The great Tiananmen taboo

Guardian ^ | 6.02.09 | Ma Jian

[Dr. Marten]

It is 20 years since students and lecturers filled Tiananmen Square, demanding democracy, only to be crushed by tanks and fired on by the Chinese army. Banned novelist Ma Jian, who was there at the protests, returned to Beijing to find a country desperate to erase all memories of the thousands of innocent lives lost...

[Dr. Marten]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9-nXT8lSnPQ

[Dr. Marten]

1989 Tiananmen Square Protests - Tank Man

[Vince Ferrer]

[dfwgator]

This is Radio Beijing. Please Remember June the Third 1989....

I heard this broadcast as it happened on my shortwave radio.

[manapua]

It's hard to believe that it's been 20 years.

I remember when I finished my homework one night and heard the news that the commies were massacring the students. My heart just sank and I was numb with sadness and anger.

To think that 20 years on, we would see the end of our republic. And the reds didn't even need tanks to crush liberty here.

[keats5]

I remember too. I was so proud and amazed to see how brave all those young beautiful people were. Remember the Chinese Statue of Liberty? I couldn’t believe how many dead were left in the streets, and then the Chinese denial that it never happened.

How did all those parents explain to their countrymen why their children no longer existed?

[Vince Ferrer]

I have walked around Tiananmen Square. While in one sense it is kind of like walking around the Washington Mall, for all of us foreigners, it means completely something different than for the Chinese. Like no other place in China do you feel more distant from the Chinese people, because its like there is this "cone of silence" that drops over everyone. Chinese people walk around it like they don't know anything about it, and the rest of us kind of really wonder what the Chinese really know about those events.

The Simpsons cartoon to me captures the creepy mood there really well.

[Ultra Sonic 007]

ping of interest

[SunkenCiv]

Thanks.