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Seldom are glory and dread quite so thoroughly mingled for so many. And seldom is history played out on such a grand scale, minute by minute, before such an enormous global audience. Though the drama had been building all week, the countdown began early Saturday morning, after Li announced in a televised speech that "we must end the turmoil swiftly" and ordered troops into the city. While Li's raspy voice echoed from Tiananmen Square's loudspeakers, sirens wailed and blue lights flashed as an ambulance arrived to take away yet another weakened hunger striker. A full moon, shrouded in mist, gleamed above the Great Hall of the People. Some slept, some talked, and all waited for what the new day would bring.
But already the city of 10 million had begun to stir. Supporters of the students banged pots and pans to wake neighbors and send them into the streets with a mission: stop the trucks and armored personnel carriers heading toward Tiananmen, the vast square that has been the center stage of Chinese politics for more than three centuries. Because troops stationed in Beijing might not comply with orders out of sympathy with the hunger strikers, the forces were drawn from nearby provinces. Many of the soldiers were peasant boys who had spent the previous week in camps outside the city. Forbidden to read newspapers or watch television, they were not aware of how much support the hunger strikers had attracted.
They quickly learned. Residents swarmed around the military vehicles, stopping them in their tracks. Sometimes they sat on the hoods; sometimes they simply lined up before the convoys. Often they covered the windows with glue and paper, and slashed tires.
Then they lectured the soldiers. "We are people and you are people! Why do you have no feelings?" a demonstrator screamed. "You should think about what you are doing," another exhorted a truckful of soldiers. At the intersection of Gongzhufen, five miles west of Tiananmen, thousands flooded around a convoy of 50 trucks, bringing food, water and pleas for the soldiers. Urged a young woman: "The students are for the people. Please don't hurt the students."
Some vehicles backed up and departed, the soldiers flashing victory signs. Other trucks, hundreds of them, just sat where they were, blocked by thousands of protesters. On the faces of some of the young troops, tears glistened.
Then at 10 a.m. the government announced that all satellite dishes operated by foreign television networks would be shut off. Viewers around the world watched in amazement as the minutes ticked by, concerned that as soon as the plug was pulled, the crackdown would begin. By noon Saturday in Beijing, all live broadcasts had ceased.
In any country at any time, such a confrontation between power and protest would be extraordinary. In China, a nation whose tradition is suffused with respect for authority, last week's outpouring of discontent was nothing short of revolutionary. No major power in the postwar period has ever been so rudely shaken -- rocked, in fact, to its foundation -- by the dissent of its populace. Still, on the faces of the hunger strikers in Tiananmen Square and of their millions of supporters around the country, the message was clear: China had crossed a threshold into a new era, where the future was entirely and terrifyingly up for grabs.