The Chinese student protests in the spring of 1989 are remembered mostly for how they ended — the bloody military assault around Tiananmen Square in which hundreds, perhaps thousands, were killed. But the pro-democracy movement spread far beyond Beijing before it was crushed. More than 1,000 miles away in Chengdu, a sprawling metropolis in southwest China, as in scores of other cities across the country, young workers and students concerned with corruption and unemployment gathered to demand accountability and democracy.

News cameras from around the world recorded the Tiananmen crackdown, but there were far fewer journalists in these other cities. In Chengdu, however, was a 28-year-old Ph.D. candidate at the University of Michigan who was in the region conducting research and sent dispatches to a newspaper in Detroit.

That student, Andy Levin, was elected to Congress in November and now represents Michigan’s Ninth District. On the 30th anniversary of the protests, we asked Mr. Levin to shake out his old notebooks and share his memories. His account has been edited and condensed.