The moment is etched indelibly in my mind. I was still at Georgia Tech, undergoing my baptism by fire as a gradual student. I was four years away from graduating. It was the beginning of the usual pollen infested Atlanta Summer, but I felt comfortable if a bit warm and humid as I watched the students, kids my age or younger, in Tiananmen Square on the verge of changing my native land, a land that I had never set foot in. It would be twelve years before I would set foot in China.
We were all sitting mesmerized by our television screens, all tuned into CNN, back when CNN was relevant and in the vanguard of television journalism. I remember following every word coming out of Mike Chinoy's mouth, studiously tracking the comings and goings of the students as they congregated around the Gorbachev visit to China. We cheered for the sheer audacity - back when audacity meant something, before it became a slogan - of the students, and the pure chutzpah of the student leaders as they dictated their demands to their elders, who we knew could crush them like a bug, like they were wont to do later. We followed the troop movement rumors as if they were celebrity gossip, we marveled at the lack of sanitary conditions, and we dreamed of democracy for China. Deep in my still idealistic heart, was the remotest hope that my people, a people so inherently focused on survival that we had, throughout our history, gladly traded self determination for stability. A Chinese historian had likened us to sand, forever loose, selfish and individualistic and never cooperative, unified, or powerful.
But we were hopeful, hopeful that this was the turning point, hopeful that this was going to be our moment in history, hopeful that the Chinese dragon was about to arise out of the ooze of political corruption, so emblematic of our governments, both dynastic and authoritarian. In hindsight, we were so naive, so fooled by our hearts that we actually believed that sincerity and good will was enough to overturn centuries of patrician oligarchy. We innocently were convinced that the outpouring of pure patriotism and passion would convince the skeptical and cynical old people that the young knew the way, and they would lead the people to the promised land. While we all knew, whether we admit it or not, that this was not going to end well.
As the situation dragged on, we were more and more hopeful. When reports came that the Beijing police and troops refused to move on their own blood, we were elated and lulled into dreaming of a democratic future. We went to bed that night with visions of a strong and democratic China dancing in our minds.
I remember that Sunday, I had gotten up late and was late getting to a lunch date with some friends. We were going to Hong Kong harbor, a dim sum joint on Cheshire Bridge Road, one of my favorites. I arrived and the people at the table were speaking in whispers, some were crying. I had no idea, but they told me. I don't remember if the restaurant had the televison on or not, but I just remembered feeling slightly numb and surreal, I did not accept the stories my friends had told me. My mind was so wired to the belief that it wasn't real unless I saw it on TV, preferably CNN.
We all met up in Emory University, where a spontaneous gathering had happened. I couldn't tell you which building we went to, but I do remember people wearing white headbands with defiantly angry Chinese calligraphy slashing in all its fury on the white backgrounds. White is the color of mourning in China, so it was both a protest and a mourning. There was confusion about how many had died, there was confusion about the timeline, we held on to the slim belief that the attacks came from a renegade Chinese army unit, that the oligarchs dared not eat their own young. We were so wrong.
I remember angry speeches, sad speeches, sobs and shouts. There was a TV and CNN was on, that was where reality struck us all in the face. I remember standing up and being pushed forward by my friends to the podium. I said my piece, incoherently, sobbing at times, screaming at times. I left that stage and I went home. I sat glued to the television, calling my parents,calling my friends, trying to make sense of it all. In the days that followed, I joined the Chinese students on campus and in the greater Atlanta area, forging bonds with people who had considered me to be too American to be Chinese, and me considering them too Chinese to be American. For a short period of time, we bonded in our common grief.
We wept at the vision of the lone man confronting the tank and wondered if we could be that brave and that foolish at the same time. We speculated about the man's identity, we watched as the western press tried to gather the outrageous stories of utter cruelty, of dead bodies on the square, of macabre and yet totally believable stories of tanks running over students in their tents, their lives being squeezed forcefully out of their bodies.
And in the end, time passed, memories faded, and we went to being the selfish Chinese people that we have always been. We saw the student leaders emerge in the west, shell shocked but alive, amazed at the decadent west, making a fortune in the decadent west by selling their stories, becoming entrepreneurs and activists, and in the end fading into the mist of history.
So now here we are, twenty five years later. China is still as UN-democratic as it was twenty five years ago, but so much wealthier and so much less human and innocent than it seemed twenty five years ago. I hear that there are mothers who are still struggling to find out what happened to their children, having never recovered their remains, and being persecuted for being mothers and for asking inconvenient questions. People are still struggling against the regime, but in relative comfort of Hong Kong. True to the western stereotype of China and the Chinese, the future seem inscrutable as ever, but now the desendants of the butchers of Tiananmen are far more powerful and respected than they had ever imagined.
So now my thought is: what was accomplished? The flowering of idealism was crushed effortlessly, that was kind of expected, but what did a bunch of college kids accomplish twenty five years ago? In the short term, it seems that the oligarchs have won. I ponder the long term meaning of all this and I will weep once again for the long dead and for the future of my people, as most Chinese people have through out our history, because we are so maddeningly patient.
