{"id":799,"date":"2014-06-03T22:49:05","date_gmt":"2014-06-03T22:49:05","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/starstrewnsky.net\/satellite\/?p=799"},"modified":"2014-06-05T10:55:01","modified_gmt":"2014-06-05T10:55:01","slug":"tiananmen-square-25-years-on","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/starstrewnsky.net\/satellite\/?p=799","title":{"rendered":"Tiananmen Square: 25 years on"},"content":{"rendered":"

I was in China in 1994. I was acting over there, in the Shanghai International Shakespeare festival. I was young and wide-eyed. I still have quite big eyes.<\/p>\n

Anyway, with my companions, I went to Tiananmen square, and had a small experience, about which I wrote a poem, that evening.<\/p>\n

It isn’t very good, it approaches doggerel in fact, but I remembered that I had written it today, on this anniversary of the massacre that the Chinese government still refuses officially to acknowledge.<\/p>\n

I reproduce the poem faithfully – doggedly – below:<\/p>\n

There are pockmarks in the paving of
\nTiananmen square
\nThere are the young and the old
\nas the sun sets
\nbehind the Forbidden City<\/p>\n

We are tourists, with our votes
\nand our dollars
\nthe bicycles fly past us, and<\/p>\n

the soldiers march
\nacross The Square<\/p>\n

We met two young men,
\nby the flowers<\/p>\n

built to depict a rising Phoenix.<\/p>\n

Students, like ourselves,
\nat “the Peoples’ University”<\/p>\n

We sat on the ground, cross legged
\nLouisa joked, it was “a sit down protest”<\/p>\n

We all thought of tanks.<\/p>\n

We sat and we talked
\nof our different worlds met there
\nand the crowds milled past<\/p>\n

‘as westerners you will have heard of the massacre here no doubt, in 1989’<\/p>\n

We looked into his eyes.<\/p>\n

Two men in suits refused to mill
\nthey stood nearby
\nlistening and watching<\/p>\n

He broke off and looked at the men.
\nStopped speaking,<\/p>\n

turned back.<\/p>\n

‘It was not as bad as it was reported as being’ he said.<\/p>\n

I looked down at the fresh paving stones,
\nat the pockmarks
\non the old.<\/p>\n

The men in suits and sunglasses conversed with a soldier<\/p>\n

We offered to buy our new found friends lunch, and we walked the Beijing streets.<\/p>\n

I saw a three year old girl
\nfall off her father’s bicycle
\nto the street below,<\/p>\n

watched her get up without a tear, back onto the bike.<\/p>\n

At McDonald’s they took their first bites
\nof Mcfreedom.<\/p>\n

Both their first bites were their last.<\/p>\n

‘This isn’t food’, they stated, matter of factly.<\/p>\n

We said goodbye, outside.
\nWith a plastic effigy of Ronald McDonald grinning from a bench.<\/p>\n

They went off to unlock their bikes.<\/p>\n

The two men in suits and sunglasses
\nwere waiting.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n\"\"<\/blockquote>\n