Mrs Huang Jinping, a woman in her early 30s with a round, sad face, cycled several miles from the east of Beijing to Tiananmen Square yesterday morning.
In the basket of her bicycle she carried a bouquet of yellow chrysanthemums and a hand-written sign. She stopped at the spot north-west of the square where her husband, Yang Yansheng, then a young man of 31, was killed by army bullets 10 years ago.
After a long pause, and a few tears, she moved on and joined her older friend, You Weijie, who had cycled to a location south of the square to remember her husband, Yang Minghu, then aged 41, who was also shot dead by the People's Liberation Army on June 4th, 1989.
Such poignant little acts of defiance went almost unnoticed yesterday on the 10th anniversary of the bloody suppression of the pro-democracy movement by China's Communist government.
Traffic flowed normally around the square throughout the day, though security officials crowded the pavements. Many posed as tourists, including a young woman in hot pants who surreptitiously photographed passers-by, and a bulky man with tourist map and camera whose pocket emitted loud radio static.
Thus, when a young man threw leaflets in the air, plainclothes police were able to grab him along with several foreign correspondents also trying to pass as tourists who sprang to life and tried to take pictures. The journalists were released after being lectured about reporting without a specific permit, and much of their film was confiscated. The leaflets, echoing student demands in 1989, called for democracy and workers' rights, and denounced corruption.
In late afternoon a second man briefly opened a white umbrella on which was written a call to "Remember the 10th anniversary of the student movement", before he, too, was seized.
Even when the two widows parked their bicycles and took a taxi to Wan'an public cemetery at Fragrant Hills west of the city, police were there in tinted-glass Toyotas to watch them, and to enforce a notice on the gate, "No correspondents admitted". About 20 grieving relatives held a ceremony inside the cemetery, during which they put out the urns containing the ashes of the deceased, lit incense and sprinkled them with alcohol. One unfurled a computer printout saying, "Mourn the June 4th Victims".
Outside afterwards they were anxious to talk. "Yesterday I called the city council and told them my husband was killed on June 4th and that I have no job and only get 50 yuan (£4) a month," said Mrs Huang. "An official asked me `So what's your point? Are you saying we should look after you?'
"I rang the State Council to complain about his rudeness and the official rang back to apologise. He said, `Sorry, I thought you were someone with an ulterior motive to create chaos.' I called, the council," she explained, "because I was upset my husband was killed on this day. I think about this every day. Yesterday I was crying uncontrollably." Alongside her, Mrs You said: "It's already been 10 years since June 4th but the government ignores this incident. As the living we feel we have to carry on doing this." Mrs Zhang Xianling, whose 19-year-old son was killed, commented: "The wound has become a scar but the scar has not healed. Only when they conscientiously resolve the problem will everything be all right."
The government has refused to change its verdict on the demonstrations as counter-revolutionary turmoil. As if to emphasise who won the day 10 years ago, the smiling face of Li Peng, the official who declared martial law, greeted Beijingers from the front pages of the official newspapers yesterday, photographed performing a function as No 2 in the party hierarchy.
He has good reason to look pleased. The campuses of Beijing universities from which the student masses poured to condemn him a decade ago were yesterday quiet and orderly. The successor generation of students is preoccupied with examinations and success, their political instincts diverted into aggressive nationalism, especially since the NATO bomb hit the Chinese embassy in Belgrade last month. "We have a better grasp now of what's right and what's wrong," a first-year law student at the People's University told a reporter. "The students were too extreme back then. They were manipulated" possibly by foreign governments, she said.
More than 70,000 people streamed into Hong Kong's Victoria Park yesterday, organisers said, to commemorate the Tiananmen Square massacre in defiance of Chinese warnings.