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.

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