25 years ago an unknown Chinese protester stood in front of a tank in defiance of the government. No one knows the identity of the man but he was given the nick name “Tank Man”. This is one of the most iconic photographs of the century.
It’s actually been 27 years now since the incident known as the Tiananmen Square Massacre occurred. The picture above, famously referred to as “The Tank Man” was actually taken on June 5, the day after the massacre. (Which honestly makes him the one of the bravest person, to go back and stand up to a regime after such a terrible event transpired)
So what happened? I’m gonna give the TL;DR version:
April 15, 1989. Hu Yaobang,
a former Communist Party Chief
dies.
Many people, including workers, laborer, students and some officials come to mourn. You see, those protestors were originally there to mourn, not protest.
Time passed and there were some hunger strikes, and protests, and a call for accountability and reform from the government.
Eventually, things went south, because the communist party doesn’t have time to deal with these sorts of “demands” and grievances.
Keep in mind, the people wanted not the end of the Communist Party, but for the party to stop with the official corruption, rule of law, and the gross monopoly of information and power.
Incidentally, China still suffers from all of these SAME problems to this day…
June 3, 1989. The massacre started at night to disperse the crowd. Many were shot, wounded, and killed.
June 4, 1989. Some of the parents of the protestors who never came home went looking for them. It was still total mayhem.
June 5, 1989. The iconic image of the tank man was taken. To this day, no one knows what became of this person.
Content Warning for video: blood
“Tell the world…”
I cannot stress how important it is that people remember and know about this event. Do you know how China responded? With lies and censorship.
Even now, in 2016, we do not have an official death toll on the Tiananmen Square Massacre, the Chinese government doesn’t even acknowledge the event as a “massacre”. And they weaves these cover stories of “counter revolutionaries trying to overthrow the government”. Therefore, the violence was necessary to ~protect~ the people. (Or some bullshit like that)
The amount of lying and censorship in China is, quite frankly, scary amazing. Tumblr, which somehow managed to fly under their radar, found itself being blocked in that country.
After all, tell a lie often enough and it becomes the truth.
And those who remember the incident in China? …………well, you tell me.
Please at least REMEMBER this tragedy. Untold innocent lives were lost, and a nation has been fed a lie for almost three decades now from their oppressive af regime.
I have never seen this video before.
What the fucking hell.
What the hell.
Tiananmen Square happened when I was seven, and let’s just say children have a really interesting way of interpreting information.
I just remember thinking it was a happy event, because all these people were out on the street, and at first the army were interacting with these people. And it almost looked like a festival because people were singing and talking, and hopeful. And then tv coverage for the events got cut off.
The blocking of the live coverage had all the adults anxious, nobody said anything for ages, I just remember my grandmother saying, “Just be glad your father isn’t in China, now.”
And that stuck with me to this day. Because yeah, if dad had been in China then he would have been in Beijing studying, he would have been on those streets with those other students.
It was the first time I knew that something horrible had happened to all those people I saw on the television. I don’t even remember how I knew that the army must have shot at the civilians, I just knew. Because when you grow up in China, especially in the 80s you knew there were things you don’t say, that you can’t express in a public forum, because that can get you and your family in trouble. You just knew, and it didn’t fucking matter if your were a child or an adult.
To this day I don’t remember how I found out what happened in Tiananmen Square, because the news covered it up, but people found out. My grandparents knew, my uncles and aunts knew. Extended family visited my grandparents, I remember people telling my mother not to mention my father’s name because my father was a Chinese Beijing University graduate, who had gone overseas. Because there were people who died in the protests that my dad knew.
And it was all just so frightening because nobody was telling me directly what was happening, but I just knew that all the people on the streets was probably dead.
Looking back on it, Tiananmen Square instilled in a me a life long distrust of governments, but especially the Chinese government. I’m ethnically Chinese but I never want to return to China, not even for a holiday, and this has been my attitude even before Xi Jinping took power. Because Tiananmen Square was a peaceful protest that ended up with the army using heavy artillery against their own people. How can you trust in a system, in a government like that? Because if my dad had delayed further studies overseas by two years he would have been one of those students, one of those fucking kids on the streets that would have died.
And you know, when the Umbrella movement was happening in Hong Kong I was deeply panicked and just anxious because I kept on thinking all those people, all those kids are going to be killed. And when that didn’t happen it was such a relief.
When I found out years later that Chinese people a few years younger than me didn’t know what happened in Tiananmen Square I was so fucking angry. I can’t even articulate the rage and the sheer tiredness of it all.
Dad and I talked about Tiananmen Square a few times through the years, broadly, politically, and at times with sheer rage on dad’s part. I don’t even know what I wanted to say, but just fuck this fucking regime.
Phoebe Bridgers and Taylor Swift perform onstage during night one of
“The Eras Tour” at Nissan Stadium on May 05, 2023 in
Nashville, Tennessee. (Photo by John Shearer/TAS23/Getty Images for TAS
Rights Management)
Supergirlwriters: A surprising amount of people ship Kara and Lena . I suppose we could give them some more scenes together. Strictly friendship of course but still enough to keep those shippers on the hook
PitchPerfectwriters : A crazy amount of people ship Beca and Chloe . Let’s put a few comedic scenes of them to keep them on the hook
Warrior Nunwriters : A lot of people ship Ava and Beatrice so we are thinking … let’s go hard for it in season 2 . I am thinking …. . Ava and Beatrice are roommates working in a bar together . We will start with them pining for each other and being insanely jealous whenever they see someone else speaking with them . Also of course we will have them just be happy and dancing together and being so lost in each other’s eyes you could clearly see the unspoken love . Now for episode two …..
When it rolls to a stop in front of her, the window on the side is
down and Beatrice can see the driver. “Morning!” The driver, an older
lady, calls out.
Beatrice tips her hat. “Good morning.”
Suddenly, the side of the van pops open and an automatic door starts to roll back.
From there, a ramp folds out and gently touches the dirt.
The
driver is already out of the van and climbing in the back - she’s
fiddling with something but Beatrice can’t get a good enough look inside
because of the position of the sun just overhead.
“Alright, Ava. You’re ready to go.”
Beatrice pushes her hat down a bit, blocking the sun just in time to see her new co-worker, Ava, come out of the van.
It is one of the most surreal moments of her entire life.
Ava is not an old friend of Suzanne, or if she is, they were friends when Ava was a baby.
Because Ava can’t be a day over twenty-four and could very well be the most beautiful girl that Beatrice has ever seen.