The first anniversary of the White Paper Revolution, commemorated by a self-report

It’s the first anniversary of the Blank Paper Revolution.

The sounds heard and shouted on Wangping Street that night are still deafening.

I have never been with so many strangers shouting for a unified and heartfelt desire to achieve. It is also the first time that I have resonated with the strangers around me without communicating, and shared the same anger and joy. We passed the trumpet and one of us shouted a protest slogan, and the crowd responded. Someone printed out white paper and distributed it, while passing around marker pens for free writing. Then everyone held up the white paper and firmly started the largest civil protest in the past 30 years with an extremely restrained attitude.

In the afternoon, I was discussing this rally in the Instagram group. Everyone felt that the poster calling for a memorial rally was spread too abruptly, especially since the arrests occurred after the rally on Urumqi Middle Road in Shanghai the day before. We were worried that the poster was a "fishing law enforcement" . What I don’t even understand is why Wangping Street, a commercial internet celebrity location, was chosen instead of a more political location.

Moreover, Wangping Street is not actually a particularly specific address, because Wangping Street is both a street and a community according to the administrative classification. The only place that is most likely to meet the needs of crowds is Binhe Road along the river. There is a red archway built at the entrance of Binhe Road to create an Internet-famous business district. Many online videos of police rushing into crowds took place there.

Two friends in the group went to the area at 4 or 5 pm to inquire about the situation. They found that there were police cars stationed at every intersection, and there were also police cars patrolling the surrounding areas. Later, I met up with them at about 6 o'clock, and I bought a stack of white garbage bags from a small shop on the street. I also reported my whereabouts to other friends in the WeChat group.

It didn't go well at first. There are nucleic acid scanning machines at every intersection when entering Wangping Street. On the bridge, I also saw young people holding flowers being prevented from entering by security guards. Scanning the code means tracking, which means it is easier to be tracked. And we are a group of people who refuse to do nucleic acid, so we can only explore other ways.

But the strange thing is that the young people wandering around there, especially the young people holding flowers and candles, are like a particularly easy-to-identify kind to me. It was as if the stranger I passed by had the same purpose as me, and was a partner who reached a conspiracy with me without using words. At that moment I felt the brightest hope of our generation.

Later, we walked through the back door of the hotel in a small alley on the side of Wangping Street to the Binhe Road side. It was already after seven o'clock, and the crowd had already gathered. We squeezed into the center of the crowd and found patrolmen wearing black security uniforms and red armbands trying to evacuate the crowd. A few young people without masks who looked like the organizers started dancing in the middle of the crowd, playing loud music, and the whole crowd sang "You, you, you, you, you, you, you, you, you, you, you, you, you, you, you, you, you, you, you want, you want, you, you, you can do, you want to dance, you, you're you, you want,,,,,,,less likely, needless,,,,cessless to, to dance to dance in the middle of the crowd.

A Uyghur boy faced several patrolmen, holding a candle high and loudly questioning their law enforcement rights. After a stalemate for a while, the patrolman gave up evacuating the crowd and stood at the back watching us place bouquets and candles on the ground. Later, people crowded in to place bouquets of flowers or candles, and the security staff were eventually squeezed out of the crowd.

Looking at this photo now, you can see that this patrolman is quite young. I wonder what he was thinking when he looked at the people around him. I also know that he is just doing his job and passively standing on the opposite side of us according to the professional training and speaking skills he has received. But I hope that what happened that night will be imprinted in his mind and prompt him to start thinking about some questions.

I wore a hat and a mask, covering my face tightly. My friend blushed and said she felt like crying. But it was like I was in a dream, my body was accepting the shock of the scene, but my heart was not yet able to accept the reality of what was happening. Even while shouting slogans, I would pay attention to the camera hanging on the telephone pole in front of me. I shouted excitedly and prayed that the camera would not capture me. It seemed that I was split into several selves in that scene, one of which I was fully immersed in being a street citizen for the first time for most of them. During the protest, one part of me knew very well that someone would be locked up in a dark room for such a public action, and the other part of me was withdrawn and watched it all as a bystander.

Until I took the subway home with my friend and he felt so much about everything that happened tonight and couldn't help but hug me and cry, I still didn't feel it. After going home and staying away from the noise and watching everything that happened after we left, I realized what kind of thing I had experienced.

I still remember that Uyghur boy interrupted everyone after the crowd chanted "Xi Jinping steps down and the Communist Party steps down." He said that today he just wanted to commemorate the compatriots who died in the fire. But the atmosphere at the scene was no longer under control. Those demands that had nothing to do with the zero-clearance policy, and those who dared not shout out because they had been brainwashed and controlled by the Communist Party in China for a long time, overshadowed the boy's appeal. At this time, my friends and I also feel that the resonance is no longer there, and when the crowd cannot agree on their demands, things will go out of control.

So we withdrew from the crowd and prepared to meet up with other friends on the other side of the river, only to find that many people had gathered on the other side of the river to respond, and some even sang songs.

It was also at this time that I discovered that the mobile phone signal was blocked, and even calls could not be made. We were about to retreat to the main street to contact other friends, but we happened to see a large group of plainclothes people gathered at the archway and running towards the crowd in batches. A male voice shouted, "Plainclothes are here, everyone, please be careful." In fact, it is powerless and unwilling. We cannot stop plainclothes men from committing violence against those who are still protesting, nor can we stop them from brutally interrupting this hard-won civil movement.

