The Atlantic has posted 50 beautiful photos on its website in a series called “Tiananmen Square, Then and Now,” that should more than justify the five minutes it takes to look at them. I’ve posted five more of my favorites after the jump, but there really isn’t a bad shot in the bunch. You might have seen many of them in the Boston Globe’s “The Big Picture” in 2009 to commemorate 20 years since the military crackdown at Tiananmen, but they’re worth seeing again. Cogs in something turning… they were all childs of God.
need to get this out to Mainland Chinese …
I’ve always found the notion that Mainland Chinese don’t “know” about Tiananmen to be somewhat of a myth. The rural or uneducated aside, people now seem to be at least somewhat aware of the events. The real oddity is that, even for those who are, many don’t particularly sympathise with the protesters. Or, sometimes it’s a general: “It’s bad that they died, but…they sort of had it coming.”
Then again, we in the West were also woefully un/misinformed on the events up until recently. we have that image of thousands of student protesters rallying for democracy being run down by tanks, even though the student body had largely left by the time of the crackdown, and most of the casualties were older, blue-collar workers, and the majority of the civilian deaths were caused by gunfire not tanks, and the death toll was likely “hundreds,” not “thousands.”
And it didn’t happen in Tiananmen Sqare.
When we criticise, as we should in this case, we should always criticise from the side of knowledge. It’s difficult to argue your position convincingly if it’s riddled factual errors, after all.