Bed bugs, Luo Yu thought when he was awakened by a biting sensation late at night on June 3, 1989. Luo, a colonel and head of the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) General Staff Department’s aviation equipment office, turned on the lights, checked the sheets, and found nothing.
The mysterious insect bites and intermittent “ta! ta! ta!” sounds that seemed to issue from the Jianguomen area near Beijing’s Tiananmen Square kept Luo wide awake the rest of the night.
At breakfast, a domestic servant told Luo Yu and his mother that military vehicles were burning in the streets.
It was gunfire I heard in the night, Luo thought to himself.
