20th Anniversary of Tianamen Square

In recognition of the 20th anniversary of Tianamen Square in Beijing, China I thought I'd share my visit to the monument about one month after the massacre. This is part of a larger article I wrote shortly after my visit in July 1989. I was working for a company specializing in tours to China and reservations dropped sharply during this time and cancellations were more common than new bookings. Tourism was down all over China.

The Chinese Department of Tourism devised a plan to hold an international tourism seminar and invite foreign travel agents who were directly involved in promoting tourism to China. They would promote China as a safe place to visit and a country culturally rich in tourism attractions and prove to the travel agents that normalcy had returned to China. In return, the travel agents would educate their clientele and bring the tourists back to China.

In the summer of 1989 I was employed by a company that sold package tours and hotel accommodations in China, and our company received one of the coveted invitations to the 1989 Beijing International Tourism Seminar. The Chinese government paid all expenses: airfare, hotel accommodation, meals, and some sightseeing. In return we would have to attend two days of seminars and listen to a representative from the Chinese government explaining the Tianamen incident. During this time China was considered an unsafe place to visit and the Canadian government had issued a tourist warning discouraging citizens to travel there. I decided to accept the invitation the opportunity of a free trip to China might not ever come around again. Thanks to the Tianamen Square massacre my hours had been cut back to part-time and I was in the process of seeking alternate employment.

I now cut partway through my article which mostly described the mass confusion at the airport and hotel. Here is the part about Tianamen Square.

After lunch we reboarded the buses for a city tour. We made an impressive calvacade and the citizens of Beijing paused to gawk. Policemen stopped traffic at intersections to allow us to pass. I was in bus number eleven of the twelve bus parade and behind us followed ten smaller buses full of media. We did not get a travelogue from the young tour guide standing at the front of the bus. I do not know if his English was so poor that he did not feel comfortable talking to us or if this was his first effort at guiding a group and he didn’t know how to deal with us. We passed many buildings with ornate Chinese design with no clue of what we were looking at. Up one street and down another, we weaved across the capital city and then the buses pulled up to the infamous Tianamen Square, only a couple of blocks away from the Beijing Hotel where the silent journey had begun. The 1989 Beijing International Tourism Seminar attendees were the first group allowed in since the June riot. I expected to see soldiers, tanks, and other army vehicles strategically located throughout the square. Instead I saw a few soldiers stationed at the perimeters or the adjacent crossroads preventing pedestrians from crossing the street to Tianamen Square. I was disappointed there was not a tank in sight. We were told we could not take pictures within one hundred feet of the guards and to exit our buses, walk to a designated spot where a group picture would be taken with our fellow bus mates, reboard the buses, and leave. Instead we became a mass movement as we made a beeline to the infamous monument in the center of the square. We could not climb onto the monument and there were twelve soldiers guarding it, complete with a rope a barrier that cordoned off the steps. This did not deter one adventurous TV cameraman who stepped over the rope and backed up the steps. He did not have his camera pointed at the soldiers but instead panned his camera around the travel agents milling in the square. He was curious to see what the soldiers would do and received a prompt answer when one soldier approached him and gently led him back down the stairs. The cameraman then attempted to find a volunteer to mount the monument so that he could get a shot of the soldier leading somebody else down. He was unsuccessful. We wandered around the square searching for blood, bullet holes, and any evidence of the bloody June massacre. I took several pictures of the monument and broke the rules by snapping some soldiers. I photographed bullet holes and noted freshly cemented sections, evidence of some quick restoration work. Some steps looked like a giant chisel had chopped off huge chunks of cement. Further up the stairs was a red patch, too faded to make out exactly what it was, but the general consensus was that it was blood. The stones in Tianamen Square were badly marred with obvious signs that heavy artillery had driven over them. Black smudges remained where vehicles had been set on fire and the tires had melted into the stones. One fascinating black smudge had the appearance of a darkened outline of the upper torso of a body with outspread arms. It is unclear if a person actually burned to death there, but the remaining outline made for good supposition.

As the official picture taking of the group ended in disorganized confusion, the guides requested the group to return to the buses. It was a hot day and the sun beat down on us and the humidity was overwhelming. We returned to the bus and were refreshed with damp facecloths and tins of Coke. We were next taken for a quick visit to the Forbidden City and quickly ushered through like a herd of cattle before returning to the hotel.