All ye 20 year olds, I was almost your age when this happened. And nothing but nothing has changed in the intervening years. In fact, ever since they have flushed out many such springs everywhere. The Arab spring being the most recent in memory. 25 years on, that haunting image of a defiant young man standing smack in front of a battle tank has got burnt in civilisations memory. And yet we know so little of what happened to that very braveheart and the thousands of spirited youngsters who took it upon themselves to change the nations destiny and failed so gloriously at it. Well, you can keep your bloody China model, I have no use for it. Do read this and the accompanying article when you have the time: Five years ago, I met the artist Chen Guang in his Beijing flat, and he talked to me about the trauma he suffered as a young PLA soldier in 1989 when his unit was ordered to expel the students from the square with assault rifles and bayonets, then later burn the tents, journals, clothes and banners flattened by the tanks. Before the 20th anniversary of the massacre, he was able to exhibit on his website – for the few days before censors closed it down – paintings inspired by photographs he had taken of soldiers and tanks on the square. This year he has not been so lucky. On 29 April, in front of a few friends in the Songzhuang artists village, he donned a face mask and hurled whitewash over the dates 1989 and 2014 painted on a brick wall. A week later he was placed in detention. Three years ago, the artist Hua Yong went to the square, punched himself in the nose and with the blood that poured from it wrote on a concrete paving stone the numbers six and four, the common shorthand for 4 June. Plainclothes police dragged him away immediately. Two years ago, Hua Yong returned to the square, cut his finger and with the blood wrote six and four on his forehead. He was arrested and sent to a labour camp for 15 months.
Posted on: Mon, 02 Jun 2014 18:18:49 +0000
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