Standoff At Tiananmen

Document of 1989: 33 Writers' Open Letter

noreply@blogger.com (Eddie Cheng) — Sun, 12 Feb 2012 23:54:00 +0000

On February 13, 1989, five weeks after Fang Lizhi's open letter, 33 prominent writers in Beijing co-signed an open letter to the National People's Congress and the Party Central in support of Fang Lizhi's suggestion of an amnesty.

After the crackdown, a few individuals claimed that their signatures were either forged or obtained under false pretense.

After we learned the open letter by Mr. Fang Lizhi to Chairman Deng Xiaoping on January 6, 1989, we would like to express our deep interest in this issue.

We assert that, at the time of the 40th anniversary of our nation and the 70th anniversary of the May Fourth Movement, a general amnesty, especially the release of Wei Jingsheng and other political prisoners, will produce a harmonic atmosphere beneficial to the reform efforts. It is also in accordance to the general trend of respecting human rights in today's world.

Bei Dao, Shao Yanxiang, Niu Han, Lao Mu, Wu Zuguang, Li Tuo, Bing Xin, Zhang Jie, Zong Sui, Wu Zuxiang, Tang Yijie, Le Daiyun, Huang Ziping, Zhang Dainian, Chen Pingyuan, Yan Wenjing, Liu Dong, Feng Yidai, Xiao Qian, Su Xiaokang, Jin Guangtao, Li Zehou, Pang Pu, Zhu Wei, Wang Yan, Bao Zunxin, Tian Zhuangzhuang, Liu Qingfeng, Mang Ke, Gao Hao, Su Shaozhi, Wang Ruoshui, Chen Jun

February, 13, 1989

(For the Chinese names of the signatories, please view the original version here.

Documents of 1989

New York Times' Reporting in 1989

noreply@blogger.com (Eddie Cheng) — Sat, 04 Feb 2012 23:32:00 +0000

In 2008, while preparing for the book Standoff at Tiananmen, I went through the archives of New York Times and read through its reporting during the period of student movement in 1989. A daily summary was published in this blog at that time. They are now listed here as a "table of contents," with each post containing one or more links to the actual NYT reports in it. All dates below are for 1989 while the titles are that of my own summaries, not NYT articles or necessarily their intent.

3/21: Economics and Tibet
3/23: Power War at the Top
3/29: Wei Jingsheng's Anniversary in Prison
3/30: No Amnesty

4/2: China's Economic Reform, So Far
4/4: Li Peng Rejects the Soviet Example
4/5: The Charm of Comrade Gorbachev
4/6: Second Thoughts on Reform
4/7: Taiwan's First Official Delegate to Beijing
4/8: Open Letter Signature Gatherer Deported
4/9: Professor Salary and a Dissident's Release
4/12: Christianity in China
4/13: Hu Yaobang Hospitalized
4/15: Hu Yaobang Died
4/16: Dissidents' Lives in the Early 1980s
4/16: First Mention of "Democracy Salon"
4/17: So it Starts, with a Smashed Little Bottle
4/18: Memorial Turns into Protest
4/20: From Tiananmen to Xinhuamen
4/20: Protest at Xinhuamen, Again
4/21: China's Date with Destiny
4/22: Hu Yaobang's Funeral
4/23: After the Funeral
4/24: Students Start to Organize
4/25: The Banning of the World Economic Herald
4/26: The Infamous People's Daily Editorial
4/27: Gathering Storm
4/28: A Glorious Day of Protest
4/30: A Dialogue with Officials

5/1: Emerging Student Leaders
5/2: Gearing up for May Fourth
5/4: Students' Ultimatum for Dialogue
5/4: Students' Ultimatum Rejected
5/5: Recapping the Wide-Spread Demonstration
5/6: Press Freedom in May
5/7: Tactics and Sincerity of Students
5/10: Journalists Speak Up
5/11: Students Bike to Support Jouranlists
5/12: Waiting for Gorbachev
5/13: Protesting against "Satanic Verses" of China
5/14: The Eve of Gorbachev's Visit
5/15: Hunger Strike Took the Center Stage
5/17: Sino-Soviet Summit
5/17: Zhao Ziyang's Disclosure
5/19: Millions are in the Square
5/19: Focus on the Hunger Strikers
5/21: Martial Law
5/21: Residents Block Troops
5/22: Second Day of Martial Law
5/23: Rumors are Flying
5/24: Reading the Tea Leaves
5/25: Power Struggle Continues
5/26: Li Peng Appears on TV
5/27: Threat of a Crackdown
5/28: Students Talk about Withdrawing
5/29: Global Demonstration
5/30: Goddess of Democracy
5/31: The Beginning of the End

Document of 1989: Fang Lizhi's Open Letter

noreply@blogger.com (Eddie Cheng) — Thu, 02 Feb 2012 04:25:00 +0000

On January 6, 1989, Fang Lizhi wrote a personal letter to Deng Xiaoping, suggesting a general amnesty for political prisoners. It soon became an "open letter" through foreign reporters in Beijing and drew the curtain of the 1989 student movement.

Chairman Deng Xiaoping
The Central Military Commission

This year is the 40th anniversary of the People's Republic of China. It is also the 70th anniversary of the May Fourth Movement. There will certainly be a lot of commemorate activities for these anniversaries. However, compared to looking back, far more people would perhaps concern about the present more. They are concerning about new hopes these anniversaries could bring for the future.

For this purpose, I sincerely suggest to you that, at the cusp of these anniversaries, a nationwide amnesty is called for, especially to release Wei Jingsheng and all political prisoners like him.

I think that, however one would judge Wei Jingsheng himself, releasing someone like him who had been in prison for 10 years is consistent to the humanitarian principle. It will enhance the social atmosphere.

Coincidentally, this year is also the 200th anniversary of the great French Revolution. No matter how we see that event, the values symbolized by that revolution, Liberty, Equality, Fraternity, and Human Rights, have become universally respected by the human kind. Therefore, I sincerely appeal to you once again to consider my suggestion, so that we can add on more respect for the future.

Best Regards,

Fang Lizhi
1/6/1989

Documents of 1989

A Life In Drift: Review of Chai Ling's Autobiography

noreply@blogger.com (Eddie Cheng) — Mon, 30 Jan 2012 01:11:00 +0000

More than 20 years after being one of the most visible leaders in the 1989 Chinese student movement, Chai Ling finally published her autobiography, A Heart for Freedom: the Remarkable Journey of a Young Dissident, her Daring Escape, and her Quest to Free China's Daughters, last fall.

When the book was published, it caused a minor publicity stir because of the author's surprise revelation that she had had four abortions during her younger years, the last two being almost immediately before and after the 1989 movement, respectively. But as that faded away, so seemed the book itself. Several reviews came from the religious community, focusing on Chai Ling's journey to Christianity. Her experience in that movement was mentioned only as a backdrop. Little was said about that movement more than 20 years ago.

Little could be learned from this book in that regard, either. A Heart for Freedom is a chronological account of the author's life so far, but lacks the details and depth necessary for readers to gain a real understanding of her intellectual and emotional development. In particular, as the Commander-in-Chief who dominated the second half of the 1989 movement, her account of that life-altering event was sketchy at the best and sometimes borderline on disingenuous.

Her Tiananmen Experience

In this book, Chai Ling framed her initial participation of the movement as motivated by her love and concern to her then husband, fellow student leader Feng Congde. She then provided little explanation or perspective as how she emerged to become the leader of the hunger strike and latter the commander-in-chief at Tiananmen Square. She did disclose, however, that she had held a personal grunge from the beginning as she felt mistreated by Feng Congde and his male-dominated circle of young leaders.

