Six Dash Four

 

Find the cost of freedom, buried in the ground. Mother Earth is calling you, lay your body down.

                                                                                         Stephen Stills

The Chinese governement would like us all to forget this day but I hope that many are thinking about Tainanmen Square today.  I remember watching what happened as if it were yesterday. It was impossible to stop watching the news all during May of that year and into June. The images stay with me - the Tank Man, Lady Liberty, the students starving themselves and being carried away unconscious, the people of Beijing rushing out to try and stop the army from moving in on the students - small acts like miracles. I remember the sense of hope felt in discussions with friends during those days. The glimmer of hope that perhaps there could be a peaceful move towards democracy in a country where freedom wasn't known. Our voices held a sense of awe and admiration. These students were truly risking all for what they believed.  I cannot remember ever witnessing people putting so much on the line. They were astonishing in their determination.  Their Lady Liberty, flattering in its mimicry, was a poem, so remarkable was it to watch it rise.

 

I have often been disillusioned that nothing much ever happened to China for that day. The outrage never quite matched the enormity of what happened. 20 years later and Beijing gets the Olympics and this very same square is dressed for prime time and made to look as if nothing ever happened. In the Washington Post today there is an article about the different meanings the word "freedom" has for people in China now. One woman says there is too much freedom; another, a 22 year old student says "I am not very interested in democracy or something like that" and then goes on to make a statement galling in its level of selfishness. I guess I shouldn't be too surprised given how history is taught in Beijing.  Thank God for Wang Heyan, a journalist, who says: "I believe freedom without democracy is fake freedom. There should be free speech, freedom to publish, a right to march, assemble and organize. Although those freedoms are in the constitution, they cannot be realized in reality." 

The Post's article was, in essence, a throwaway. A bone tossed to a memory. The New York Times did a much more comprehensive job. Several articles, an audio memory by Nicholas Kristoff and a photo essay. Whichever way you find to reflect on this day I hope you do so. I teach my students every chance I get that remembering history, remembering the events both good and bad that are part of our history, whether national or world history, is a way of shaping how we view our world, how we come to terms with our world and what choices we make for ourselves in relation to our world. 6/4. Remember.