June Memorial--From Opium War to Tienanmen

"It is not easy for me at the moment because I cannot leave the diplomatic quarter," came the reply from Peking. "We have been very strictly controlled recently, even the telephones are bugged . . ."

Another correspondent came on the air and confirmed that he had been roughed up by armed security police. "Were you very scared?" asked the radio host.

"Of course, for a professional journalist this kind of experience is disturbing. But at the time I suddenly reflected that if a foreign correspondent can be subjected to this kind of terrorist treatment, can you imagine what it is like for the average Chinese person in daily life to be under constant pressure and always pushed around. It was only then that I got a taste of what life is like for the people who have to actually live here." Later on, the prize-winning journalist described how, "It seemed that we appeared to our captors like the defeated foreign soldiers in the previous evening's Opium War movie."

History cannot flow backwards, but sometimes it seems to repeat itself. The xenophobia stirred up by the Communists for the 150th anniversary of the Opium War in Tienanmen Square was obviously intended as a diversion from the anniversary of June 4--but there is a curious parallel between the two.

Before the Opium War, at least in the European Enlightenment, China was seen by the West as a cultivated, well governed and serene land. Architecture, wallpaper, ceramics were all included in the fashion of chinoiserie. Until the mid-nineteenth century, when foreign gunboats broke down the door to China, after which images of the pig-tail and opium addict became China's new trade marks.

In the 1960s came Mao Tse-tung, using communism to control one quarter of the world's population. His portrait was to be carried aloft in the streets of London and Paris during the Cultural Revolution, while many academics proclaimed that a new dawn for mankind had broken in China.

Mao was followed by Teng, who became the darling of the western media during the 1980s period of "openness and reform." Until the spring of 1989 when the western news army followed Gorbachev to Peking only to be confronted by Chinese using foreign guns to wash Tienanmen in blood.

As the images arrived back in the West they shattered the glass of the western experts and cracked the beautiful image of mainland China's progress towards glory. The rulers became muddle-headed fools and terrorist butchers.

While the fruits made available to westerners by the gunboats of the Opium War can still be seen in every great museum of Europe, those who were present at the June 4 massacre also brought back curiosities for the world media. Eye-witness accounts, in-depth analysis, and long-range predictions appeared in rapid succession.

A university philosophy teacher who tried to understand China from books and newspapers described how after June 4 he felt there was a sudden gestalt switch--as if China was one of those black and white pictures that can be seen as either a youthful girl or wrinkled old hag, but only one at a time.

Is that not so? With the color supplement image of a delighted Shanghai wife taking home her first fridge still lodged in their memories, readers of the Independent on Sunday magazine might have upset their morning tea when recently confronted by a double-page color photograph of an execution in China. Apart from being shocked, and perhaps put off their Sunday lunch, the readers might well have asked whether the Communists had also enjoyed "killing chickens" during the 1980s? And do Shanghai housewives really not buy fridges these days?

In the same vein, we can look back from the 1978 lionization of Teng Hsiao-p'ing on the cover of Time with the caption "Visions of New China" to the Newsweek cover for the anniversary of June 4, which read "Silent Rebellion." More recently, one book review appeared in the Times in 1986 under the title of "China: now for the real leap", while another appeared this year in the Guardian under the title "The Great Leap Back." It seems that "China" will always move in mysterious ways, remaining an inscrutable curiosity, a smiling face hiding a scheming Fu Manchu interior.

While the Communists were busy in the run-up to June 4 arranging for children to queue up in Tiananmen Square to marvel at the size of Lord Palmerston's nose and vigorously announcing that "the western imperialists have never given up their conspiracy to pillage China," the western media picked up interest in "Tienanmen revisited" articles in an attempt to discover the feelings of the Chinese people.

On revisiting Tienanmen, it was discovered that everything was as before: "On the surface you would not know it had happened. The flowers are blooming along Peking's main thoroughfares, the shops are as busy as ever, Chinese and foreign tourists chatter excitedly in Tienanmen Square, and women, as the city mayor said recently, continue to have babies."

