National Day

I woke up late on October 1^st after making plans with Derek to go to Tiananmen Square early in the morning. Derek knocked on my door at around 1:00PM asking me if he could borrow my camera. I gave him my camera and told him to get some good shots for national day. He pointed down the hall at the service person standing by the window, letting me know that there was one on each floor preventing students from getting too close to the window, or from looking out onto the campus. Derek was determined to get shots. He asked the service person if he could take pictures but she declined. He asked her why, maybe expecting a detailed answer straight from the head of the party. The little woman smiled and laughed as he snuck pictures from down the hall and insisted that we stop taking pictures.

He told me I should be ready to go by 2:00PM. I wanted to shower, which meant I would have to take a cold shower because hot water was only turned on from 7-9 in the morning, 3-5 in the evening, and 8-12 midnight. Derek, Derek’s friend, and I from Tsinghua left around 2:00PM to take our bikes to Tiananmen Square. The ride was an hour and a half long, but nothing a spry 24 old man couldn’t handle. We spent the ride in conversation about China and its relationship with Taiwan. I didn’t really know enough to take a stance but it seemed like an awkward issue for international relations for even the most well informed people, let alone undergraduate students.

Since I’d slept too late to try and make it to the parade, I turned on the television to watch some of it. What I saw was awesome. The sheer amount of people involved in the parade, all moving at the same pace, and the image of the tanks was powerful. The CCP was making a statement about their authority, and it was very convincing. Hu Jintao overlooked the parade with a cautious smile on his face. As we got closer to Tiananmen Square and the Forbidden City, there were sectors blocked off. Cops had created a perimeter and they weren’t allowing anyone in. We found a small restaurant in an alley and sat down to eat.

We found our way to a bike rack right outside of one of the police blockades and parked our bikes. Our next objective was clear: penetrate the blockade to get closer to the Forbidden City. Derek had a military background, which meant he knew how to go on a reconnaissance mission. We took several laps back and forth noticing the holes in the blockade. There were two. They were not stationary. We saw a Chinese man try to go through one of the weak points only to get mildly choked by a guard and thrown back outside the perimeter. I wasn’t willing to sneak in if that was going to be the penalty. I would be willing to sneak by police if it meant getting thrown out physically, but the choking looked a bit harsh. The guards stepped aside for a bus to pass through and closed off the blockade. We then realized how we could get in.

Sitting on the bus Derek, his friend, and I were glad we decided to come down. We were dropped off just outside of the Forbidden City on what I think was the southeast corner. There was a designated area for people to stand that wasn’t crowded at all. The fireworks were scheduled to start at 8:00PM and we had a half hour to kill. I went across the street to buy an ice cream before coming back to our spot and enjoying the atmosphere. It didn’t feel much different from going to a concert at some outdoor venue in upstate New York. People were friendly, there were lots of cameras, and security was trying to maintain order. Some of the security guards congregated across the street pointing and laughing. If it was a serious event, it certainly didn’t feel like it. The people of China, party members or not, were taking pride in their country tonight. Ten minutes before the fireworks were scheduled to begin, the guards began moving people. They came up to the crowd and asked everyone to move further down the road, or to go across the road by the convenience store. If there was any particular pattern, it was hard to say. It seemed more like they just wanted to keep moving people. A guard approached me specifically and said “Excuse me sir, I am sorry, but you cannot stand here. If you wish to watch the fireworks could you please go across the street, it is getting too crowded here.” The guard walked away before I could pretend to be Italian and never came back. By the time the fireworks started, the guards stopped hassling people.

As the fireworks continued, the guards scrambled to get out of the way of the rapid-fire photographs being taken. Everyone scrambled onto the grass behind the railing and snapped a lot of photographs and took digital videos. The fireworks were quite impressive, the Chinese are, after all, known for having invented them. We watched for 45 minutes as the Chinese fireworks lit up the sky above the Forbidden City. As we got on the bus to go back to our bikes, more fireworks were set off in the shape of smiley faces and Chinese characters.

The ride back was much longer than the ride down, and on top of the 12 miles we had to cover; we each had a passenger for the ride back. By the time we returned to Tsinghua we were all too tired to do anything else, so we stayed in and played Uno and ordered McDonalds. The National Day was a fantastic show and one of the more memorable events I can say I was a part of in my time in China. I began to feel like I was getting more out of the semester abroad than my peers who went to Viet Nam and Cambodia. And the break had just begun.