A witness to history abroad

Half a world away, half a lifetime ago, on June 4, 1989, I was in China, in its capital, Beijing, about four miles from Tiananmen Square, the historical, cultural and political center of China.

For some, 'Tiananmen Square” evokes memories as clear and powerful as saying '9/11” or 'Kennedy's been shot.” For some, it hearkens a dark time whose truth and details are obscured. For some, it may mean nothing.

The Chinese government doesn't want its young people to know what happened on June 4, 1989, and wants those who know to forget.

DEATH SPURS STUDENTS

I went to Beijing in August 1988, ready to teach college students just a few years younger than myself. I did my best with the teaching, with learning Chinese, with trying to understand a culture far older than mine. I did not expect to become a witness to history.

When a government official named Hu Yaobang died suddenly on April 15, 1989 (the day I taught my students about income tax), college students across China, and at the school where I taught, posted handwritten tributes. It may seem quaint in our social media-infused world to think of paper-plastered billboards and walls - but such speaking up was, well, virtually unheard of. Students crowded around the posters - leaning on each other, taking it all in.

The students saw in Hu Yaobang an advocate for reforms that might let them think more freely, have more rights, live a bit more democratically. As students honored his memory in those spring days, they awakened and became their own advocates.

Within weeks, many students were emboldened, holding gatherings on campuses, then boycotting classes - and then marching to Tiananmen Square.

My students, who had shyly asked me questions about U.S. pop culture, were now deciding whether to join in boycotts, to camp in Tiananmen Square, to join the hunger strikes. I was no longer their teacher; I was their witness.

HEART-STOPPING EVENT

If you recall something in your life that struck you with wonder, that almost made your heart stop it was so filled with awe, then you'll know how I felt the day I watched students and citizens streaming down wide boulevards to join the protests, or the day I ran into some of my students in the middle of Tiananmen Square. (How concerned they were for my own safety!)

Students from other schools journeyed by train to join the occupation of the Tiananmen Square. Workers, teachers, writers joined their ranks. The demonstrations grew in mid-May as, in a previously planned visit, the former Soviet Union sent a delegation, including leader Mikhail Gorbachev, to Beijing for the first such high-level meeting of the powers in 30 years. I rode down to Tiananmen Square the day 1 million people converged there. Gorbachev was displaced; he had to be welcomed instead at the airport.

With the world press converging to cover the meeting of the 'Red” powers, the students knew they could get their message across, that they had some protection from being arrested or beaten under the world's eye. The campus boycott left me free to find temporary work helping one of the major U.S. news networks cover the growing demonstrations.

I helped pair American reporters with guides and interpreters, I monitored Chinese TV, I even made a few trips to the square and surrounding areas. By late May, the student movement seemed to have lost it momentum, despite having had the ear at one point of China's highest - ranking leaders. The last time I went to Tiananmen Square - about 36 hours before the government ordered soldiers to fire on protesters - I thought it might end quietly.

ARMY'S RESPONSE

But it didn't. The Chinese army, the People's Liberation Army, turned on its people. Hundreds of people died, perhaps thousands. One of my tasks on June 4 was to call hospitals to verify the number of dead.

I have my personal stories about how I left, what I felt, but they are nowhere near as important as the story the Chinese government still refuses to tell about Tiananmen Square.

' Becky Soglin is a writer, editor and sustainability planner in Iowa City. She taught English from 1988 to 1989 at Qinghua University in Beijing. Comments: bsoglin@yahoo.com