A Can of Harmonize...

Being in Beijing on June 4th is the one thing I looked forward to the most about this internship. If you don't know what happened in and around Tiananmen Square 20 years ago, you're in the same boat as a lot of the Chinese population. The government has run a non-stop campaign to remove that day and those around it from memory. It's the kind of information control that the state refers to as "Harmonizing."

You've seen The Photo though - the one with the man carrying two plastic grocery bags standing in front of a column of tanks, stopping their progression through the city. Lens, a multimedia project from the New York Times, did a really great story about that photograph - there are apparently four versions of it - and how difficult it was for journalists to get information about what happened at those democracy protests out of the country.

Joh and I went to Tiananmen once before on this trip. We got off the subway and crossed a crosswalk into the square. I tried to go in the wrong entrance and the security guys waved their hands and pointed me to a little security tent. I walked in, went through a metal detector, it beeped, I looked around for the security guard who gave me a passive wave to show how enthused he was about his job, and we walked in.

Last night (this post will show June 4 probably, but it's June 5 here), the system was totally different. All of the interns here at our Web site (which has nothing about Tiananmen on it) planned on going to the square after work. We watched all the stories come up throughout the day about the police presence downtown to prevent any uprisings. Even Al-Jazeera had a story up about it. When we got off the subway downtown, our walk from the stop to the square was tense to the point of being comical. Cops in several different uniforms lined the sidewalks, police cars were parked up and down the sides of the streets. Then there were these "undercover" guys in civilian clothes wearing these drug-store badges with a Chinese flag on them. Their eyes were darting all over the place and we could tell they thought we were suspicious because they actually weren't staring at us.

When we got to the entrance to the square, there were about 10 guards where there had been only one before. They were looking through people's bags and checking their pockets. They kept asking about cameras. I went to walk through and was abruptly stopped and waved to a woman who wanted my passport, which I wasn't carrying.

"You can't go in, sir."

"I need a passport to get into the square?"

"Yes."

Another American interjected: "It's because it's the 20th..."

Thanks, Captain Obvious.

I wanted to ask the security woman if she even knew why there was such a large presence out for just this one day, but I figured she wouldn't understand what I was asking and I also wasn't really interested in causing a scene. Luckily, Joh stepped up and started speaking Mandarin to another guard, which I think warmed him up. He waved us through and on we went.


There was hardly anyone there. I think the security guards outnumbered the visitors. I wish I could show you the pictures I took, but I can't seem to upload photos from China for some reason. Sometimes it's like I'm stuck on the 1997 version of the Internet...

I'm not sure why I wanted to go. I guess I was just curious to see how many people would be there and how many people would know the significance of the day. If you don't know much about what happened, you should really check it out - articles about it are up on all of the news sites. Say what you want about the USA, but it's hard to imagine the government attempting to systematically erase the memory of something like what happened at Kent State in 1970. It's hard adjusting to a place where speech is controlled - where I can't visit whatever Web sites I want. It almost feels like the sun shouldn't shine as brightly in a place that's under so much control...