There has been so much written about June 4th that I have not even tried to throw my hat into the ring. I have nothing new to add to the mix. I was living in rural Virginia then, in what seems like another life. My daughter was finishing kindergarten, my wife, a librarian in Winchester, and I was a self-employed carpenter staying busy as the Washington metro sprawled into the Shenandoah Valley. It was hard not to be hooked by what was happening on the Square, but family, gardens, sheep, keeping the pickup running, cutting firewood for the winter was what commanded the most of my attention. And then came Tank Man, and life somehow changed. There stood a man with shopping bags in front of a line of tanks, jogging as they jogged, not letting them pass, saying “no” and bringing them to a halt.
I have no idea what TAM was really all about. And I haven’t met anyone yet who has been able to adequately tell me. My friends Mark and Annie, who were living in Dongbei at the time, have given me the best sense of how things felt: a sense of dawning hope is about the best I can put it. I have a great friend here in Tianjin whose father handed out small money to students at Tianjin Station as they boarded trains to Beijing. He was a poor working man in 1989, but he was overwhelmed by the possibilities of something happening that needed to happen, and so he traveled from the countryside to the nearest big city, Tianjin, and gave students who were off to the Square a few kuai here, a few kuai there to help them buy food along the way. It was the frog knowing that there was more than just the well. It was imagining a sky that was more than a just a tight, little circle at the up end of a long, dark shaft. Was it democracy? I’ve no idea. But I do know there was Tank Man.
Yesterday a new photo of Tank Man, taken at street level moments before the iconic photo and film footage were shot, was published by the NYT here. It is a harrowing photo since we know what happened next. He is standing in the background a good 75 meters in front of the lead tank, two young men in the foreground fleeing, a man on a bicycle looking over his shoulder, a front-end loader, it’s shovel resting on the street. Without the other dramatic photo and film of the incident, what we have here is a man on the street with tanks. It is a photo. There is no movement, other than the implied motion of the two men in the foreground who are running away. We view Tank Man from his starboard quarter, patiently standing at attention, waiting for whatever was about to happen next. The distance between him and the lead tank allows us to understand infinitely more his composure and intent. He seems calm, self-contained in the middle of fear and wreckage.
We all know what happened in the next few moments, but we have no idea what happened after that. As often as I have heard the term “hero’ overused and misused by politicians and people who don’t know any better (George Bush I declared all those who served in his war, Gulf War I, as heroes, thus cheapening the word even more than Ronald Reagan had), I can honestly say that there are few in this world who I would pin with that title. Tank Man for me is Number One.
And so I want him to be alive, though I’m sure I’ll never know. I think about him often as I walk the streets of Tianjin and Beijing, especially in the early mornings and late evenings when I often nod to men with their dogs, smoking cigarettes, hunkering down next to a canal, looking off into the distance. I want him to be one of them: a guy who’d be hard to remember if you had to pick him out of a crowd, but one who is, unavoidably, there. His unforgettableness is immeasurably tied to his anonymity, his heroness is his calm humanity in the face of overwhelming machine. This is the best that I can do with Tian’anmen and June 5th.
6 responses so far ↓
1 Bill // Jun 5, 2009 at 9:39 pm
Thanks for remembering.
2 bhb // Jun 6, 2009 at 4:02 pm
I can’t find the right words. “Hero” does not describe the man’s discontent. He doesn’t hold a weapon, he holds shopping bags. His defiance is not to fight and destroy an indestructible opponent, rather he is fed up and prepared to be a martyr. I am overwhelmingly moved by the brazen passion of this would-be martyr. I can feel what he feels and this sympathy brings me to tears.
There also seems to be humanity in whoever governs the tank’s forward movement as they cannot bring themselves to crush this would-be martyr. Can it be that they feel what I feel on seeing this man standing there decrying the lack of humanity. And finally, the courage of those who run out and pull that Tank Man out of harm’s way, a further display of humanity.
Concerning heroes, Jeff Widener, the photographer, strikes me as a hero once I became familiar with his story of getting into China, getting to Tiananmen Square, securing the photograph and escaping with it.
Still, my thoughts always return to the Tank Man, his utter disgruntlement. It is a fascinating contrast, to interrupt his shopping to become this great thing, a symbol that begs us to end the madness and implores us to finally act humane.
