One balmy August day, Xiao Han was getting ready to leave China to study in Canada. Just before she left, she and her friends went to their old haunt, Buer Bistro in Beijing's Dongsi Street, near the old Drum Tower. From a distance, the bar seemed to exude a warm glow, its decorative plastic tassels shimmering. "Great, it’s still there -- after everything," Xiao Han whispered to herself, recalling that night at Liangmaqiao Bridge more than six months before. But the pub had changed its name and was operating under new ownership. Its former proprietor Lin Yun, a 30-something musician and his girlfriend, former Beijing News reporter Yang Liu, were last seen here before disappearing in the wake of the Liangmaqiao protests of Nov. 27, 2022 over a incident that brought out nationwide frustration with top leader Xi Jinping’s "zero-COVID" policy On Nov. 24, 2022, a major fire broke out in the Jixiang residential area of Urumqi, the regional capital of Xinjiang, which was under lockdown due to COVID-19. Official reports said 10 people died in the fire. The incident led to protests on Nov. 26 in Urumqi's Zhonglu Road in which people held up blank sheets of paper, followed by similar protests involving thousands in the Liangmaqiao area of Beijing a day later. Yang Liu and Lin Yun were among the protesters. Three weeks later, on Dec. 18, a widespread crackdown began, leading to the detention of Yang and Lin. Like many others in Beijing, they were held for about a month and released on bail before the 2023 Lunar New Year. Lin was sent back to his hometown in faraway Guizhou, while Yang was told to go back to her hometown in Linfen, Shanxi province. Having suppressed the protests, China also abandoned its "zero-COVID" policy. But young protesters were to face extensive retaliation in various cities across the country. Ten protesters from Beijing – including Cao Zhixin, Zhai Dengrui, and Li Siqi – were formally arrested and detained until April 19, 2023, when they were released on bail and required to return to their hometowns. The treatment of protesters varied from city to city. In Chengdu, a Uyghur student named Yassar, who had been detained for 37 days following the initial round of arrests, was re-detained in Xinjiang with new charges shortly after the end of the Chengdu Universiade sports competition in August 2023, causing great concern among his friends. The White Paper protests highlighted the aspirations and frustration of China's next generation. Yet the ceaseless political repression and oppressive atmosphere drove many to despair. Some chose to leave, applying to study abroad or taking temporary refuge overseas. Xiao Han was one of them. She was on Liangmaqiao Bridge that night. Now, under the autumn sun in North America, in a relaxed university environment, everything seemed surreal. She tried not to dwell on that day, but memories often flashed back unexpectedly. "I was most worried about the guy who shouted 'we want national self-determination,’" she said. In October 2022, while listening to the state broadcaster CCTV evening news, Xiao Han started her application to study in Canada. The Chinese Communist Party’s 20th Party Congress, which voted to entrench Xi as ruler, had made her determined to leave, despite her reluctance to say goodbye to the family cat. As a journalist, she had experienced the tail end of what was once called the "golden age of Chinese news," but like her peers, she became a casualty of the "new era" of repression under ruling party chief Xi Jinping. The three years of rolling pandemic lockdowns since 2020, in particular the "zero-COVID" policy implemented after 2021, had taken a toll on her mental state. She felt as if she was "going mad, wanting to bite people whenever I stepped outside." A number of tragic events occurred just before the 20th Party Congress. On Sept. 18, a bus carrying residents for relocation as part of the "zero-COVID" efforts plunged off a cliff in Guizhou. Tragic incidents related to lockdowns seemed to occur almost daily during that period. Xiao Han felt as if she was trapped in a kind of political hallucination, as she scrolled through Twitter reading various political rumors about China, though none of them came to pass. On Oct. 16, she came across a news report online about Peng Zaizhou, who hung protest slogans from Beijing's Sitong Bridge. She remembers feeling shocked at the time. "This person has nothing left to lose," she thought. Then the 20th National Congress started, and Xi was rubber stamped for an unprecedented third term in office, turning state newspapers and news sites into a sea of red banner headlines. A week later, things took a curious turn, even for the enigmatic world of Chinese politics, when former President Hu Jintao was escorted away during the closing ceremony in footage that shocked everyone who