T’ien An Men Square :: Beverley Jackson

Chapter Eleven
TROUBLE IN T’IEN AN MEN SQUARE
Part Two

Monument to the People's Heroes and the Great Hall of the People. 12/26/2004. By Jacob Ehnmark from Sendai, Japan (Flickr) [CC-BY-2.0], via Wikimedia Commons

Monument to the People’s Heroes and the Great Hall of the People. 12/26/2004. By Jacob Ehnmark, via Wikimedia Commons

While I’d been waiting for my box to be built earlier in this production, I’d been able to look outside through a window to the small back street below. There were rows of bicycle rickshaws waiting for Chinese customers. No way would we have been allowed to ride in one of them. The Communists would have considered this an example of westerners exploiting the poor Chinese, treating them like beasts of burden as they pedaled the westerners through the streets of Peking.

I’d also noticed a small side entrance through which people entered and left. So, when I finished, sure that my taxi/spy/driver was still lurking somewhere out front, I slipped out the side door.

I knew that I was somewhere in back of T’ien an men Square, the largest square in the world, and it wasn’t hard to find. This is one gigantic open area as the world now knows from the massacre films. Being totally on my own for once I was overcome with the feeling of exhilaration. The big Russian style buildings on three sides of the square weren’t of particular interest to me. The Monument to the People’s Heroes, a tall square granite obelisk on a raised platform right in the center of the square was more interesting. As with almost everything in China, there was a quote from Chairman Mao on the monument. I found out later that this quote, engraved into the marble in Chinese characters, translated in English to “The People’s Heroes Will be Remembered Eternally”. And carved into the base were relief depictions of historical events, starting only with the mid-nineteenth century Opium War. The highest section of that raised platform looked like a good place to take photographs so that’s where I headed.

As I found my spot and got the camera out, in the distance buses pulled up in front of the National People’s Congress Building and masses of young people piled out, unfurling big red flags as they went. They fell into formation and started going through elaborate routines with their red flags. This was a great photo op! Or so I thought as I snapped away, until I saw through my lens a frighteningly large group of young people wearing red neck scarves quickly and menacingly coming directly towards me.

I was frightened! No one knew where I was and there were so many of them coming at me. I had no idea what I had done to prompt this action. But I obviously was their target. Then just as suddenly as they started towards me, they reversed their direction and quickly returned to their training area. I had no idea what had intervened, but I was deeply grateful for their change of plan.

To be safe I moved down slowly and started taking lots of photos of some very cute colorfully dressed children near the monument. I wanted to appear innocent. I was innocent! And children were always an accepted photo choice.

I worked my way casually across the gigantic square, shooting pictures of children all along my route (all the while knowing I’d run out of film some photos before) heading towards the Gate of Heavenly Peace which is across from the square on the other side of An Chieh highway.

Having had enough independence for the day I walked on past the entrance to the old Imperial City and the site from which Mao Tse-tung proclaimed the People’s Republic of China back to our hotel. The taxi driver wasn’t there waiting for me as I’d thought he might be. No one was looking for me. In fact, it wasn’t until several weeks later that I figured out why no one was searching and why the angry Red Guards had had done such a quick retreat.

I found the answer while sitting in my Santa Barbara living room viewing the colored slides of my China trip that I’d just picked up from the photo shop several weeks after my return from China. In several of the photos I noticed a plain looking man in blue Mao suit and cap was walking across the square, directly towards where I had been standing. He had his hands behind his back and appeared to be out for a casual stroll. But in one photo he was turned towards the advancing Red Guard gang and one hand was raised. Obviously the taxi driver had returned to the hotel and reported me out on my own and party cadres had taken off quickly to find me. The older cadres were well aware of the violence towards westerners the young Red Guard were capable of, which was one major reason we were watched constantly while we were in China. The Communist Party government was most concerned that no negative incidents involving the visiting westerners take place. Belatedly I was most jubilant this time they had infringed upon my independence.

My alarming encounter with the Red Guard in T’ien an men Square in 1975 came particularly alive to me years later when on June 4th, 1989 I watched on TV as a lone young patriot faced down a gigantic military tank, one of many the Communist Party leadership had ordered into T’ien an men square to crush an unprecedented democratic peaceful protest. I watched the brave young women and men falling like toy soldiers in their battle with the well trained heavily armed army troops in what has come to be known as the Massacre of T’ien an men Square. The old men in power were tremendously frightened by the young students who yearned for democracy in China and gave orders to stop them at any cost.