The book did provide some previously unknown hints, perhaps unintentionally, on her emotional state at the time. One particular puzzling aspect was Chai Ling's inner-despair, most obviously expressed first in her speech to launch the hunger strike and her later disastrous "Last Words" video tape (more on that later). That raw emotion, while powerful and influential, was at odds with the mode of the general student public. In this book we learned that Chai Ling had experienced a series of personal and family traumas just before the movement broke out. By that time she already had had 3 pre-marital abortions (only the last pregnancy was with Feng Congde). Her mother suffered a severe nervous breakdown at home after being falsely accused of stealing. She was nearly raped (she was not even sure if it was an actual rape since she had blacked out) by an acquaintance on campus. Then she had a couple of bad encounters with the campus police, which led her to believe that her relation with Feng Congde was in trouble. All this was probably too much for a 21-year-old girl, who later framed her call for hunger strike as imperative "at this life-and-death moment of our people's survival" as an effort to see if China, as a country, still had any hope left. Maybe that desperation had a deeper root at a personal level.

Meanwhile, the book glided through many critical moments at Tiananmen rather superficially, without going into any detail on her or others decision making process. Indeed, whether it was the start and end of the hunger strike, the dialogue with government official Yan Mingfu, the failure of withdrawing from the Square near the end of May, and even the final moments of the massacre, our Commander-in-Chief appeared in her own book more of a bystander or follower than a leader.

Chai Ling did devote quite a few pages specifically to her "Last Words" video. She defended herself with a rather, well, defensive tone. She made the excuse that she didn't know her conversant at the time, an American youth by the name of Phillip Cunningham, was working for a western media outlet. She attributed the most damaging passage of "expecting bloodshed" to Li Lu, one of the deputy commander-in-chiefs, and blamed him for not "owning up" to it. She also claimed that Cunningham disclosed the video to the documentary Gate of Heavenly Peace producers without her permission.

Her Accuracy

That leads nicely into the question of accuracy and trustworthy of her contents. Indeed, Chai Ling might not know that Cunningham was working for a press agency, but she knew full well that another female reporter from Hong Kong was also present and answered a few questions from her. According to Cunningham, Chai Ling wrote a note specifically authorizing Cunningham to publicize the video. They then tried to "shop" it to several western media companies in Beijing right away but failed to find any takers. Maybe Cunningham was not truthful here, but none of these was even mentioned in this book. Nonetheless, the fact remains that the video first became public in Hong Kong days after the massacre and years before that documentary was planned.

Upon the publication of this book, Feng Congde issued a public statement claiming that many details in it are not accurate. He said that he had sent Chai Ling a list of "up to 100" mistakes and more than 300 notes after reading her earlier drafts, but was largely ignored by the author. Of course Feng Congde is not an unbiased critic either. As the author's ex-husband, he was described as handsome and brilliant as well as temperamental and abusive in the book.

Indeed, there are many occasions in the book where the author's descriptions differ from known facts or consensus from recollections of others. The book only contains scant endnotes, almost all of which are not helpful as references of her story.

Her Life in Drift

A Heart for Freedom narrates Chai Ling's life from her childhood to her recent rebirth as a Christian and a triumphant return to public life through charity work against China's population policy. It is indeed an interesting story. She had attended top universities in both China and US, led a popular uprising that fixated the attention of the whole world, met with numerous world leaders and dignitaries, nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize, became a successful entrepreneur, and transformed herself from an atheist to a Buddhist and then to a Christian.

Given the author's background, most readers would rightfully expect to read about a determined leadership personality. Despite the obvious effort to portrait a strong-willed and independent woman, however, the book reveals a fragile soul that was constantly influenced by others at every stage of her life. It's a life in drift.

In her own words, Chai Ling confirmed that, although being the Commander-in-Chief, she was not the actual leader of the movement but a figurehead largely controlled by Li Lu, who made most of the important decisions from behind the scenes. Her initial participation was due to her feelings for her then-husband. Her decision of launching hunger strike was influenced by a few graduate student friends. Her veto of the plan to withdraw from Square that she had originally agreed on, her most critical decision throughout the whole movement, was entirely Li Lu's idea. And so on. At least from this book, we do not see the author as being and acting as her own person in that critical junction of history. Yet she occupied, and stubbornly refused to relinquish, the most important leadership position.

She also confirmed that she cried almost every time she faced a tough situation or choice.

The 1989 movement aside, the main theme of A Heart for Freedom seems to be the journey to Christianity: the spiritual awakening of a girl who was born and raised atheist. The "freedom" in the book title has dual meanings: a free life from the Communist oppression in China and a free soul under the protection of her newfound God. With her conversion, Chai Ling indicates that she has finally ended her decades of drifting and reached her destination. She had claimed that it was God who was writing this book through her hand. But it is difficult to find her conversion convincing or inspiring. Instead, it appeared more of an act of circumstances and convenience. Years earlier, when Chai Ling and Feng Congde were on the run after the massacre, they were protected by a group of devoted Buddhists for an extended period of time in southern China. In isolation, both of them were moved enough to convert themselves to Buddhism. Later in her life, Chai Ling found herself surrounded by devoted Christians including his new husband, friends, and fellow former student leaders who had become ministers. She quickly found her new Lord and became a Christian. (Unlike Chai Ling, Feng Congde has held on to his strong Buddhist faith to this day.)

Her Self Perspective

In her story, Chai Ling often displayed her own way of selective truth telling. She spent quite a few pages describing her difficulties of getting a high-profile consulting job after her graduation in US because of potential threats from China. (She eventually got one when a firm forced her to work under a fake name -- is that even legal?) She regarded it as an issue threatening her very survival in this country. It never occurred to her that she could try working for a smaller firm without ties to China. While complaining about such obstacles, she conveniently neglected any possibility that her past and fame might have helped her to gain entries to such privileged institutes as Princeton and Harvard, not to mention important connections during her career development and launching her own company.

She repeatedly asserted that she "led" the students' final withdraw from Tiananmen on the night of the massacre. Yet even her own book confirmed that she didn't do anything herself other than walking in front of the student formation with other leaders (while a large group of students were still refusing to leave). The withdraw was initiated and negotiated by older intellectuals on site despite objections from her and other student leaders and finally orchestrated and led by Feng Congde.

In her defense of the "Last Words" video, she continued to claim that criticisms aimed at her are vicious attacks to student leadership and the student movement as a whole. (Feng Congde has been making the same claims through the years defending her.) Yet she found no problem in shifting the same criticisms to her then-deputy Li Lu, blaming the latter for not taking the responsibilities for her, the Commander-in-Chief. She also gravely underplayed her recent predatory lawsuit against the producers of the documentary Gate of Heavenly Peace.

Her Book

A Heart for Freedom traces Chai Ling's life and adds to the existing and expanding literary collection of characters associated with the 1989 student movement. But to readers who are not familiar with the nuances of that history, this book may be hard to follow as many events and names are casually mentioned without introductions. The author assumes her readers either already well versed in or not care much about them. It may find a ready audience in the religious community who are never tired of such stories of a celebrity conversion. For others, the book may provide a few insights to Chai Ling's back story and emotional state as a leader of that movement. But unfortunately it lacks details, depth, and accuracy to be a valuable historical account.

