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| Hands raised for “Five Demands not one less” look much like America’s “hands up, don’t shoot” festering right now in American streets |
Victoria Park in Hong Kong last night. June 4 memorialisers — breaking Covid distancing rules. The police, praise them, did nothing, but watch and keep order, even though the gathering had not been given permission, as it could not under current Covid guidelines.
They are remembering, memorialising, the crackdown on protesters in Beijing’s Tian’anmen Square on June 4, 1989.
It was known in China as “Liu Si” (六四), 6-4, June 4th. But not for long. It was soon was forgotten. Beijing did not allow any memory of it. Discussion prohibited.. If you go to China now and ask anyone under 50 about Liu Si, they won’t know what you’re talking about. But here, remembered, and the reason for the graffiti all over town last year, “8964”, 89-6-4.
We were there at the time, J and I. J was in a side street off Chang An Avenue, where “Tank Man” stood. After he’d finished blocking that tank, in what became the most iconic of the images from the day, he wandered past her, muttering. She noticed his shopping bag. She’d been bicycling are kind the city, at times chatting to the young soldiers manning the tanks. Who all seemed to her, young as she was herself, as young kids. Frightened. Not knowing what was going on. Speaking in country accents. Nituizi they call them (泥腿子) in Chinese. Muddy legs. Peasants.
I was at the Great Wall Hotel, just out of the city centre, on my way back to Australia after a trip to Britain and Russia, doing my consulting work, due to meet up with our partners, the Great Wall Publishing House, part of the PLA, as we were wrapping a doco on the Chinese armed forces, which became The Great Wall of Iron. Taxi downtown to see the damage, shattered windows in five star hotels, the Jianguo, New World, even the Peking hotel. Strange sights. Not so strange these strange days. And when I get back to the hotel, the staff would say, in what became a bit of a meme for a while after, “ni hai huozhe ne?”, you’re still alive, then? And a mordant smile.
The numbers are commonly claimed to be in the thousands killed. Best guesses from academic studies are that dozens, perhaps up to a hundred were killed, including quite a few soldiers. Nothing to excuse here, of course, just that that’s the likely number.
There’s a memory here in Hong Kong, this renegade city, this naughty child of the motherland.
In China, “Liu Si” is down a memory hole. State-induced Forgetfulness.
