On a cold December day in 1992, University graduate student Seth Walker stood in Tiananmen Square as armed Chinese guards watched him with suspicious eyes. He reached slowly into his bag. The guards moved in closer.
Walker was standing in the world’s largest square, where in 1989 a Chinese student uprising against the Chinese government ended in bloodshed.
“Those students had been so brave,” he said. “I felt like I wanted to do something to recognize them.”
“I knew I was slightly at risk, you know, there were guards watching me as I was carrying this bag around. And they all had AK-47s.”
In an effort to create a moment that expressed China’s budding freedoms, Walker reached into his bag — a gesture that he said could have got him shot only years before — and pulled out a Frisbee disc.
“The only way that I could think to do it was to let this Frisbee that I had — this white Frisbee — fly across the square,” he said. “It was the only thing I had, and it was also something that wasn’t allowed there before the student uprising.”
Walker said the guards looked confused, as if they had never seen a flying disc, but as he mimicked a throw, recognition crossed their faces.
He said he intended to throw the toy across the square but decided to throw it to a
guard instead.
“I threw it to him as his partner watched over me, and the guy, you know, he strapped his rifle to his back before he tried to make the catch, and he missed it,” he said.
Walker said the guard ran to the Frisbee, picked it up and, with a smile on his face, handed it back to him. Years later, Walker, 32, recounted his experience in an essay written for a nationwide contest held by National Geographic Traveler magazine. Participants were asked to write about their “Experience of a Lifetime,” and Walker, who had traveled to China as an undergraduate, thought back to his moment in the square.
In his essay, Walker wrote that the guard hadn’t missed the point although he had missed the catch.
“We were two strangers from worlds apart taking a chance on one another,” he wrote in his essay. “We were each at risk in our own way. But we sensed then, if only for an instant, that the most rigid orders, the most brutal history, cannot withstand the power of human connection and freedom, or the desire to have a bit of fun.”
Walker imagined writing an essay that symbolized freedom and that connected with students today.
“I was about the age that, you know, those students would have been when they were laying down their lives in the name of freedom,” he said.
Walker entered the contest fall term, and his essay will be published in the first edition of National Geographic Traveler On Campus, which will be distributed in various campus newspapers around the country.
On Campus’s Managing Editor Kathie Gartrell said Walker’s essay, which is expected to be published in the fall, stood out from the nearly 120 other entries because his experience is something many people can identify with.
“It was very compelling; it was well-written,” she said. “It was hands down the first-place winner.”
She added that the 500-word limit made it a challenge to write about an experience of a lifetime, but Walker’s conciseness and his story made everyone who read it love it.
Along with being published, Walker won a 13-day, all-expenses-paid trip to Eastern Europe, which he said he plans to take in June.
When he returns from his trip, Walker said he plans to spend the summer researching for a nonfiction book he is writing about a World War II army division.
“I love stories about adventure,” he said. “That’s what I like to write about.”
Walker said he never expected to win because this was his first writing contest, and he is new to the literary nonfiction genre. He said his essay was a good opportunity to practice his writing and to gain more experience in the University’s Literary Nonfiction program in which he is a first-year master’s candidate.
“When I saw the poster (for the contest) on the wall, I knew it was a perfect fit,” he said.
Journalism Professor Lauren Kessler, who teachers in the Literary Nonfiction program, said Walker’s essay was successful because it “made the moment come to life.”
“It is a phenomenal thing to win a national essay contest, period,” she said, adding that it is even more phenomenal considering Walker is fairly new to the program.
“It was a lively narrative of a moment that had a deeper meaning behind it,” she said.
Walker said he credits his win to entering the program and working with Kessler, who he considers his mentor.
“I really feel like I wouldn’t have won this contest had I not taken the risk to come back to school,” he said.