might now feel themselves free to re-launch some new political storm. We could see around us that people were absolutely distraught. In his last major public speech Zhou had set China a goal of Four Modernisations, which made no reference to communism or even socialism; it was a nationalist goal. Sitting in my office in Beijing, I read low-level intelligence reports from Hong Kong, based on interviews with legal travellers crossing into the colony, and those provided a wealth of evidence of the widespread popularity of Zhou’s nationalist goal, and the fear that Mao’s cronies wanted to tilt China to the left and relaunch a Cultural Revolution type of movement. Four months after Zhou’s death, at Qingming, the festival when Chinese traditionally venerated their ancestors, which had been turned into veneration of revolutionary heroes, for a week every work unit in Beijing sent a delegation—a column of people—marching through Tiananmen Square to bring wreaths for Zhou Enlai. Dedicated to him, they stood there, they made speeches swearing even to the death to defend the political legacy of Zhou Enlai. A few put up posters warning against a political storm being whipped up by certain people—leftists, as we would say. I spent four days on the Square observing what was the first true popular mass expression of opinion since 1949. I even took my two infant daughters to the Square because we were witnessing a historic event, and I wanted them to be able to say in later years that they were there. I remember standing, on the Sunday evening, on the edge of Tiananmen Square and looking out over the vast space. There on the Gate of Heavenly Peace was the portrait of Mao Tse Tung facing out across the Square. Only a few isolated individuals were walking around on the square, Tiananmen was crowded: there were row upon row of wreaths standing on easels facing Mao Tse Tung, and at the heart of many of those wreaths was a portrait of Zhou Enlai composed of flowers. So there was an army of Zhou Enlais facing Mao Tse Tung— Birnam Wood had come to Dunsinane.120 I stood there at midnight, and I said to myself, ‘How is this going to end? The Politburo cannot leave the political heart of China occupied by a hostile army, but if they remove these wreaths, there could be an explosion of popular anger.’ I went back the next morning—this illustrates the point that we could now work as observers and did not just have to be confined to reading the People’s Daily every morning—and at breakfast time the wreaths had all gone. There were thousands of young Chinese on the square, rushing up to the side wall of the Great Hall of the People, shouting, ‘Give us back our wreaths!’ There were 200 young men with shaven heads who, when they spotted a tiny little police car with a megaphone on top, which was going around appealing to them to leave the square, they rushed towards it, got the policeman and the policewoman out and turned the car over. By the end of the day, the square was filled again. There was fighting on the square. That night, the army and the militia were sent in to clear the square, and there was bloodshed and whatever. Those were some of the atmospherics. We had begun to observe Chinese politics happening on the street. When Mao died in September, I remembered that before leaving the UK I had been told that Jiang Qing,121 now Mao’s widow, had said to her American biographer in confidence: ‘When he dies, they will come for me within one month.’ I watched and waited. Then one day, my wife and I took our only Chinese contacts of any standing out to lunch. Before lunch began, the wife took me aside and told me in terms that were guarded but unmistakable, that Jiang Qing would not appear in public again, and nor would the other three members of what we later learnt to call the ‘Gang of Four’.122 I reported that 120
From Macbeth: “Fear not, till Birnam wood do come to Dunsinane”. Jiang Qing (1914-91). 122 Political faction: Jiang Qing, Zhang Chunqiao (1917-2005), Yao Wenyuan (1931-2005), and Wang Hongwen (1932-95). 121
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