Books about Tiananmen

People of 1989: Kong Qingdong (孔庆东)

noreply@blogger.com (Eddie Cheng) — Sat, 28 Jan 2012 03:55:00 +0000

Professor Kong Qingdong (孔庆东) has never been your typical academic. Rather, his outspokenness, which sometimes borderlines on intentional offensiveness or even insanity, makes him a frequent media darling or villain, depending on your point of view. He is also a self-claimed descendant of Confucius.

And every time he causes a public stir, people with varied motives love to dig up his past - that he was once an active participant of the 1989 Chinese student movement.

In 1989, the 24-year-old Kong Qingdong was a graduate student of literature at Peking University. Little was really known about his activism before the movement.

In late April of 1989, just when the Preparatory Committee at Peking University was busy organizing itself amid confusion and bitter infighting after the initial protest wave, Kong Qingdong emerged as one of the student representatives and elected into the inner circle, eventually becoming the head of the Committee on April 25.

Kong Qingdong worked with Shen Tong and others in the Committee in an effort to arrange an official dialog between top school officials and their rebellious organization, in lieu of an official recognition. Their negotiations showed promise but were interrupted by the infamous April 26 People's Daily editorial and the subsequent April 27 demonstration. Along with Shen Tong, Kong Qingdong tried in vain to keep that demonstration on campus. They henceforth lost the trust of some of their fellow student leaders and were even suspected as moles. Kong Qingdong eventually lost his post in another election on May 2 and appeared to have dropped out the movement from then on.

It is not known what repercussion, if any, Kong Qingdong had suffered in the aftermath of the suppression. He left Peking University and spent three years wandering in remote areas of China. But he was able to make his way back to the same school as a graduate student again to earn his doctoral degree in literature.

Since mid-1990s, he has become a prolific writer, publishing numerous popular books. He also became a professor at Peking University. But it is his public persona, as an outrageous commentator in TV shows and other media, that garnered most attention for him. His political views now align with those "ultra-left wing" who displays nostalgia of the old Maoist China and strong nationalist pride, defending the legitimacy of the Communist rule. It is a far-cry from the days when he was standing among his fellow students in Tiananmen Square.

People of 1989

Review of My Book: From a Next-Generation Perspective

noreply@blogger.com (Eddie Cheng) — Sat, 31 Dec 2011 01:35:00 +0000

The following review is written by a 16-year-old "bibliophile" growing up in the US, whose mother was an active participant in the 1989 Chinese student movement. It was originally posted on the author's own blog and is reproduced here with permission.

STANDOFF AT TIANANMEN - EDDIE CHENG

Can I have a congratulatory pat on the back? BECAUSE I. HAVE. FINISHED!
Though how much I actually remember is a different story.

Trying to collect my thoughts about it is something of a different story, because had one thing gone differently, I might not even exist. So obviously, it’s something I feel strongly about, something I feel strongly connected to, beyond just the “human spirit” and the human desire for free will and a voice that was so exemplified here.

But being emotional doesn’t help anyone in a review of a nonfiction book. So, I will try not to.

Accuracy/History:

To be honest, I don’t know shit about the Tiananmen Square Protests (and subsequent massacre) beyond the (little) that my mother has told me of her own experience (she was a grad student at Beijing Normal University at the time, and was among the protesters in the Square). So I don’t know how accurate it is — and, given the secrecy of the Chinese government, I doubt we’ll ever get acompletely accurate account of what went down in the Square — especially concerning the number dead (Chinese officials say that only a few hundred died, whereas most estimates rank it in the thousands).

I am inclined to trust this account, though, simply because there is a level of objectivity in the book — though many of the protesters were his peers, the author was studying in America at the time, and he does not seek to glorify the students or the student leaders as many (mainly Westerners, I find — in watching a short Al Jazeera documentary, Wu’er Kaixi, one of the main student leaders from Beijing Normal University, does express certain amounts of regret about how they handled the incident, whereas people like my APUSH teacher and my art teacher tend to romanticise the incident as an exercise in democracy) do. He does not seek to make martyrs of the people dead — though martyrs they were — there were flaws and in-fighting and factions and a highly hierarchical "government," as it were.

And because he is a peer of the student leaders, he does have access many first-hand accounts and primary resources that make his book credible.

I get the sense that the protesters were not truly protesting for democracy but rather against totalitarianism, which is a very interesting concept, as many people regard them as one and the same. The students were very careful not to make themselves opponents of the government, but rather patriots who wanted to reform it. (My mother and her peers were raised in a society that taught reverence to the government and to Mao Zedong (Mao Tse-dong) — she remembers saying “万岁万岁万万岁 (essentially — “long live”)” to portraits of Mao, as you would to an emperor, so it’s very hard to openly and abjectly criticise something which has had a more paternalistic role in your life for so long.)

People:

I didn’t realise how hard it would be to feel any sort of sympathy for the student leaders. I came into this wanting to revere them for their bravery and their idealism and their sacrifices, but it’s so hard to do that, especially in retrospect, when you see that if they had just listened to those who were older and wiser than they, instead of just rushing impetuously into drastic action (the hunger strike, the sit-in), they could have prevented so much bloodshed. When you see how, if they’d only kept their mouths shut at certain critical periods, if they’d only opened them during others, if they’d only done a better job organising and uniting the other students, China may have been a democracy — a true democracy, perhaps even a socialist democracy (I will not deny that that is my favourite form of government) — by now.

Maybe I’m influenced by my mother’s opinions (of course I’m influenced by my mother’s opinions), but I found Chai Ling and Li Lu to be extremely unlikeable (and I don’t mean that to be critiques of their representation, and certainly I would never say such a thing in a review of a novel, where likeability isn’t a factor into how strong the novel is, but these are real people whose actions have had real consequences for thousands of people who lost their lives or their loved ones or their futures that day). Wu’er Kaixi I can tolerate, if only by virtue of the remorse he showed. Liu Gang and Feng Congde and Shen Tong I can stand — I can like, even (I’m following Shen Tong on Twitter) — but that Chai Ling took every suggestion Li Lu had without even critiquing or thinking about them first, that she was the one who lead the students into the hunger strike (there had been rumours that the government was willing to cooperate prior to this), that she let her tears instead of her brain do the reasoning — is extremely obnoxious to me. These are real people she was toying with, not tin soldiers.

Writing:

If I were honest with myself, which I should be — this whole Tumblr is supposed to be dedicated to my growth as a person, as pretentious as that inevitably sounds — the writing kind of…sucked.

It wasn’t horrid, but it was so boring. He was trying to cover too much ground. The book had neither flow nor form, and the only reason I read it is because this movement means so much to me. Had it meant only a smidgen less, I would have surely put it down. (I would recommend that everyone read it, because I think it is a relatively unbiased portrayal of one of the most important events of the 20th century and has severe implications in the 21st, but it takes a certain amount of gumption, I would say, to a person with my reading tastes.)

There was endless history about the movement — the stressing of the April 15th (was it 15th?) and May 4th movements, Tiananmen’s connection with the French Revolution, the backgrounds of each of the student leaders, the background of the American-founded Beijing University — and not enough about the movement itself (it seemed to be more of a rundown of events, and did not discuss the impact or the implications of the movement — globally and domestically — enough for my taste).

For a book about the “Standoff at Tiananmen,” rather than a detailing of each of the student leaders’ lives, I read far too much about where they came from and who their families were.

