Andréa Worden, a former teaching fellow from the U.S., recalls the atmosphere in Changsha, Hunan Province during the fateful spring of 1989 and its aftermath.

Originally published in China Rights Forum, Issue No. 2, 2004 https://www.hrichina.org/en/content/3738

Fifteen years ago this spring, an estimated one hundred million people took part in pro-democracy protests that erupted in more than 300 cities across China. After the People’s Liberation Army brought the protests in the capital to an end, demonstrations continued in more than 180 other cities for about a week after the massacre, in large part to protest what had occurred in Beijing.

During the spring of 1989, I was in Changsha, the capital of Hunan Province, nearing the end of a two-year Yale-China Association English teaching fellowship at Hunan Medical University. As the birthplace of many leaders of the Chinese Communist Party, including Mao Zedong and Hu Yaobang (whose death in April 1989 was the catalyst for the democracy movement that spring), Hunan is respected for its revolutionary credentials. Changsha satisfied expectations in 1989 with daily protests, a bold local media, hunger strikes, and even calls from some local government officials for Hunan to secede from the PRC.

I remember being awoken in the early hours of June 4 by students pounding on the door of the house where the Yale-China fellows lived, yelling up to us the news of the massacre. We grabbed our bikes and headed to May First Road—the nerve center of the protests—and read VOA and BBC broadcasts that had been hastily transcribed on large posters, which detailed the horrific events in Beijing the night before. Anger and desperation led to escalated protests in Changsha: students blocked train tracks, major traffic intersections and factory gates, and urged factory workers to go on strike. Despite the shutdown, which made daily life very difficult for Changsha residents during the days after June 4, most people expressed support for the students’ actions. But news that troops were positioned just outside the city, coupled with a call from student leaders in Beijing for an “empty school” movement, eventually led students to withdraw from the streets, and soon thereafter from Changsha itself.

The sense of despair among the students after the Tiananmen massacre was overwhelming; it was despair not only for their country, but also for themselves. Almost every student had participated in some way in the events of spring 1989, and they had no idea what awaited them. Possible fates depended on level of involvement and leadership, and in the end, students in Hunan faced a range of punishments: leaders were arrested or sent off to re-education through labor, most students were subjected to political education and forced to write self-criticisms, and some were punished internally within their universities. The entire graduating class of Hunan Medical University in 1989 was sent to the countryside.

After June 4, Fang Lizhi and his wife went into hiding in the U.S. Embassy in Beijing and the People’s Daily ranted about “hostile foreign forces” stirring up the recent “turmoil” in China. Some friends and colleagues in Changsha expressed concern that China would return to the anti-foreign and violently dogmatic days of the Cultural Revolution. Another friend warned me that rumors were circulating that I was a spy (someone had been calling foreign news sources about what was happening in Changsha, and I guess I seemed a likely candidate). I recalled an encounter with an undercover officer from the state security bureau one day while I was observing the protests. He appeared out of nowhere, brandishing a sophisticated camera and expensive zoom lens (tipping me off that he was not an ordinary Changsha resident out supporting the protesters) and snapped 10 or so photos of me from different angles. When he was done, he turned and left with a slight wave and a look that seemed to ask me to understand—he was just doing his job.

When I learned that the Yale-China Association had decided to evacuate us from China, I was overcome with a sense of both relief and profound sadness. As we were getting ready to leave Changsha on June 11, one of the many people who stopped by to see us off was an acquaintance I had met a year or so earlier in town, and with whom I occasionally had a meal. Without saying a word, she handed me a note through the window of the van that was about to take us to the airport and away from Changsha. She wrote:

“Today when we part, perhaps it will be forever. In this life, in this world, it will be hard to meet again. I have lost a friend from another country, and my country has lost so much, too much . . . There’s so much I want to say, but I am unable to utter any words. I don’t know whether it’s tears or blood that’s flowing from my heart, and I don’t know which month, which year, if ever, it will stop. In silence, I wish you a safe journey home.”

The Chinese leadership wishes that people would simply forget June 4th and concentrate on making money, but their heightened vigilance beginning in mid-April every year indicates that they know it has not been forgotten. A new regulation went into effect in Beijing on April 20, 2004, which calls for strict control of the Tiananmen Square area and preparations for possible “emergencies.”The regulation also prohibits activities that “disturb social order” or “jeopardize public security,” and warns that those who engage in prohibited activities will be punished. But sometime in the not-too-distant future Chinese citizens will take back the Square—it’s just a question of when and how.