The name "Tiananmen Square" carries a certain charge to non-Chinese ears, but for those who’ve grown up in the country in the past 20, 30 odd years, it’s just a place with Mao’s body and a Starbucks. The bloody massacre of students and other unarmed protesters that occurred there just shy of 20 years ago isn’t common knowledge among those Chinese young enough to have missed it when it happened, and those who are in the know aren’t exactly being Chatty Changs about it.I’ve spent the past few years studying Chinese at a university in Beijing and it’s always fun discussing politics with my Chinese co-students. Not fun as in rewarding and stimulating, but fun as in "Ha ha, this is such a farce." I downloaded two documentaries about what happened in Tiananmen in the summer of ‚Äò89, and circulated them to a few of my friends and teachers, and then I jotted down their reactions so that you can muse about it like 18-century colonial pashas.
Subject 1: Guo Wang
Relation: My teacher
Reaction: Skeptical, thought I was just foolin’
My Chinese-language teacher is 25 years old and only recently came to Beijing from the countryside to teach at the university. During Mandarin classes we sometimes discuss social questions and historical events—one lesson the topic was China’s "open door policy" and the changes it had brought to the country. The teacher is very interested in social issues, but the only education she’s had came from Communist Party schoolbooks, and so her comments on matters are generally just base praise for the efforts of the country’s leaders. After class I asked her if all results of the new policy were positive, referring to Tiananmen 89. As expected, she didn’t know much about it, and since my Chinese wasn’t good enough to fully explain the situation I decided to just hand her the two documentaries.The next day in school Guo told me she hadn’t slept at all the previous night. She had been watching the documentaries over again and thinking about their content. Her conclusion was, as she said, "in line with the party." She told me the films must be American propaganda (after all, the voiceovers were in English) and that the scenes of the People’s Liberation Army shooting unarmed civilians in the back as they fled was most likely filmed in Hollywood. I tried to give her even more details about the massacre, but she called me a liar with an intonation somewhere between joking and uncertainty. Even though I told her to be careful with the movies she ended up showing them to her family during the Chinese New Year. They refused to discuss the subject with her and had her immediately erase the movies from her laptop. Name: Liu Shi
Relation: Language partner
Reaction: Burst into tears, declared her life "a lie"
For someone born and raised in China, Liu Shi has a very wide knowledge of outside history and politics. She does nothing but study and can relate anecdotes about ancient Swedish Viking gods with far more detail than myself. She knew about the massacre before I handed her the same documentaries that I gave to my teacher, but her understanding of the situation was that the military did a heroic effort to put down "dangerous elements" in a peaceful way. She heard there had been a few deaths on the square, but most of the victims were military personnel who suffered violent ends from the aggressive elements in the crowd. Liu Shi knows that it’s smart to consult more than one source when learning about these kinds of political incidents, however, due to Chinese censorship, she couldn’t find any other material on the protests or massacre and therefore considered the whole thing a semantic quarrel without any specific importance.The day after I gave her the documentaries we met at the library for our regular language studies, and she came in with red, teary eyes and said she too hadn’t slept the night before. Watching the material she felt her whole life was a lie and came to the conclusion that if the government was misleading her so extensively about this situation, there was nothing they told her that she could believe. She’d started to question the very fundamentals that her life and knowledge was built upon—what if everything she’d ever read was really just some Party fabrication? As she was trying to make sense of the whole thing she started crying again, right there at the library. I felt like an asshole for making a girl cry, but I didn’t know what to do, so I just explained to her how to get around the Chinese censorship in order to surf Wikipedia. The next day I gave her another documentary, concerning China’s oppression of Tibet. Was that a dick move? Name: Xiao Yu
Relation: Guy I know
Reaction: Surprise, declared politics boring
Xiao Wang is 23 years old, born and raised in Beijing. He and his parents actually lived in the city at the time of the massacre. We were talking about politics one day and when I brought up Tiananmen he looked at me like a human question mark. It turned out that he’d never heard about the event before, not even from a propagandist point of view. When I explained the actions, the estimated number of dead, and the insane level of violence he assumed I was lying. I realized ol’ Western me wasn’t enough to convince him, so I suggested that he ask his friends and parents about what went down.The next day he came back with the biggest eyes I have ever seen and said very solemnly that I had been right.I tried to ask him exactly what he’d learned about it, but he said he wasn’t interested in the affair anymore. When I asked if he wanted to see one of the documentaries I’d given Xiao and Guo, he replied it wasn’t necessary because, all of a sudden, he wasn’t "so interested in politics." Evidently after asking his parents about the massacre they told him to shut up about it and keep a low profile. What made me even sadder is that the discussion totally killed our friendship. We went from meeting several days a week to occasionally bumping into each other every other week. I was annoyed at him because I felt like he was trying to escape the truth, but he was definitely affected by the discovery and, I think, really ashamed.JOJJE OHLSSONPS: It goes without saying we changed everybody's name here.
