Never Forget

Today, June 4, 2015,  marks the 26th anniversary of the Tiananmen Massacre in Beijing, China. An entire generation has grown up since this horrific event. I don't know what people know about what happened or even if they remember that it happened, I was there at the time and it had a big impact on my life so I thought I'd tell my story. I was living in China at the time of the massacre. Not in Beijing, but in Zhengzhou, in Henan Province. This is what I experienced.

The student protest had begun several months earlier when groups from Beijing University (or  "BeiDa") and several other schools, began protesting the lack of political freedom in the country. Groups of students began occupying Tiananmen Square.  Tiananmen or the "Gate of Heavenly Peace" (irony noted), is a huge empty square (109 acres according to Wikipedia) directly in front of the main gate of the Forbidden City, the former palace fortress of China's later emperors. Surrounding the square are a number of government buildings so the protests could not help but be noticed. As the protests grew, students and others came from all over the country to join in. The square became a small city, full of people and tents. A number of students from my university, including some from my classes, joined in. I heard also that several students of my Qigong teacher had gone as well.

At first the government ignored the protests, but as the movement grew, they began to take notice. More people arrived and camped out in the square. The students began to be more active. Several people began hunger strikes, something no doubt borrowed from the West since China has no history of hunger strikes. Several large statues of the "Goddess of Liberty" which was based on our Statue of Liberty, began to pop up in the square. The protests were not confined to Beijing either. I observed several protest marches in the streets of Zhengzhou. Initially there was no police or government presence at the these events. The government did not know what to do. No one had dared challenge the Communist Party since the founding of the People's Republic in 1949. As the protests went unchallenged, a mood of excitement and hope seemed to envelop the country. People believed that a historic change for the better was suddenly possible in one of the most tightly controlled countries in the world.

I won't go into the political background surrounding the protests or the events that happened in the square; you have Wikipedia for that (unless you are in China where all things related to the massacre are still strictly censored.) I'll Just tell you what happened to me.

On the day of Sunday, June 4th I was at the Shaolin Temple, where I spent all my weekends and holidays. I was finishing up a couple of days of hanging out with my Danish friend Thomas and several of my "Dharma Brothers". (This a term used when one is a member of a generation of Buddhist disciples, lay disciple in my case, to describe one's relationship with those who are disciples of the same teacher. All the disciples, lay and ordained, of a given Dharma Master will have the same character as their first name and are referred to as what might be translated a "Dharma Brother". In the case of the 31st generation, that character was "De" or "Virtue". My name was Deqin while my Dharma Brothers were named Deyang, Deshui, and so on.) I had had a great weekend, staying at the temple, hanging out with the monks and studying gongfu. On Saturday, Thomas and I had climbed up a nearby mountain and met a 74 year old Buddhist nun at a retreat temple at the top. We spent a long time chatting with her. Later we found a beautiful scenic area and practiced gongfu before making the long, slippery climb down the mountain. On Sunday, I visited with my Shifu, the Venerable Dharma Maser Shi Suxi. We spent a pleasant afternoon talking and playing with a kitten that belonged to one of the monks. All too soon it was time to return home so I collected my things and caught a bus for the two hour ride back to Zhengzhou. I was just about to board when one of the monks rushed over to me. "Did you hear?", he said, "The government used tear gas on the students in Tiananmen!".

That gave me something to think about during the long ride home. I guess I wasn't too surprised. The government couldn't go on ignoring such a powerful, growing movement. Dispersing the students from Tiananmen wouldn't put an end to the protests, though. There was a real hunger for political freedom in China and the protests were spreading throughout the country. The government might shut down this one location but they were never going to be able to stop the fight for democracy in China, I thought. I was wrong.

When I made it back to the campus, something seemed wrong. It was very quiet. In fact, the whole city seemed too quiet. There seemed to be very few people around. Something just seemed wrong.

At this point I'll quote from my Journal:

"I am totally shocked. When I got back to Zhengzhou this evening, I met Wang Bing. He told me the news. Saturday, the Peoples's Army drove tanks and armored personnel carriers into Tiananmen. At about 2 AM, they opened up with machine guns and massacred everyone who moved; old people, children, unarmed students. Over 1,000 (some say 5,000) innocent people were brutal murdered. They used flame throwers to cremated the bodies on the spot so an accurate account could not be made. There have been reports of soldiers stealing bodies from the hospital to confuse the count. Four young girls were bayoneted or shot while begging for their lives. Today (June 5), the shooting continues at random at anyone who goes out on the street. How could they do it? How could any government be so inhuman? It was so brutal, so unexpected. The country and the world are in shock. The government has lost any legitimacy it ever had. The damage this will do to the country is incalculable. At one point, I had to leave the room. The thought of it all just got to me and I began to cry for all the wasted lives. Cry for China."

After Wang Bing left, I turned on my short wave radio. I searched for the Voice of America. It wasn't there. Neither was the BBC World Service. At 11:00, I turned on the TV to watch the English language news but it was absent as well. Later I heard that an English speaking announcer for the official Chinese radio service had been letting people know what was going on at the square when his broadcast suddenly went dead. I was effectively cut off from the world.

In the days that followed, things got a bit surreal. The Chinese news began showing CCTV footage of the square on the early morning of June 4. I noticed from the time stamps on the video that they never showed anything between 2 and 5 AM. I caught one broadcast that showed the square after sunrise. There were fallen tents and debris everywhere but no people. As the camera panned past one pile of trash, I swear that I saw a body covered in nylon sheeting. There was also lots of footage of some soldiers that had been killed by protesters and their bodies burned. The official account claimed that only a few hundred citizens had been killed. This was revised downward over the next few days until it was announced that only one protester had actually been killed. One.

For the next couple of days there were sporadic protests in the major cities. The students at all the universities boycotted classes. There reports of unarmed protesters being shot. When it became apparent that the government response was only going to get harsher, the students who had been boycotting classes, gave up and returned to their homes. My school became a ghost town. Official blame was placed on Westerners for inciting the original protests. Wang Bing came to see me and said that he thought the police had followed him. I realized that if I stayed, I would be putting my friends in danger. Anyone who contacted me was at risk of being questioned by the police. I had seen it happen before. Sadly, I knew I had no choice. I took one more trip out to Shaolin to say "good-bye" to Shifu and left the country.

It wasn't until after I had been home for a bit that the enormity of what had happened hit me. I saw a news report showing Chinese troops forming in front of the main gate of the Forbidden City. They formed a three sided box shape that covered every angle of the square in front of them. Then they laid on the ground behind machine guns and opened fire. It was a massacre. We will probably never know just how many were killed and wounded and I will never know if anyone I knew was involved. But one thing is certain; I will never forget.

Published June 4, 2015