Jan Wong, August 1988 - August 1994 (original) (raw)
Former Globe China correspondent Jan WongDeborah Baic/The Globe and Mail
The cranberry-red Volkswagen Santana shadowed me as I walked along the sidewalk that hot June afternoon in 1989. Plainclothes police often followed my car, but I was on foot because the bureau's beat-up Toyota Corolla had vanished in the chaos of Tiananmen Square. A few days earlier, the People's Liberation Army had shot hundreds, possibly thousands, of pro-democracy protesters.
Suddenly two men appeared at my side. They half-lifted, half-dragged me across the sidewalk. Behind me, a third man was forcing my head down. The Volkswagen's back door was open. It dawned on me they were trying to stuff me in the back seat.
Chinese or English?
If I screamed in Chinese, I'd skew the tones. An unhappy image popped up from my past - the scolding face of Fu the Enforcer, who had had the unenviable task of teaching me Mandarin at Beijing University.
"Help! Help!" I croaked in English.
It was rush hour. No one moved to help although many cyclists dismounted to watch. (In 1989, there were still very few cars.) My kidnappers conferred. I was too scared to focus, but in hindsight my choice of English must have saved me. They apparently assumed I was Chinese and now realized their mistake.
They loosened their grip. I dumbly watched them get back into their car.
I'll get the licence plate, I thought, and report this to the police.
As the car drove off, I saw it had no licence plate. They were the police.
Looking Chinese was a workplace hazard for me. But my appearance was an undeniable advantage too. I had gone from being a member of a visible minority in Canada to being nearly invisible in China. With my skin as an invisibility cloak, I could eavesdrop aboard buses, sneak into military compounds and interview a dissident in a public park without attracting a second glance.
The Globe and Mail's Beijing bureau was the best job a journalist could have, a marvellous, life-changing assignment. It was there that I hit my stride as a journalist, realized I had a book or two in me and gave birth to my boys, Ben and Sam. In covering dissent, I developed a visceral appreciation for freedom and human rights, something I had previously taken for granted. The biggest gift of the Beijing bureau, however, was the crystallization of my own identity. Living in China while representing a Canadian newspaper, I finally concluded that I did not need to hyphenate myself. I am Canadian.
People there and here often wrongly assume I'm from China or that I at least grew up speaking Chinese at home. I would bewilder many over there when I pointed to my face and deadpanned, "This is what a Canadian looks like." Looks can be deceiving; you should have seen the confused ones I got when my Canadian-born parents visited me in China, and I had to translate for them.
In university, I found my passion in Chinese history. Historians must read documents in the original, of course. Intent on learning Mandarin, I went to China on my summer vacation from McGill and talked my way into Beijing University, becoming the first Canadian to study in Communist China.
It was 1972, the height of the Cultural Revolution. At 19, I was enthralled by the egalitarian credo of Maoism. I didn't know that the Cultural Revolution was Mao Zedong's decade-long campaign to eradicate his enemies.
Believing I was in a utopia where everyone was equal, I threw myself into the revolution. I studied Chairman Mao's works, planted rice, dug ditches and hauled pig manure. McGill, bless its 1970s hippy heart, gave me full credit for my year in China. I graduated on time, with an honours degree in history.
By then, I had caught the China bug. I spent the next six years studying more history, learning to speak fluent Mandarin and working in Beijing. But I was no longer interested in pursuing a doctorate. I wanted to help write what Phil Graham, the late publisher of The Washington Post, called "the first rough draft of history."
Ever since 1979, when I became the first news assistant in Beijing for The New York Times, one of my career goals had been to return as a reporter. In 1988, I arrived as The Globe's 13th correspondent.
By then, China had almost recovered from the Cultural Revolution, which had formally ended 12 years earlier with Mao's death in 1976. Women were now tattooing their eyebrows, restaurants were serving foie gras, homeless peasants were sleeping on the street and families were buying their first cars. Ordinary people were talking freely about what they wanted for themselves and their country.
Then came the student protests, sparked by the death of Hu Yaobang, the former Communist Party chief. In the spring of 1989, millions of people marched in Beijing and almost every major city in China demanding democracy, elections and freedom of speech. Students boycotted classes and staged a hunger strike in Tiananmen Square, the symbolic heart of Chinese political power.
It reminded me of the Cultural Revolution, except this time it was entirely spontaneous. The historian in me remembered that in 1968, Deng Xiaoping had been a target of fanatical student Red Guards. Now, as China's paramount leader, it seemed inevitable that he would consider the chaos an intolerable echo of Mao's Cultural Revolution.
I feared it would end badly. That week I wrote a piece for the Focus section. I still remember my opener: "It began with a single death. It could end with many more." Cautious editors back in Toronto cut the second sentence.
A few days later, the Chinese People's Liberation Army shot their way into the capital, rolling in on tanks along the broad boulevards first laid out by Ming Dynasty city planners. I had booked a room at the Beijing Hotel, with a balcony that overlooked the north end of the square. That night, I tried to take the best notes of my life. I didn't realize I was within range. The next morning, a fellow journalist pointed out a bullet hole in our balcony.
A day later, I watched a young man jump in front of a line of tanks, as gracefully as a soccer goalie trying to block a penalty shot. I began to cry. I was sure he would be killed, but two bystanders pulled him to safety. To my knowledge, he was never caught. In writing that first rough draft of history, it didn't occur to me that there was another hero that day - the driver of the lead tank.
I stayed at my vantage point as long as I could. After CNN and others broadcast footage of the Tank Man, police began searching the Beijing Hotel and kicking out foreign journalists. I had already sent my husband, Norman, to the front desk to re-register the room in his name so it would no longer be connected to a journalist. (Norman worked for Sun Microsystems and his government-issued identity card classified him as a foreign businessman.)
As an added precaution, I hung a "Do Not Disturb" sign on my door. Amazingly, it worked. For the next few days, I watched tanks rumble by. I witnessed soldiers darting through darkened streets, shooting at anything that moved. Every day, I wrote thousands of words. The foreign editor told me to leave the phone line open to Canada for hours at a time, just to be sure I could file. We both cringed at the cost.
I became the last journalist to vacate the Beijing Hotel. By then, most foreigners had fled the capital. The hotel restaurants had closed, the elevators had stopped working and the lobby lights were switched off. When I finally checked out, I discovered the staff had also abandoned the front desk. The Globe never had to pay for the room - or the phone bill.
I guess it all balanced out. A year later, I discovered that the thieves who stole The Globe's beat-up Toyota were - this is true - the Chinese police. My husband caught them red-handed, with police lights strapped across the roof. I made them give it back and then, of course, I wrote about it.
Jan Wong won a National Newspaper Award for her story on Chinese women sold in marriage. She is the author of three books on China: Red China Blues; Jan Wong's China_; and_ Beijing Confidential_._