Early dismissal from School for a State Visit – China’s President comes to the City of Meissen for Forty Minutes
(Meissen is the world-famous German porcelain-manufacture city)
A huge contingent of police and security officers and security forces accompanied Jiang Zemin during his tour of the Meissen Porcelain Works. In addition to scuffles between police and demonstrators, the city experienced massive traffic jams.
By Petra Alexander-Buhl
A police helicopter circled overhead. Gawkers were glued to restraining barriers along Rauhentalstrasse. A young boy braked his bicycle, tires squealing. Immediately three police officers turned toward him. Walkie-talkies crackled. An official checks his video camera. At 3:20 P.M., a bus arrives at the manufacturing plant, disgorging fifty children who wave German and Chinese flags. A Chinese army soldier in olive green uniform garb stands forlorn among men in dark suits. This is the wait for China’s President. Police close the B6 (Interstate highway 6), Post Street and Neumarkt (New Market).
Shortly after 3:30 P.M., thunderous motorcycle police escorts turns into Talstrasse. While the children wave their flags, two plainclothes officers wearing jeans, leather jackets and baseball caps push a young Chinese man and woman into the entry corridor of a house. Police patrols yank at Falun Gong demonstrators’ red-and-yellow scarves and banners and tear them from them. At Post Street there are also scuffles between police and Falun Gong demonstrators who had come from Frankfurt am Main. Each demonstrator is escorted away, one-on-one. Later on the Chinese woman tells us that she wanted her banner to be an appeal to Jiang Zemin, to allow the Falun Gong meditation system to be practised in China. “According to German law, freedom of expression is guaranteed in Germany. How come I was not allowed to avail myself of that? I carried no weapons!” She declines to state her name.
The onlookers don’t get to see much of Jiang Zemin. A scant two-dozen limousines with darkened windows arrive, as well as an aid car and also a mini bus with blackened windows. Jiang’s bodyguards and members of his secret service burst from the limousines and surround their chief. The president disappears at a fast clip into the factory. He makes his rounds, looks over the shoulder of a porcelain painter who is painting a floor vase and is presented with a vase adorned with a “Red Royal Dragon.”
He thanks his hosts and tells them through his interpreter, “Meissen is a good example of how Chinese culture is nurtured and carried on in Europe.”
At 4:19 P.M. the Chinese “wagon train” is moving once more. Ben, Lydia and Ren from the Neumarkt School are disappointed. Although they were dismissed from school one hour early because buses to the outlying areas during this afternoon were cancelled, they had expected something completely different. “Well, this president wore a black suit and wore black glasses, but one could not really see him. The best part was the motorcycles. They simply whistled through here,” the three excitedly said.
(Original text in German)
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