The text that follows is an account of a return visit to Tiananmen Square in commemoration of the 25th anniversary of the peaceful demonstrations and violent crackdown that I had witnessed in Beijing in 1989.
Initially
I had planned to go to Hong Kong, as I had been invited to join the
well-publicized commemoration in Victoria Park where the people of Hong Kong
have held a candle for the lost souls and lost dreams of 1989 on an annual
basis for a quarter of a century now. In past years I have marched with the conscientious
objectors of Hong Kong, lit candles in the warm tropical air and drawn strength
from the distant but principled and persistent expression of solidarity with
the suppressed uprising at Tiananmen.
But I was in Beijing already and it didn't seem right that Hong Kong should be the only place where the past could be commemorated. The
Square is a beacon, the obvious ground zero for such an anniversary, but any
veterans of the movement who would like to have visited in commemoration were
either under house arrest, denied visa entry or were being so closely monitored
as to make a respectful pilgrimage all but impossible. During the weeks leading up to the anniversary, there were arrests, warnings to journalists to keep away, and a mass influx of police vehicles and armed guards at key locations, but most especially in and around Tiananmen Square. It
seemed eerily possible that not a single activist of Tiananmen 1989 would be
back on the Square for remembrance this year.
I
felt beholden to get as close to the scene of the uprising and the symbolic
scene of the crime as I could, as much for the survivors who couldn’t go, as for the
memory of the lost souls whose spirits have hovered in and around Tiananmen ever
since.
Although
the boisterous student demonstrations of 1989 were the most crowded communal
event I ever took part in, I could not seek comfort in a group, as Beijing
authorities were on the lookout for anything that smacked of an organized
vigil. So
I walked to the Square alone, but not unaccompanied. The faint echo of
long-forgotten millions, the joyous outbursts of song, the plaintive cries for
help, the crackle of gunfire and the wail of ambulances still rang in the air. I
had recently finished revising “Tiananmen Moon” which recollects the experience
of a month on Tiananmen Square in the midst of a people’s uprising, for an
expanded anniversary edition of a book that is banned in China.
On
June 2, 2014 security was extremely tight, but it was possible to spend half a
day on the Square. The third of June, I went by the Square again only to find
it eerily empty. On that date, which marked the onset of the violent crackdown
of 1989, the Square was closed down for almost the whole day because of the
"coincidental" scheduling of a state reception for a minor foreign
dignitary, hosted at the Great Hall of the People. I went again on the
fourth but could only skirt the northern face of the Square, as controls were
even tighter. The entry below was written in Beijing and first posted in
Beijing using a VPN to access the Internet on June 3, 2014.
still under lockdown after all these years
by Phil
I
approached the Square from the ceremonial gateway of Qianmen and Zhengyangmen,
which back in the old days of the Qing Dynasty composed the first barrier of
the formal entrance into the Forbidden City. Nowadays it's still a gateway of
significance; it's the point of entry to a quasi-forbidden public square.
In
better times, when the Communist Party enjoyed the trust of the people, one
used to just walk onto the Square, from almost any direction, at almost any
time. It was wide, inviting and open to the public. I had flown kites there
under blue skies, cycled there and rested by the monument at midnight, and had
been there amidst a defiant crowd of one million. There were no fences and few
guards. You simply walked in or rode around the Square on your bicycle
But
ever since 1989, and the subsequent regimen of information control that renders
taboo public discussion of a crackdown that still cannot be countenanced, the
Square has been circumscribed and carefully fenced in from every angle.
On
this hot June day, the only way to enter the vast Square from the south was
winding and circuitous. One had to first go underground and then pass through
the easternmost ticket lobby of the Qianmen subway station, where one was
subjected to X-ray bag checks as a general security measure. From there one had
to walk up a narrow staircase which emerged onto the southern perimeter of the
Square, only to enter a maze of crowd-control fencing with signs warning not to
jump the fence. After zigzag through the chrome maze, there was a short
breakaway of empty pavement leading to a fenced in line of people waiting to
enter the Square, bottled up by a security shack guarding another fenced-in area,
passage through which led to the Square proper.
We were guided like farm animals in a fenced-in corral,
there was only one way in and you couldn't deviate from the path. The final
bottleneck involved individual security checks as thorough as a border-crossing
or any airport, where individual IDs were checked against a police database on
a handheld computer.
After
a fifteen-minute wait in the hot sun, I got to the front of the line where I
was singled out by an unfriendly guard who pulled me aside, took my passport
and instructed me not to move. I moved to the side, testing his resolve but
also to get out of the sun. From the shade of the police booth, I waited and
watched the process as local visitors produced ID, were questioned and frisked.
All bags were X-rayed and some were hand-inspected as well.
Had
I been carrying my own book, Tiananmen Moon, the title would have been
arresting enough to get me turned away, if not detained and investigated. Even
with a book about a communist poet in hand it would be no simple matter to get
through. Those behind me on line were inspected and let in, one by one, while I
lingered uncomfortably to the side. The cop who collared me probably equated
foreigners with trouble, as in journalists, but it could have been the black
shirt I was wearing, too.