When he does get to the movement — and the massacre itself, though, it’s probably best to have a box of tissues nearby. I was literally sobbing into my pillow — not because the language he used was particularly evocative (I can’t exactly fault him for that — his English is better than my mother’s, and like her, he was an immigrant), but because what happened was simply so awful.

Overall, I would hesitate to say that this was a bad book, though certainly there were aspects of it that could have been so, so much better. The language was stilted, much of the background unnecessary (for example, we do not have to know the geography of the Beijing University, merely that it has a tradition of heading political movements), but nevertheless, it is an important chronicle of an important event.

Sorry about this rambling, half-incoherent wall of text, though. And also the lack of a conclusion. Can I blame it on my tiredness? Or is that not sufficient?

Reviews of My Book

People of 1989: Chen Xi (陈西)

noreply@blogger.com (Eddie Cheng) — Mon, 26 Dec 2011 18:24:00 +0000

When the 1989 Chinese student movement broke out in Beijing, then 34-year-old Chen Xi was a political staff in a college in the remote Southwestern Guizhou province. But unlike most of his peers in that profession, he was open-minded and already active in the local scenes, organizing a series forums and making many friends. Early that May, when students in Guizhou started to act in support of their compatriots in the capital, Chen Xi coordinated with authorizes in schools and law enforcement agencies to ensure an orderly student demonstration, escorted by the local police forces. He maintained his contacts with student leaders throughout the movement.

Yet his most daring move was on June 5, after tanks had already rolled in Beijing. That night, he and a few others gathered to form a "Guizhou Patriotic Democracy Association," calling for a general strike to protest the massacre in the capital. They were all arrested within days. A year later, Chen Xi was sentenced to 3 years of prison for "counter-revolutionary propaganda and agitation."

After he served his sentence, Chen Xi soon took part in the activities of organizing opposition parties while insisting on demanding a re-evaluation of the 1989 movement. In March, 1996, he was arrested again and sentenced to 10 years for "organizing and leading counter-revolutionary organizations." He only walked out the prison in 2005.

Yet Chen Xi never stopped what he does. In the recent years, he organized a series of symposiums in Guizhou on human rights and published hundreds of articles on Internet forums to commemorate the 1989 movement as well as calling for democracy. It is some of these articles that landed him in jail one more time.

On December 26, 2011, Chen Xi was sentenced to another 10 years for "inciting subversion."

People of 1989

People of 1989: Chen Wei (陈卫)

noreply@blogger.com (Eddie Cheng) — Sat, 24 Dec 2011 05:40:00 +0000

When the 1989 Chinese student movement broke out, Chen Wei was just a freshman in the Beijing Institute of Technology. From the very beginning, he actively participated in the campus activities in memory of Hu Yaobang. He helped leading about 4,000 of students from his school to attend the funeral at Tiananmen Square. Soon after, he played a key role in organizing an independent student organization at his school.

At the end of April, he took a trip to his hometown in Sichuan to spread the messages from Beijing movement. When he got back to the capital, he joined the effort of the Dialogue Delegation as a representative from BIT but soon joined in the hunger strike. During that time, he fainted several times and had to be taken to hospitals.

At the night of the massacre, he was on the streets trying to block the advancing troops. He later vividly described how he saw a girl being gunned down, execution style.

Chen Wei returned to his hometown soon after the massacre. He attempted to form an underground organization but was soon captured. He was later released without charge after almost a whole year of detention. That's when he started his career and life intertwined with prison terms. In 1992, he was arrested for organizing opposition parties and sentenced to 5 years. After the completion of his term, he still continued his work in local and regional organizing and became a signatory of the Charter of 08.

He was arrested this past February in a round of suppression in Sichuan. On December 23, 2011, Chen Wei was sentenced to 9 years in prison for "inciting of subversion."

People of 1989

Book Review: From the Square to QinCheng

noreply@blogger.com (Eddie Cheng) — Thu, 24 Nov 2011 18:33:00 +0000

Li Jinjin's personal memoir, From the Square to QinCheng, published in Chinese language by Mirror Books, 2011, consists two separate parts: The first is a brief autobiography of the author and two recollection essays of the author's experience participating in the 1989 Chinese student movement. The second part narrates the author's life, feelings, as well as reckonings during his detention in various jails after his arrest. The "QinCheng" in the title refers to the most notorious prison in China, in which the author had been a resident briefly.

In 1989, on April 18, just days after Hu Yaobang's passing, Li Jinjin stepped up at the stairs outside of the Great Hall of People and led a day-long sit-in which finally forced three People's Representatives to come out and publicly receive students' petition. Then, in the final weeks of the movement, he helped founding the Workers Autonomous Federation and became one of its core leaders. He had recorded these experiences in two articles "The First Organized Sit-in in the Square" and "Remembering the First Workers' Independent Organization," respectively. These essays had previously been published in newspapers and other books before. They were also sources for my book Standoff at Tiananmen. Now republished in this book together with the author's autobiography, they lead to a deeper appreciation and perspective for the stories.

The book's subtitle, The Study of Law of a Law Ph.D. Student in Prison, indicates that the book's main content is centered on the author's experience in prison after the movement. Before his college years, Li Jinjin had served first in the army for 6 years and then as a policeman. In 1989, he had already earned his Masters degree in law and was pursuing his Ph.D. degree. With such a background and statue but being put in jail and forced to observe everything from the perspective of a prisoner was quite a unique opportunity. It is therefore remarkable that Li Jinjin never complained or involved in self-pity but spent all his time carefully observing and reflecting. He also helped his cellmates analysing their cases and fought with diginity for more humane conditions and treatments of prisoners.

One particular interesting aspect is that, although the author was a Ph.D. student, he was not jailed together with his fellow student or intellectual prisoners. Rather, because of his involvement with the workers union, he was treated as a worker and therefore imprisoned with other "odinary criminals," a distinction the government had been careful of in its handling of punishments. Therefore, his recollection of the prison experience sheds an entirely different light from those of other student leaders. His "study of law" is also more of actual legal merits, not swayed by the differences and confrontations in political opinions at the time.

From the Square to Qincheng is not a massive book and is very easy to read. (Unfortunately it is only available in Chinese.) The book provides several snapshots of the 1989 student movement and the inside operations of chinese prisons at the time. It's most valuable in its calm and matter-of-fact narrative, which greatly enhances its credibility. Perhaps because of the author's intentional carefulness, the content is confined strictly within his own experiences without much mentioning of other student leaders or participants. This somewhat limits its scope as a historical reference for the movement itself.

Books about Tiananmen

People of 1989: Li Jinjin (李进进)

noreply@blogger.com (Eddie Cheng) — Thu, 24 Nov 2011 18:07:00 +0000

On April 18, 1989, three days after the death of Hu Yaobang, Li Jinjin found himself sitting on the stairs of the Great Hall of People at Tiananmen Square among younger students trying to petition their government. He was excited but not quite ready to act himself.

At the time, Li Jinjin was a graduate student of law at Peking University. Unlike most of his classmates there, he had already acquired quite a bit of experiences outside of campus.

Born in 1955, he grew up in the midst of the Cultural Revolution when the education system was disfunctional at the best. When he was only 15, he joined the People's Liberation Army (with his age altered by a recruiting officer). Six years later, he was discharged and became a policeman at his hometown Wuhan city. That was the time when the national college entrance exam was reinstated and he became one of the hundreds of thousands youngsters fighting for a precious spot in higher education. In 1978, he became an undergraduate student of law near his hometown at the age of 23.

