Something new happening

George Bush Senior was in the white house, John Major in no 10 and no one knew what the internet was. I’d just been a week on a train and I was barely an adult.

Beijing was sunny, the air cold and crisp (the smog was yet to arrive) and the streets crammed with bicycles. I’d never seen so many. Chairman Mao’s eyes looked down at me from a huge portrait on the red brick wall framing the Forbidden City. “So it was here it happened,” I thought.

Less than two years earlier my mum had said “Something new is happening!” referring to the latest international news. There was a photo of an alone man who appeared to block the way of several tanks. After decades of communism the young people of China had come together to demand freedom and democracy.

At Tiananmen Square, a vast flat area in the middle of Beijing, all stone and no trees, students armed with words and chants dared to hope, just like my mum, that maybe their country, the biggest in the world, was about to set its people free. “People are stopping the tanks – They are not shooting!” she announced excitedly.

But they did. Afraid that a major uprising was about to happen the state decided to clear the square and then some.[1] No one knows how many were killed in the purge. Two hundred, says China. Ten thousand, says the former British ambassador.[2]

“Hello, where are you from?” a young-looking man interrupted me and Mao. Eager to speak English, we got talking. It turned out he was a student who had been involved in the demonstration.

“You were lucky not to have got shot,” I said.

“Lucky not to have got killed,” he clarified and proceeded to roll up his trouser leg, exposing a large circle formed scar just below the knee.

“The bullet went in here,” he pointed at the scar, “and out here.” He turned around to show the other side. As I stood there, in the middle of the capital, looking at the bare leg of a Chinese man, I became aware of linear marks in the stone floor around us. Track prints from tanks.

In the book store by the entrance to the big hotel that I kept visiting for coffee and the China Daily, I curiously browsed through the carefully curated English-speaking selection. The event from 1989 actually had whole book devoted to it. “Thugs and terrorists attacked our country, successfully defended by our brave policemen, soldiers and people,” it declared while showing photos of an injured policeman being cared for by what looked like locals.

I should have bought that book. Like all other signs, memories and proofs of the massacre it was soon to disappear. It got quiet.

Three decades of seduction by increasing wealth offering ample selection of designer goods, French wine and German cars followed. Today the average person on the street in China knows more about Versace and Apple than about Tiananmen Square.[3]

But now there are cries for freedom anew. In neighbouring Hong Kong, people are putting up a fight and this time it looks like China can’t afford shooting them down.

Maybe something new is happening.

Sign the petition.

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[1] When I today read the timeline of events it turns out that the “Tank man” appeared after the massacre. I don’t think I got that back in the day.

[2]The figure was given in a secret diplomatic cable from then British ambassador to China, Sir Alan Donald. The original source was a friend of a member of China’s State Council, the envoy says. https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-china-42465516

[3] The image that China forgot.