Free God's Double Agent by Bob Fu

of teachers erupted all over the country, and students began protesting the widespread government corruption.

    “Why won’t the government help the teachers?” I asked Bruce one day while we ate lunch in the cafeteria. “Aren’t the teachers the guides of the souls of children?”
    “I don’t know,” he responded, thinking while he chewed. “But they don’t have the resources to teach. The whole nation—even the party secretary—admits teachers are paid too little. Want to orchestrate our own protest?”
    “You organize the protest route,” I suggested. “I’ll try to come up with some catchy slogans.” We stayed up late, organizing friends from the dorm to help, and thinking of ways to get our message into the community. The next morning, I went to the university’s propaganda department to get the permit.
    “We’d like to submit our plan for a protest,” I said at the counter.
    “You want to do what?” he said, looking at the signs we’d made, which were leaning up against the wall. “You can’t walk around with those. We’ll solve the problem within the system.”
    “The system,” of course, was communism. Though I hadn’t joined the Communist Party yet, I assumed I would one day. We used to say, “Join the party in order to change the party.”
    “This is ‘within the system,’” I argued. “Everyone agrees with us,” I said. “We are a teacher’s college. Don’t you think we should stand up for teachers? My professors agree with us, as does the president!”
    “If you keep at this,” he said, lowering his voice in a menacing admonition, “you’ll face some real repercussions.”
    With slumped shoulders and dashed hopes, Bruce and I walked slowly back to our dorm.
    “I don’t understand,” I said. “We had it all planned out. It’s not like we were advocating for the overthrow of the government.”
    “Maybe we should,” Bruce said, with an impish grin on his face. “Want to try to fight this?”
    That was the last conversation I ever had with my friend.Within days, Bruce was “persuaded” to switch to another school. The school had told his dad, the political leader, that his son was out of control. He feared that his son was jeopardizing his political future, and so—just like that—he was gone. I was left confused and alone. Shouldn’t we fight for what’s right? We’re all future teachers, so why can’t we unite?
    I tried to understand the propaganda department’s concern, and figured that the party official was simply confused on how to deal with the unrest. The protests went on for a while, which I followed in the news. Then, on April 15, 1989, the editor of the official school newspaper ran up to me on campus.
    “Hu Yaobang is dead!” he said. Yaobang was the former Communist Party secretary who supported the 1986 student movement. My mind flashed back to high school, when I had read news of the story in my stolen newspaper.
    “What happened?” I asked.
    “It’s mysterious,” he said. “No one knows exactly, but he died right in the middle of a high-level Communist Party leaders’ meeting!”
    “What were they discussing?” I asked.
    “What else?” he said. “The education budget.”
    “He must’ve sided with our teachers!” I said. I envisioned him standing in front of the group, passionately arguing for the rights of teachers. I imagined the hardliners fighting back against his rhetoric and him dropping dead of a heart attack.
    The whole nation was shocked over news of Yaobang’s death, especially students. Spontaneous demonstrations of mourning caught the government off guard. After the 1986 student protests, he’d been ousted and had become something of a disgraced icon of reform. Completely bereft, I left my friend and went to be alone in my dorm. There, in the silence of my room, I got out a pen and paper and thought about the legacy of Hu Yaobang.
    The words flowed out of me until the sun went down outsidemy window. By the time I