He then became a graduate student in Peking University in 1982 and graduated with a masters degree in 1985. After a couple of years of teaching, he returned to Peking University in 1987 to pursue a Ph.D. in law. During his second stinct there, he became active and campaigned to become the chairman of the school's Graduate Student Association in 1988. But he soon got into trouble by publicly voicing dissents and organizing controversial seminars. In early 1989, he was replaced in a reelection meeting that he himself was not aware of.

Having been cautioned to stay out of trouble, Li Jinjin had decided to focus on his academics in that spring of 1989. But when he observed the faltering sit-in at Great Hall of People, he nonetheless stepped up and took a leadership role. He led the latter stage of the day-long sit-in and achieved success: publicly and peacefully submitting students' Seven Point Petition to three People's Representatives. He left the scene immediately afterwards. But the crowd did not disperse and marched to the site of the government instead. It later led to quasi-violent confrontations with police at Xinhuamen.

That could have become the single odd apperance for him in the movement as he immediately disappeared. In early May, he even left Beijing to get back to his family in Wuhan due to their concerns of his involvement. It was not until May 18, when the hunger strike had greatly escalated the confrontation in the streets and a crackdown was immenient, that he got himself involved again. But this time, he took a different route.

On May 18, 1989, Li Jinjin was back on the streets of Beijing, delivering improptu speeches. That night, he happened upon a couple of workers who were trying to organize workers. He volunteered his service and immediately became the de-facto legal counsel of the budding Workers Autonomous Federation. Along with Han Dongfang and Zhou Yongjun, etc., he helped to launch the organization and drafted many of its documents and public statements.

When several members of the federation were detained on May 31 as a precursor of the coming crackdown, Li Jinjin and Han Dongfang led a group of workers and students in another day-long sit-in at Beijing police headquarters. They eventually won the release of their detained members.

Quite amazingly, Li Jinjin then left Tiananmen Square on June 2 and returned to Peking University for his Ph.D. qualification exam. In the morning of June 3, he successfully passed the exam and was spending the rest of day preparing documents to formally register the federation when news of massacre altered all his planning. He tried to return to the Square that night but didn't get past Muxudi, scene of the bloodiest battle that night.

After the massacre, Li Jinjin left Beijing and returned to his home in Wuhan, where he was arrested on June 10, 1989. He was released without a formal indictment on April 24, 1991. He travelled to US in 1993 and earned his US law degrees. He is now practicing law in the state of New York and active in the oversea Chinese democracy movement.

In June, 2011, Li Jinjin published his memoir, documenting his experience in 1989 and the subsequent prison life in China.

People of 1989

Shen Tong Joins Occupy Wall Street

noreply@blogger.com (Eddie Cheng) — Tue, 15 Nov 2011 02:33:00 +0000

The Wall Street Journal reports that former Chinese student leader Shen Tong has joined the Occupy Wall Street movement at New York City:

Now, Mr. Shen, 43 years old and a successful businessman, can be found in the Financial District's Zuccotti Park, where he has become a sort of father figure for Occupy Wall Street.

Nearly every day, he holds planning meetings with the protesters in an unremarkable Broadway office. His responsibilities range widely—from mundane tasks like hunting down paperwork for the unwieldy group to lending advice to younger, self-styled revolutionaries.

"It's a lot of wise old man comments," said protester Max Bean, 29.

Mr. Shen didn't plan to devote all his time to Occupy Wall Street. On Oct. 17, he simply ventured 10 blocks from his home to Zuccotti Park and was intrigued to meet some protesters who knew of his efforts in China. "I was curious about the movement," he said. "Pretty soon, I realized it was not going away. But no good deed goes unpunished."

Mr. Shen soon found himself working a full day for Occupy Wall Street, seven days a week.

The paper also quotes Shen Tong commenting: "Last time we wanted a different China, we got shot at. America can still afford to do this nicely."

During the 1989 student movement in China, dozens of 40-something intellectuals had also stayed in Tiananmen Square doing the same thing for much younger student leaders like Shen Tong himself.

People of 1989: Liu Di (刘迪)

noreply@blogger.com (Eddie Cheng) — Fri, 21 Oct 2011 04:19:00 +0000

The name Liu Di (刘迪) did not appear in many historical records or literature of the 1989 student moment. That was probably how he liked it.

Born in 1950 in Beijing, Liu Di belonged to a slightly older generation to the students at Tiananmen. He first became famous for participating in the April Fifth Movement in 1976 and landed himself in the most wanted list back then. He was captured and put in jail later that year and served 10 months until the verdict of that movement was overturned by the government.

Along with his fellow "April Fifth Heroes" Chen Ziming and Wang Juntao, Liu Di quickly got himself involved in the 1978 Democracy Wall and then 1980 election campaign in Beijing. His home in the city often served as the publishing house of the underground journal Beijing Spring and gathering place of various dissidents. Later, Liu Di helped Chen Ziming in the founding of their influential and independent think tank.

During the 1989 student movement, Liu Di was one of many older intellectuals who volunteered to assist and advice student leaders from behind the scenes. He was one of the organizers of the Capital Joint Conference which tried but failed to gain leadership to the movement as it was falling apart after the end of hunger strike.

After the massacre, Liu Di was arrested on July 10, 1989 and spent 9 months in jail. During the 1990s, he was active in raising international awareness of the human rights conditions of political prisoners in China. For the past decades, he was consistently denied of jobs or rights to travel abroad and had to survive by his wife's wage and his parents' help. But he never hesitated to help others who are in political trouble.

Liu Di died of cancer on October 19, 2011. He was 61 years old.

People of 1989

Fang Zheng Enjoys New Life in America

noreply@blogger.com (Eddie Cheng) — Tue, 18 Oct 2011 05:33:00 +0000

Fang Zheng, who lost both his legs during the Tiananmen massacre, is enjoying his new life in America. In the picture above, Fang Zheng is celebrating his 45th birthday with his daughter, wife, and mother-in-law (photo courtesy of Feng Congde). The happy couple is also expecting their second child.

Fang Zheng was also granted his green card recently. He is currently studying in a local community college and has his own driver's license.

Chai Ling Recalls her Abortion Experience while as Student in China

noreply@blogger.com (Eddie Cheng) — Sat, 24 Sep 2011 18:50:00 +0000

In a recent testimony to the American congress, former student leader Chai Long recalled her painful experience of having multiple abortions while as student in China. It is the first time that she had revealed such a private secret and how she suffered from it. The testimony was part of her work with the "All Girls Allowed," a non-profit organization that she had founded.

Chai Ling stated that she had first become pregnant as a sophomore at Peking University when she was only 18 years old. Her father helped arrange an abortion for her at the time. She then had another one while as undergraduate student.

Her third abortion came after she had become a graduate student at Beijing Normal University. This time it was with her then soon-to-be-husband Feng Congde, who went to the clinic with her at the time.

After the couple escaped China shortly after the 1989 crackdown and reached the safety of Paris, Chai Ling had her fourth and presumably last abortion there. She said that their marriage was already falling apart at the time and she was persuaded to end that pregnancy.

By all account, Chai Ling is currently happily married to her second husband and has two kids. Nonetheless, her testimony provides a glimpse of her painful inside, already existing at the time of the 1989 movement, that was previously hidden from the public.

Her entire testimony can be read here.

Boston Globe Updates on Chai Ling's Nonprofit Work

noreply@blogger.com (Eddie Cheng) — Thu, 01 Sep 2011 03:16:00 +0000

Linda Matchan reports on Boston Globe today updating the status of Chai Ling's work in her nonprofit organization "All Girls Allowed," which fights against gender-selective abortion in China influenced by the country's one-child policy.

