Hope - On the 20th Anniversary of the Tienanmen Square Massacre

I’m standing next to the sculptured Goddess of Democracy in Tienanmen Square, June 3, 1989. Together, she and I fix our eyes intently across Chang An Avenue onto the portrait of Mao Tse Tung guarding the Forbidden City. Never before (or since) have I been in the midst of such exhilaration, such sense of community, such hope.

As our son John had told me over the phone from Beijing University a week earlier, “Dad, you must come. There’s hope that for the first time in the history of China, there may be a bloodless revolution!”

Students by the thousands had marched in orderly columns to the Square. Workers by the millions were joining the surge toward freedom. One middle-aged man with whom I spoke had brought his crippled aged mother in a wheel barrow to the Square. “She never dreamed that she’d be present for the birth of freedom in her country. Her grandchildren will have opportunities now undreamed of!”

English speaking Chinese students surround me. They joyfully speak of America and China forgetting their decades long enmity. “Democracy is coming to China and our two countries will be united in freedom.”

Days earlier the sheer mass of humanity had prevented a military convoy from reaching the Square. The Peoples’ Army wouldn’t dare fire upon their own people. Even the old guard around Deng Chou Peng would finally make the concessions to at least receive the written petition from student leaders. Conversations would begin. Political and economic freedom would begin to seep under the doors of the old imperial palace, now the Communist seat of power. One student even quoted to me, “Mine eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the Lord!”

Despair was dissipating. Doors to political, economic and intellectual freedom were opening. Hope welled up. It was intoxicatingly energizing.