Just the mere mention of the words Tiananmen Square is enough for most Westerners to flash back to the infamous massacre of unarmed civilians on June 4, 1989 and the indelable image of “Tank Man” standing off against the PLA soldiers in the Beijing Square as an iconic representation of his people’s fight for democratic freedom.
So it is hard to believe that when author Louisa Lim recently dared to show this image to students at the very universities where hundreds of protesters were gunned down on that fateful day more than a quarter of a century ago, only 15 out of 100 students recognised it.
Such is the level of “collective amnesia” in China that the tragedy is like a massive secret missing from the country’s history books, censored from modern day discussions and virtually a criminal act to speak of.
Despite her journalist credentials as an NPR and BBC correspondant in China, Lim was worried even she might be detained for simply showing the picture of Tank Man to students as part of her research.
Lim’s incredible investigation takes her readers on a number of “human journeys in memory and forgetting” as she speaks to many who lived through the events of June 4, from student activists to soldiers and senior politicians.
“Even for the participants themselves, the events of 1989 have become half-stories … Memories – individual as well as national – is fickle, sculpted by the exigencies of vanity and convenience, as well as the distortions created by political dictates.” – Louisa Lim
It is a sensitively written book that weaves the compelling stories of individuals whose lives have been transformed by this tragedy through a backdrop of historic facts that deserve to be remembered and recorded.
With this book Lim has sought to do what any good journalist aspires to do: tell the truth.
It is an important truth that “breaks the code of silence” and pays homage to the participants and the victims of the Tiananmen Square massacre and opens a necessary discussion that some, even today, would prefer to remain closed. – By Fiona West