Why
would anyone with innocent intentions wear the color of mourning for an event
that's been officially erased from history?
The atmosphere was lackadaisical yet laced with unspoken tension. Deprived of my passport, I was left face to face with an array of security personal who lorded over the hoi polloi day-trippers with the bespoke imperiousness of gatekeepers, taking their time, and singling out certain individuals for more intrusive checks than others, turning some away, letting others through. The uniformed agent who held my passport started muttering to me in incomprehensible English. And then in very comprehensible Chinese, he addressed the crowd.
"Is
anyone with him or is he alone?"
Nobody
knew the foreigner. The only thing that was clear was that I wasn't going
anywhere soon. The guard gestured that I should step next to the police booth,
barking more incomprehensible words in English. I told him I couldn't
understand what he was saying; he said he was calling in a supervisor who spoke
better English. I said why don't we speak in Chinese and save some time? He
asked me if I was a journalist. I explained I was not on a journalist visa, I
was on a personal visit, but he wasn't satisfied with my minimal explanation.
He got busy on his phone, and his handheld database device, apparently trying
to see if they had anything on me.
As
the crowd shuffled past me for obligatory bag inspections and ID checks, the cop started to walk away with my passport; I asked him to return it before
stepping out of sight. He stopped, glaring angrily. Meanwhile, a tall older man
brushed against me, cigarette dangling as he waited his turn to enter the
security booth. I asked him to please not smoke next to me. The cop was
taken aback. "Who are you telling him not to smoke? Even I don't
have the right to tell him that. He can smoke if he wants to."
Rights. The right to smoke in a crowded public place was upheld while the right to visit a public square was held in abeyance.
The
cop and I continued to regard one another as if in a face off, each waiting for
the other to blink. He stopped inspecting others and clung close to me, as if
he had collared a prime suspect. We whiled away the time, exchanging terse
comments, me pressing him to speed it up, him clutching onto my passport which
was as good as holding me on leash. I asked, do you like doing this? Isn't this
boring (wuliao) and he snapped, what job isn't 'wuliao'? I said last time I
visited there was not much security, what's with this, something about 6/4?
He stared knowingly, a thin smile breaking on his tight lips, but didn't acknowledge my comment. The short repartee that followed earned a series of suppressed grins, but no
rapport.
The
supervisor arrived at last, and with it the promise of closure, one way or the
other. "This is the guy, he speaks Chinese" (shi zheige ren, ta hui shuo
zhongwen) the indignant inspector said by way of introduction.
The
supervisor was slightly pudgy, bright-eyed, bespectacled and confident. He
smiled in greeting; I smiled in return. He was relaxed and pleasant, rather
what you'd hope an officer of the peace to be, in comparison to the ball-buster
beat cop who was now assiduously hand-copying my passport data on a piece of
paper. The supervisor asked amiably, visiting people? Yeah. Where? I mentioned Shida, a local university. Are
you a reporter? No, I am not a reporter. A teacher? Yeah, you could say that,
but not at Shida.
He
took my passport and the notepaper from his testy subordinate, studied at my
visa and then pocketed my passport, handing me the police notepaper by mistake.
I said, no thanks; I'd rather have my passport back. He grinned and quickly
corrected himself, saying I was free to go on. In parting I said your
subordinate needs to learn more about visas; he doesn't know about visa types,
and it's hot standing here in the sun and he's wasted a lot of everyone's time.
The inspector was appropriately humble in front of his supervisor; he looked at
me with a thin-lipped smile and said he would study more (xuexi, xuexi). Then
my passport was checked by a female inspector, my bag X-rayed and subject to a
hand-search. The book was thumbed through with curiosity, as if to ascertain
that the contents corresponded to the cover, and then I was "free" to
walk out onto the empty pavement of a vast downtown plaza.
As
I stepped into the clear, I could see that Tiananmen Square was ringed with
heavy security every direction of the compass. I pressed forward, at once giddy
and downcast to find myself at last on a public square where police vehicles
were parked and idling in every nook and cranny. The street facing museum and
running the length of the square was entirely closed off to traffic, other than
crowd control busses and security vehicles. There were policing techniques that
were new to me, at least as seen on the Square. Police patrolled the perimeter
with hefty-looking guard dogs.
Mounted
cameras seemed to whir from every other pole, and the metallic sheen of
temporary fencing, in addition to the more permanent fencing that has been put
in place over the years, gave the open vista of the people's plaza a confining,
penned-in feeling, like a giant prison yard.
