hello to anyone out there who is still checking up on my blog. It's been a long time since i've posted a new entry because a lot of sites were blocked here in May. I'm not very computer savvy so it took me awhile to learn that i could get to this website by going through a proxy website. it took awhile to find one that worked.
As you probably knew, the 20th anniversary of the tian an men square massacre was earlier in June, and a lot of social networking sites stopped working around that time. i guess it's a possible place for people to meet and plan a demonstration, so they were all blocked-- i heard the official line was that June 5-7 is the annual date for website maintenance in china where a lot of sites are closed temporarily. (the anniversary is on the 6th.)
Aaron and i decided to go down to the square and see what the atmosphere was on the 6th. we heard from someone who tried to go earlier that they weren't letting foreigners in without a passport, so we stopped at home after school and got them. the police presence at the square was unbelievable. guards, armed police everywhere you looked. they had all but a couple entrances to the square blocked off. we put our bags through the usual metal detecters and then the workers searched them and asked us some questions.. why we were there, what we were doing in beijing, why we chose to come to the square that day, etc. they let us through and we walked back above ground into the huge cement square.
the weather was strange; sweltering hot and humid but overcast and you could feel a storm coming. the weather itself was enough to make the atmosphere thick and tense. there were plainclothes guards stationed throughout the square, each with an wire in their ear and an umbrella. if their goal was to blend in they didn't do a very good job. they just stood and watched people. we learned later that the umbrellas were to deter people from taking photos they shouldn't take or any video. if they saw someone doing so they would walk infront of the camera with the umbrella opened and block the view. we watched a video of a reporter trying to report (outside the square) who was constantly being blocked by umbrellas. the whole thing almost seemed comical--it would've been funny if the whole atmosphere hadn't seemed so heavy.
(the pictures included here are from the winter)
we wandered through the square, passed the tens of police vans sitting, waiting with their doors open, passed the scores of plainclothes police, passed the chinese people on a grassy area--not talking, just sitting quietly, passed the vans of young soldiers who stared at all the foreigners passing by and it seems likely that a lot of them weren't even from beijing but probably brought in from the country or other towns for the day.
The huge stone statues of Mao's proclaimed heros of china--the people, the workers, the peasants-- stood as always outside the mausoleum where his pickled body is still preserved and displayed. They are impressive stone statues in their size and stature, depictions of hearty peasants marching forward in a group, arms outstretched and eyes looking toward the horizon, toward the new and better age of communism, THEIR government, their time, their future. And the irony of it all seemed so immense that a largely peaceful student led demonstration 20 years ago ended with hundreds of innocent people gunned down by their government in the same square.
After leaving the square I was thinking how crazy it is that so many people outside of beijing don't even know what happened that day. The government swept it under the carpet and pretended it never happened. But with such a large police force there that day, anyone would know something important was going on. Which made me realize that it doesn't really matter if people know. Of course nothing would be reported in the newspapers, but even with all the people who were at the square and witnessed the government's enormous clamp down on any possible show of unrest, why does it matter if people see? For one thing, the many people who do know about the tian an men square massacre are vastly outnumbered by those who don't. China is enormous and beijing is such a small part of it. And secondly, it seems to have become less about a battle of truth (the massacre happened v.s the massacre didn't happen) and more about a battle of force (fine. you know it happened? just try doing something about it.) it's impossible to summarize this country. It's full of contradictions and surprises. I feel like I've been here for a long time, but still know very little.
