75 pages • 2 hours read
William BellForbidden City
Fiction | Novel | YA | Published in 1990A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more. For select classroom titles, we also provide Teaching Guides with discussion and quiz questions to prompt student engagement.
Chapters 29-32Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Chapter 29 Summary: “June 7”
Alex’s restlessness increases the longer he is with the students. He is discussed by the students and feels that it is “What To Do With Alex Day” (142), a conversation he is not allowed to be part of, it seems. Meanwhile, he feels he is “going nuts with frustration” (142), worrying about his father, reliving the killing of Lao Xu, and the terror of the square. The sound of gunfire outside the window punctuates his thoughts.
Nai-nai continues to feed and tend to him as he tries to regain strength. The family eats “boiled rice and stir-fried celery with soya bean sauce and sugar in it. That’s it. A typical meal” (143). Alex comes to see that the way he lived and ate at the hotel and the kind of Chinese food he enjoyed back at home is drastically different than what the people of Beijing actually have access to.
Xin-hua’s friend, Xiao Yang, spends some time traversing the city carefully in order to get a better sense of what is going on and to see if he can find out anything more about the fate of Alex’s father. Although nothing is discovered about Alex’s father’s whereabouts, Alex can tell that something more is afoot with the students. While lying in bed in pain, he watches Xin-hua, Xiao Yang, and Xiao Nie talk in rapid Chinese. He comes to see that the female student, Xin-hua “dominated the discussion” and that she is “the leader of the group” (146), a fact that previously escaped him. It is she who delivers the friends’ verdict on what to do with Alex. They will help him get to the Canadian embassy. From there, he should be able to get some help in getting out of the country. They will help him on one condition, that they bring his video tapes of the massacre with him so that he can share them with the world.
At first, Alex baulks at the plan. He doesn’t want to go to the embassy. He wants to go back to the hotel, the last place he saw his father, in the hopes that maybe somehow his father has returned there. Alex also thinks initially that it is best if he leaves his video tape with the students: “I’d already been shot once, and I wasn’t sure how I’d act when I saw another PLA and his AK 47 with a bayonet sticking up from the barrel” (148). Getting caught with the tapes on him is certainly a death sentence.
But then Alex becomes ashamed at his thoughts. He recalls the sight of Lao Xu’s dead body and wonders if it’s been burned, if his life and death have already been erased by those that murdered him, the army he believed in until the end. He realizes what he has to do for these students who unquestioningly saved his life, an act for which they could be summarily “shot as traitors” (149). He has to go to the embassy and try and find his father from there. And he has to get the tapes of the Tiananmen Square Massacre out to the world.
He tells the students he will accept this responsibility, and Xin-hua tells him the plan that she’s hatched. They will pretend to be transporting a new washing machine through town. They will travel in the ping ban che, a flatbed tricycle equipped for transporting large objects, owned by Xiao Yang’s father. Alex will ride in back, and before they leave, his hair is blackened with shoe polish to make him blend in more. Alex announces he will rig up the video camera in the back of the bike in such a way that he captures a view of the streets as they pass through them, a view he can then share with the outside world.
Chapter 30 Summary: “June 8”
Alex and Xin-hua undertake their painstaking and dangerous journey through the city in order to film what is happening and to get Alex to the embassy where he can hopefully be reunited with his father. First, the pair must say goodbye to Nai-nai who has taken faithful care of Alex. Despite her own simple living conditions, she wishes Alex good luck and health and “pressed a crumpled ball of paper into [his] hand” (153), some money that she can barely afford to part with. Xiao Yang and Xiao Nie wish him good luck too. Xiao Nie offers some extra bandages and painkillers for their travel.
While hiding as best as he can in the back of the che, Alex monitors Xin-hua’s breathing and movements to see how things are going and who is around them. When she can, she whispers to Alex about their surroundings, warning him when they get closer to the square, streets, or corners where PLA personnel are stationed. They are stopped once. No one inspects the back of the che, so they are able to continue on. In one neighborhood close to the University, they see a student give PLA soldiers the V sign that the protesting students used in the square. Without a word, the student is instantly gunned down. The soldiers laugh, and passersby scramble to grab the apples the student dropped as he fell to his death. Xin-hua steers the che to a safe and secluded spot and begins to cry. Alex holds her and tries to console her. The pair make it to an abandoned work shed beside a Buddhist temple. Alex notes all the rubble inside the temple and realizes that all the broken statues are the result of the Cultural Revolution.
Exhausted and traumatized, Xin-hua tries to tell Alex about the PLA, how they were taught to revere the army as heroes of the people and how they called all officers by the affectionate term of “uncle” as children. This makes Alex think of Lao Xu and his bitter disappointment at being misled by the Party. Xin-hua cries over the friends and teachers that she’s lost, and Alex joins her in weeping over his losses.
Chapter 31 Summary: “June 9”
The pair barely manages to sleep, as they are afraid of being discovered in the brick shed hideout. When they set out again, they are aware that they are entering PLA territory and as they get towards the embassy it will only become more difficult. Xin-hua and Alex debate which route to take and resolve that they must go past the hotel district where Alex stayed in the past, even though it is close to the square.