The newspaper describes her efforts as

Into this battle steps [Chai] Ling, who has had brushes with controversy even in this country. In civilian life she is the founder and president of Jenzabar, which makes educational software; her husband, Robert Maginn Jr., is chief executive. Jenzabar’s charitable foundation has committed $1 million to All Girls Allowed, which, with the help of private donations, dispatches volunteer foot soldiers to run four projects in China. A “Baby Shower’’ program gives financial incentives to mothers who keep their daughters. A scholarship program enrolls orphan girls in schools. All Girls Allowed provides legal aid to women who have been the victims of forced abortion.

It also operates antitrafficking campaigns, in one case crossing vast rural areas north of the Yellow River, distributing 60,000 pamphlets, and setting up a hotline in a successful search for a 3-year-old girl named Little Bean who’d been snatched in front of her house in 2010. The organization also hosts a website featuring profiles of kidnapped children and practical information on how to keep kids from being tricked or snatched. A typical post: “When walking with your child along the road, always have the child farthest away from the road to prevent traffickers from grabbing them as they speed by in a motorcycle or van."

[Chai] Ling reports that so far 550 mothers have received financial gifts, 25 orphans have enrolled in schools, and four children have been reunited with their parents. It’s modest progress considering the scope of the problem: according to the group’s own data, there are 1.3 million forced abortions in China every year, 1.1 million infants abandoned, and 200,000 children trafficked.

It describes Chai Ling as passionate in her endeavor, driven by her recent conversion to Christianity.

The paper also mentions controversies surrounding Chai Ling and her software company Jenzabar, including lawsuits brought by their former investors and employees. It says the court had cleared Chai Ling for any wrongdoings.

The other, perhaps more prominent, lawsuit is the one Chai Ling brought upon the producers of documentary "Gate of Heavenly Peace." Although that suit has been rejected by the court, the paper states that "Jenzabar is appealing."

Hong Kong Police Harasses Man Wearing Tiananman Shirt

noreply@blogger.com (Eddie Cheng) — Thu, 18 Aug 2011 02:48:00 +0000

Since returning to the fold of China, the city of Hong Kong has kept most of its freedom. Every year in June, thousands of Hong Kong residents gather to remember the deaths of the 1989 Tiananmen massacre, the only remaining commemoration of significance worldwide.

But there are signs that more limits are being imposed on the freedom of expression. Yesterday, a man wearing a T-shirt with the slogans of "Overturn the Verdict of June Fourth" and "Build up Democracy" was forcefully taken away from the street and detained by the police. Apparently, the Vice Premier of China, Li Keqiang, was due to visit that neighborhood and could be embarrassed by the presence of the T-shirt. The man was later released.

The incident was caught on camera and played on the evening news:

Ai Weiwei Talks, Ran Yunfei Walks

noreply@blogger.com (Eddie Cheng) — Thu, 11 Aug 2011 04:15:00 +0000

Almost half a year ago, during a wave of crackdown in China, many prominent dissidents were detained and/or arrested, some were charged with subversion. Among them were free lancer Ran Yunfei and famous artist Ai Weiwei.

Ai Weiwei's arrest in April caught world-wide attention and outrage. He was then released in June with parole conditions including no media interviews or participating in social media. He had kept his public silence, until now. This week, he showed up unexpected on Twitter, expressing concerns of his colleagues who were detained because of connections to him.

Even more strangely, he is now interviewed by the official newspaper Global Times. The paper describes him as "feisty" and quoted him saying "Of course you might live an easier life if you abandon some rights. But there are so many injustices, and limited educational resources. They all diminish happiness. I will never stop fighting injustice."

The interview was published in the English language edition of the paper. There was no mention in the Chinese language edition.

Meanwhile, it has been reported that Ran Yunfei, who was detained in February, had just been released from prison. So far he had made no public statements.

Liu Gang Launches Protest Against US Government and Companies

noreply@blogger.com (Eddie Cheng) — Sat, 16 Jul 2011 20:16:00 +0000

1989 Chinese student leader Liu Gang was spotted outside of the White House with a home-made protesting poster yesterday. He was calling on the US government to act on what he termed as the "unrestricted warfare" conducted by the Chinese government on American soil.

Liu Gang has been embroiled in a nasty divorce after his second marriage fell apart. He publicly accused his estranged wife as a former Chinese military officer and that the Chinese government has launched a para-military campaign against him, his now-former employer, and other Chinese dissidents and American dignitaries. Almost a year ago, he sued Chinese president Hu Jintao in a New York court with similar accusations.

Liu Gang also claims that he was the initiator of the so-called "Jasmine Revolution" in China and that it made him a target of the Chinese government.

His public accusations of his wife and his former employer have led to him losing his job and being temporarily arrested a few times. But he has vowed to defy a court-ordered gag order and continue to protest his case in public. This morning, he declared he will travel around the country with his personal protests. He did not disclose details of his plan.

This Day in 1989: July 14

noreply@blogger.com (Eddie Cheng) — Fri, 15 Jul 2011 03:34:00 +0000

July 14, 1989, was the bicentennial of the French Revolution. In the early days of that year, this coming anniversary, along with other important Chinese ones, was a major inspiration for the upcoming student movement.

By the time the date arrived, of course, the movement had already been suppressed in a bloody massacre.

In Paris, however, a splendid celebration was launched to mark the occasion. The French government had by then rescinded their invitation to the Chinese government for participating the festival. Instead of government officials, a group of Chinese dissidents in exile stood on the reviewing stand with other foreign dignitaries.

But the most dramatic act of all was hundreds of Chinese students in Paris participated in the massive parade on the Champs Elysees in place of the absent official Chinese troupe. The students wore their everyday clothes, walked their bicycles, and dragged an enormous Chinese-style drum. The drum was silent and so were the marchers. They had their heads down -- instead of celebrating, they were mourning the death of their own revolution.

You can catch a brief glimpse of the Chinese students formation in this old news reel (at around 47 seconds).

Days of 1989

Party Emblem at Tiananmen

noreply@blogger.com (Eddie Cheng) — Tue, 28 Jun 2011 02:27:00 +0000

For the occasion of the 90th anniversary of the founding of the Chinese Communist Party, a new but temporary symbol -- the hammer and sickle emblem of Communism -- is now installed inside Tiananmen Square, right between the National Flag Pole and the Monument of People's Heroes.

The giant emblem, about 40 feet in diameter, is part of a red, heart-shaped floral display that will remain in the square during the celebration period surrounding July 1st, the official anniversary date.

It is the very first time in history that the party emblem is so prominently placed in the symbolic center of the country.

Book Review: My Two Chinas

noreply@blogger.com (Eddie Cheng) — Tue, 21 Jun 2011 02:35:00 +0000

Tang Baiqiao's book, My Two Chinas: The Memoir of a Chinese Counterrevolutionary, came with high accolades. Its cover proudly boasts that the book was "foreword by His Holiness the Dalai Lama". Yet the first thing a careful reader notices is that it is not true. The book's Foreword, all of three brief paragraphs, was actually written by Dalai Lama's secretary.

This, combined with other sales pitches, such as that the author "Tang Baiqiao is one of China's most influential modern dissidents", "Tang's name became legendary during the time of the Tiananmen Square Massacre", etc., -- overly exaggerations at best -- does not lend well to the credibility of the book itself.