A friend cried out worriedly, which was also a reaction to the three years of turning concrete people into numbers while constantly compressing personal space and rights to achieve the absolute centralization of public power that Xi Jinping wanted. Another friend ran back to follow up on the situation. When he came back, he said that there was no violent conflict and that the plainclothes men were just trying to disperse the crowd. So we went to the other side of the river to meet up with our friends and continued to protest.

On the other side of Wangping Street, many passers-by stopped to watch, including people riding electric scooters and nearby residents out for a walk. I saw a middle-aged man smoking a cigarette standing on the street. He was just watching the excitement, so he couldn't help shouting a few words. But what was very confusing was that even though the place was already so crowded, there was still a group of older people dancing with big names, as if everything happening at this moment was in another dimension to them. I can't help but guess that maybe some of them have experienced the Chengdu pro-democracy movement in 1989 and know the Communist Party's attitude and methods towards it, so what they see is not a group of young people who have the courage to stand up and fight for their due civil rights. Instead of speaking out, a group of ignorant and reckless young people are destroying their own future.

Not long after, a group of uniformed policemen gathered on Binhe Road to disperse the crowd and dragged the citizens who continued to protest. We also followed the crowd and rushed to the bridge. Perhaps we hoped that the police would not use violence in full view of the public. Or maybe we hope to record more and preserve history no matter what.

The crowd gathered again under the Wangping Street archway and continued to chant slogans. Plainclothes men hiding in the crowd would randomly break up and gather together from time to time. In order not to be scattered by the crowd, we either held hands with each other or hooked the rope of a friend's backpack. Later, the people in the innermost layer were scattered and scattered outwards. In order to avoid a stampede, we also turned around and ran away. In this way, one intersection followed another, and we were finally driven to the Chunxi Road intersection.

It was almost 11 o'clock at that time, and I saw a message from a Hong Kong journalist friend during the intermittent signal reception, so I decided to say goodbye to my friends and go home to tell him everything I had experienced. At the end of the interview, he said that he saw the hope of China and the hope of Chinese young people, which also encouraged me:

But after the interview, I went to Wangping Street to follow up. There were even friends I knew who were pushed and dragged around by plainclothes to grab their cellphones. I saw plainclothes officers knocking people to the ground, hitting their heads, dragging them and kicking them in the waist and abdomen. So he was roughly pulled back from his ideal expectations and into the gap between the cold gears of public power. I know what happens to those who are captured, and there is no one in this place who can help them avoid this trauma.

The next night we all gathered at a friend's house to share our feelings, none of us wanting to digest the incident alone. Friends who didn't go to the scene gave me a hug when they saw me. I also participated in an online sharing session with people who have experienced it from various places. Some listeners from Taiwan left warm greetings and concerns in the comment area. I don’t think I took to the streets because I was brave, I just happened to have this opportunity to shout out the slogan of Sitong Bridge in public, and I didn’t miss it. And if a few friends in the group hadn't made the decision to encourage me, maybe I wouldn't have gone out on the street alone. When I integrate with the crowd, what drives me is the simplest sense of justice and responsibility. All I do is to implement the legitimate rights of citizens.

But at the same time, for those who were arrested and experienced it, it is unfair to them to refuse the title of "hero". I was lucky enough to get through the year safely without being targeted, but a lot of people have had their day-to-day life taken away from them. Until today, I didn’t know that the Uyghur boy at that time was named Yashar. He had been taken away from him so much this year, and he couldn’t wait to say sorry.

I still remember him choking up and talking about what his identity as a Xinjiang person meant, and that he had to fight a lot to gain a foothold in the city. He is more saddened by the fire that occurred in Urumqi than we are here, and he also knows better than us what the long-term blockade and years of supervision will cause the people of Xinjiang to experience. The word "compatriot" has the most solid and close sense of identity and belonging for him/her. So we left after TA’s suggestion to adjust the protest slogan was ignored. For him, letting Xi Jinping step down and the Communist Party step down will not achieve the most urgent goal of helping his compatriots. The only way is to stop the zero-clearance policy and allow people to return to normal life.

There was a Uighur girl next to him that day, and he also shared some of his experiences and thoughts. It was he who reminded the boy to stand up and stop the topic from deviating. Likewise, he was not wearing a mask. I don’t know if he has been arrested and whether he can still live a normal life now, and at the same time, I cannot speculate optimistically on his current situation .

I have read some reports on the first anniversary of the White Paper Revolution in the past few days. Many people who witnessed it have gone abroad, and some people I know who have witnessed it are still living under surveillance in China. Just like feminists or pro-democracy activists, living here cannot wait for the day when it will be completely safe. Going abroad is the only way, and it is also the path that must be taken as a last resort.

One year has passed and people's lives have returned to normal. Faced with the various uncertainties and potential risks left by the three-year epidemic, some people choose to continue to ignore and focus on their own lives, while others begin to think about new directions in life and expand into new areas. possibility. I was also experiencing a wonderful life, but at the same time I seemed to be stuck in that night. Up to now, the home page of Moments is still a blank piece of paper, and the ins avatar is still the one drawn by netizens holding up a blank piece of paper.

The wax oil on the Wangping Street pavement has long been cleaned away, and there will be no deafening shouts when passing by. But every time I drive past that stretch of river embankment, a seemingly ordinary commercial street, it always reminds me of that night. Because history happened here, this place also has different annotations for me. What I can probably do is remember the history here, record it, and tell it.