. If that’s what you want, I’ll stay and die with you,’ he said, unable to think of any other way to persuade them to go.
Some students stood up. Addressing Hou as ‘teacher’, one assured him, ‘We don’t blame you. Thank you for what you’ve done.’
Hou started to cry. Tears streaming down his face, he continued to haul up more students from the ground. A platoon of soldiers approached from the west; by the time the last of the students were on their feet, the troops were less than ten metres away. They all joined what became a mad rush to get out of the square.
For the last few hours Hou, who’d eaten almost nothing and hardly slept in two days, had been living on adrenalin. His goal of getting the students off the square accomplished, he felt his energy sapping away. His breath came in gasps; he was slipping into a state of shock. He would probably have slid down onto the cool paving stones of the square if it hadn’t been for the two loyal student marshals. One on each side, they supported him and helped him negotiate a stream of people so dense it practically lifted them along.
Suddenly, club-swinging troops descended on the group from the northwest. Shrieking in fear and pain, students fell to the ground, clutching bloodied heads and broken bones. Rushing eastwards to escape the onslaught, the crowd hurtled straight into the low iron balustrades bordering the central part of the square. The first line of students tumbled painfully over these barriers; several lines more fell over in a heap on top of them before the forward surge was checked, but not before one of the student marshals who’d been supporting Hou was caught in the pile of bodies. Hou tried with his remaining strength to pull him out, but the student yanked Hou up on top of him instead, so that Hou could scramble up over the pile to safety. The evacuation had degenerated into chaos.
‘Dejian! Dejian!’ Incredibly, it was Liu Xiaobo, come back to look for him. Xiaobo said he’d lost the others. Seeing the shape Hou Dejian was in, Xiaobo put one arm around Hou’s waist and the other around that of the second marshal, who’d broken his leg in the crush, and they hobbled over to the Red Cross station on the eastern side of the square.
Glancing back at the square, Hou glimpsed tanks rolling steadily towards the monument. Near them, he saw several students supporting three people covered in blood. Hou could barely stand. When they reached the Red Cross station, Xiaobo and the nurses helped him onto a stretcher. The wounded continued to stream in; through a semiconscious haze, Hou heard the sound of weeping and felt a cold breeze blow over the square. A female student covered him with a red coat.
Late on the night of 3 June, after the troops began to fire on the protesters, I called Cheng Lin from Nick’s hotel room for news about Hou. She was frantic. She knew nothing except that he was in the square. I phoned other friends in Beijing. Nearly everyone I knew was on the streets and those at home were hysterical with concern. I went back to my hotel sometime in the wee hours of the morning, and fell asleep, red-eyed and exhausted, to the sound of gunfire on the TV.
On the morning of 4 June, Wayne, Murray, Nick and I made a grim party on our way to Shanghai airport where we boarded a flight for Beijing. There, Nick and I would try to make it into the city and the others would catch a flight out to Hong Kong. I was too concerned about Hou and other friends to think about leaving China.
The plane to Beijing was nearly empty. The stewardesses conversed inanely about gold jewellery. I wanted to scream at them. After farewelling Wayne and Murray at Beijing airport, Nick called the embassy. They promised to send someone to pick us up as soon as it was safe. Time stretched out in the eerily deserted arrivals area; Nick and I gave each other nervous little hugs of comfort.
Finally, the Australian military attaché arrived driving a van. I recall that we flew the flag and that the attaché was packing a gun. Driving through deserted streets, he told us it wasn’t safe for us to go to Nick’s flat, because there were tanks and APCs in the area. The army was still killing people. He took us to the embassy instead. Nick went straight to work trying to locate all the Australians in the capital. He put me on a phone and gave a list of names to call. In between, I tried to get news of Hou and other friends like Ah Xian and the punk He Yong, who’d also been on the streets since the night before. Cheng Lin still had no word and was close to hysteria. She cursed Hou for being an idiot.
I said I’d check in with her later and phoned the home of the rock singer Cui Jian. His father answered. Cui Jian was safe, he told me. But he’d heard that Hou Dejian was dead. Run over by a tank in the square. He and Liu Xiaobo both. Crushed into mincemeat.
I don’t remember hanging up the phone, or standing up, but I recall holding onto the back of my chair, swaying. I felt like I was going to vomit.
My eyes were round with shock and welling with tears when Richard Rigby came into the room.
‘Hou Dejian’s dead,’ I cried, my voice breaking.
‘I don’t think so,’ Richard answered. ‘At least he didn’t sound dead. He just called. He does needs someone to pick him up, though.’
HOU was resting on the stretcher when someone screamed, ‘The army’s surrounded the medical station!’ He sat up in alarm, but a doctor motioned to him to lie down again. Covering his body and face with the coat, two doctors hoisted the stretcher onto their shoulders. With Xiaobo beside them, they struggled on for more than ninety minutes. From under the coat, Hou heard the sound of gunshots, screaming and weeping. When, at last, they set him down and pulled off the coat, he discovered he was in an operating room in the Capital Hospital, not far from the square, surrounded by the grievously wounded. Soon, someone came in and moved him to another room.
It was nearly 8 a.m., Sunday 4 June 1989, exactly six years to the day since Hou had defected to the mainland. He closed his eyes and slipped into a deep sleep.
When he woke up about five hours later, Xiaobo was by his side. They phoned Richard to see if he could get them out of there. They wanted to come to the diplomatic compound at Jianguomenwai, where Nick lived. Hou didn’t want to be separated from Xiaobo and feared that if they tried to get back to his place at Double Elms, Cheng Lin, who blamed Xiaobo for getting Hou involved in the first place, wouldn’t allow his friend in the house. Besides, if the authorities were to come looking for them, neither the flat at Double Elms nor Xiaobo’s home on the Beijing Normal University campus would be safe. In the semi-colonial past, in places like Shanghai, Chinese dissidents often took refuge in the foreign concessions, where Chinese law didn’t apply. The foreign compounds of Beijing enjoyed no such immunity. But Hou and Xiaobo figured they could at least provide a temporary haven.
