HE was in his mid-30s with a baseball cap pulled down over his flat features, and wearing a brown leather jacket. For several seconds he stood looking at me intently, then he slipped something into my hand and disappeared into the crowd.
It was a blue-lined scrap of note paper, with the words: "Anyone who doesn't redress the pro-democracy events of June 4th, 1989, will be a second Hua Guofeng."
The point was clear. Hua Guofeng was the communist leader who took over the Chinese leadership from Mao Zedong in 1976 but who lost office within a year. The man was trying to tell a foreign correspondent that Chinese President Jiang Zemin would not survive if he did not address the issue of the crushing of the student-led democracy movement in 1989.
It was one of a number of isolated incidents after the funeral service for Deng Xiaoping in Beijing yesterday when Tiananmen Square was reopened to the public. People milled around in hundreds while police kept close watch for unauthorised demonstrations of grief. Freelance displays of mourning in the past have turned into the dangerous airing of grievances; in 1989 the death of the party moderate, Hu Yaobang, became the catalyst for the student pro-democracy movement.
The first arrest came just before midday. A young man donned a white mourning smock and headband and held up a cloth with the words: "Grandpa Deng, the people will miss you forever." Police bundled him into a white van with darkened windows which had driven onto the square. A curious crowd surrounded the vehicle, peering inside, but moved apart when it started up.
Shortly afterwards a tiny young woman donned a similar smock band white headband and held up picture of Deng. Burly men in jerkins closed in and began escorting her to the van. A crowd followed. People began running to get ahead. I found myself jumping over low railings in the crush and being pushed up against the side of the van as the woman was bundled roughly inside.
Eight years ago the white head-bands of the students were the symbol of protest in Beijing. To see them again yesterday on Tiananmen Square - where I witnessed some of the big student demonstrations in 1989 - was an eerie experience.
A police officer asked for instructions on his radio as photographers arrived. "Use the old methods," came the reply. A cameraman was asked to surrender his film and leave the square. Some 50 soldiers came by at a fast trot, four abreast, but they were only going to buses on the far side.
Meanwhile, another crowd gathered in front of the Monument to the People's Heroes, historically the gathering point for unofficial wreath-laying. A young man in an expensive black coat took flowers from a shopping bag and placed them on the steps. Someone added a second bunch wrapped in cellophane, and a note.
Young men with walkie-talkies appeared and took the flowers away. People watching in silence pressed forward, knocking over the chain holders. A woman in her 50s walked up the steps with a hand-written banner. The police took it and persuaded her to go back. She bowed to the monument and left.
The police stayed respectfully at a distance, however, when a 59-year-old hospital manager from Deng Xiaoping's home province of Sichuan hunkered down on the edge of the square and wailed inconsolably as dozens gathered around. "I was jailed three times," he said later. "Comrade Deng was responsible for my release."
Most of the crowd seemed to be transients or unemployed workers who tend to gather round the square most days. There was no sign of any organised defiance of the government ban and by lunch-time most had drifted away.
"A lot of this is genuine grief," said a long-time Beijing observer at the scene, "but the government will make sure nothing goes wrong today. The country has enough problems. Workers from state companies have been laid off and have lost benefits. It's the disparity issue which might start a chain reaction, not student grievances."