Although signed in the form of "Tang Baiqiao with Damon Dimarco," the book takes a first-person singular tone to narrate the personal story of its main author Tang Baiqiao, who in 1989 was a college student in the remote Hunan Province and became a student leader there. The book covers Tang Baiqiao's experience growing up as a child in rural China, getting involved in the 1989 student movement, becoming a fugitive and then prisoner in the ensuing crackdown, and his eventual escape from China and his exiled life in America.

Tang Baiqiao's personal involvement in the 1989 student movement as retold in this book is surprisingly sketchy. In early April that year, he helped organizing a few student rallies and marches in his city and was elected to be the main leader there. In May, he took a trip to Beijing, hoping to connect with the movement leader there. The trip, as he frankly admitted in the book, was a failure. Other than participating in several marches, he did not accomplish anything there. So much so that he did not even become aware of the name of one of major student leaders -- he later thought Wang Dan was a name for a female student. By the time he returned to his home city in later May, the student movement had already petered out there.

But the book does provide a rare glimpse of the movement, and student life in general, far away from the capital city. In one amazing tidbit, Tang Baiqiao recalled being on the stage facing thousands of students chanting "Long Live Tang Baiqiao! Long Live Tang Baiqiao!" (P. 87) A scene never seen in Beijing.

Since the story is told in first-person, sometimes it is difficult to judge whether it is stating facts or mere perceptions of its main author at the time. For example, the book makes many careless statements such as "Fang Lizhi was also a close friend and adviser to Hu Yaobang" (P. 56) or "During his meeting with Gorbachev, Zhao Ziyang made it known that he was a puppet, nothing more." (P. 99).

My Two Chinas serves as an addition to the existing autobiographies of the movement participants such as Li Lu, Shen Tong, and Zhang Boli. It could be interesting to anyone who would like to learn about lives in that period in China from an individual perspective. But unfortunately there is not much information about the 1989 student movement here, nothing to justify the author's "legendary" status in it, at least.

Books About Tiananmen

Fang Lizhi Recalls his Year as Refuge in American Embassy

noreply@blogger.com (Eddie Cheng) — Tue, 07 Jun 2011 03:39:00 +0000

The day after the Tiananmen Massacre in 1989, Professor Fang Lizhi and his wife Li Shuxian took refuge in the American Embassy in Beijing. The case soon became a focal point in the struggling Sino-US relationship.

Recently, Fang Lizhi wrote a three-part memoir in Chinese titled "The Sino-US Interplay in 1989-1990 as I Experienced" (see Parts A, B, and C). While there are no real surprises or major reveals from what we have already learned throughout the years, there are some interesting tidbits in the story:

The Chinese government delivered a 14-point accusation of Fang Lizhi's "crimes" to the Embassy as the initial step of negotiation. The accusations revealed that Fang Lizhi's residence had been monitored and his phone bugged during the entire movement. Fang Lizhi made detailed response to each accusation.
After President George H. W. Bush signed an order to allow Chinese students stay in the US regardless their visa status as a protection, a Chinese official sermoned the US Ambassador for an official protest. An hour later, the secretary of the official called the Ambassador's secretary to plead a US visa guarantee for his wife.
After four months of vigorous protest, the Chinese government signals a willingness of negotiation in October, 1989. The initial conditions were passed to former President Richard Nixon and Henry Kissinger, who were visiting China at the time. Negotiations continued in November and December and cumulated in a state visit by Bush's aid Brent Scowcroft, who came to Beijing with the intention of taking the family to US. But the negotiation broke down at the last minute when China demanded an end of international sanctions.
Fang Lizhi continued his scientific research work in the embassy. In fact, he published a preprint in the Fermi Lab with a temporary mailing address of the US foreign service. After the publication, he received many books and journals from his international colleagues. The work for the paper was performed on an old Apple computer left at the embassy.

Negotiations to resolve the matter restarted in the spring of 1990 when Japan is seeking a way to end the sanction to China. (Loans to China from Japan and the World Bank were unfrozen two weeks after Fang Lizhi was allowed to leave China.)
Because the Chinese government was eager to have sanction lifted, Fang Lizhi had the upper hand in the negotiation of his release. He refused to make "confessions," admit guilt, or appeal for "leniency" but only applied to travel abroad on humanitarian grounds.
There were strong indications that Deng Xiaoping took a personal interest in these negotiations through the entire process.
Li Shuxian disagreed with a part of the statement Fang Lizhi had written. She only signed on two of the three points her husband had signed.
As a mother, Li Shuxian secured a guarantee of their second son's safe passage abroad as a condition of their release.
At the farewell party at the embassy, Ambassador James Lilly told Fang Lizhi a secret: the US was aware of how Feng Congde and Chai Ling escaped China, "from the beginning to end." Feng Congde had maintained that their escape did not receive any help from abroad.

Issues of Tiananmen: Was there bloodshed INSIDE the Square

noreply@blogger.com (Eddie Cheng) — Sun, 05 Jun 2011 02:54:00 +0000

Throughout the night of June 3 to June 4, 1989, Beijing time, the entire world got a terrified and limited glimpse of what was transpiring in the streets of the Chinese capital thanks to (almost) live television. Tanks, Armored Personal Carriers, fully-armed soldiers with automatic assault weapons and clubs marched through dimly lit scenes like ghost figures, illuminated by battlefield flames in the distant background. Gunshots were heard too frequently and clearly, along with the chaotic screaming and shouting of victims. There was no question that a massacre was happening.

Historically, the event became named after its most recognizable geographic symbol: Tiananmen Massacre.

It was very unfortunate, as it drew attention to a place where massacre, in its literal meaning, did not actually occur. Instead, most of the killing (and wounding) happened in several main roads in the city leading to the square, but not inside the square itself.

The Telegraph reported today that "secret cables from the United States embassy in Beijing have shown there was no bloodshed inside Tiananmen Square," with the cables obtained from the famous Wikileaks. (The contents of the cable appears to be only based on a single Chilean diplomat's eyewitness account on the scene.) For the uninitiated, this may sound like a shocking piece of news. But it is actually a well-documented fact, sensational claims of "blood flowing like a river in the square" not withstanding.

The last chapter of my book, Standoff at Tiananmen, describes the mayhem of that night, based on many divert recollections and eyewitness accounts. The martial law troops killed hundreds, if not thousands, civilians as they advanced in the city, with the most killings happening on the West Chang'an Avenue in the west and Qianmen Avenue in the south. After they successfully surrounded the square itself, the troop actually halted their operation and allowed time for negotiations and a semi-peaceful and semi-organized withdraw of the remaining students.

The encirclement of the square, which was achieved around 1:30am that morning, appeared to mark a turning point in the military tactics. Before that, the army was ruthless and determined to achieve its strategic goal at any cost. They fired into crowd along Chang'an avenue at the outskirt of the square. One of the student leaders, Zhang Jian, was wounded there when he confronted an officer at point-blank range. He also witnessed death, according to his testimony.

But the troops did display patience, albeit limited, after they surrounded the square and established firm control. They did not advance into the square, where thousands of students still remain in the vicinity of the Monument of People's Heroes, until around 5:30. During those 4 hours, they used various tactics to scare most people into leaving the scene voluntarily. But most importantly, they negotiated and agreed to allow the remaining students withdraw peacefully.

