June 4, 25 years later

 

I was living in Taipei in the spring of 1989. For 9 months, I had heard my Taiwanese friends and acquaintances distance  themselves from their Chinese neighbours,  playing out roles assigned by a divisive and wounding shared history.

Taipei was booming, feeling the effervescent jolt of capitalism.  There was, among some, an air of superiority – better clothes, greater sophistication – and pride in the difference – in welcome evidence   of “other”-ness  –   not just as between countries, but between people. 

In April, the Democracy Movement and protests began in Beijing. Large TV screens in glistening glass-fronted stores in downtown Taipei (memorably the Japanese Department store named after the warship SOGO) showed Chinese youth rallying in Tiananmen Square, mourning the death of a treasured leader, calling for change. They were kids.

Rather than disdain, a palpable sense of unity began to build, coupled with concern. Taiwanese youth began to protest in an ecstatic show of solidarity with their Chinese counterparts, and shouted fiery indignations at the TV screens when the tanks rolled in to Tiananmen Square.

On June 3-4, 1989 when those tanks  started firing on students, the loss was shattering. Young and old pointed to the screens. They doubled over. The cried out, “Those are my brothers and sisters!" They walked around in a stunned haze.  "They murdered our brothers and sisters." We didn't know then about the expanding bullets. And we'll never know how many lives were lost.

I try to take a moment at this time of year to remember the strength of what unites us as humans - and the wrenching sense of loss in those who forgot for a time that even when countries divide us, our humanity cannot. 




It’s been 25 years since The bloodshed of June  4, 1989. The lessons hold.