“Citizen Action from Negative to Zero” on the first anniversary of the White Paper Movement in Shanghai

I wonder who has not spoken out yet, who else but me is defending our city? Who is born with power and the will to make decisions, who wants to accept his fate and keep silent?

—"Ask who has not spoken"

The outbreak of the White Paper Movement was both accidental and inevitable. Three years of border blockade, a year of severe and dynamic clearance caused disasters, and many cities were under endless lockdown. The transfer bus that overturned late at night in Guizhou, the Sitongqiao warriors before the 20th National Congress, the fire in Urumqi, and the protests and blockades that followed one after another in front of residential communities across the country. Finally, in the protests in Urumqi City and the demonstration at Nanjing University of Communication, It broke out in more cities and universities.

For myself, the weekend of November 26, 2022 was just an ordinary rest day after the city was closed. Anyone who wants to take public transportation or enter a company needs to undergo a nucleic acid test every 72 hours or 48 hours, but the city’s public life has been recovering little by little. This weekend is the "Danish Film Masters Exhibition". On Saturday afternoon, I went to the Majestic Theater with my friends to watch "The Fourth Marriage of Madame Margarita". Majestic didn't have the experience of Grand Guangming Cinema often organizing film exhibitions. There were quite a few people waiting in front of the door to exchange their tickets before the opening that day. The queue stretched for hundreds of meters, quite like the queue waiting for nucleic acid when the lockdown was just lifted. It was impressive. After the movie ended, I had dinner with my friends, walked on the street, waved goodbye and got on the subway. It was a normal weekend in Shanghai.

At about 11 o'clock in the night, I saw a friend posting in the WeChat group about the commemorative event on Urumqi Middle Road. People gathered around the street sign and lit candles to mourn silently. Everything was so peaceful, and the police did not stop them any more. At that time, I had not paid attention to the media "Teacher Li is not your teacher" on Twitter, which played a huge role in the White Paper Movement. I live in the suburbs, and the subway has stopped running late at night, so I have no idea of ​​going to Wuzhong Road and go to bed early. It wasn't until I woke up the next morning that I realized what had happened the night before. The confrontation with the police, and people shouting the slogan of Sitong Bridge: "Don't take nucleic acid, but eat, don't lie, let's vote, don't be a slave, be a citizen..." Even “the Communist Party will step down and Xi Jinping will step down”, which everyone knows but dare not say, is shocking and enlightening.

For various reasons, I didn’t go there until the evening of Sunday, the 27th. Before setting off, I kept thinking about what my late grandfather once warned me not to participate in social movements. Even if I did, don’t go to the front and just deliver food and water. He experienced the Cultural Revolution and June 4th. I understood what he said, but I felt that I couldn't just sit at home. I took the subway to Changshu Road Station. Friends had already arrived and were waiting for me next to the subway station. At Jing'an Temple Station, the train doors closed and slowly slid forward. The next stop was Changshu Road. I leaned against the door and looked at everything on the platform that slid backwards. I suddenly remembered the night at Prince Edward Station during the anti-extradition movement. The demonstrators were sprayed by the police and huddled together in the corner where the seats and the car doors met, unable to move. , will I become one of them? An hour later, at 8 o'clock in the evening, Changshu Road Station was closed.

Walking onto the ground from Exit 7 of Changshu Road Station, people have gathered at the intersection of Wuyuan Road and Changshu Road, facing off against the police guarding the intersection. Wuyuan Road leads west to Urumqi Middle Road. After arriving, people and the police were relatively calm at first. Only some of them held up white paper with one hand. Gradually, people shouted the slogan "release them." This was the last time people continued to take to the streets the next day, except for stopping the dynamic clearing. important purpose. Then, the slogans of Sitong Bridge were shouted out, don’t…do…, don’t do…do…. This was also the first time that I shouted out my inner thoughts so loudly in a public space. During this period, some people also tried to lead everyone to shout Although "Xi Jinping steps down" came out, everyone should still take to the streets with great fear similar to mine, and very few responded. I didn’t have the guts to pick up the white paper. Many of the people holding the white paper and leading the chants were women, and they were very brave. Changshu Road is one of the busiest roads in the concession. As more and more people crowded at the intersection, the traffic on Changshu Road was forced to a standstill. People on the car picked up their mobile phones to record the scene. Many cars honked. I understand it's a form of solidarity.