saw it online. The 20th Party Congress and its first meeting of the 20th Central Committee ended on Oct. 23, but the lockdowns remained. Neither Beijing, where Xiao Han lived, nor other cities showed any signs of lifting the "zero-COVID" policy, and Peng Zaizhou was still missing. In desperation, Xiao Han hastily made a backup study application, applying for a major unrelated to journalism, leaving her dream of becoming an investigative journalist aside. She wanted to leave China as soon as possible. On the evening of Nov. 27, Xiao Han saw in a WeChat group that some people were planning to mourn the Uyghurs who died in the Urumqi fire at the Urumqi Liaison Office in Beijing by holding up a simple poster. Then they heard that the office wouldn't be open that day, and that police were already in the vicinity. So the crowd turned up at Liangmaqiao instead. Without thinking too much about it, Xiao Han made plans with a colleague and headed out to join them. When she got there, the streets were already full of people. Slogans echoed through the crowd. She heard the slogans from Sitong Bridge being chanted repeatedly. "We want food, not COVID tests!" "We want votes, not leaders!" "Press freedom" was also shouted many times, and she recognized one of the voices as that of her friend. When a young man shouted, "We want to eat KFC," everyone bursted into laughter. Peng Zaizhou's slogans gave voice to the suppressed desire for a better life under the "zero-COVID" policy and other long-unspoken sentiments. Another young woman who was present that night told WhyNot: "We were all very calm and well-behaved, because the police were right there. We couldn't shout any of the more radical slogans, but we almost shouted everything we wanted." She said that at that moment, the atmosphere was more one of joy, as people had been repressed for too long. "I truly felt alive in that moment," she said. Xiao Han also chanted "press freedom" many times. "I thought at the time, without press freedom, where will we go to watch movies or dine in a restaurant?" But what stood out for her that night was when a Uyghur student suddenly shouted, "We want national self-determination." Xiao Han remembers the sudden silence that fell over the scene. The crowds had chanted many slogans together, yet this demand clearly didn't resonate with the bulk of those present, who were primarily majority Han Chinese. Amid the silence, she suddenly lowered her head and wept. She felt sorry for the man, and approached to give him a comforting hug. "In China, Han nationalism has always been quite powerful. It's so powerful that people often fail to even realize its existence. The sound that night seemed on the fringe, unfamiliar, but it was real," she said. At that moment, she saw a police officer with a body camera walking by. She realized that this Uyghur man could be in a lot of danger, so she quickly pulled him into the shadows at the edge of the crowd. A year later, Xiao Han often thinks about him. Even though there were many people there that night, she still thought most about him, hoping he is safe. "A father said to his child: The people standing here don't want to take any more COVID tests," she said. -––– In the summer of 2023, Tara sat in a park in New York, having hurriedly left China to study in the United States. She too was at the Liangmaqiao protest, after hearing about the memorial event while she was working out with a friend. Her friend immediately wanted to go, but Tara hesitated. She had encountered China's thought police many times during her years of work in non-government organizations. And she knew that, if anything happened, as an activist she would be in more danger than the others, and her future opportunities would be even more limited. Friends had told her that she had been targeted by China's "stability maintenance" system on a regular basis over many years, so attending an event like this would only bring further harassment, putting her in more trouble than the average person. "Should I go?" she wondered. Eventually, Tara decided she would. She got to Liangmaqiao after 10 p.m., wrapping herself up to hide her face so she couldn’t be photographed. Standing in the crowd, she found it hard to shout slogans with passion, but she still joined in the chants for press freedom because she was also a writer. She saw young people gathering under the bridge. Passing cars honked in support, and someone yelled, "Release the detainees in Shanghai!" In a pause between the slogans, she overheard someone nearby saying, "We had to be here tonight. You can always find another million-dollar job," She couldn't help but smile. The atmosphere that night was very cheerful. Although there were a lot of police officers, walking back and forth among the crowd, people were not afraid. There were police officers