My Rating: 4.5 stars
June 4th, 1989. This is a date that has been seared into my memory for the past 30 years – a date that, being from Hong Kong, I have an obligation never to forget. It doesn't matter that my family immigrated to the U.S. when I was barely old enough to talk, or that I was only 11 years old when the events of June 4th took place, or that I was thousands of miles away, living and growing up in Los Angeles and barely even remembered what Hong Kong looked like at that time, let alone China, having never set foot in the country up to that point.
I first learned about the Tiananmen Square Massacre (which is referred to euphemistically as 'the June 4th Incident' in the Chinese-speaking part of the world) in my elementary school classroom. We had been watching a usually pre-recorded news snippet recapping recent world events (a practice that was part of our regular curriculum at the time) and near the tail-end of it, the breaking news came in about the situation unfolding in China, where students from various universities had been protesting for weeks at Tiananmen Square, the heart of the country's capital in Beijing. At the time, the information was sketchy of course, being that we were thousands of miles away and relying primarily on news feeds transmitted from foreign journalists in China. While I don't remember the exact content of the news feed at that time, one thing I do remember from that broadcast were the shocked expressions on the faces of both newscasters as they relayed the little information they had, as well as the chaotic scene in the newsroom as everyone scrambled to get more details – to this day, those images have stayed with me. When I got home, my family was able to fill in the details of what had happened, since our relatives in Hong Kong had already been monitoring the situation as soon as they saw it on the news over there and was relaying the information to us firsthand. To be honest, I was too young at the time to truly understand the magnitude of what had happened – all I knew was that the situation was very, very bad, as the Communist government in China had resorted to sending in their military with guns and tanks to quash unarmed protesters. Most of what I remember from that first week was watching program after program where practically every famous celebrity in Hong Kong at the time came out to denounce what the government had done and also, more importantly, mourn all the protesters who had been senselessly killed. It wasn't until later in the year that I fully understood the significance of the Tiananmen Square Massacre for Hong Kong and why the reaction in the city was as tremendous as it had been for something that hadn't even taken place there: Hong Kong, a British colony at the time, was scheduled to be handed back over to China on July 1st, 1997 – a mere 8 years away. Everyone in Hong Kong was terrified (and rightfully so) of having to soon be under the rule of a government that seemed to have no qualms about killing its own citizens for the mere 'crime' (in their eyes) of disagreeing with the Communist Party's ideology. It was because of what had happened in Tiananmen that throughout the early 90s, there was a huge surge in emigration out of Hong Kong, as many citizens – especially those who had been the most outspoken against the Mainland government – were determined to get out of the city before the handover.
Many of us from Hong Kong vividly remember the events of June 4th, yet in the country where the events took place, there is an entire population that does not remember – or, perhaps more appropriately, has chosen to forget. This is where NPR correspondent Louisa Lim's book The People's Republic of Amnesia: Tiananmen Revisited comes in. Her book, which was published back in 2014 to coincide with the 25th anniversary of the Tiananmen Square Massacre, explores Mainland China's effective "erasure" of the event from not only its history books, but also from the minds of its nearly 1.4 billion citizens. After that day of bloodshed, Deng Xiaoping and the rest of those in charge at the time were quick to label the Tiananmen protests as "counterrevolutionary turmoil" instigated by "ruffian mobs" whose previous actions of killing a PLA soldier justified the government's use of force in order to "bring stability" back to the country. Over the past 3 decades, in efforts to maintain this narrative, the Tiananmen Square massacre has been continually downgraded and downplayed by the ruling Communist Party. As Lim writes in her book, "Deng's 'counterrevolutionary turmoil' has morphed over time into plain 'turmoil' and then a 'political storm.' Nowadays, if it is referred to at all, it is often called the 'June 4th incident,' a term notable for its blandness." Indeed, in today's China, most of the younger generation do not know about Tiananmen while many of the older generation who lived through it have gone to great lengths to protect their offspring from knowledge of this past history for the sake of their futures. One of the tactics that has made this enforced collective amnesia so "successful" for the Chinese government was the decision after Tiananmen to concentrate efforts on economic reform, thereby opening up a path to wealth and prosperity for millions of its citizens — the focus became making as much money as possible and with that money, buying up every material good that had previously been out of reach, effectively lifting many of its citizens, especially in the urban areas, from "grinding poverty to unimaginable wealth." Today, China is an economic superpower, second only to the United States in terms of economic might and wealth. In the many interviews she did as part of her research for this book, Lim expressed that she seemed to encounter a common mindset amongst many of China's youth today — when asked about Tiananmen, the few who knew about it often chose the path of willful ignorance, citing the "pointlessness" in mentioning the past when things were going so well for them currently….why rock the boat and bring trouble upon themselves when they can ignore the past and continue to enjoy the life that they have now? To me though, what was more heartbreaking than China's citizens deliberately forgetting Tiananmen was the fact that, as Lim asserts in her book, many of the young Chinese who do know about Tiananmen "see the country's prosperity as a post-facto justification for the crackdown."
