To the Square, to the Square
I wrote this during the day, on the mobile phone, while walking through the site of June 4th Massacre, on its 20th anniversary.
I’m on the way to the square, and today’s date is 4th june, 2009, 20 yrs after the night of the massacre. 4.30pm is the time, i’m on the tube, expecting to pay my condolence to those murdered, and without their death being dignified for two decades.
Even a police dog is present at the tube station of tiananmen east. the atmosphere is damn tense, with uniformed police or plain cloth patrolling every 5 steps. one needs to pass the seciruty check in order to enter the square, and every bag is opened after being machine checked, and hence double checked again mannually. my little bottle of coffee is taken out, shaken a few times and examined carefully before i sighed that “it’s really just coffee”! i entered the square from its northeast corner, what is facing me is the great people’s hall, with the dozens of stairs leading to the east entrance left empty. i’m then saying to my friend, pointing at these stairs, “that’s where they went and knelt down for hours in exchange for a conversation with li peng, but without any success”. this girl then asked me to describe in details what heppend there in every corner of this square, the night 20 yrs ago. i tried my best to recall everything i read from everywhere, the south side where the armed soldiers entered, how these drugged (according to some rumour) monsters held rifles and fired them against students and citizens, marching from the west to the east, with their backs to the great people’s hall, where guo haifeng led for the silent plea to talk to the authority. then i see the street side where a burnt bus was abandoned, on the morning of the 5th, and a bit further, the widely known rank of tanks, stopped by a single man, with two plastic shopping bags in his hands, a poster now hanging in my living room, for rememberance’s sake. we march againt the killing route, from east to west, then turn to the south, finishing entouring the entire square, picking up the almost lost memory of where the statue of liberty was, where the speeches were made, minibus was burnt, and where hanger strikers were interviewed.
Then after my friend leaves me, i cross the Chang’An Avenue through the underpass, taking a stroll passing the actual tiananmen, people are taking photos, with smiling faces, under the portrait of mao, as if nothing terrible strikes their minds, and it’s very possible that is indeed the truth. a foreigner is sitting on the kerb, with a small notebook in one hand and a pencil or pen in the other, and is thinking, i do hope he’s doing the same thing as i am doing now, at lease being one of the others who actually care. i am now standing to the east of tiananmen, beside me there are two guards, apparently and hopefully have no idea of what i am trying to record here. what else, ah, another western guy is wearing a red tee, with a man holding a rifle against whoever stands face to face with him, another chinese guy wearing another red tee saying ‘courage’. i do hope both incidents are actually intentional.
i was trying to write “to the square, to the square” on xiaonei.com this morning, but was immediately removed, and my live space has stopped working within china since yesterday. all the plain clothes or emergency security guards are wearing a huge logo of the communist youth league, all not bad-looking at all, but with a typically rigid and unhuman facial character that only belongs to trained soldiers, and by the way with eyes that are all ‘bride’, in french. the weather wasn’t good during the day, the dimmed sky was clouding over the city, but now, twenty minutes to seven, the sun is going down, suddenly starts to cast its light from behind tiananmen, the view is in fact magnificent, with everything inside the square, outlined with a golden-coloured rim. it’s indeed beautiful, a view that moves, that triggers some glamorous pride and joy from any ordinary and humble heart, only however those who know the history understands that this emotional glamour exists as nothing but an illusion. without the history being justified, we can never build such feeling from within. my standing here and typing on my mobile phone like mad has attracted more attention than i wished. time to go, to dinner, to friends, and to my family.