stationed every 10 or so meters (33 feet) along the road, but they were just observing. She saw an older man holding a stack of white paper and giving out sheets to people nearby. She saw on her WeChat Moments app that someone had uploaded lots of photos from the scene. Most of the people there were young, but all age groups were represented. A number of motorcycles and electric scooters were parked nearby, and a few food delivery riders were standing there. "How do you feel about tonight?" one of them suddenly asked her and then answered, "I think today's action was a success." He added, "Just having so many people together is a success." His comment has stayed with Tara to this day. On the same night, Xiao Han overheard a conversation between a father and his three-or-four-year-old daughter who were standing in the crowd. "Daddy, are all these people waiting to take a COVID test?" "No, these are people who don't want to take any more COVID tests,” her father answered. ––– Some faces from last year’s protests The Liangmaqiao protest went on until after 2.00 a.m. Xiao Han got home a little after eleven. The next day, she read that police in Shanghai were checking passengers' phones on the subway. In the evening, around eight o'clock, she was busy deleting her phone messages when four or five police officers and a community worker knocked on her door. She was taken to the police station and questioned repeatedly, while her phone was scanned. But her calm and somewhat evasive responses left no room for the police to find anything amiss. Her phone's system language was set to English, and the police seemed to grow impatient with this, and eventually they let her go. She got home in the middle of the night, grateful that her roommate had been quick to tell all her friends what happened, and warn them to delete their messages. In the days that followed, Xiao Han scanned the internet daily for information about missing protesters. She already knew some of these people. She knew of Yang Liu as an excellent journalist. She saw a video of Cao Zhixin calling for help before she was arrested. "I only watched it once; I couldn't bear to watch it again. It was too painful." In Xiao Han's view, the arrests were random because the protest was entirely spontaneous and unorganized. People like Cao and Zhai were arrested because they were in a group that shared information, and all of its members were arrested. "This is the absurdity of Chinese law enforcement. The police often wait for an approach to be set, and then they use that approach to try to find so-called evidence. The group chat was basically their source of so-called evidence," a lawyer helping to track down and assist protesters told WhyNot. Xiao Han said she believes that those who were arrested mostly had no experience of dealing with the police. Some may not have deleted their phone messages in a timely manner, and the police always target the weakest link. Almost a year later, some of Xiao Han's theories have been confirmed. A source told WhyNot that one woman hadn’t even gone to the protest. She was only in a WeChat group in which some had taken part, but when another protester was arrested, she was taken away and detained for 37 days. "All of them were taking our punishment for us," Xiao Han said, adding that she realized just how arbitrary the police action was. What angered Xiao Han was that after Yang Liu was arrested, the media organization where she worked terminated her employment. None of the employers of those who were arrested spoke up for their employees. In one journalists' group, someone shared the news of Yang Liu's arrest, and someone else said, "Maybe we shouldn't mention her here; that might be better protection for her." As a fellow journalist, it saddened Xiao Han that when people were in trouble, their colleagues didn't actively voice support, but hid away and avoided the issue. Soon she heard that another female colleague, Wang Xue, working in the media industry, had also lost her job. ––– Chengdu: A Uyghur loses his freedom On the same day as the Liangmaqiao protest, there was also a White Paper protest on the southwestern city of Chengdu's iconic Wangping Street. Cheryl, a lawyer, had other commitments that evening, and wasn't there. Later, past 10 p.m., some friends of hers who did go along gathered at a barbecue stall, and she rushed over to join them. In the bustling and fashion-conscious city of Chengdu, the protests were the focus of heated discussions. Among the crowd that night were a spirited couple, Pang Hu and Huang Hao, who had just taken part in the demonstrations. Pang, a tattoo artist known for her short hair and confident demeanor, and her husband Huang, who sported shoulder-length locks and was interning at a law firm, shared a passion for cosplay and drag. Both proudly identified as