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Hidden Away for 28 Years, Tiananmen Protest Pictures See Light of Day

nytimes.com

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Re: Hidden Away for 28 Years, Tiananmen Protest Pictures See Light of Day

#91

Post by arthur2e5 »

boomboomsubban wrote: post #50
bluetwo wrote: post #41

English Wikipedia still calls it the "Tiananmen Square protests of 1989" instead of the "Tiananmen Square Massacre" which is what pretty much everyone outside China calls it. Maybe someday we'll stop China from censoring Wikipedia.

The article is about the protests as a whole, they ended in the "Tiananmen Square Massacre" like the first paragraph of the article says.

It may be a good idea to try blending some massacre (um, because WP:COMMONNAME, a.k.a. "everyone mentions the massacre"?) in and call it some "protest and massacre" though.

Re: Hidden Away for 28 Years, Tiananmen Protest Pictures See Light of Day

#92

Post by seanmcdirmid »

guiltygatorade wrote: post #82
SurrealSoul wrote: post #7

Kind of a personal story, but my fiancé is from Beijing. She found out about Tiananmen square about a year ago. She only knew that she shouldn't ask about the Tiananmen incident growing up and that it was a bad thing that happened. She has been in the states for several years now and when she found out what really happened with our even blurry images and stories we have now it really changed her perspective on things…

I'm in my mid 30s and remember seeing it on TV as a kid in Shanghai. The news were all reporting on how the PLA rolled in and were holding back and avoiding violence against harassment from the protesters. (And to be fair most were until the orders came down from up top). Other interesting pieces of media: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Gate_of_Heavenly_Peace I think does a pretty good job at covering a highly con…

There was a lot of dissent in the PLA against firinon Chinese citizens, especially since those soldiers were local. It wasn't until they brought in soldiers from far away (with fewer ties to beijingers) that they were willing to fire actual bullets. Suffice it to say, the CCP focused on indoctrination and loyalty in the PLA after 1989 so they wouldn't have that problem again (as well as building up the PAP so they would have actual riot police to avoid having to use military force at all).

Re: Hidden Away for 28 Years, Tiananmen Protest Pictures See Light of Day

#93

Post by kaishiro »

wyuenho wrote: post #90
guiltygatorade wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm in my mid 30s and remember seeing it on TV as a kid in Shanghai. The news were all reporting on how the PLA rolled in and were holding back and avoiding violence against harassment from the protesters. (And to be fair most were until the orders came down from up top). Other interesting pieces of media: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Gate_of_Heavenly_Peace I think does a pretty good job at covering a highly con…

The Gate of Heavenly Peace is a must watch if you want to fully comprehend how the whole ordeal went down. Highly recommend.

Just a quick side note. Back ~2006 I had the opportunity to travel to China with Carma Hinton, the director of Gate of Heavenly Peace. Amazing woman with an amazing background.

Re: Hidden Away for 28 Years, Tiananmen Protest Pictures See Light of Day

#94

Post by srett »

vtange wrote: post #43
SurrealSoul wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To be fair, USA hardly ever reports positive articles about China. We didn't report on their moon landing until a year after it happened and many people don't even know it happened at all. Same goes with their space station. The only coverage went to their previous one that is leaving orbit into earth. I know that this is a small sample size and only related to their space program as well as my personal observations,…

For the past couple months the media has pointed out China's successes in tech in Shenzhen, how they have a much better stance on climate change than Trump, and how they have the most prudent position (that doesn't involve all-out war) on North Korea. That's pretty positive if you ask me.

Yes, it is getting better. But even then I can't help but feel like it's said in this "See, even the Chinese do better than trump" manner. Just like 10 years ago the only good news about China was about how well their economy is doing, but not without some "they took our jobs" vibe.

Re: Hidden Away for 28 Years, Tiananmen Protest Pictures See Light of Day

#95

Post by I-M-S »

roywiggins wrote: post #71
clamprecht wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We can read about Kent State shootings. But what can't we read about? What ugly stuff happened in the US that we don't talk about?

