On the 25th anniversary of the violent crackdown of the Tiananmen student demonstrations, all eyes are on China.

International media revisit the history of the protests that started in April 1989, and ended with the violent governmental crackdown on June 4th. Foreign news reports zoom in on China’s  ‘Tiananmen amnesia,’ and describe how the Chinese government has effectively removed ‘4/6’ from collective memory.

By now, it is widely known that the Tiananmen student protests, that have become an emblem of China’s 1980s outside the nation, are not something that the Party wants to go down in China’s history books to pass on to the next generations.

The 1980s are the main theme in this year’s best-selling book The 1980s, My Homeland (Wo de Guxiang Zai Bashi Niandai, 我的故乡在八十年代), published by New Weekly (新周刊). The book is a compilation of columns by various authors about the 80s era, its main events and historical meaning.

This is a book with a historical and sociological perspective on China’s 1980s decade, and yet, not a word is written on what is commonly perceived as one of its major events: the 1989 student protests on Tiananmen.

When the book lists ‘China’s Main Events in 1989’, this is what is summed up:

1. February 2^nd. Gun sounds in China’s Art Gallery “China’s Contemporary Art Exhibition”: female artist Xiao Luchao’s self-made work ‘Dialogue’ connected two operating guns.

2. April 15. The former general secretary of the Central Committee of the Communist Party, Hu Yaobang, passes away. Soon after, people organize activities in Beijing and all over the country to mourn.

3. April 26. The ‘People’s Daily’ publishes an editorial titled ‘We have to stand up against unrest’.

4. May 15. Gorbachov, the general secretary of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, visits China and is welcomed with a ceremony at the airport. Sino-Soviet relations are restored.

5. June 23. The 13^th plenary session of the Communist Party is held in Beijing. Jiang Zemin is named general secretary of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China.

6. August 24^th, the Communist Party and the State Council calls together the media, publishers and audiovisual market and decide to hold another ‘anti-pornography campaign’.

7. September 7^th. The Party’s organizational ministry stipulates that members of the ministerial units need to register again.

8. November 9. The Party’s plenary session comes to an end. Deng Xiaoping resigns as the chairman of the Central Military Commission, and Jiang Zemin takes his place.

9. December 2^nd. Taiwan lifts the ban and holds the first government offficial elections” (28-29).

The book also includes a ‘1980s alfabet.’ Tiananmen, nor the students, are part of it.

But Tiananmen does play a role in the book- on its cover is a picture from 1981, taken by photographer Liu Xiangcheng, depicting dozens of students sitting down at the square, reading books. The description says that the 1980s era is collectively remembered as the ‘decade of poetry’ (‘诗意的年代’).

Another image shows a happy smiling man drinking a 0.45 RMB bottle of Coca-Cola. An image covering two pages is one of Beijing University students on Tiananmen Square in 1984, carrying banners saying “Hello, Xiaoping!” The event took place on National Day (October 1^st), the 35^th anniversary of the People’s Republic of China. The students paraded the square and unexpectedly unfurled a banner that greeted top leader Deng Xiaoping in an informal way.

These are memories that are collectively treasured- those of students reading Chinese poetry and greeting the nation’s leader from Tiananmen- no tanks in sight.

Nevertheless, the book does carry a less cheerful tone. Editor Feng Xincheng says:

“The 1980s era launched a generation and even this nation. But the outcome is that the people who set out in the 1980s are now scattered in all directions. In this nation, more and more people have lost their roots. They do not even dare to dream about their spiritual foundation. People are always on the move- they are going so far that they have long forgotten why they set out in the first place” (1).

The 1980s are described as a nostalgic place, an era that holds the ‘soul’ of contemporary China: “The ‘soul’ is in the 1980s, the ‘brains’ are in the 1990s, the ‘body’ is in the contemporary era” (1).

According to Ma Junchi, the ‘human’ was most important in the eighties (2)- the author writes about the courage and vigor of people in this era.

No matter how much the Tiananmen demonstrations are not mentioned in this book, its marks can be found in between the lines. The book opens with a Bei Dao poem on the first page that speaks for itself.

“Then we had dreams,

about literature,

about love,

about travelling the world.

Nowadays we have late night drinks,

and the clinking of our glasses,

is the sound of shattered dreams”

–       Bei Dao (own translation)

-by Manya Koetse

References

Zhou Ke 周可(ed). 2014. Wo de Guxiang Zai Bashi Niandai 我的故乡在八十年代 [The 1980s, My Homeland] (In Chinese). Beijing: New Weekly 新周刊.