they cannot soar into the air and fly away so quickly
June 4, 2014 7:03 AM   Subscribe

Liao Yiwu, poet, author of Bullets and Opium and former political prisoner, writes on the 25th anniversary of the Tiananmen massacre.
My father died in the fall of 2002. At the last hour, he couldn’t speak any more, but he would fix his eyes on me, his son, the political prisoner. The police had searched me and taken me away in front of him many times. He died worried about me. Maybe in his last moments, when he couldn’t speak anymore, he still wanted to tell me not to provoke the Communist Party. Tank Man vanished into thin air—another proof my father was right.
posted by frimble (29 comments total) 13 users marked this as a favorite
 
The Tank Man may have vanished, and the CPC may still be trying to erase him from the historical and cultural record, but 25 Years Later, Tiananmen Square Tank Man's Memory Lives On (See also: "Stuart Franklin: how I photographed Tiananmen Square and 'tank man'".)
posted by Doktor Zed at 7:11 AM on June 4, 2014 [3 favorites]


A few of my Facebook friends (Japanese>English translators who, like me, follow news in NE Asia pretty closely) have claimed that Tianannmen never happened, or at least the massacre did not. When I have asked for some sort of citation, they say "it's out there" or something. Anyone have any idea what they might be talking about?
posted by KokuRyu at 7:31 AM on June 4, 2014


There's Sandy Hook Truthers and 9/11 Truthers and Moon Landing deniers. Tiananmen denialism would be child's play for conspiracy enthusiasts.
posted by kmz at 7:37 AM on June 4, 2014 [3 favorites]


I've found the work of the Turnley Brothers in China during Tiananmen to be just remarkable and have always been amazed that they got their film out.
posted by jeanmari at 7:50 AM on June 4, 2014


To give your friends the benefit of the doubt, maybe they're referring to the fact that the Massacre is somewhat misnamed. Most of the murders happened on Chang An Avenue (which runs between Tiananmen Square and the Forbidden City), not actually within Tiananmen Square itself.
posted by kmz at 8:05 AM on June 4, 2014 [3 favorites]


Tiananmen denialism would be child's play for conspiracy enthusiasts.

No, that's not it - they can't be dismissed out of hand like that. They are not Truthers and are generally pretty rational. I'm just trying to figure out why they would be saying that. I have asked, but translators can be pretty weird sometimes (likely because we spend a lot of time alone in front of a computer) and have brushed me off.

I think why I actually care is because, in my experience, Western media consistently and reliably gets foreign reportage wrong. What we get in the English-language media is just scratching the surface. Memes and memories are created often by "senior foreign correspondents" with no local language ability or even specialization about the country they are reporting on.

Anyway, there was a great interview with Rowena Xiaoqing He about Erasing The Memory of Tiananmen.
posted by KokuRyu at 8:08 AM on June 4, 2014 [1 favorite]


I just returned from the Hong Kong candlelight vigil. Turnout is the highest it's ever been this year (organisers estimate a hundred and eighty thousand) probably due to a combination of reasons - 25th anniversary, accumulating stress between China and HK on electoral reform and the tourist influx, and so on.

The experience was equal parts poignant and inspiring for me. For far too many years I could not attend because I was overseas, and this is the first time I've been able to commemorate June 4, really, since I became politically aware. Teng Biao braved the trip to Hong Kong; he pointed out that the massacre never truly ended, and the fate of democracy here and in China are inextricably linked - there will never be true elections in Hong Kong until China is democratised.

For those who gave their lives a quarter of a century ago, and for those who continue to risk their lives and freedom to bring democracy and justice to China - we stand with you in solidarity:

.
posted by monocot at 8:59 AM on June 4, 2014 [14 favorites]


It is a bit odd that there is no Google Doodle for the 25th anniversary, isn't it?
posted by cacofonie at 9:17 AM on June 4, 2014 [2 favorites]


No, that's not it - they can't be dismissed out of hand like that.

Not to knock your friends, but why not? In my experience it's exactly the smart, rational people who get sucked the deepest into the world of conspiracy, precisely because they think they're so smart they see past the lies and have figured it all out.

