China: campus reactions to the NATO bombing in 1999

Contemporary Review, Feb, 2003 by Garreth Byrne

The schoolgirl, whose Western name is Flora, arrives a few minutes later and I ask casually what the students were shouting about. In passable English she replies: 'Some buildings were destroyed in Yugoslavia'. Probably a 'dumb bomb' hitting civilians, I think, and proceed with our hour-long conversation lesson. Flora with her umbrella unfurled disappears towards the campus entrance and the bus stop.

That evening I tune into the BBC news on shortwave radio and learn that NATO bombs have accidentally destroyed part of the Chinese embassy in Belgrade, with three people killed. Thinking back, I calculate that 4 p.m. South China time must have been about 7a.m. Yugoslavian time, so our group of 50 campus students would have been reacting to first news reports. I turn in for a good night's sleep.

Sunday, 9 May: On a quiet, sunny morning I take, as usual, the 7.15 a.m. Bus 234 from the campus gate into the distant centre of Guangzhou in order to attend Mass at the 'stone church' (cathedral) near Haizhu Square. The bus winds its way along the suburban highway and then through the maze of inner city streets on its 50-minute journey, stopping to drop and pick up passengers at intervals. I begin to observe some passengers soberly reading their morning papers: the headlines and photographs are large and grave.

I don't need to understand Chinese to get the meaning. I feel a little self-conscious as the only Westerner on a half-full bus, but nobody gives me a glance and I don't worry.

After church some Western teacher mends and I from different institutions repair to a nearby fast food restaurant for coffee and snacks, as is our Sunday morning custom. We discuss the news and agree to keep in touch by telephone and then disperse to our respective apartments.

At lunchtime I go from my campus by prearrangement with some Chinese acquaintances to a restaurant somewhere south of the Pearl River that meanders through this city of more than 7 million inhabitants. There are women and children in the private dining room with its traditional round table and rotating 'lazy Susan' on which assorted bowls of food are placed. Conversation is polite and general and the meal satisfying. I enjoy leisurely Chinese meals.

We take a taxi back to my campus. En route we are delayed for twenty minutes as traffic is stopped by police near the entrance to Jinan University, an old institution with landscaped avenues where I sometimes dine with an Irish teacher friend. We watch as a fleet of a dozen or more buses swings in convoy out on to the highway that passes the campus gates and heads into downtown Guangzhou. Banners with large character Chinese slogans adorn the sides of the buses, each vehicle crammed with students. They are apparently headed for the relevant foreign consulates. On fashionable Shamian Island are the American and British consulates. In an adjoining district is the consulate of Germany.

I tune in to the BBC news and take special interest in the Hong Kong television news.

Later in the evening an official from the university Foreign Affairs office visits me and other foreign teachers and advises each of us as a safety precaution not to leave the campus.