Subsequently, more police officers poured out of Wuyuan Road and drove away the demonstrators gathered at the intersection. People were forced to gradually disperse along the north and south sides of Changshu Road. Since they were far away from the police, I had no way of knowing whether there were demonstrations. were arrested in it. This is also the most intuitive feeling when participating in a social movement for the first time. It is impossible to know from a God’s perspective afterwards what happened in the movement and where is safe or dangerous, like watching Wikipedia or Youtube documentaries. People can only follow along. You can see a part of your own footsteps that you can see, but other things that happened at the same time are completely impossible to know at the time.

After being evicted from the Wuyuan intersection, my friends and I walked around Urumqi Middle Road, along Changle Road, Huashan Road, Wukang Road and Fuxing West Road, trying to find a place closer to Urumqi Middle Road. Sure enough, it didn't work. As expected, all intersections leading to Urumqi Middle Road are guarded by police, and only residents can enter. Some of these times, my friends and I rode shared bicycles to pretend that we were "innocent people" passing by, so as to slightly increase the sense of security in our hearts. When walking on Wukang Road, which was the most famous road in the French Concession in the past, you can often see the marks left by other demonstrators, the flowers leaning on the corners, and the red background of the deleted WeChat articles posted in the phone booths. Exclamation point, we are not alone.

Finally, we came to the triangular green space at the intersection of Urumqi Middle-South Road, Fuxing Middle-West Road and Huaihai Middle Road, where is the bronze statue of Nie Er. Before I got here, I had already learned from the Twitter post that Mr. Li is not your teacher that this place had been blocked. It was indeed the case when I arrived. Losing the Internet during exercise is a scary thing, so my friends and I did not enter. I only looked at the green space without lights across the street. Later I learned that the police had used wanton violence to chase down the demonstrators next to the bronze statue of Nie Er that night. I left the bronze statue and hid at a friend's house on Tianping Road until almost midnight. When I took a taxi and passed near Urumqi Middle Road, I could still see police cars flashing by on the street from time to time.

As the next working day and the cold snap arrived, the police also randomly checked mobile phones at important subway stations and crowded places to intimidate any possible gatherings and demonstrations, and the White Paper Movement came to a hasty end. But contrary to the expectations of every protester who opposed the dynamic zeroing policy, whether in a big city or in a school, the change to the dynamic zeroing policy came so quickly. In just ten days, it changed from the most stringent policy in the world to The harsh dynamic has entered a state of anarchy at the public health level. Their so-called "life first and people first" is nothing more than a rhetorical joke.

I deeply feel that I am extremely lucky. I was not arrested by the police or received a summons call at the time of the movement or afterwards. However, I still fell into a similar state of mind as the protesters in Hong Kong. Why not me? Why am I so lucky? I can still feel the fear when I received a call from the police. A few months after the White Paper Movement and one year before the Shanghai lockdown, I saw a T-shirt purchase link forwarded by a group friend in a WeChat group. The words on the shirt "2022 Shanghai Lockdown Survivor", out of commemoration of the lockdown, many group friends and I purchased this dress. A few days later, when I turned on my phone in the morning, I suddenly found that a group of friends who also bought clothes were taken to the door for questioning by the police at three o'clock in the morning because of the clothes. I also had two missed calls from the same stranger on my phone. I realized what was going to happen to me next, so I hurriedly deleted the "sensitive" software on my phone, including VPN, Twitter, Youtube, Instagram, and Telegram, and quit some WeChat groups where sensitive issues were discussed. On the way to work, I once again received a call from this unknown number. Sure enough, it was from the police station in the area. It asked me if I knew about the clothes, how I learned about the clothes and purchased them, and asked me to hand over the clothes. I tried to avoid other questions. Fortunately, the clothes were only picked up at the courier station. The police said that they could go directly to the courier station to pick them up, and there was no need for me to meet them again. But the fear of being about to face totalitarianism is a real experience. I can't imagine being interrogated by the police for "drinking tea", such as Cao Zhixin, a participant in the Beijing White Paper Movement, being detained and imprisoned, or human rights lawyers and journalists being sentenced for speaking out. How scary it would be.

