by Darien Hsu Gee
Of course we would go. We cut jagged strips from dishtowels to wrap around our heads—my mother stayed home. In Tiananmen Square, three weeks earlier and 7,200 miles away, other headbands bore phrases like liberty and hunger strike and denounce butcher regime and all power belongs to the people. Days in, student protestors sprawled limp on well-trodden paths, burnt eyes cast on the Monument to the People’s Heroes, the Great Hall of the People. Almost a million bodies packed into 109 acres of city square, a portrait of Mao gazing from the Gate of Heavenly Peace. June 4 had come and gone, image after image a totem to that day—the stark white 33-foot Goddess of Democracy, born from foam and paper mache. CNN’s Bernard Shaw’s breathy voice—Fifty-eight minutes from now, the government will pull the plug on all transmissions out of this nation. The lone man, plastic shopping bags in hand, fixed in front of a column of tanks on the Avenue of Eternal Peace. Continue reading
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