feminists. Even in trendy Chengdu, they stood out as avant-garde trendsetters, known for their fresh and distinctive styles. Cheryl, who often hung out with them, commented, "Each time we met, their unique fashion choices never failed to make an impression." The night of the protest, they met up with several groups of friends, and the gathering lasted well into the early hours. The next day, Cheryl heard that the police had detained Pang and Huang. Fearing for their dog's well-being, they had made frantic phone calls to friends for assistance. After 37 days in detention, they were released on bail. During that time, their friends had been working hard on their behalf to gather information and secure legal representation for them. When Pang finally got out, Cheryl and their friends welcomed her with a bouquet of flowers. To everyone's surprise, she appeared in good spirits, and very cheerful. Pang's mother, who had come from out of town, was constantly talking, while Pang simply wanted to be with her friends. They ate dumplings together and later unwound at a spa. Cheryl couldn't help but notice that while Pang seemed fine on the surface, she had suffered emotional damage. "Something inside her had been shattered," Cheryl recalled. ––– Also detained in Chengdu was Yassar, a 24-year-old man from Xinjiang, whose well-being was to become the primary concern of these friends. Yassar had been very quiet among the crowd on Wangping Street, at least to start with. "While some participants were shouting more aggressive slogans, he stood up and insisted that the focus should shift to commemorating the victims of the Urumqi fire," according to one of his friends. Tall with curly hair, described by his friends as a "handsome and cheerful" individual, Yassar studied design in college, initially working in Beijing before relocating to Chengdu due to the pandemic, where he found a job at a cultural company. Yassar hails from Bortala in Xinjiang, near the border with Kazakhstan. His father, a retired teacher in failing health, and his sister, soon to start university, found they were unable to contact him. They later discovered that he had been detained, and his whereabouts remained unknown. Yassar's father wanted to come to Chengdu to see him, but he had to wait until his salary was paid to afford the plane ticket. Eventually, kind-hearted individuals bought the ticket for him, and carrying 20 pieces of Uyghur bread as provisions for the journey, he made his way to Chengdu to find his son. Yassar was released from detention just before the 2023 Lunar New Year, but he would disappear again in August. A person familiar with the situation told WhyNot that around a dozen officials from Xinjiang arrived in Chengdu the day after the Chengdu Universiade ended and put Yassar back in detention. That night, they flew him to Bole county in Xinjiang for continued imprisonment. Since then, Yassar has remained out of contact with his Chengdu friends. No one knows his whereabouts, only that he has been accused of "spreading extremist ideology." Lawyers are representing him in his case, and have submitted legal documents to request a meeting, but there has been no response. Another person familiar with his situation told WhyNot that after Yassar's initial release, he was interviewed by the media, which may have been one of the reasons for the renewed retaliation against him. Following his initial release, Yassar was continually threatened, interrogated and harassed by police, according to a person familiar with the situation. In the months before the Universiade, he was placed under close surveillance, and "almost driven crazy." Everyone thought things would calm down after the games were over, but they were surprised when he was taken away again. One of his friends told WhyNot that Yassar had received a lot of support from people, and had been to some public activities in the months after his release. That he found understanding among the other young people, and seemed much happier, and no longer isolated. "Now, he is detained all alone in Xinjiang. It's hard to imagine what he might be going through," one of his friends said. "He always planned to work hard to support himself and his family. He also has a lovely girlfriend," his friend said. "He tried to stay out of trouble and hoped not to be targeted. How could he be a revolutionary or an opposition activist? He was just a young person hoping for a stable life. But that turned out not to be achievable." Who were the White Paper protesters? Were the protests political? One September day last year, Chen Dong met Yang Liu. Yang Liu was tall, wearing a blue short-sleeved shirt and jeans. "She seemed to be doing okay," Chen Dong recalled. Lawyer Chen Dong was also there that night at Liangmaqiao. He had just gotten back into town from a business trip, and