Chapter 1: Part 1 Part 2
Chapter 2: Part 1 Part 2 Part 3
Chapter 3: Part 1 Part 2 Part 3 Part 4
Chapter 4: Part 1
Chapter 5: Part 1 Part 2 Part 3
Chapter 6: Part 1 Part 2 Part 3
Chapter 7: Part 1
Chapter 8: Part 1 Part 2
Chapter 9: Part 1 Part 2
Chapter 10: Part 1
Chapter 11: Part 1 Part 2
Chapter 12: Part 1
Chapter 13: Part 1

By The Way
This blog was started to sell my new book and I keep going off on other topics. Please do check out The Beautiful Lady Was A Palace Eunuch at Amazon.com

Acknowledgement:
Kathleen Fetner, Technical Advisor and Friend

Chapter Eleven
TROUBLE IN T’IEN AN MEN SQUARE
Part One

It was Theodore White who called T’ien an men Square the Place de la Concorde of Chinese history. That was in the 1950’s. Little did he know how prophetic his words would prove to be!

T’ien an men Square and the Forbidden City face each other straight on — the old and the new. In 1975 it was Karl Marx, Vladimir Lenin, Fredrick Engles and Chairman Mao who faced the Forbidden City. King-size portraits of them on stone lined the entrance to the colossal square facing the Gate of Heavenly Peace from which Mao Tse-tung proclaimed the People’s Republic of China. You never for a moment forgot who was in charge of China in 1975, although in later years we learned Mme. Mao should really have had her picture up there too since she assumed so much power as Mao aged and his health failed.

My own T’ien an men near-catastrophe started out so innocently. But so did the massacre of the students in the same place in June 4, 1989. Torrie Levy had glowing tales of the interesting process of mailing a package home from the big main post office. The post office in our hotel could only handle small mail. And since the big post office was in the picture book for taxi trips I decided to go there with a bundle of souveniers from the Baihuo Dalou (Main Department Store) I wanted to send home. It was only a short distance from our hotel so I pantomimed instructions for the taxi driver not to wait for me once we arrived at the post office. It was my only opportunity to spend some time there with real Peking citizens, not the rehearsed people our guides continually led us to. The driver kept nodding his head “no”. I kept nodding “yes” and finally disappeared inside.

There was no one in the entire big busy building who spoke English so this became a test of my pantomime skills. I stood in the entrance looking quite bewildered, my arms loaded with things and not knowing where to start. Almost immediately a man came up and pointed me in the direction of a worker sitting on the floor hammering wooden boxes into shape. This was the first step in the mailing project. The box man accessed my bundle and produced a lidless wooden box he’d just made.

This man pointed me towards a man who had baskets of wood shavings to be used as filler. Together we packed the box. He then directed me to a counter where the inspector would take the box all apart looking for whatever sabotage devilment I might have concealed. It was quite fascinating standing in line watching what people were sending off. Freshly dried seaweed was being shipped to relatives by one elderly woman. Young girls were sending a hand knitted red scarf. The old man in front of me was mailing a photograph of children to an address in San Francisco. The inspector took the photograph out of the plastic “frame” and went over every inch of it with his finger tip — the top, the bottom, the paper thin edges, the entire frame. He was looking for hidden micro-film I was later told. Finding nothing but smiling little faces a proud grandfather wanted to share with fortunate relatives far away in America, it finally passed inspection. A man sending tobacco to Thailand really got a thorough check.

In the line next to me a woman was sending off packages of rice and dried mushrooms. They were each opened and spilled into a big enamel basin, the kind used for everything from washing clothes and brushing teeth to cooking. And the inspector ran his hands through every grain of rice and every mushroom. When he had finished he left the poor woman to get it all back into cloth bags that seemed to have shrunk since the inspection began. Once she had it all in the original cloth bags she sewed them up, having come prepared with needle and thread.

The inspector really wasn’t too hard on me. My purchases looked innocent enough, which they definitely were. It really puzzled him that I needed so many hand painted bone tooth brushes and six pairs of brightly colored plastic sandals in ridiculously large sizes. But I passed inspection and ultimately was directed to the table across the vast marble lobby where for a few pennies a man with a hammer and nails put a wooden lid on my box.

Next I “rented” a big paint brush and pot of black paint. It took me at least 20 minutes to paint on my daughter’s name and our home address, with my Peking hotel address in the proper spot. When I returned the brush and paint pot, they handed me an enamel basin filled with hot water and a clean but threadbare towel to wash the paint off my hands. I paid what I considered a very small sum for over two hours of entertainment — plus a big box that had to travel many thousand miles. …to be continued

By The Way
This blog was started to sell my new book and I keep going off on other topics. Please do check out The Beautiful Lady Was A Palace Eunuch at Amazon.com

Acknowledgement:
Kathleen Fetner, Technical Advisor and Friend

Archive for T’ien An Men Square

A Front Row Seat for the Cultural Revolution: Trouble In T’ien An Men Square (Part 2)

A Front Row Seat for the Cultural Revolution: Trouble In T’ien An Men Square

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