Hu Yaobang, 73, a reformer and one of the few politicians the Chinese have ever genuinely worshiped, died on April 15, 1989. As the party leaders who had toppled him from his position as general secretary two years earlier carried him to his grave, some 100,000 students gathered on Tiananmen Square and demanded Hu's rehabilitation. The incident marked the beginning of the revolutionary events of 1989 in faraway Beijing.
On the evening after Hu's death, his son asked his friend Zhang Lifan, a historian, to document the coming days and weeks. He told Zhang that members of the Hu family were too exhausted to do it themselves.
Today Zhang, who was 38 at the time, is one of China's leading intellectuals. He had 300,000 followers until last November, when censors shut down his blog. Zhang is a tall, kind and playful, 63-year-old man. When he is searching for a word or a memory, he tilts his head to one side and presses his left hand to his forehead. He wears a silver skull ring, a memento mori given to him by a Buddhist monk.
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