took a taxi. When the driver heard where he was going, he said: "There's a protest going on -- why are you going there?" He then dropped him off far short of the destination, so Chen had to walk the rest of the way. The crowd was densely packed, full of young faces. He has kept thinking back to those young people who turned out that night. Who were they, actually? He later came to describe them as "sensitive, pure and proud." "They are very sensitive to life and reality," he said. "Many of them are artistic, and like poetry and film." What he admired most was their sense of pride. Perhaps it came from their affirmation of their own worth, a sense of self-confidence gained from modern life itself. Chen had seen this aura in a lot of younger people. "I really liked it," he said. Standing there in the crowd, Chen had a sense of rising excitement. "I had been feeling as if I was living life in a black box, but I was suddenly very encouraged that there were so many people with the same ideas as me," he recalled. Several months later, at an event in Chengdu, he met a "cool and talkative" young couple, who introduced themselves as Pang Hu and Huang Hao. He saw the same qualities in them, too. Just ahead of Lunar New Year in 2023, Chen started getting requests for help from the families of detained protesters, including Yang Liu's. Lawyers worked tirelessly to help them, and eventually a good many people were released on the day before Lunar New Year. Among them was Yang Liu. Yang Liu was immediately told to go back to her hometown in Shanxi, while her boyfriend Lin Yun had to return to Guizhou. Another informant told WhyNot that for several months afterward, Yang Liu was banned from going back to Beijing, but her situation gradually improved. Chen had met Lin Yun and remembered him as having an artistic temperament and a gloomy demeanor. He also remembered his strong desire to return to Beijing, but it was not permitted at the time. "Was that night about politics?" Chen said. "Of course it was!" Born in the 1980s, Chen had previously worked in the media, witnessing a period of civil society activism in China that was filled with hopes and disappointments. Eventually, he transitioned into the legal profession. At Liangmaqiao, he felt a "sense of encouragement." "I thought people had been tamed in recent years, but that night I saw a lot of bravery and pride," he said. There is a common perception that the young people of the White Paper movement were only calling for an end to lockdowns, not making a political statement, but Chen disagrees with that view. "On that night at Liangmaqiao, I suddenly realized that this was the first political action to take place on Beijing's streets in over 20 years. That was truly precious," he said. "In China, just taking to the streets is a political act," he said. ––– "Freedom, not lockdowns! Votes, not leaders! A month ago, these words were hung from Sitong Bridge by Peng Zaizhou," another writer who gave only the nickname Little Wilson said. "Back then, the COVID-testing policy was China's biggest political issue. So if opposing it wasn't a political statement, I don't know what is," he said. "Politics isn't just behind-the-scenes manipulation of power. Politics is part of public life. In my view, this is a Chinese resistance movement, made up of calls from bravely independent individuals," Chen said. He noted that most participants in the White Paper protests were young people working in the cultural and media industries. He remembered seeing several rock bands there, who introduced themselves as such, saying "This is our guitarist," or "This is our drummer." Not far from Chen, a young man named Xin Shang recited Shakespeare sonnets to a line of police officers. He disappeared quickly, and was released after a few days' detention. But then he disappeared completely after that, with no further news of him. You can still find a documentary he made online about 2004 "Super Girl" runner-up Li Xiaoyun, full of shaky footage. One year on, where are they now? On Oct. 30, 2023, people started posting photos of Halloween in Shanghai to social media, in which young people dressed in costumes as a form of satire. One person painted their face and wore a sash emblazoned with the words "Finally able to retire in 2070," in a satirical dig at delayed retirement. Another dressed up as revolutionary author Lu Xun and gave a speech calling on the nation's youth to "stay warm and shine bright." Others turned out dressed head-to-toe in white PPE with giant cotton swabs, mimicking the enforcers of the three years of the zero-COVID policy. A woman identified only as "Woman F" told the Uncomprehending Podcast that there was a similar atmosphere at the White Paper protests in Shanghai a year earlier. "It was very clear to me that everyone out on the street in a weird