It was not all peaceful, of course. There were indeed gunfires in the square itself. They were shot into the sky, either to destroy students' makeshift broadcasting speakers or to scare the students themselves. Many students later recalled the frightening and angry feeling when they saw sparks on the Monument of People's Heroes when it was hit by bullets. Some students who refused to withdraw were brutally beaten with boots and clubs. But nobody was killed in the process.

When the Chinese government spokesman Yuan Mu made the claim that "nobody had died during the final clearing of Tiananmen Square" in a press conference on June 6, the statement was widely interpreted as a categorical denial of the massacre as a whole and caused a world-wide uproar. Thus started the phony controversy of whether there was ever a massacre inside Tiananmen Square. It was as if the hundreds of deaths in the streets outside of the square were not enough.

To this day, there were no direct evidence of deaths inside the square, although indirect evidences indicate a few individuals might have fallen there. One of them was a student named Cheng Renxing (程仁兴), with second or third hand information indicating he was shot and killed under the National Flag Pole in the square.

Many have claimed that, when the army finally drove their tanks into the square and smashed everything on their way, there were still students sleeping in the tents. The account could not be verified. Before the tanks' advance, both student marshals and soldiers had separately swept the tent formation to make sure there were nobody in them. Indeed, a few students were found and led away from the tents.

Others claimed that they saw a large group of students refused to follow the withdraw formation and remained in front of the Mausoleum of Chairman Mao and were later gunned down en mass. No evidence had ever surfaced to corroborate this account.

It is perhaps the time to clarify, once and for all, that the term "Tiananmen Massacre" means a historical event, that happened in the city of Beijing during the night of June 3, 1989, as well as several days after, but not restricted to Tiananmen Square itself.

Document of 1989: The Making of Goddess of Democracy

noreply@blogger.com (Eddie Cheng) — Tue, 31 May 2011 00:20:00 +0000

On May 30, 1989, the statue Goddess of Democracy was erected at Tiananmen Square and became one of the lasting symbols of the 1989 student movement. The following is a re-telling of the making of that statue, originally published in the book Children of Dragon, by a sculptor named Cao Xinyuan:

Nothing excites a sculptor as much as seeing a work of her own creation take shape. But although I was watching the creation of a sculpture that I had had no part in making, I nevertheless felt the same excitement. It was the "Goddess of Democracy" statue that stood for five days in Tiananmen Square.

Until last year I was a graduate student at the Central Academy of Fine Arts in Beijing, where the sculpture was made. I was living there when these events took place.

Students and faculty of the Central Academy of Fine Arts, which is located only a short distance from Tiananmen Square, had from the beginning been actively involved in the demonstrations. When the movement wanted to honor the recently deceased Hu Yaobang, the students painted a huge oil portrait of him and propped it against the Monument of People's Heroes in the square. On May 27, a representative of the Beijing Autonomous Student Union came to the Central Academy to ask them to produce another large-scale work of art, this time a statue, and that it be completed in time for the great demonstration planned for the thirtieth. The Student Union, which gave 8,000 yuan for materials and expenses, suggested that the sculpture be a replica of the Statue of Liberty, like the one that had been carried by demonstrators in Shanghai two days earlier. But the Central Academy sculpture students rejected that idea, both because it might be taken as too openly pro-American and because copying an existing work was contrary to their principles as creative artists. What was needed, they felt, was a new, specifically Chinese symbol. But they faced a problem: how could an original, major sculpture be finished in three days, even if they worked through the nights?

Their solution was ingenious, and explains some features of the sculpture as it took shape: its slightly off-balance look and its posture with two hands raised to hold up its torch. The students, with the strong academic training that young artists receive in China, chose a thoroughly academic approach to their problem: they decided to adapt to their purpose a studio practice work that one of them had already made, a foot-and-a-half clay sculpture of a nude man grasping a pole with two raised hands and leaning his weight on it. It had been done originally as a demonstration of how the musculature and distribution of weight are affected when the center of gravity is shifted outside of the body. This was the unlikely beginning from which the Goddess of Liberty and Democracy was to grow. The students cut off the lower part of the pole and added a flame at the top to turn it into a torch; they repositioned the body into a more upright position; they changed the man's face to that of a woman, added breasts, and finally draped the whole figure in a robe.

This transformed model was the basis for the thirty-seven-foot-high statue. It was first cut into four horizontal sections, and teams of young sculptors constructed the corresponding parts of the huge work, which would be assembled on the square. The main material was foam plastic, large pieces of it carved and held together by wire, with plaster added to the surface to join the pieces more strongly and to allow finer modeling. The four sections were fairly light, each needing only five or six students to lift.

The students had intended to bring the statue in in one of the academy's trucks. But the Security Bureau sent word that any driver daring to take them would lose his license. In the end, the students hired six Beijing carts, a bicycle in front and a flat cart with two wheels behind; four of these carried the sections of the statue, the other two carried the tools and materials.

The route had been announced: turn left out of the academy, then westward to the Donghuamen, the east gate of the Forbidden City, around the road between the wall and the moat to the square. Our announcement was made to deceive the police, in case they were waiting to stop us. In fact, we turned right out of the academy and followed the shorter route, down Wangfujing, right along Changan Avenue, past the Beijing Hotel.

The site on the square where the statue was to be erected had been carefully chosen. It was on a great axis, heavy with both cosmological and political symbolism, extending from the main entrance of the Forbidden City, with the huge portrait of Mao Zedong over it; through the Monument to the People's Heroes, which had become the command headquarters of the student movement. The statue was to be set up just across Changan Avenue from Mao so that it would confront him face-to-face. When we arrived around 10:30 at night, a huge crowd, perhaps 50,000 people, had gathered around the tall scaffolding of iron poles that had already been erected to support the statue. The parts were placed one on another, attached to this iron frame; plaster was poured into the hollow core, vertical poles extended from the ground up through the center to hold it upright. The exposed iron supports were then cut away, leaving the statue freestanding. It stood on a base also made of rods, about six feet in height, which was later covered with cloth. The statue was made so that once assembled it could not be taken apart again but would have to be destroyed all at once.

The work continued through the night. A circle of students joined hands around the statue so that those working on it would be undisturbed. By noon of May 30, it was ready for the unveiling ceremony, for which many people had waited all night. Actually, only the face was "veiled" by two pieces of cloth, bright blue and red -- the students never collected enough cloth to cover the whole figure.

The ceremony was simple and very moving. A statement had been prepared about the meaning of the statue and was read by a woman, probably a student at the Broadcasting Academy, who had a good Mandarin accent. "We have made this statue," the statement said, "as a memorial to democracy, and to express our respect for the hunger-strikers, for the students who have stayed in the square so many days, and for all others involved in the movement." Two Beijing residents, a woman and a man, had been chosen at random from the crowd and invited into the circle to pull the strings that would "unveil" the sculpture. When the cloths fell, the crowd burst into cheers, there were shouts of "Long live democracy!" and other slogans, and some began to sing the "Internationale." A musical performance was given by students from the Central Academy of Music: choral rendition of the "Hymn to Joy" from Beethoven's Ninth Symphony, another foreign song and one Chinese, and finally the "Internationale" again.

That night there were strong winds and rain. We rushed to the square in the morning to see if the statue had been damaged. But it had endured this first serious test without harm. We took this as a good omen...

Documents of 1989

The Cartoon History of 1989 Student Movement

noreply@blogger.com (Eddie Cheng) — Fri, 27 May 2011 05:11:00 +0000

Here is a cartoon history of the 1989 student movement, narrated by the song Sound of Silence.

8964 from sofunny on Vimeo.