25th ANNIVERSARY

June 4,1989 is 25 years ago but the events are seared in to my memory as though it were yesterday. I am standing with my son under the entrance archway to Beijing University. Above us in emblazoned red characters is the phrase: ”Tienenmen bathed in blood. The whole world weeps” It is early morning and the students are streaming in from the Square and from the area morgues. They are carrying the nametags of their colleagues whose dead bodies they had identified. They were victims of the bullets of their military countrymen or of being run-over by tanks and other heavy artillery.

Only 24 hours earlier we had joined these students under the statue of the goddess of democracy and shared our dreams of a more democratic China-of renewed partnership between our two countries. We had spoken with a gentleman who wheeled his mother in any old wheelbarrow to the Square. “I wanted her to be a part of China’s history “, the gentleman explained. “The first bloodless revolution in the history of our country”

Across the ocean my wife (who I was unable to reach for more than 72 hours ) worried. While she saw it all on television the local Chinese media reported that only that few soldiers had been injured by unruly students but that peace prevailed. Eventually we made it home safely and my son who was in doctoral studies at the University was able to retrieve his research. It was a dark day. But slowly and inevitably some light has broken through. Some economic freedoms have emerged. Living standards have been raised. China is about to equal the USA in gross domestic product. But all of that lay deeply hidden that day under the bloody bodies of students who had a dream-and paid for it with their lives.