Inconvenient Memories: A Personal Account of the Tiananmen Square Incident and China Before and After by Anna Wang Yuan

Author:Anna Wang Yuan [Yuan, Anna Wang]
Language: eng
Format: mobi
Publisher: Purple Pegasus Publishing
Published: 2019-05-14T16:00:00+00:00

Students on hunger strike at the Tiananmen Square, May 1989.

Photo by Yanguang He

Chapter 12

Under Martial Law

As students met with Li Peng, Cui Jian performed in the square. I was crushed to learn I’d missed it.

“What did he sing?” I asked a student.

“Every song you know, he sang.”

“Even ‘Starting All Over?!’”

He thought for a moment. “Why not?”

It was my favorite song of his by far, but it seemed an odd choice for the occasion:

I just want to leave this place

I just want to exist in space

At the edge of this life I hover

I just want to start all over

“Don’t you think it’s a bit dark?” I asked. I first thought of the word “ominous,” but pulled back a bit.

“Dark?” He was confused. “You don’t even know... The whole place went crazy.”

I could imagine. As soon as that guitar sang out, and those drums started pounding, who would have bothered to listen to the lyrics?

“He was a funny guy, too,” he continued, making an air guitar gesture. He elaborated, saying Cui Jian declared: “It may be at my front, but my guitar’s got your back.”

Once the hunger strike began, the office TV was on from the moment we got in to the minute we left, with the sound kept muted. On the morning of May 19, I glanced over to see Zhao Ziyang in the Square preparing to make an address. I called the others. We huddled around. I grabbed the remote and turned up the volume.

The event had been recorded earlier. The speech took place under a hazy curtain of dawn. In his seven-minute address, he implored the students to think about their health and end the strike. Their young bodies, he advised, were not as strong as they might think. He reminded them that fasting caused irreparable damage, and that the students might later regret it. The students received his concern no more favorably than Li Peng’s, even though Zhao was a moderate reformist.

The hunger strike put the legitimacy of the Party to the test. The Communist Party of China had been avoiding the fundamental question of whether one-party rule was legitimate. Without checks and balances, could they deliver the utopian existence they had promised? They kept their mouths shut tight when questioned on the matter.

Their strategy was to draw a parallel between parenting and governing. They appeared in the public only under specific circumstances. After a flood, earthquake, or other natural disaster, Party leaders would comfort families who had lost everything, and reassure them that they were in good hands. “Do you have enough food? Enough tents? Enough clean water?” They would ask. Grief-stricken families who had never received such attention suddenly became the subject of blatantly staged concern. They stared at the camera lens bewildered, and murmured their thanks to the Party with trembling hands and spontaneous tears. All of it was faithfully captured and broadcast to the whole nation. Party leaders portrayed themselves as caring patriarchs, and the students had called their bluff. Letting them starve to

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.