我所在的波特兰本地电台早间节目：Tiananmen Remembered

 POSTED BY: BREE HOCKING

For Victoria Yu, June 4, 1989 changed everything.

That’s the day the Chinese military cracked down on student-led, pro-democracy demonstrators in Beijing’s Tiananmen Square. The clash left hundreds of Chinese civilians dead with many more injured.

Yu, then a reporter for a Chinese newspaper in Sichuan Province, refers to Tiananmen as:

a direct cause for me to come to this country. After the event, there was a general sense of disillusionment. …The reporters, we went through study sessions and [had] to come clean as to what we did during that time. … I thought I would find a better environment elsewhere.

Today, Yu is the executive director of the Asian Education Foundation in Portland. She views Tiananmen’s legacy as “complicated” but noted that at “that point in time this kind of movement was inevitable.”

Other Chinese-Americans living in Oregon say their views have changed over the years.

Business consultant Ning Zhang was an MBA student at Oregon State University in 1989. He remembers being “high on emotion” while watching the stand-off and resulting bloodshed unfold on TV. He attended rallies, helped raise money and even wrote letters to U.S. Senators in support of the Chinese student protesters. But now, Zhang says, he sees the event as “totally preventable.” Communist party hardliners, he asserts, were forced into taking “a harder position” by the demonstrators. “One radical thing leads to another,” he says.

Many recent headlines focus on the apparent apathy of today’s Chinese youth toward what happened that day. So, 20 years later, what is Tiananmen’s true legacy? We’ll talk to individuals whose lives and work have been affected by the events of what is frequently described in the Western media as a “massacre.” Were you in Tiananmen Square that day? Did the event change your life in some way? How does it matter to contemporary China and its relationship to the West?

GUESTS:

• Swan: the pseudonym for a Chinese-born Eugene woman who participated in the Tiananmen Square demonstrations
• Ning Zhang: Owner of Geoinformation Consulting in Corvallis and a former graduate student at Oregon State University during the Tiananmen Square crackdown
• Chen Xi: A second-year Chinese PhD student in U.S. history at the University of Washington in Seattle
• Jack Gabel: Organizer of the Tiananmen Remembered: 20 Years in Poetry and Music concert and a founding member of the Cascadia Composers

Photo credit: Richard.Fisher / Flickr / Creative Commons

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COMMENTS: (6 total)

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Tiananmen reminds me the price of freedom is not free. Too many Chinese demonstrators were maimed, jailed, killed or exiled.

Tiananmen reminds me of Orwell’s 1984 and the saying, “The nail that sticks up must be hammered down.”

Resistance is futile and we will be assimilated. We are nothing but Copper Tops. To hope for happiness or fulfillment is the sign of a weak mind and the weak must be expunged. To be a happy and willing factor of production for the state is a human’s highest calling, dearest comrade.

I have no idea how Tiananmen affects contemporary China. Seems like China viewed the incident as an unfortunate glitch and they got busy making money and ruining their country’s environment while failing to address the needs of the many. Tiananment was effectively swept under the rug by those who think they’re in control. Typical human mistake that is repeated unendingly all over the world.

Many American slaves and indigenous people were destroyed during their quest for freedom, so Tiananmen reminds me that Freedom is not a permanent state; freedom is a responisibility which requires constant pursuit and nurturing.

If humans become truly enlightened, freedom will flow freely and perpetual suffering will be overcome.

trurl9 — Sun May 31st 2:16a.m.

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My view on this subject and was not reflected  in the interview at  beginning of this  blog page is this:

In 1989 the economic reform had been going on for about 10 years.  Along with the realignment of policy with ideology, was the redistribution of economic opportunities and wealth, restructuring of institutions and rearrangement of social order.  On top of that, there was  power transition from old revolutionaries to a new generation of technocrats. Understandably, there was a great deal of anxiety, fear, uncertainty and discontent.  People felt lost amidst all the dizzying changes.   That explains the  lack of a clear agenda on the side of the protestors and the  indecision on the side of the government.  There were mixed messages and misjudgment on both sides, and a great deal of confusion in the media as well.  The conflict was inevitable.  It was a result of the increasingly  diverse and complex social demands besieging an inadequate system.  The disastrous outcome of the government action also exposed the lack of governing experience and skills of the leadership at the time and the Chinese people paid a terrible price for that.  Since then, the Chinese leadership has made deliberated effort to accelerate its learning curve by changing its reclusive attitude to participate in interntionational organizations, adopt certain international standards and subject itself to certain international regimes.   It would not help the American public understand and appreciate the complexity of the context in which the conflict took place by  framing it in a simplistic good vs. evil  narrative.

Victoria — Tue June 2nd 6:21p.m.

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Victoria,

Thanks for the clarification.

Best,

Dave

David Miller — Wed June 3rd 9:24a.m.

Good interview on Tiananmen from a survivor in exile:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/p0034v6r/The_Interview_30_05_2009_Shen_Tong/

Shen Tong says it is too soon to determine how history will judge Tianamen. I’ve recently thought that so much as happened to the world in the 20th and 21st centuries that it might be difficult for us to collate and analyze the data effectively. We’re too close to the data so it is challenging to be … objective.

Victoria is right, looking at Tianamen as “good versus evil” is naive. China is undergoing massive social and economic change, and on a scale that is hard to fathom.

trurl9 — Wed June 3rd 1:28a.m.

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I studied in China the year before the Tiananmen massacre. The event convinced me that the 1949 revolution had only really changed things on the surface-the attitude of the Chinese government to its people remained and remains aloof. There are small riots every month somewhere in China mostly about corruption. I hear that there is one informer for every 100 citizens-easy to keep a country in intellectual lockdown with that many snitches. They’ve had good results with supplying the populace with bread and circuses as well. It’s worked well in the US too.

homitsu — Wed June 3rd 6:32a.m.

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My wife and I were teaching English at a medical college in Shandong Proivince during the 88-89 school year.  I remember how excited many of our students were during April and May when the signals from the government seemed to be leaning more towards openness.  At one point our college even put TV’s in classrooms so the whole college community could sit and watch reporting of these events.  After June 4 things changed dramatically.  Our students all went home.  All but a handful of our Chinese friends were willing to talk openly with us.  Everyone knew how to temper bahavior during a crackdown.  The daughter of a good friend of ours who was due to attend a prestigious University in the fall, was drafted into the military and had to delay her college education.

vonrohr — Wed June 3rd 8:16a.m.