WHERE WAS GEORGE?:

'This is China's tragedy' (JAN WONG, 6/02/06, Globe and Mail

He was a truck mechanic who wanted to change China.

In the heat of the 1989 protests at Tiananmen Square, Lu Decheng and two friends lobbed paint-filled eggshells at Mao's portrait in Tiananmen Square. Turned in by student protesters, he was sentenced to 16 years in prison for "counter-revolutionary destruction." One got life in prison, the other got 20 years.

"I have no regrets," Mr. Lu said softly in Chinese in his first in-depth interview. "In a repressive dictatorship, if no one has a spirit of sacrifice, we will never achieve democracy. This is China's tragedy." [...]

At 17, Mr. Lu got his mechanic's licence, and learned to drive a truck. He got married and had a baby girl. When the protests started in April of 1989, he and his friends began to pay attention to politics. "We wanted to support the student protesters," he said. "We felt that the absolute power of the Chinese Communist Party would unavoidably lead to corruption and decay."

They made a pact. Whoever wanted to go to Beijing should show up the next day at the train station in Changsha, the provincial capital. Mr. Lu's wife was out of town. They were very much in love, but she was uninterested in politics. So he left a cryptic note on the kitchen table: "I'm going north to support the students."

The next day, five showed up and pasted pro-democracy slogans on the station walls. But the night train to Beijing was sold out. Friendly arms pulled them aboard when passengers learned they wanted to support the hunger strikers. The conductor came up with footstools, which they plunked down near the washroom sinks.

Mr. Lu had never spent a night away from home. But 23 hours later, he and his friends, arms linked, were marching to Tiananmen Square under a red cloth banner that said, "Down with Deng Xiaoping." There were tens of thousands of protesters, as many as lived in his small county town of Liuyang. That night, he and his friends slept next to Mao's mausoleum.

The next day, Chinese authorities declared martial law. Alarmed, Mr. Lu and two of his friends wrote a proclamation, declaring it illegal because the government had not received approval from China's parliament. In vain, they tried to get the students to broadcast it.

A few nights later, frustrated and worried they were missing a unique chance to push China towards democracy, the trio considered self-immolation in Tiananmen Square, but feared their suicides might be misinterpreted. Smoking and passionately debating what to do next, Mr. Lu's childhood friend, Yu Zhijian, a primary school teacher, glanced at the iconic portrait of Chairman Mao. "It's because his dark soul has never been vanquished!" Mr. Yu declared. "It's all his fault."

At first they wanted to pull it down, but decided that was impossible. The third friend, Yu Dongyue (no relation), who had studied fine arts, suggested defacing it with paint.

"We didn't want to commit violence, so we didn't use glass bottles. We used eggshells," Mr. Lu recalled.

The next morning, they purchased red, yellow, black, blue and green paint. They mailed letters home. "Take care of yourself," Mr. Lu wrote to his wife. "Raise our daughter well. I won't be coming home."

At noon, they bought 30 eggs from a sidewalk fast-food vendor, lopped off the tops, and asked him to make their last meal: omelettes. They filled the shells with paint. While Yu Zhijian prevented people from walking through the gate under the portrait, Mr. Lu and Yu Dongyue began hurling eggs as fast as they could. It was a stunning act of lèse-majesté.

"I remember bystanders started applauding," Mr. Lu said. "Some people disapproved, but I felt the majority were with us."

Student security guards grabbed the trio. Mr. Lu and his friends went willingly and answered questions. Later that afternoon, the students called a press conference where he answered questions. Back in Hunan, Mr. Lu's father saw the evening news and fell to the floor, crying: "It's all over, it's all over." Mr. Lu's wife had a nervous breakdown.

In a move that has never been fully explained, the students later handed Mr. Lu and his friends over to police. At the time, I was The Globe's Beijing correspondent. By the time I reached Tiananmen Square, officials had already draped an olive tarpaulin over the vandalized portrait. A day later, a new portrait was up, showing Mao with a hint of a smile.