URGENTLY, POLITELY, THOUSANDS RALLY HERE

Several thousand impassioned but extremely polite Chinese students and their supporters held a protest outside the Chinese Embassy here yesterday, demanding democracy in their homeland and the resignations of Chinese leaders who have moved to quell antigovernment demonstrations in Beijing.

The protesters, most of whom attend graduate schools along the East Coast, said they were trying to show their support for student demonstrators in China -- and were anxiously awaiting word of the tense situation in Tiananmen Square.

After a short rally in Dupont Circle, an estimated 3,500 to more than 5,000 participants marched to the embassy, 2300 Connecticut Ave. NW, where they shouted at embassy employees watching from open windows to come out and join them.

"Long live freedom, long live democracy, Chinese come down here," the protesters chanted, before breaking into an emotionally sung chorus of the Chinese national anthem.

"It's a critical time for our nation," said Dingju Chen, 27, a graduate student in applied mathematics from Cornell University, who drove from Ithaca, N.Y., for the protest. "China is now a changed China, and the people have changed. Western culture has influenced us."

Min Tao, 40, who is studying for a postdoctoral degree in biochemistry at the University of Maryland in Baltimore, said she wanted her country "to have democracy . . . our leaders won't step down because they are dictators."

Amei Zhang, 37, a former Red Guard studying economics at Yale, said she and other young people were "fooled by Mao."

The demonstration, organized and led by members of the United Association of Chinese Scholars and Students in the United States, drew participants from Washington and Baltimore area schools as well as from more than 30 campuses along the eastern seaboard and in the Midwest and California. Other protesters were expected to gather at Chinese consulates in several other cities, according to organizers.

Though the protest wasn't decided upon until Thursday night, the demonstrators yesterday were remarkable for their disciplined, resourceful and courteous demeanor.

Protesters set up drinking water stations at the beginning and end of the march route. March leaders used walkie-talkies. Demonstrators brought masking tape, sheets and paint or ink markers to Dupont Circle to fashion signs and banners, which were printed in Chinese, English or both.

About one in three protesters carried a video or still camera to record the event.

The signs and banners bore promising and not so promising pronouncements. "Victory Belongs to the People," said one. "Crackdown = Suicide," said another. One protester scrawled his blunt sentiments, leveled against Chinese senior leader Deng Xiaoping, on his shirt: "I Hate Deng."

When students from the University of Pennsylvania couldn't find poles for their banner, one quick-thinking demonstrator rushed to the nearby Peoples drugstore and bought two mops -- which worked just fine. When police escorts cleared a path up Connecticut Avenue for the marchers -- but did not help them get out of Dupont Circle -- student organizers policed the exodus themselves, obeying the "Walk" and "Don't Walk" pedestrian crossing orders.

When told to sit down, they sat down. When told to march, they marched. And, when told the size of the demonstration was too large for everyone to fit into the little park in front of the embassy, those at the front of the protest dutifully agreed to set off for P Street Beach, as the park at 23rd and P streets NW is known, so that those in the rear of the march would also get to file past the embassy.

Secret Service and Metropolitan Police said they were glad to be dealing with such an orderly group because, said one officer, "We don't have the manpower here to handle a crowd this big."

The apparent lone exception was a confrontation across the street from the embassy between a District police officer, S.K. Brown, and a marcher, Zhi Bin Gu, a professor at the University of the District of Columbia.

A Washington Post reporter saw Brown shout, "Didn't I tell you to shut up that thing?" and then pull a bullhorn away from Zhi and throw it on the ground, accidentally hitting him in the mouth with the microphone.

"Don't you believe in human rights?" Zhi asked Brown, to which Brown replied, shouting, "I'm going to show you how inhuman I can be."

Brown said later she did not mistreat the demonstrator, but only ordered Zhi to get out of the street and on the sidewalk.

At P Street Beach, protesters flooded the park. Wearing headbands and carrying placards, they surrounded surprised sunbathers and began chanting, "Democracy."

Some of those lounging on towels joined the protest, while others moved out of the way as Chinese students streamed through the trees and walked down the grass hill into the park.

"It's great that they are taking action," said one man lying on a towel. "Our government shouldn't tell the Chinese what to do, but these students can." Staff writers Marc Fisher and Lynda Richardson contributed to this report.

Articles appear as they were originally printed in The Washington Post and may not include subsequent corrections.