costume wasn't just taking part in Halloween as some kind of ghost, but was someone who had experienced all of the silence, isolation, lockdowns, forced quarantines of the zero-COVID policy, and the White Paper revolution," she said. "These were people who had shared the deep collective trauma of the pandemic and the zero-COVID policy." There was "anger and sarcasm flowing subtly just below the surface of that joyful and playful atmosphere, as well as young people's desire for freedom of expression and storytelling in the present," she said. "Everyone seemed to realize that this was one of the very few opportunities they would get to take to the streets freely and openly," Woman F said. She wasn't the only one to notice this. Cheryl, who hosts public dialogues with young people, told WhyNot that many of the young people who came out on Halloween had also taken part in the White Paper protests a year earlier. "When I saw that cosplay by the young people of Shanghai, I wasn't surprised at all," she said. "The young people on the streets of Shanghai are the same as the young people I've been seeing all year." "If you were to ask what kind of young people they are, I believe they are the kind who are willing to think," Cheryl said, adding that she has seen bookstores large and small popping up like mushrooms after rain since the movement, an expression of a long-suppressed desire for public expression. Young people are now starting to think hard about China, and about their future, she said. Recent dialogues she has hosted have been very diverse, from women freezing their eggs to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, and have been attended each time by dozens of people, with lively discussions sometimes lasting into the early hours. "They have the ability to discuss issues and be inclusive of different viewpoints," Cheryl said, describing the discussions as "very rational." "Life itself has power," Cheryl said, adding that young people are just waiting for an opportunity and will make good use of this power when the time comes. "They're not pessimistic or self-aggrandizing, but feel that they have a great responsibility given that they are living in these times," she said. "They don't have a paradigm," she said. "But why do they need one? They're the kind of people you would think of in day-to-day life as unassuming and well-behaved." "They're not the type to emphasize 'masculinity' or embrace a violent aesthetic," Cheryl said. "They just want to be themselves. They are authentic individuals. But this also sets them apart from any previous generation of young people." "They may not actually know each other, and their lives may not intersect, but they are a free community," she said, adding that these are the same kind of people who took to the streets of Shanghai during the White Paper Movement. One year on, the young people who were suppressed for protesting are gradually getting their lives back on track. The young man who spoke out so loudly and held flowers while standing on the streets of Shanghai has reportedly left the country. Beijing protester Lin Xuxu is now enjoying a quiet life in Southeast Asia. The heated atmosphere of that night seems to have faded, and she is trying to write about what happened that day, lest she forget it. One October day in Tokyo, Bai Yuan took the subway to attend a lecture by a Chinese scholar on contemporary Chinese history. He longed to know more about his own country. Police had come to his home because he held up a piece of white paper at a subway station in central China. Yang Zijing, who protested in Haizhu Square in the southern city Guangzhou, was ordered – like many other detainees – to remain in her hometown after being released. Cheryl is busy with various things and says she seems happier than before. She often thinks of a taxi driver she met more than six months after the protests. For some reason, they started talking about that night. What surprised her was how candid he was. Without any probing, he suddenly said, "I was there that night." He used to be a subcontractor and lost everything during the pandemic, so he started driving to make a living. When he heard about the protest that night, he didn't hesitate. He went straight to the scene, pushing through to the very front of the crowd, as far as he could. Cheryl was surprised by his determination. He told her very clearly that the system couldn't go on like this. He said he had been under so much pressure that he couldn't breathe, but he knew that if he was called on to stand up again one day, he knew which side he would stand on. Now, when she's running her dialogue sessions, Cheryl looks for him in the audience. "I hope to see him there. I want to tell him that he's not alone," she said. (Interviewees' names have been changed to protect their identities.)