Tonight we go into the square. It’s a particularly important night for the movement. Gorbachev is in town, and I know we’re going to see kids from every university in Beijing. They’re saying we’ll even have protestors from the Foreign Ministry and the Central Television Station. It’s ironic, but the whole thing will make for a great blowing-off-steam party. My thesis is done, finally. “Women Who Fought Fate.” The research I did was ambitious, not so much for the details about Wu Chao and her reign as the Emperor Tse’Tien, but for being able to find anything on Pai K’an at all. Historiography wasn’t perfected until a couple hundred years after her time, and let’s face it, she’s not the kind of figure that the powers that were, or that exist now for that matter, would want to keep record of. You won’t find her in any text besides mine. It’s only because of the stories my grandmother used to tell me that I even know of her. I like looking at the scraps and the clippings, block printed or hand written, that describe her the best. The determinists would say that you can’t escape fate, no matter what you do. They’d say that the fact that Pai K’an lived in the same century as Wu Chao was fate enough to begin with. But she didn’t care about any of that. She just fought it, everyday of her life, confident that nothing could determine her course, arrogant that no one could hold her back. I’ll take her with me to the square tonight. I’ll try to inspire my friends, who fear the power of our oppressors. I’ll hold on to what Pai K’an always stood for, because I know that this is going to move toward something -- something the whole world will soon hear about. We owe it to ourselves to be sure now about why we’re doing what we’re doing. Each one of us must ask the question: ‘Will I be ready when the time comes?’