Men
in uniform patrolled and watched at every juncture, sometimes they would
approach people already on the Square for a follow up security check or
interrogation. I saw only five foreigners on the Square in the two-and-a-half
hour period that I wandered around. Three of those foreigners, blond and
female, were stopped and interrogated in the middle of the Square. Hadn’t they
passed enough security just to get in? They looked a little scared so I
approached them to ask if everything was alright, which of course prompted the
cops to turn their sights to me, asking if we were together. A female officer
ushered me away when it became obvious I wasn't part of the three-person “cell”
they were questioning. Content the three foreign ladies were not being unduly
abused, but only experiencing communication difficulties due to the implied
conspiracy of visiting in a group, I moved on, aware of being observed from
many different angles, from prowling security staff on foot and on wheel, some carrying weapons of war, others with dogs on leash.
Being solo didn’t avert the stares, but at least I could evade trumped up charges of conspiracy.
There were conspicuous plainsclothesmen studying new arrivals at entrance staircases from underground passages, on the north face of the Square, even though visitors had already passed through checkpoints on the way in.
The
centerpiece of the Square, the Monument of the People's Heroes was unapproachable;
fully fenced off and guarded. Just the mere act of pointing my phone camera at
the stone obelisk that had served as the epicenter of the historic
demonstrations provoked attention from security personnel.
I
found a few local tourists sitting in the shade of a stationary police van and
I joined them on the ground. Sitting down felt good, it reminded me of being on the Square
day and night in '89, the way voices echoed off the stone, the way the sky
seemed so vast and unreachable. By chance I had chosen a spot along the central
axis, not far from where the Goddess of Democracy statue had once stood.
The crowd was sparse, mostly provincial visitors judging from accents and attire. There were two affable Tibetan monks, or perhaps I should say two Potemkin monks, for there was something slightly unreal about their getup.
The
early June sun was hot and unforgiving, but the constant monitoring and
suspicion of any kind of human interaction made for a cold reception. One of
the handful of Caucasians on the Square by chance came to be
standing next to me at the railing overlooking the boulevard and Mao's portrait
on the other side. Not a word was exchanged, but the mere, inadvertent proximity of two foreign men quickly
raised pert stares and suspicious movements from the well-built T-shirted
scouts prowling across the north side of the Square. It's as if they saw us as
co-conspirators.
I
said hello to a few people who seemed old enough to be remembering or quietly commemorating and and got one seemingly knowing smile in return, but that was about it.
Otherwise there was an unusual degree of silence and repressed curiosity from the scattered,
apolitical crowd. The sour mood was pierced by the occasional awkward
"hal-low" shouted by provincials with limited English ability, and
one practiced "What-is-your-name-where-are-you-from?" routine from two
enterprising bargirls who had braved the security measures to seek prey in a
captive location. "We are from Harbin. What is your country?" I
humored the perfumed pair long enough to sense a routine, and then brushed
them off; I had been interrogated enough for one day. A few minutes later they
closed in on the other foreign man, asking, “What is your country?” and other
standard questions. Before I walked out of earshot I heard them suggest he join
them for a beer, probably at a bar of their choice with extravagant prices, or
so goes the scam.
The
only “people’s heroes” in the vicinity were embalmed, as the one in Mao's tomb,
or etched in stone, commemorating revolutionary events long before the
unspeakable event that stained the Square in 1989.
The open vista on the north side of the monument has for some time been flanked by two gargantuan high-tech video boards that flash scenes of beautiful China and the latest lame slogans exhorting unity in one form or another. The screen on the west flank neatly corresponds to the spot where the hunger strikers gathered and held court a quarter of a century ago.
Nestled
in the southeast corner of the monument, where the students briefly had their
headquarters in the broadcast tent, stood an empty guard booth marked “do not
enter.”
About the only sign of normalcy was seeing families with small kids, who as ever, romped about without apolitical abandon and urinated openly on the Square, and one could hardly chastise them. The long trek to and from the public restrooms would have involved another security check.
There were several police scooting around on Segways. And then there were periodic brisk marching formations of men in khaki, dressed to impress but going nowhere in particular.
There
were armored vehicles and tow trucks and black-windowed vans and green army
trucks, all idling all the time. It was like China's version of the
out-of-control, out-of-proportion US security state, no expense spared to keep
Tiananmen under wraps.
I lingered on the perimeter of the sterile, fenced-in Square to watch the sun set and red flag go down. I thought about how political lies, fear of truth and denial of history continue to hurt and haunt China.
And
then I walked. I walked out of the prison pen that is Tiananmen and back into
the real world. I ambled along Changan Boulevard, and then went north to
Donghuamen. From there I threaded through the portion of the Forbidden City
open to the public, which, for all the horrors of imperial history, was
tranquil, majestic and at peace with itself.
I
walked past the secretive compound of Zhongnanhai, where the living leaders of
China were safely guarded with a fraction of the manpower and hardware deployed
to make sure nothing happened on the cold paving stones of an empty Square. I
circled past Beihai and Jingshan Park and walked on past the bars of Houhai and
boutiques of the Drum Tower district where it was just another raucous fun
night for youthful revelers with no memory and little knowledge of Tiananmen in
1989.