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Relation: My teacher
Reaction: Skeptical, thought I was just foolin’
My Chinese-language teacher is 25 years old and only recently came to Beijing from the countryside to teach at the university. During Mandarin classes we sometimes discuss social questions and historical events—one lesson the topic was China’s "open door policy" and the changes it had brought to the country. The teacher is very interested in social issues, but the only education she’s had came from Communist Party schoolbooks, and so her comments on matters are generally just base praise for the efforts of the country’s leaders. After class I asked her if all results of the new policy were positive, referring to Tiananmen 89. As expected, she didn’t know much about it, and since my Chinese wasn’t good enough to fully explain the situation I decided to just hand her the two documentaries.The next day in school Guo told me she hadn’t slept at all the previous night. She had been watching the documentaries over again and thinking about their content. Her conclusion was, as she said, "in line with the party." She told me the films must be American propaganda (after all, the voiceovers were in English) and that the scenes of the People’s Liberation Army shooting unarmed civilians in the back as they fled was most likely filmed in Hollywood. I tried to give her even more details about the massacre, but she called me a liar with an intonation somewhere between joking and uncertainty. Even though I told her to be careful with the movies she ended up showing them to her family during the Chinese New Year. They refused to discuss the subject with her and had her immediately erase the movies from her laptop. Name: Liu Shi
Relation: Language partner
Reaction: Burst into tears, declared her life "a lie"
For someone born and raised in China, Liu Shi has a very wide knowledge of outside history and politics. She does nothing but study and can relate anecdotes about ancient Swedish Viking gods with far more detail than myself. She knew about the massacre before I handed her the same documentaries that I gave to my teacher, but her understanding of the situation was that the military did a heroic effort to put down "dangerous elements" in a peaceful way. She heard there had been a few deaths on the square, but most of the victims were military personnel who suffered violent ends from the aggressive elements in the crowd. Liu Shi knows that it’s smart to consult more than one source when learning about these kinds of political incidents, however, due to Chinese censorship, she couldn’t find any other material on the protests or massacre and therefore considered the whole thing a semantic quarrel without any specific importance.The day after I gave her the documentaries we met at the library for our regular language studies, and she came in with red, teary eyes and said she too hadn’t slept the night before. Watching the material she felt her whole life was a lie and came to the conclusion that if the government was misleading her so extensively about this situation, there was nothing they told her that she could believe. She’d started to question the very fundamentals that her life and knowledge was built upon—what if everything she’d ever read was really just some Party fabrication? As she was trying to make sense of the whole thing she started crying again, right there at the library. I felt like an asshole for making a girl cry, but I didn’t know what to do, so I just explained to her how to get around the Chinese censorship in order to surf Wikipedia. The next day I gave her another documentary, concerning China’s oppression of Tibet. Was that a dick move? Name: Xiao Yu
Relation: Guy I know
Reaction: Surprise, declared politics boring
Xiao Wang is 23 years old, born and raised in Beijing. He and his parents actually lived in the city at the time of the massacre. We were talking about politics one day and when I brought up Tiananmen he looked at me like a human question mark. It turned out that he’d never heard about the event before, not even from a propagandist point of view. When I explained the actions, the estimated number of dead, and the insane level of violence he assumed I was lying. I realized ol’ Western me wasn’t enough to convince him, so I suggested that he ask his friends and parents about what went down.The next day he came back with the biggest eyes I have ever seen and said very solemnly that I had been right.I tried to ask him exactly what he’d learned about it, but he said he wasn’t interested in the affair anymore. When I asked if he wanted to see one of the documentaries I’d given Xiao and Guo, he replied it wasn’t necessary because, all of a sudden, he wasn’t "so interested in politics." Evidently after asking his parents about the massacre they told him to shut up about it and keep a low profile. What made me even sadder is that the discussion totally killed our friendship. We went from meeting several days a week to occasionally bumping into each other every other week. I was annoyed at him because I felt like he was trying to escape the truth, but he was definitely affected by the discovery and, I think, really ashamed.JOJJE OHLSSONPS: It goes without saying we changed everybody's name here.