If the White Paper Movement this time draws inspiration from the anti-extradition movement, it may be "Be Water" and "No Platform"; perhaps another level is also a kind of influence of the Chinese citizens' movement. Helpless. As long as there is any advance publicity before the start of the movement, any person who is the center of the organization will only make the government police aware of it in advance, thereby extremely raising the alertness of the place where the plan is to take place, thus causing the operation to fail. The reason why the White Paper Movement took place is Thanks to people’s spontaneity and non-centeredness. On the 27th, Shanghai was not without organized demonstrations. Some people posted posters on the Internet near Huaihai Xintiandi and gathered in the afternoon. However, as mentioned before, police officers were already waiting. Two of my friends were taken away for questioning by the police for staying nearby. The purpose of the police was also very funny. They were not questioning the protest itself but the organizers behind it and whether there were any foreign forces. Of course, there was no such thing. , the friend was also released after several hours of having his phone checked and interrogated.

I really like a report by Duan Media after the White Paper Movement , "China's Protests from Negative to Zero: If the turning point has not come, it's because now is the beginning." In the thirty years since June 4th, especially in the ten years since Xi Jinping came to power, needless to say, the civil movement has become the most secretive thing in this country. It is believed that people are motivated by cowardice, but by fear of the capabilities of a powerful state machine. Ten minutes after the beautiful scenery here on News Network, the world is in dire straits. There are often protests and demonstrations in various countries around the world. In 2019, the anti-extradition movement in Hong Kong became the "Hong Kong thugs" in official media reports.

As a participant of the White Paper Movement in Shanghai, I think everyone on the street that night was walking on the streets of China for the first time in their lives to express their opinions, but the method was so clumsy. Many times even the slogans were There is an embarrassing situation where the previous sentence cannot be connected to the next sentence. Not to mention issues such as mutual communication and mutual distrust among protesters, how to reasonably resist police actions, how to reasonably protect their rights and interests after being arrested, and so on. But everyone needs to learn, right? From Hong Kong’s opposition to Article 23 and Occupy Central, nearly one-third of Hong Kong’s population took to the streets during the anti-extradition movement; in Taiwan, it has been since February 28 that the government has repeatedly Confronting the protesters, the self-immolation of Zheng Nanrong, the bridgehead of the Zhongli Incident, led to the subsequent non-party movement, the Formosa Incident, and ultimately the democratization of the Lee Teng-hui era. As a larger country, China naturally has a longer way to go. Every attempt will not be erased, but will be learned and passed on in more movements in the future.

Most of the participants of the June 4th generation went overseas through the subsequent Operation Yellow Bird, more than thirty years ago. Of course, it is impossible to deny the huge sacrifices and contributions they made back then, but the indelible growth of age and separation from the actual situation in China has caused many of them to blindly repeat "anti-communism" and "democratization" and become divorced from the younger people. Yuan’s pursuits, such as women’s rights and equal rights issues, or the “freedom of film” that people called out during the White Paper Movement. Wang Dan was accused of sexual assault during June 4 this year, and the feminist open mic that started in New York is nothing more than a contrast between two generations. The legalization of same-sex marriage in Taiwan is inseparable from the efforts of the younger generation.

The White Paper Movement has just begun. The commemoration of Li Keqiang’s death in 2023, the Halloween parade in Shanghai, and even the pursuit of their own rights by high school students and college students, although more moderate, are all continuations of the White Paper Movement and expressions of their own demands. I think that protesting and fighting for one's own injustice and paying attention to things around us are exactly the beginning of social movements. I believe that one day, people in China, Hong Kong, Xinjiang, and Tibet can freely take to the streets, just like young people in Taiwan and other parts of the world, they can express themselves freely and carry out a sunflower revolution safely. . I firmly believe that this day will come.

*Regarding the history of the White Paper Movement and the dynamic clearing and anti-dynamic clearing over the past year, Li Houchen, the host of the podcast "Flip Radio", wrote a book "Chronicles of the Epidemic Years" to record and provide an in-depth understanding of the epidemic management system. Logic analysis, I hope you have time to read it. The book can be obtained by searching for "Li Houchen" in zlib.