Even with my knowledge of the Tiananmen events, reading Lim's book was still an eye-opener for me, especially in its portraits of those whose lives were impacted by what had happened in one way or another. I was especially moved by the profile of the Tiananmen Mothers -- two elderly women whose sons were killed during the Tiananmen protests over a quarter century ago, yet to this day, they are not allowed to mourn their sons publicly and at times, not even privately. The mission of the grassroots organization that they formed alongside others whose relatives were killed in Tiananmen is summed up in 3 words: truth, compensation, and accountability. Over the years, they have been able to painstakingly put together a list that confirms the identities of more than 200 victims killed in the crackdown. Despite decades of continual harassment and monitoring from the government, as well as being forced to "disappear" every year whenever the anniversary rolls around, the Tiananmen Mothers have continued to remain relentless in their mission to keep the memory of Tiananmen alive.
Today, the only place on Chinese soil where the Tiananmen massacre can be publicly commemorated is Hong Kong, where the "one country, two systems" pledge given by Mainland China during the handover guaranteed its citizens continued autonomy and freedoms for 50 years. Every June 4th, students in Hong Kong organize a huge rally attended by tens of thousands and also hold a symbolic 64-hour hunger strike in honor of the victims. With this year being the 30th anniversary, commemoration events were especially poignant, with record numbers of Hong Kongers attending the events (though no doubt that the timing of the anniversary date to other recent spats with the HKSAR government also drove up the number of people in attendance who view Tiananmen in a more symbolic light, of their own freedoms being slowly eroded). It is no coincidence that in the 22 years since the handover, the relations between Hong Kong and the Mainland have continued to be strained — even more so as Hong Kongers feel that more and more of their rights and freedoms (core tenants of the city's existence), are being encroached upon. In fact, it is not lost on me that as I am writing this review, there is yet another protest about a matter related to Mainland rule (the extradition law that has been heatedly contested the past few months) going on in Hong Kong currently and that, once again, just like the 2 major protests before it (the Mongkok riots from 2016 and the larger scale Occupy movement prior to that in 2014), the protests in certain areas have escalated into a violent scuffle between protesters and the local police. This seems to be the way of life there now -- Hong Kong used to be one of the safest cities in the world, but over the past 10 years alone, things have changed drastically. When I returned to HK several years ago to visit relatives, I was shocked to discover a city that I no longer recognized, a city where everyone seemed to be constantly on guard, a city where people seem to have taken on a consistently hostile attitude toward everyone and everything, a city that seems to constantly be in a state of unrest and that I no longer feel comfortable or safe in.
What happened in Tiananmen 30 years ago continue to have a lasting impact on not just China, but also Hong Kong as well as many Chinese-speaking communities around the world. Yet, an entire nation has chosen to deliberately suppress memories of that day and wipe its existence from the annals of history. This is why books such as Louisa Lim's are so necessary, even if only to serve as a reminder that history forgotten is likely to be repeated. To this point, one of the most powerful passages from the book that sums up why many of us Chinese who live outside of Mainland China's borders feel it is an obligation for us to remember the events of June 4th: "Memory is dangerous in a country that was built to function on national amnesia. A single act of public remembrance might expose the frailty of the state's carefully constructed edifice of accepted history, scaffolded into place over a generation and kept aloft by a brittle structure of strict censorship, blatant falsehood, and willful forgetting."
This book (and others like it) are important, not just to help us understand history, but also to help us remember it. And while I'm not going to bank on those who have "forgotten" about Tiananmen (whether willfully or otherwise) to read this book and suddenly "remember," I do hope that for others who may not have known in the first place, books like this one help enlighten.
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