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By S.H.

May 10, 1999 | BEIJING -- Saturday

Today I watched two buses sponsored by the Communist Youth League take student protesters from Peking University to the area near Jianguomen where the American and British embassies are. So I went down to Sanjiaodi, the bunch of bulletin boards that make up a "speech zone" (notice the lack of "free" -- this is the same area where a lot of Tiananmen protests happened) to see what was going on.

I knew the protests had to do with NATO's bombing of the Chinese embassy in Belgrade. The Chinese government and media had been stridently anti-NATO before this, and their reaction to the bombing wasn't exactly surprising. But it's also clear to me that there has been growing political tension about the upcoming 10th anniversary of Tiananmen and the 50th anniversary of the founding of the People's Republic. This anti-NATO protest has seemed like a good way for the Chinese to let off a lot of steam.

When I got to Sanjiaodi, it was turning dark, but there were a lot of people milling around, posting and reading posters, and otherwise talking and assembling. While some of the posters looked very student-made (big calligraphy on cheap paper, maybe a red or blue background), there was at least one really nice glossy poster that didn't look like the rest. It seemed like the government's attempt to boost this protest movement.

I bumped into some Chinese friends who warned me not to take pictures or talk to Chinese people, or else I'd look like a reporter, and get people in trouble. So I left and went to an Internet cafe to read the news on the web. Later I walked back to campus with another American, and this time, passing through Sanjiaodi, there was a lot more noise and people. Students had made a large banner, and went walking out of the south entrance of the university with it. In a sign of apparent official sanction, the usually half-open university gates were all the way open.

The crowd marched down through busy streets of the Haidian district, singing the Chinese national anthem and shouting things like "Down with American imperialism" and "Chinese people -- rise up!" I ran into a Chinese friend who warned me to go home. But I was hungry, and so my American friend and I stopped by a McDonald's to get a milkshake, and let the crowd pass us. When we caught up with it again, the crowd had reached People's University (another big university in Beijing) and joined some of its students in protest. About half the large group decided to march to the American embassy -- a 12 mile walk.

I was already amazed at the amount of "help" the marchers got -- lots of police directing traffic, with no attempt made to get them to disperse. Then suddenly nine big buses appeared on the Third Ring Road to shuttle the tired protesters to the American embassy. My American friend and I decided to skip the buses and walk the rest of the way.

It took two hours, so we'd missed a lot of excitement at the embassy when we finally arrived. Still, there were many hundreds of students still there at 2:30 a.m., shouting protests, lined up in a very orderly fashion far away from buildings. There were also lots of police and soldiers, who didn't try to break up the protest. My friend and I were tired, and left to rest our legs.

Next page | Lecture from a military nerd

Photograph by AP/Wide World