Suddenly I was a celebrity. As I walked across Tiananmen Square towards the gates of the Forbidden City, people would stop what they were doing and point at me, talking amongst themselves excitedly, and then approach, smiling, asking for a photograph.
The smog obscured the distance, so that I could barely make out the enormous concrete buildings that surrounded the square. People would emerge from behind me as if through a fog, appearing suddenly to ask for photos and then disappearing again into the dull greyness of the concrete tiles that blurred with the choked sky.
Stopping for one emboldened others, so that soon I could only walk a few feet before being stopped again. My skin was a curiosity, unknown to these small-town villagers who had come to the big city as tourists. One woman tried to get her little son to pose with me, but he stood shyly behind her legs and refused, averting his gaze when we made eye contact.
I pretended that I didn’t see the others waving from the corner of my eye, and instead looked up to follow the tail of a colorful kite. It fluttered freely in the sky, a smattering of color against the smog. A man approached me with one in his hand, trying to sell it to me, but I waved him away, so he joined the others in following behind me. When I stopped again he produced a handful of tchotchkes from his bag emblazoned with Mao’s face, and I had to smile at the irony. The man smiled back, taking it as a sale, but I shook my head again, raising my hands across my chest and pushing past him.
The entrance to the Forbidden City loomed over a bridge on the other side of the street, an enormous portrait of the Chairman hanging above the ancient archway, the way through thronged with sweaty tourists holding bottles of water and umbrellas to keep out of the sun. I lost my coterie in the crowd, so for a moment I felt free once more, alone in my anonymity.
But I could see a woman pushing through the crowd, heading directly towards me, her thin shoulders parting the crowd like water. I turned to the left to circle away from her, but she changed her direction and intercepted me, sidling up beside me and extending out the badge that hung around her neck.
“I’m a professional tour guide,” she said, “this is my license.” She motioned to the badge again. “I can take you through the Forbidden City and tell you all about it.”
“No,” I replied, trying to jockey away from her in the confined space, but she stuck close, repeating her sale, adding scattered facts that I would find interesting.
“Did you know that it took a million workers to build the Forbidden City?”
“No thank you,” I tried again, and just as I was about to push past her a loud yell echoed out across the square behind me, and I turned to see a man flailing his arms, talking excitedly.
He was middle-aged and poorly dressed, and although I couldn’t understand what he was saying, his face was furrowed in anger, his hands pointed into the faceless crowd, his bare feet stamping on the ground. The people around me only looked for a moment and then turned away, leaving his anger without an audience.
The tour guide began to speak again, but instead of listening I stood transfixed to the screaming man, watching the crowd part around him, an island alone among a sea of people. Behind him, on the road separating the City and the Square, a white van pulled up and three men jumped out. They were dressed all in white, and they hurriedly approached the man, one on each side, grappling his arms, while the third parted the crowd and opened the doors of the van.
The man kept talking as they dragged him into the van, his loud voice muffling as they closed the doors on him. The third man climbed into the driver’s seat and pulled the van away, taking the man with them.
No one turned to look.
