Fear, Disbelief, and Mourning in Hong Kong
I first went to China in 1988 and was there during the turbulent student demonstrations that led up to June 4, 1989. On that exact date, I was in Hong Kong and so had the opportunity to see Hong Kong’s reaction to the events in China. This is what I saw and wrote on that day of fear, disbelief, and mourning.
June 4, 1989
One month ago, I was walking alongside the May 4th Youth Day parade of college students of Hangzhou, China. On June 4th, I again walked in a demonstration with Chinese people. But these were Hong Kong Chinese, and we were all in mourning for the many students killed in the Beijing nighttime massacre the night before.
As I walked alongside, a marcher called to me, “Join us,” and held out his hand. I immediately thought of that other young man in Hangzhou who had said those same words to me on May 4th.
I joined the black-clad Hong Kong mourners. Young and old, children and even babies were there. We sweated together in the heat of the June sun. We passed the thousands of shops and skyscrapers that line Hong Kong with armbands, headbands, holding banners, chanting, or simply walking. On the roads not closed to traffic, cars and taxis honked continually and flew black flags from their antennas. People on the sidelines clapped, or made “v” signs with their fingers, or joined the marchers. One tiny, wizened Chinese woman waved a black flag angrily with tears in her eyes.
Most everything was in Chinese, but then I heard the familiar song in English, “We Shall Overcome.” That brought me back to the other demonstrations and movements I had witnessed — the Civil Rights movement, and the anti-Vietnam War demonstrations of the 1960’s.
I had left China a few days earlier. I had been missing my China life, and my diligent, sincere students. They had been excited about the demonstrations, about some action at last in their rather monotonous and hopeless existence. There had been speculation that the movement for freedom and democracy was growing, dying, or going underground. Even the peasants in the remote countryside had heard about the hunger strikes and sit-ins in Beijing and other cities.
In Hangzhou, my Chinese friends had innocently assured me that the government would never dare to hurt the students if the students remained non-violent. I had not wanted to intrude upon their trusting innocence at that time. The massacre horrified me, but did not really surprise me.
As I stood on a Hong Kong street watching the news on a small television set placed by a local vendor above his shop, I watched the faces around me register stunned disbelief as they saw film clips of the tanks rolling down Beijing streets. With horrified fascination and disgust, they listened to gunshots and saw wounded, dying, and dead people.
I have lived in Israel where burning buses, tanks in the streets, and people being shot are often daily news there. But Hong Kong Chinese have relegated such sights to exciting crime movies. As my Hong Kong friend said to me, “Even demonstrations and protests are new to Hong Kong.”
These Hong Kong Chinese are indeed a strange counterpart to their mainland Chinese brothers and sisters. They will unite politically in 1997. In contrast to my students, these well-fed, very westernized Hong Kong Chinese marched in Reebok sneakers and designer jeans with Gucci belts. They munched McDonald’s hamburgers, and many carried radio-tape recorders plugged into their ears. The Hong Kong police looked authoritative in snappy uniforms adorned with a gun, nightstick, and walkie-talkie. I thought of the contrast they made to the nervous, baggy-uniformed drab Chinese police who look like little boys dressed up in their father’s clothes.
The Hong Kong Chinese care about the mainland Chinese, and genuinely want to help them, but the gap is so very wide from so many aspects. I thought how hard it would be for my students from the countryside — thin, poorly-fed and poorly-clothed — to imagine decorating a car with banners and driving down the street honking and waving as a show of solidarity with Chinese students in China in their struggle for freedom and democracy.
The Hong Kong Chinese, already worried about the unification in 1997, are now understandably terrified of what 1997 might mean to the freedom they now take for granted. I, myself, had come to value my American freedom and choice much more since my students had expressed their envy of it openly and longingly.
I doubted that my Chinese students themselves knew the magnitude of what had happened in Beijing, or that the world was in outrage and mourning. I wanted them to know, and yet I wanted to shelter them from the full impact of the cruelty. I bought some newspapers to send them, and then was afraid they might get in trouble for having them. I wished they were safely home instead of still in school.
I thought of my first visit to Tiananmen Square in October. I remembered the monstrous proportions of the square, and behind Mao’s huge picture, the gate of the Forbidden City, the palace for the Emperors of China. I thought cynically that the Emperors would have approved the action of the Chinese government.
I cried for the students I knew in Hangzhou, and for those I hadn’t known in Beijing.
Starting in August of 2008, I posted several blogs about my personal friends in China, and how their lives had changed since I first knew them. These postings are listed under The Tiananmen Generation. I thought it was important, as well as fascinating, to follow their lives from 1988 through the last 20 tumultuous years of change in China.
Tags: 1989, Hong Kong's reaction to June 4, Travel
