Students Leave Violence-Torn China for Safety of Home

One Orange County student was back home from China and another fled to Hong Kong--although perhaps without his surfboard--as the departure of U.S. students from the troubled Asian country continued unabated Thursday.

Adam Fletcher was welcomed at John Wayne Airport Thursday afternoon by members of his San Clemente family, who earlier in the week had lost contact with him.

Returning via a flight to San Francisco, Fletcher, 23, said it “feels real secure” to be back in this country after a harrowing week in violence-torn Beijing.

“I’m just really sorry it had to happen this way--so many people dying for their ideals,” said Fletcher, a student at UC Santa Barbara. “The students really did give their hearts to the democracy movement.”

Fletcher had visited Tian An Men Square on Saturday afternoon, less than 12 hours before Sunday morning’s bloody assault on student demonstrators by troops of the People’s Liberation Army. The Chinese students appeared exhausted after their monthlong protest and there was a feeling that it was about to fizzle out, Fletcher said.

He said the Chinese were universally shocked by the attack of the 27th Army.

Over and over, he said, he heard the phrase, “ Wo mei-you xiang dao (I never expected this).”

Before their flights home, Fletcher and several other UC students spent two days in a downtown hotel, a period he described as “a bit scary because we were pretty close to military postions and tanks were patroling the streets.”

Another UCSB student from Orange County, James Niermann of Santa Ana, was reported Thursday by his mother to have reached the safety of a youth hostel in Hong Kong. She was less certain that Niermann’s prized surfboard had also made it out of China.

Flora Niermann said her son had gone surfing at Hainan Dao Island in southern China and wanted to return “during typhoon season because then there would be better waves.”

On Tuesday, she said, Niermann, a graduate of Woodbridge High School in Irvine, was temporarily separated from a group of UC Education Abroad program students. The consensus among the group was that Niermann had returned to the International Student dorm at Beijing University to rescue his surfboard and was trying to find a train to Hong Kong so he could take his board with him.

This turned out not to be feasible, Fletcher said, and Niermann eventually flew out Thursday. It wasn’t clear whether he was accompanied by his surfboard.

“He’s out of there. I’m very, very relieved,” Flora Niermann said. While UC Irvine has no students or faculty in the People’s Republic of China, four of the 22 students taking part in the nine-campus UC Education Abroad program list permanent addresses in Orange County. Joining UCSB’s Niermann, a political science and international relations major, and Fletcher, an economics major, are Jolynn Chow of El Toro, a UCSB business and economics major, and Wayne Su of Placentia, an economics major at UC Berkeley. Their whereabouts could not be determined Thursday.

Education Abroad program Director William Allaway said from Santa Barbara Thursday that all members of the program who wanted to leave Beijing had done so. Accompanying the last group out was UC Davis economics professor Ty Shen, the program leader in China.

Cal State Fullerton reported one faculty member and one student still in China, both at Xiamen University in Xiamen Fujiam province on China’s southern coast.

The faculty member is Emmie L. Lim, an instructor in the department of foreign languages and literature, said Norma Morris, assistant to CSUF’s president.

Also at Xiamen was Chinese language student David J. McKeever, 23, of Corona del Mar, described by family members as someone who is developing a habit of being in the wrong place at the wrong time.

“My brother seems to go where wars and revolutions break out,” said sister Kellee McKeever. “He was in Argentina when the Falklands War broke out, and now he is in China.

“He’ll stay until it is absolutely mandatory to leave the country--that’s just his personality.”

McKeever is the son of the former Ram and USC football star Marlin McKeever. His mother described him as something of a language whiz.

“This is his seventh language,” Sue McKeever said. David is already fluent in Spanish, Portuguese, Italian, French and German.

EMBASSY OF LITTLE HELP--U.S. citizens complain that American officials in Beijing gave them no information. Part I, Page 17.