En route, they are stopped by PLA troops who seem to Alex “bored by the whole thing” (172). They harass Xin-hua some, making her explain herself in rapid Chinese that Alex can’t follow. However, Alex “gets an idea and pulls out the wad of one and two yuan notes” (173) from Nai-nai. This pay off seems to be enough to send the PLA guards to harass someone else. Behind them, as they pedal off, they hear the sound of gunfire and rattled, the pair proceeds more quickly.
When they get closer to the embassy, they discover terrible news. There is a massive roadblock in front of all the embassies. In conversation with a woman on the street, Xin-hua learns “[a] famous scientist, Fang Lizhi and his wife are hiding in the American embassy” (175), and the government is furious about it and has sent additional PLA to the site.
It is clear that the plan to get Alex to the Canadian embassy will not work. Alex thinks maybe he could just hail a cab and try and get into a hotel, but Xin-hua reminds him that he is in disguise. The two wash off a bit but the shoe polish will not come out of his hair. Xin-hua says that it is fine, that she will take him to the airport. Alex tries to convince her to turn around so that they can come up with a different plan. However, turning around will be too dangerous and “trying to get her to change her mind was like taking the Great Wall apart brick by brick” (180).
Outside the airport, they are stopped again. Xin-hua is asked if she is a student, and she swears no, that she is a worker. Alex is spotted in the back of the che, and PLA guards rip off his shirt to reveal him as a foreigner. The guards drag Xin-hua from the che while Alex screams for them to stop. He hears the gunshot in the trees where they took her and begins to wail. The guards grab him and shove him violently into a taxi. Alex is in excruciating pain from his gunshot wounded leg, and his mind is still reeling from the murder of his friend. When he arrives at the airport, he is raving and confused. An American asks him his name, and he replies with the Chinese nickname he was given, Shan Da. Eventually he remembers his full name and is informed that a Canadian with the same last name is upstairs. It is his father, though his father barely recognizes him.
Chapter 32 Summary: “June 28”
Alex is sedated for the entire plane ride back to Canada. When he gets home, he is immediately seen by a doctor who attends to his wound. He later prepares to take a much-needed bath, and all the film falls from the various pockets he’d tucked evidence into while travelling with Xin-hua. Ted is astonished and impressed. The footage can get out into the world.
Alex tells the story of what he saw and experienced to his parents. His mother cries, especially at Xin-hua’s murder. Ted tells his own story of being rounded up by the PLA, having his camera smashed and film destroyed, being manhandled and insulted and finally delivered to the airport and told to get out. Ted tells Alex he tried repeatedly to contact the hotel, thinking Alex must still be there. When he finally reached Eddie, he learned that Alex was missing but had no way to know where he might be. Eddie’s film was lost too in his race to get to safety back at the hotel.
Ted is reluctant to leave Alex alone but goes to dinner one night when Alex convinces him it will be fine. Alex turns on the TV, only to discover that the news is on the massacre at Tiananmen Square. Alex watches on the TV as a student identified as Wang Ai-min walks up to a tank and politely knocks on the hatch. A person appears and the two have what appears to be a civil conversation. Alex’s hopes feel buoyed until the newscaster reports that “shortly after this incident […] Wang Ai-min was arrested. Yesterday, he was executed” (193). At this news, Alex snaps. He rushes upstairs to his room, to his display of formerly cherished military figurines, and smashes them all to pieces. When his father returns home, the two of them talk about what they have learned from their shared horror. Ted admits to gaining a true sense of reality and danger. He concludes that he’s finally ready to put the theatrics of his work aside now that he’s seen the real danger and seen how easily he or his son could lose their life. Like his father, Alex has a new view of reality. More than anything, he has learned what true heroes are and that “not one of them had worn a uniform” (197).
Chapters 29-32 Analysis
Nothing in Alex’s life has prepared him for the journey he must undertake with the student protesters who have rescued him. They promise to get him to safety but make a request of him—that he get their story out to the world. His footage of the massacre makes the horror plain and exposes the brute force used by the Chinese government against its own people. Alex is afraid to take the footage with him on his journey to the embassy because he knows it will be his death warrant if he is detected. But he learns that the government has already began erasing the identities and lives of the protesters. It is the thought of Lao Xu, of his potentially burned body, that gives Alex the courage to take his story out to the rest of the world.
He is also moved by the heroism of the students who rescued him. They are all courageous in a way that he can’t imagine being. They are risking their lives in assisting him, all to get the censored story to the world at large. When the plan to get Alex to the embassy and to safety is swiftly dashed, Xin-hua doesn’t hesitate in continuing on to the airport, even though Alex knows how dangerous it is for her. After she is summarily shot, Alex is returned to his father, but it is clear from their reunion that neither father nor son are the same.
Back at home, Alex sees the world differently. He is haunted by his memories of the massacre. He is initially hopefully when he sees a newscast featuring a single peaceful individual, Wang Ai-min, trying to bridge the gap between the people and the soldiers still patrolling the streets. But when he learns that Wang Ai-min was executed for his peacemaking efforts, Alex decides to smash his military figurines, and his idyllic version of fair and honorable war, once and for all. The heroes, he has learned up close, are those who labor for truth and democracy—students and journalists, not generals or presidents.
