The dismal anniversary is upon us, and that seems like a reasonable cue to take a little break from blogging for a while. I get too darned emotional about these events, and if I wrote about nothing else for the next week or more, I daresay everyone would get rather weary of it. I'm sure I'll have at least a few more TAM posts in me at some point, but for now I think this sombre milestone would be better commemorated by a week of respectful silence.
There are lots of people out there writing better stuff about it than me, anyway. Long-time China hand Philip Cunningham, for example, has been providing a fascinating day-by-day recap of the 1989 events as he experienced them on his blog Tiananmen Moon (though I think he's not much of a writer, and in later life he appears to have become in some ways a bit of a CCP apologist, or at any rate an over-compensatory USA-basher, he was unquestionably here and in the thick of things when it all went down 20 years ago) - a teaser for his just-published book of the same name.
Expect me to be back around the middle of next week (if I don't manage to get myself arrested /deported in the next 24 hours or so).
And if you are going out in Beijing, or anywhere in China, tonight or tomorrow - Wear White.
[It is the Chinese colour of mourning, and I gather a few of the still active leaders of the '89 movement have been advocating this as a sign of respect - perhaps one of the few that people might be able to get away with here. It will be difficult to tell how many people are intentionally making such a statement of support, since the weather is very warm and lots of people are wearing white for comfort anyway, but..... we'll see.]
1 comment:
I'd like to commemorate on my blog somehow. Haven't come up with a plan yet.
I like the suggestion of wearing white.
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