We watched the truck carefully.  It took about ten minutes to cover the one block to the National Trade Union Building.  In that time the crowd following the truck had grown to more than three hundred people.  There were all kinds of people, young and old, men and women, but the majority looked like students.

Yefu and I stood in the middle of this crowd, and were slowly working our way towards the front. We all began shouting to the soldiers, "Don't hurt the students in Tiananmen!"

They shouted a familiar slogan of the People's Liberation Army, "The People's Army loves the people!"

As we shouted, we inched closer and closer to the truck.  Our voice grew louder the nearer we approached.  When the crowd was only a few yards from the truck, a soldier inside began shooting at the ground near the feet of those at the front.

The pavement rang with the sound of bullets.  Blinding sparks flew up.  Four or five people at the front of the crowd were struck in the feet and legs by the ricocheting bullets.  They collapsed, and were dragged away by those behind.

At the back of the crowd several peddlers waited with their flat-bed tricycles.  They sympathized with the student movement, and willingly offered their services as man-powered ambulances.  

Those of us in the crowd who were not shot did not run away, but continued to follow the truck, shouting: "You Fascists!  Down with the Fascists criminals!  The people will bring you to trial!"

Again, shots rang out.  More people fell, and were dragged away.  The truck crept forward.  The crowd still followed.  In ten minutes the truck had covered only ten feet.  In the same ten minutes at least five more people were wounded in the feet, legs or abdomen by ricocheting bullets.

The soldiers in the truck were taking turns shooting at us.  Some of them ignored the commend to stop until their officer placed a restraining hand on their arm.

By the time the convoy neared Xidan Avenue, only a few blocks from Tiananmen, the people were furious beyond fear.  Walking hand in hand, we began to sing, "The Internationale"

"Arise you prisoners of starvation!
Arise you wretched of the earth!
For justice thunders condemnation,
A better world's in birth..."

The people marched close behind the military truck, ignoring the soldiers who continued to shoot at their pursuers' feet.

At the front of the crowd hobbled a young girl of 17 or 18, who was wounded in the leg.  She insisted on following in spite of her injury.  Two young men on either side supported her.

The sky was filled with dark smoke.  The air was permeated by a terrible stench of gun powder and burning vehicles.  The shooting continued.

The truck inched ahead.  And the crowd followed.  Every few minutes someone at the front would fall and be carried away.  Those behind would move forward, filling the gap.  I had never seen or imagined such a thing: young girls and boys, the white-haired elderly, all unprotected yet facing the bullets undaunted.  

I stood there too, and experienced a new kind of feeling.  It walled up up from deep within me, analmost religious sensation, an epiphany.  From the power of voices united in song, from the strength of hand grasping hand, from every step taken forward, ever forward, I found that life and death had lost all meaning.  

Nothing mattered anymore but the here and the now, these voices and these hands.  We measured our existence with every step, and every step was the whole of our existence.

The shooting suddenly stopped.  Could the soldiers sense this awesome unity, this fearless power?  Were they daunted by this crowd which faced their bullets and refused to run or fight? 

We waited.  The soldiers waited.  Then an officer cried out, "Fire!"