Word: tiananmen
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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Everywhere I go in China, most of the people I encounter, including those aware of what happened in Tiananmen Square, express perfectly understandable human sentiments grounded in fatalism. "As the old proverb goes," says a middle-level government official in Guangdong who holds a master's in political science from an American college, 'Happiness and sorrow flow along the same river.' Do we deplore what the army did in Tiananmen? Of course. Do we wish the government were different, more democratic, more humane? Of course. But what would you have us do? Take to the streets? For what? We have...
...boundaries of permissible complaint in China have been set. Anything may be criticized except that which really matters: the right of the party to rule. To today's leaders, the experience of the past demands a straitjacket on political dissent and helps explain why Deng so feared accepting the Tiananmen demonstrators' demand for free expression...
...bookstores that one can best see how daily life has outgrown the political system's controls, how the campaign against "spiritual pollution," so rhetorically fierce, is flouted with such abandon. While elsewhere in China, government booklets like The True Story of Tiananmen Square are prominently displayed alongside issues of Vogue, Elle and Glamour, you have to hunt for the lies at Wangfujing, Beijing's largest bookstore. The section labeled "Ideology and Political Education" actually displays books titled Modern Woman, Smart Woman, Handbook on Love and Life and dozens of how- to monographs like Eighty-Eight Points on Developing Public Relations...
...surface, then, totalitarianism in Beijing seems no more oppressive than a constant low-grade fever. Underneath, though, the town seethes. Even the silence is telling. Herded by their supervisors to the military museum's "True Story of Tiananmen Square" exhibit, those I see viewing it are stone-faced. Politically reliable cadres are everywhere, but so are wry smiles, especially when people see a giant blowup photograph of the man who defied a column of tanks, with a caption saying he had been spared because of the army's humanity...
...early military career, but even those who attend -- and most of the theaters are half empty -- talk through the movie or read. At work, employees protest by increasing their sick leave and slowing their production. At school, the results of an essay competition glorifying the army's role in Tiananmen are supposed to have been made public weeks ago. Perhaps too many entries reflect the view of an eleven-year-old girl whose grandparents I meet. Her short, three-page paper, reflecting the unpopularity of China's conservative Premier, has Li Peng resigning because he is "too stinking." Most significant...