One journalist visited Peking University to discover that the school was showing Lady Chatterley's Lover and The Last Metro. Students were still going to lectures, playing basketball and dreaming of foreign study, as usual, "But when you talk to them the anger and confusion pours out." The journalist described how, over the past twelve months, they had been agonizing over what went wrong: should they have accepted Chao Tzu-yang's appeal? Or should they have fought like the Romanians? Then what? Nobody could answer.

A democracy activist told the journalist that China is like tinder waiting for a match. Another said that now we can do nothing but wait for someone to die. Someone added that it depends on when a number of people die and in what order. A more pessimistic commentator added that, "We Chinese are going round in a circle and nobody knows how to get out . . . this is still a society where people expect there to be an emperor." The exiled leaders of the democracy movement are seen as knowing little of rural realities and Fang Li-chih is "too intellectual." He concluded that they feel they can do nothing but wait hopelessly.

"Now everybody has become very superstitious" added another Peking citizen. "Everybody is interested in ch'i-kung. Perhaps it can even save China. Even Wang Chen said that maybe in the future it can be used to steal some nuclear secrets from the Russians and Americans for us."

Following the dissipation of the enthusiasm of May last year, another journalist came to understand the hobby of old Peking residents of raising birds. "The reason the birds sing is that once they are uncovered and given their little push, 'they think they are free.' But when the birds are hooded again, even the false sense of freedom deserts them and they fall silent." He might well have also pondered over what would happen if the old men opened the cage doors? Or what if the old men died?

Jonathan Mirsky summed up his feelings in the Observer with a quote made by the Earl of Macartney in 1793: "The Empire of China is an old, crazy, first-rate Man of War . . . she may perhaps not sink outright; she may drift sometime as a wreck and will then be dashed to pieces on the shore; but she can never be rebuilt on the old bottom."

The wall of silence that was discovered in revisiting Tienanmen made China seem more obscure than ever. In a post-mortem on the record of the journalists since Tienanmen, veteran reporter John Gittings pointed out that ". . . there was a lot we did not understand. I and many other colleagues felt an awkwardness not solely attributable to modesty when we were congratulated on returning home." An angry reader, however, accused the western media of viewing the whole affair last year in terms of a Hollywood musical ". . . but the poor students were praised all the way to the grave for their willingness to die for an alien concept."

Can the actions of the desperate man who was arrested in Tienanmen Square, this June 4, after facing foreign cameras to try to reveal that there is a new philosophy in China be explained by the overwhelming power of capitalist guns since the Opium War? Or does the confusing wind that drives the drifting wreck blow from closer to home?

[Picture Caption]

Shouting for democracy and freedom for the people of mainland China. (photo by Franco Chen)

The long early-morning hours of June 4. (photos from Tienanmen: A Photographic Diary by Imaeda Kouichi)

Many of those who took part in the protests were executed by the Communists in the wake of June 4. (photo by Chih Hsiao-ning, from Friday magazine of Japan)

The memorial procession in Tokyo on the anniversary of the June 4 massacre. (photo by Chih Hsiao-ning)

The demonstrators in London marched from Chinatown to the Communist Chin ese "embassy." (photo by Eric Lee)

An artistic piece entitled June 4 Square was displayed at the site of a rally in Osaka. (photo by Chih Hsiao-ning)

Street theater, transcending language barriers, conveyed the message of pain and protest in lands around the world. (photo by Franco Chen)

Shouting for democracy and freedom for the people of mainland China. （photo by Franco Chen）

The long early-morning hours of June 4. （photos from Tienanmen: A Photographic Diary by Imaeda Kouichi）

Many of those who took part in the protests were executed by the Communists in the wake of June 4. （photo by Chih Hsiao-ning, from Friday magazine of Japan）

The memorial procession in Tokyo on the anniversary of the June 4 massacre. （photo by Chih Hsiao-ning）

The demonstrators in London marched from Chinatown to the Communist Chin ese "embassy." （photo by Eric Lee）

An artistic piece entitled June 4 Square was displayed at the site of a rally in Osaka. （photo by Chih Hsiao-ning）

Street theater, transcending language barriers, conveyed the message of pain and protest in lands around the world. （photo by Franco Chen）