Tiananmen

A little while ago, Tammer wrote a post about Tiananmen.

My RSS popped up in the middle of work about her post, and I immediately wrote back.
Here is the repost of my response.

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i remember that time very well too, much better than what i remember from anything around that time.

i remember my dad went to one of the huge protests. They said more than a million people went on the streets. My dad was never very political. i remembered thinking, wow, this must be a big deal.

i didnt’ remember the typhoon. i remember what cartoon the news interrupted to show the breaking news of what’s going on in Tiananmen. It was “Dream Warrior”, in some weird font I can still see so vividly in my mind. It was on the channel I didn’t normally watch.

i remember that the night of June 3 i believe, we were having dinner with an acquaintance at the HK country club. I remember being bored and walked the halls with my sister, and we talked about how, yeah i heard there are tanks now, in the quiet somber way that kids can talk about adult things, that they know are really truly serious.

i remember the following morning, very early, my mom came into my room, woke us up, and said with tears that the tanks have gotten into the squares, and many students have died. I remember when my mom choked up, I also started to cry. I remember the rolled up orange blanket i had next to me.

i remember Zhao Ziyang.
i remember the Goddress of Democracy.
i remember later flipping some current affairs magazine, and seeing in horror, a picture of a pile of minced meat which is what happens, when a person gets rolled over by a tank.
i remember knowing, my life is not going to be the same than when it was going to be on June 3. We weren’t thinking of emigrating before. After Tiananmen, my parents decided they did not want their kids to grow up under a govt that would send tanks to roll over students.

2 years ago, i was watching pbs when frontline had a special on the famous video. The man, standing in front of the tank, and stopping it. About 10min into the documentary, I started crying uncontrollably. I was rather surprised honestly… it’s been so long. I wouldn’t think of Tiananmen as something that still at all affects me emotionally. yet i literally bawled. I had to stop watching the video.