Ahead of the 25th anniversary of the Tiananmen massacre, a Hong Kong triad speaks fully for the first time about how he smuggled 133 students and intellectuals out of the clutches of the Communist party
Hong Kong5:00AM BST 18 May 2014
Brother Six had the fastest speedboats in Hong Kong, rigged with four outboard engines to outrun the police on both sides of the border.
He knew the best smuggling routes around the islands and waterways of the Pearl River Delta and had a team of sworn “brothers” ready to die for him.
So in the bloody aftermath of the Tiananmen massacre, as the Communist party hunted down the leaders of the student protests, activists in Hong Kong gingerly brokered a meeting with the underworld boss.
“We met in a hotel in Kowloon, around a week after the massacre,” said Brother Six at his tiny office in central Hong Kong in his first interview with a member of the Western media in two decades.
Brother Six in his tiny office in central Hong Kong
In the room at that meeting were two film stars who had become wrapped up in the cause of the Tiananmen students, Alan Tang and John Shum. “They asked me if I was willing to join the operation to get the students out,” said Brother Six, whose real name is Chan Tat-ching. “I just said yes. I knew the risks, and I knew if I thought too much about it, I would not be able to make a decision.”
“That night I came back to my office and wrote an 18-page plan, outlining how we would run the operation, what we would need, even what signals and codes to use,” he said. “I picked Li Chenggong as the code name for the escapees because in Chinese ‘chenggong’ means success.”
What followed was a series of incredible escapes engineered by political activists, triads like Brother Six and Western diplomats that spirited at least 150 people out of China under the noses of the authorities, first to Hong Kong, then a British territory, and then onwards to France and the United States.
Brother Six’s mission list: Record of the number of Tiananmen fugitives he picked up, and where from. Each Chinese character ” 正” represents five people; there are 22 ” 正”s at top right, meaning he had already saved 110 in all when this list was tallied
“It was a strange alliance, between the political activists and the underworld, but it worked,” said Lee Cheuk-yan, the chairman of the Hong Kong Alliance, which supported the Tiananmen protesters, and now the leader of Hong Kong’s Labour party.
“The only people who could pull off such an operation were not us. We raised the money and then it was people like Brother Six. They had the system already in place for smuggling. We did not have that.
“There was no other way to do it. Of course we paid for each of the escapes. Those who were more famous were more expensive. Like everything in Hong Kong, there was a market price.”
The full details of the rescue mission, which much later came to be known as Operation Yellowbird, have never been told.
Even now, Brother Six said he was afraid of implicating some of the organisers. “No one is hunting me any more, but I cannot be sure about others,” he said. “I seldom speak about it, so most people have forgotten I was involved, and I do not want to claim any credit, there were lots of others who took part.”
The memory of the Tiananmen massacre, which claimed hundreds of lives, has been erased from modern China’s consciousness, so deep were the scars that the months of protests, and their bloody suppression in the early hours of June 4, 1989, left on the Communist party.
The arrival of the People’s Liberation Army in central Beijing, and the moment that the soldiers opened fire on unarmed civilians, hit Brother Six hard. “I nearly passed out when I saw it on television,” he said. “My relatives had to take me to the hospital”.
That moment, and his own history of persecution, galvanised him to take part in the risky rescue mission.
“Except for my respect, if there is anything you need later please ask. Little brother, Li Lin.” Note of thanks to Brother Six from Li Lin, now a businessman in New York.
In 1971, he had swum the nine-mile crossing between Guangdong and Hong Kong to escape Mao Tse-tung’s Cultural Revolution. “I was the division chief of a printing factory that made Mao’s Little Red Book but they labelled me a counter-revolutionary and I had to smuggle myself out,” he explained.
Today, nothing on his business card suggests Brother Six is a triad. He lists himself as the managing director of several companies, including Only Win Enterprises, Yide Foreign Banks Ltd, and Deluxe Door Ltd. “I have been retired for a long time,” he said. “I just live off the rents on my properties”.
Now 70 years old, his left arm hangs awkwardly. In 1996, he was hacked with cleavers by four attackers as he ate at a food stand. He lost four litres of blood and doctors in intensive care feared he might end up paralysed.
But in 1989, he was a notorious smuggler. “I was only a small boss,” he said. “But I was quite famous because I invented some of the most effective smuggling techniques.”
Before the Tiananmen protests, he smuggled cars, car parts and “anything which had a high import duty” from Hong Kong to the mainland. “We bought the cars second-hand in the US and we could turn HKD200,000 [£15,000] to HKD300,000 on each one. We would boat them out to international waters then hoist them onto a speedboat with a crane,” he said.
