Looking for info about the "hong kong underground railroad".

July 3, 2008 12:16 AM

Does anyone know more about the "underground railroad" that whisked some student leaders to safety after the Tienanmen Square massacre in 1989?

I'm reading a book about china and came across this paragraph in the Tienanmen chapter:

"Two days later, the government issued a most-wanted arrest list of twenty-one student leaders. Several were already on their way out of the country, smuggled out via an "underground railroad" funded by Hong Kong movie stars, and aided by the muscle -- and speedboats -- of organized crime."

Holy shit, that sounds awesome. I'd love to read more about it.

posted by Tlogmer to Society & Culture (5 answers total)

No specific book suggestions, but perhaps this might be a question you could direct toward a library in an area with a large Chinese community, like San Francisco. You might also want to see if the South China Morning Post and The Standard, Hong Kong's big English-language papers, or any of the other press outlets who reported from the region, ran any stories on this at the time or afterward.

Also: Tiananmen.
posted by mdonley at 12:46 AM on July 3, 2008

Best answer: Figure of speech. Not an actual underground railroad. Rumours of it being funded/operated by many interested parties including European and American intelligence services.

Also known as Operation Yellow Bird.
posted by randomstriker at 1:54 AM on July 3, 2008

Best answer: It's a while since I've read it, but I believe Robin Munro's Black Hands of Beijing describes how certain of the student leaders escaped after the crackdown.
posted by Abiezer at 7:38 AM on July 3, 2008

Response by poster: Figure of speech. Not an actual underground railroad.

Christ, I'm not an alien. :P

Thanks, all.
posted by Tlogmer at 6:43 PM on July 3, 2008

So it's an underground railroad with speedboats? that sounds frickin awesome.
posted by Brian James at 10:30 AM on July 5, 2008