I've also noticed from very left-radical friends that that worldview can lead one down the conspiracy rabbit hole. I know two people who are very intelligent (PhDs, etc) that declare that North Korea has never committed any of their alleged human rights abuses and that it's all manufactured by capitalist governments to make NK look bad, including having fake defectors telling fake stories.

Maybe your friends have just fallen into these traps.
posted by Sangermaine at 9:20 AM on June 4, 2014 [2 favorites]


A little self-linky, but just wanted to mention that at the Asian American Writers' Workshop, we're putting up a themed package around June 4th in collaboration with Creative Time Reports. Here's a link to interviews with artists Mel Chin and Bob Lee, who organized a show immediately after the protests in 1989. We should be posting poems soon by Liu Xia, the wife of Liu Xiaobo.

Also, a few months ago, Jiaying Fan from the New Yorker interviewed Liao Yiwu for us. It's an alternately poignant and raucous interview about the totalitarian hilarity of his imprisonment:

When I was writing poetry, I preferred romantic writing. Back then I wasn’t even very good at making jokes. That’s because when I was young, I thought it was cooler not to laugh. But in prison, when I looked back on this, it was like watching dramas in my mind over and over to a boiling point. I felt I was among these characters. On the surface it appeared humorous, but in truth it was very cruel. For example, there was one man who couldn’t urinate or defecate in front of others. When he came in to the bathroom, everyone would surround him and watch him. The harder it was for him to go, the happier everyone got.

posted by johnasdf at 9:32 AM on June 4, 2014 [3 favorites]


That was really good.
posted by chunking express at 10:05 AM on June 4, 2014


Thanks for those links, Doktor Zed. That ABC news footage was a concise pill of the past. Sam Donaldson's giant forehead, sure, but also news that took some time to go over something. And newscasters and reporters who knew something about language (Donaldson's alliteration, Shephard's tricolon of "They fired their weapons...". And it was weird and strange to see news without a lot of other bullshit on the screen.
posted by aureliobuendia at 11:46 AM on June 4, 2014


Related: the campaign of silence in the lead up to today's anniversary that has prompted a backlash by fellow scholars. This includes an open letter to Xi Jinping signed by prominent China scholars in the international community.

Other 6/4 anniversary links:
Chinese embassy official 'forcefully' shoves amnesty chief as she lays flowers in Tiananmen remembrance gesture

Tiananmen anniversary marked at huge Hong Kong vigil
posted by Acaecia at 12:17 PM on June 4, 2014 [2 favorites]


.

NYT: Live-blogging the Tiananmen Square Anniversary, and photographers' memories of the Tank Man.

25 years of NYRB writing on 6/4: Tiananmen Revisited. The interview with Hu Jia is worth a read.
What did your parents say to get themselves labeled rightists?

My father is from Anhui province, a center of rice production. It’s a very plentiful area but in Anhui, that year, there was a famine and people starved to death. My grandfather wrote my father and said, “I’m really hungry. There’s nothing to eat at home.” My father repeated this in school. Tsinghua University’s party committee said, No way, impossible. You are spreading rumors, you are insulting socialism. You are insulting this great country. My father insisted and said, “No, there is a famine and people are starving to death. My father is starving to death.”

I don’t know what my mother said. She refuses to tell me. It’s too painful for her.
posted by ilicet at 12:41 PM on June 4, 2014 [5 favorites]


.
posted by Amplify at 12:45 PM on June 4, 2014


It is a bit odd that there is no Google Doodle for the 25th anniversary, isn't it?

Don't Google Doodles usually commemorate happy things like significant historical people's birthdays? I don't remember many which focused on tragedies although that could just be my memory's wishful thinking.
posted by andraste at 1:24 PM on June 4, 2014 [1 favorite]


Have so many words but no sentences to put them in.

.
posted by aroweofshale at 1:29 PM on June 4, 2014 [1 favorite]


.