For the rescue mission, he put together a team of ten. “One was Brother Seven, my brother, and the others were all people I knew would risk their lives for me,” he said.
Once the activists of the Hong Kong Alliance had confirmed the identities of the targets, Brother Six’s team would arrange a fast boat. “They just gave me the names, the rendezvous point and the code to use and I took care of it,” he said.
“Altogether it cost around HKD10 million [£750,000] and the Hong Kong Alliance raised most of it, but I put some in, as did other leaders. Most of the money went to the men running the speedboats, and some to bribe government officials on the mainland. In China, you cannot do anything without money, but if you have money, you can do anything.”
Among those he saved were Li Lu, a multi-millionaire investment banker, Wan Runnan, the founder of the Chinese technology company Stone Corp, and Wu’er Kaixi, number two on the 21 most-wanted list.
Note of thanks to Brother Six from Li Lu, an investment banker, sent in 2007. “People around the world will remember you for a long time.”
“This is how I feel about you – admiration, gratitude and love,” wrote Li Lu in a letter in 2007. “People around the world will remember you for a long time. It is a great honour to know you.”
He also received a note of appreciation for his work from Li Lin, a Chinese businessman in New York. “Except for respect, if you have any requests in the future, please let me know.”
The students and intellectuals they smuggled to safety remember travelling to one of the safe houses on the mainland and then boarding the boats under the cover of darkness, sometimes stopping at islands on the way to wait for a clear run into Hong Kong. “We lay under the deck and other boats secured the perimeter for us as we sped to Hong Kong,” said Yan Jiaqi, 72, now a writer in Maryland in the United States.
“We were told that the next time someone showed us an HSBC key ring with a bull’s head on it, we should follow them,” said Xiang Xiaoji, 57, now a lawyer in Boston.
In Hong Kong, they were taken to a safe house in Sai Kung, said Mr Lee. “We helped them go through the embassy and be assessed for political asylum,” he said. “We got them plane tickets out and gave them money,” he added. “One of them even stayed in my house for a few weeks.”
“The French did most of it. The British had a role to play as the Hong Kong government, to screen the people coming in and decide whether they qualified for political asylum. But the French helped around 100 of them leave.
“Some of them were here for a short while, some of them were here for a long time. The famous ones, the ones on the wanted list, could be got out in a few days, but the less famous ones, well some of them had to wait a year,” he added.
The French consulate began issuing visas for the exiles without waiting for approval from Paris.
“Sometimes when a decision is taken it does not need a very official process, it can be a local decision,” said a source with knowledge of the episode.
“That year was the bicentenary of the French Revolution, it was quite symbolic in terms of human rights. No one at that time really cared about whether it might upset the Chinese,” he added.
“I personally had the feeling that China would appreciate it, either sooner or later, because they were just students and intellectuals and to slaughter them would have added to the shame.”
“You are benevolent and just, intelligent and brave… a modern Robin Hood and a Chinese hero.” Note of thanks to Brother Six from “Younger brother” Yizi, June 2007, New York
If the Chinese spies in Hong Kong were aware of the mission, they did not seem to report it to Beijing. “There were some disagreements at that time between Hong Kong and Beijing,” the source suggested. “There was no leak. Sometimes the best way to do something secret is to do it in the daylight”.
Although Brother Six, and others involved in the mission, believe Chinese officials in the south turned a blind eye to the rescues either because they had been bought or because they sympathised with the students, the operation was not without danger.
Two of his men died after they collided with another boat. Another two were imprisoned after a sting operation by the Chinese police.
“There was a man, who has now passed away, called Lo Hoi-sing who was in charge of collecting intelligence,” said Brother Six. “When we went to get Chen Ziming, Chen had actually already been arrested. But the police fed Lo some fake intelligence so when my two men showed up, there were policemen waiting for them.”
The men, Li Longqing and Li Peicheng, confessed and told police about the operation, after which they were sentenced to six years in prison. Their imprisonment spelled the end of the mission for Brother Six, although others continued the operation for several years.
“Afterwards, I gave the Hong Kong Alliance half a year to get them out of jail, and when they failed, I decided to negotiate directly,” he said.
“In 1990 I went to Beijing to negotiate their release. I told the authorities they ought to thank me for getting rid of their headache. They said it was all behind us, and we should not discuss it further. They said if I quit the operation, they would release my men and my record would be cleared so I could go back and forth as I pleased. So I agreed and six months later they let the two out.”
Additional reporting by Adam Wu
