Geography Reference
In-Depth Information
soldier'sface.Hiseyeswerepopping,bloodshot,anddazed,asifhe
were on drugs.
(Shen 1990, 322-23)
Not all of the people who died in the streets of Beijing in the vicinity of
Tiananmen Square were civilians. Enraged crowds also killed soldiers,
and in subsequent news of the Tiananmen Massacre by China's state-
controlled media, the government played up the deaths of soldiers
and mostly ignored the larger numbers of civilian dead.
Smoldering army vehicles were everywhere, and I could smell the
fumes of the burning rubber and paint.
When we entered one alley, we saw a man in an official-looking green
uniform being chased by an angry mob of Beijing residents, who caught
up with him at a construction site and picked up pieces of brick to hit
him with. The man didn't make a sound. I jumped off the bicycle,
almost knocking over my uncle, and ran toward them. Pushing the
people aside, I saw him lying face down, with blood pouring out of his
nostrils as he exhaled rapidly. He looked about eighteen years old.
“Stop hitting him!” I pleaded with the crowd.
“It's none of your business,” a man said, shoving me away.
“Pleasestopit,”Ibegged.“Wehavetotakehimtothehospital,we
have to find him an ambulance.”
My uncle pulled me away from the mob. “Forget it, Yuan Yuan. He's
almost dead—there's no use.”
He put me back on his bicycle and rode off quickly.
“The solders are killing the people, the people are killing the soldiers,
right in the middle of the capital,” I mumbled. (Shen 1990, 326-27)
...
At daybreak the butchery was over, and the 27th Army was busy pil-
ing up bodies in Tiananmen Square and covering themwith canvas. For
the next few days they burned the bodies and had helicopters fly the
ashes away. The bodies of most of the people murdered in Tiananmen
Square and the streets of Beijing were never recovered.
On June 7 a government spokesman declared that the demonstrations
had been counterrevolutionary riots and set up a hotline for informants
to turn in people who had participated in them. Two days later Deng
Xiaoping himself appeared on television and congratulated the soldiers
who had crushed the movement. “They are truly the people's army,
China's Great Wall of steel. They have stood and passed this test.” He
did not mention the hundreds of unarmed civilians murdered by the
soldiers. Of them he said only, “Their aimwas to topple the Communist
Party, socialism, and the entire People's Republic of China, and set up a
capitalist republic.” He ended with a flat statement that his Four