3 Mark Jungels // Jun 9, 2009 at 12:01 am
I like the way you put it. We had been in China for about 7 months before the protests began and could not believe the level of frustration in people’s daily lives. There was such discontent just beneath the surface that fights seemed to break out everywhere, over what seemed like trifling issues. But perhaps the best example was at train stations over access to tickets. It was so symptomatic of how pervasive corruption and the misuse of even the slightest bit of power was., and how helpless most people felt against it all. Once the protests began there was a palpable change in the atmosphere on the street (in all the cities we were in) as people felt that at least their grievances were getting a public airing. To watch people being spontaneously generous with each other after watching them break into fist fights just as spontaneously was one of the most beautiful things I have ever seen.
4 Amanda Huang // Jun 18, 2009 at 4:07 am
Modern China’s economic reform started in 1978 when Deng Xiaoping took over the reins of the most populous country in the world. It was in 1988, the urban household income inequality became evident.
Traditionally, the economists have paid attention on the regional difference of the income inequality in China. There are plenty of inequity evaluation studies since 1978 for mainland China. However, another part of the inequality deserves consideration.
The first of many inflections appeared in summer 1988 since the 1949. While general public did not, and still does not take notice of the statistics of China, they surely felt the pain of higher prices of life essentials. The very next year, a number of reasons trigged the Tiananmen Square conflict; the most important factor has been neglected by many who are considered China experts.
5 Jim Gourley // Jun 18, 2009 at 11:33 am
Thank you, Amanda. I just want to make sure I understand: are you saying that the most important factor leading to the Tian’anmen Square conflict was income inequality?
Right now there is a great disparity between the proverbial haves and the have nots, though the have nots seem to have been given just enough to keep them from revolting, while the haves have gotten a lot more than they ever had before. And they seem to be getting more and more everyday. Close affiliation – either through membership or payoffs – with the Party seems to be the recipe one still needs to follow in order to get more Deng-ishly “glorious.” It has been a great and delicate balancing act that the Party has been treading. Urban incomes have risen at a greater rate than the countryside incomes, though that is neither new nor surprising. There is just so much to go around.
The more disturbing pattern seems to be as it has always been: that the rich are getting much richer while the poor, though not quite as poor as they were before, are acutely more aware of the imbalance. Televisions are in every village, allowing the inconsistencies to be even more visible than they were two decades ago. I wonder what this will eventually lead to? Corruption in the 70s and 80s has not gone away, and, in fact, it can probably be argued that since there is quite a bit more money in the game, corruption is probably even worse.
With the number of college graduates increasing as the number of jobs dramatically decrease, I wonder if this will lead to a situation like we saw in the late 80s? A lot of hardworking Chinese have spent a lot of money to ensure that their children are educated and in the game. But what happens when the game folds and those students find themselves back in the villages wondering how to pay their college debt. Or, more disturbing to the government, what happens when those educated unemployed, who have lost their countryside skills, find themselves in city ghettos wondering why they can’t find the kinds of jobs they’ve been educated for. Seems to me that this could be the start of something potentially bigger than we saw twenty years ago.
I agree with what I perceive to be your assessment: that economics had a lot more to do with it than the desire of a group of students to blissfully dance around the goddess of democracy. Sentimentality can only go so far; that would never have been enough to carry the movement as far as it went.
The bigger questions are: “What’s next?” and “What will the transition look like?” The answer is not to be found in imperial fiat. That rarely works, and never in situations where economic gaps are significantly widening. The Center can say, “We must do this,” but when all the Radials have their own myopic agendas, the ones who always get screwed are the ones who have the least. And if something like 1989 were to happen again, it would not be confined to Tian’anmen and Beijing.
6 Amanda Huang // Jun 24, 2009 at 12:13 am
The Tiananmen Square incident was caused by economical reasons in my opinion. I have the chance to watch Tank Man video again during last couple of weeks. One have to admit that we do not know what was really in his mind and the restraint showed by the full armed army personnel.
I do have the concerns for increasing disparity between haves and have-nots. Taking into the consideration of TV and internet bars in small towns are spreading like wild fire in countryside.
“It has to grow at a minimum of 8 percent a year or it will explode, because it will have so much unemployment and discontent, the population will erupt.”
Says Nayan Chanda, editor of Yale Global online
I have a professional blog talking about issues about China, please contact me if you are interested.
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