Forgot to add this in my earlier post.
posted by Acaecia at 2:00 PM on June 4, 2014


PBS documentary (2006): The Tank Man
posted by Mister Bijou at 2:08 PM on June 4, 2014 [3 favorites]


My father is from Anhui province, a center of rice production. It’s a very plentiful area but in Anhui, that year, there was a famine and people starved to death. My grandfather wrote my father and said, “I’m really hungry. There’s nothing to eat at home.” My father repeated this in school. Tsinghua University’s party committee said, No way, impossible. You are spreading rumors, you are insulting socialism. You are insulting this great country. My father insisted and said, “No, there is a famine and people are starving to death. My father is starving to death.”

Anhui was in fact one of the provinces hardest hit by the Great Leap Forward. I had a live-in nanny from Anhui and her husband and all her children had died in the famine.
posted by kmz at 2:17 PM on June 4, 2014 [1 favorite]


A few of my Facebook friends (Japanese>English translators who, like me, follow news in NE Asia pretty closely) have claimed that Tianannmen never happened, or at least the massacre did not. When I have asked for some sort of citation, they say "it's out there" or something. Anyone have any idea what they might be talking about?

My understanding is that there has been a concerted political/governmental effort to suppress or minimize stories about the Tianannmen Square Massacre? I recall looking it up once on Wikipedia and seeing that there had been a number of controversial edits to the wiki page.
posted by eviemath at 2:25 PM on June 4, 2014


.
posted by biggreenplant at 4:57 PM on June 4, 2014


It's so sad; the country was genuinely on the precipice of change, and was dragged in the wrong direction.

I was listening to a lecture series about China, and the lecturer spoke about how ordinary Chinese started a practice of putting out lamps at the front of their houses during the height of Deng Xiaoping's demonisation. It was kind of a support pun - "Deng" can be viewed as a homonym for lamp/lantern - and it was one of the only safe forms of protest available to them. There was this groundswell of silent support.

After Tienanmen, he spoke about how people put the lamps out, or knocked them over, signifying the betrayal they felt, not just by the CCP, but from Deng himself. A light had been put out and trashed.
posted by smoke at 5:23 PM on June 4, 2014 [2 favorites]


"Chinese embassy official 'forcefully' shoves amnesty chief as she lays flowers in Tiananmen remembrance gesture"

Goodness me, I'm as anti-CCP as it gets, truly, but that nonsense from the Amnesty people in describing what happened is the silliest hyperbole and spin, and this -

"I was just shocked and really upset that he would do something like this [prod them out of the way and shout something angrily] and seems like he'll get away with it. " - is willfully naive and silly, if you've ever seen any CCP reaction to Chinese protest anywhere in the world, and this:

"It was a really hard, physical shove. It felt quite violent and quite shocking. It made me think about what people in China are facing" - the first part is simply not true if you look at the video linked, and I actually think the second part if quite distasteful. You cannot compare getting pushed to the torture, detention, harassment, beatings and execution the CCP carries out every day. Jesus Christ, I've seen more violent pushes from people queueing in Asia.
posted by smoke at 5:29 PM on June 4, 2014 [1 favorite]


Not to knock your friends, but why not?

I don't have any emotional investment in the subject that would make me want to defend their point of view. I was just curious if anyone had heard a different story about what happened that day. The closest (in this thread) was the (perhaps trivial) detail that the massacre occurred on an avenue and not in the square itself.
posted by KokuRyu at 6:00 PM on June 4, 2014




The independent National Security Archive's website has posted a trove of Defense Intelligence Agency cables about the crackdown that it received under the Freedom of Information Act. They remain as shocking and horrifying as they must first have been when the events were unfolding: "Massacre Witnesses Described 'Continuous Stream of Victims' at City Hospitals, Bravery of Doctors and Pedicab Drivers (the 'Real Heroes') in Resisting Authorities, Transporting and Treating Dead and Wounded".
posted by Doktor Zed at 9:01 AM on June 5, 2014 [2 favorites]


Omnivore: China's repression is worse than ever
posted by homunculus at 1:05 PM on June 5, 2014 [1 favorite]




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