We don't have systematic censorship like China does, by any means, but we do choose not to teach and write down certain things, and so they end up nearly forgotten. The Tulsa race riot was excised from official histories, never talked about, and so it faded into a little-known episode of history, until activists brought it to wider attention at the end of the 20th century. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tulsa_race_rio…

"With the number of survivors declining, in 1996, the 75th anniversary of the riot, a bi-partisan group in the state legislature authorized formation of the Oklahoma Commission to Study the Tulsa Race Riot of 1921 (...) The park [to the 800 dead riot victims] was dedicated in 2010."

No worries then, in 48 years China will acknowledge what happened at Tiananmen, and in 2078 Beijing will get a lovely new park.

Re: Hidden Away for 28 Years, Tiananmen Protest Pictures See Light of Day

#96

Post by seanmcdirmid »

likelynew wrote: post #60
williw wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How old is she? I was maybe 8 at the time. I was not in Beijing. Even I knew what was happening, the event was broadcasted on TV at the time. It was probably heavily censored, but I knew demonstrations etc were going on in Beijing at the time.

Why the downvotes? How many british people know about Jallianwala Bagh massacre, shooting at a peaceful gathering killing hundreds, that was committed by them in India? How many americans care about the systematic racial genocide in their land? Most people don't care unless the event is very shocking at that time and place. And, if china is still poor, no one in west would have cared for their human rights violation.

Tiananmen Square was only less than 30 years ago.

Re: Hidden Away for 28 Years, Tiananmen Protest Pictures See Light of Day

#97

Post by seanmcdirmid »

sbarre wrote: post #83
SurrealSoul wrote: post #7

Kind of a personal story, but my fiancé is from Beijing. She found out about Tiananmen square about a year ago. She only knew that she shouldn't ask about the Tiananmen incident growing up and that it was a bad thing that happened. She has been in the states for several years now and when she found out what really happened with our even blurry images and stories we have now it really changed her perspective on things…

I definitely agree, and this problem is not limited to what we consider (or considered) repressive regimes.. In 1995 I went to visit college friends in Austin TX (I'm from eastern Canada) and a few of them who had grown up in Buda TX (a small town outside of Austin) told me that until high school (late 80s) they had been told in school by multiple teachers that the US had "won" the Vietnam War. Obviously an anecdote,…

Even crazier how china tells its students that Chi a son their Vietnam war, when the PLA lost so many soldiers and failed to achieve their objective of getting Vietnam out of Cambodia.

Re: Hidden Away for 28 Years, Tiananmen Protest Pictures See Light of Day

#98

Post by hindsightbias »

SurrealSoul wrote: post #7

Kind of a personal story, but my fiancé is from Beijing. She found out about Tiananmen square about a year ago. She only knew that she shouldn't ask about the Tiananmen incident growing up and that it was a bad thing that happened. She has been in the states for several years now and when she found out what really happened with our even blurry images and stories we have now it really changed her perspective on things…

>You should not have to move out of country to know what your country has done.

Pretty much applies everywhere.

As a shortwave listener back in the day, the invasions of Grenada and Panama were widely broadcast ~8-12 hours everywhere before a peep showed up in US media. Iran-Contra and many other US actions were not uncovered by domestic media, they were exposed by foreign journalists.

People think they're better informed or more worldly after the internet. Surely that explains why the only two US media pundits who got any airtime opposing the Iraq War were Michael Moore and Paul Krugman. You have to watch RT to see someone like Chomsky even today.

Re: Hidden Away for 28 Years, Tiananmen Protest Pictures See Light of Day

#99

Post by srett »

erroneousfunk wrote: post #89
sbarre wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I definitely agree, and this problem is not limited to what we consider (or considered) repressive regimes.. In 1995 I went to visit college friends in Austin TX (I'm from eastern Canada) and a few of them who had grown up in Buda TX (a small town outside of Austin) told me that until high school (late 80s) they had been told in school by multiple teachers that the US had "won" the Vietnam War. Obviously an anecdote,…

I never heard "we won Vietnam," except jokingly, going to a regular public school in the 90's and 2000's in the Pacific Northwest. My dad always described Vietnam with a little head-shaking regret (he was born in Texas in 1957, so he was too young to be drafted, but we had family friends in the war). We didn't hear about it much in elementary school, but in middle school history classes we learned about the Gulf of T…

You guys won Vietnam. You just didn't achieve the best possible outcome. Really, Vietnam had a thriving economy by that time, growing industry in several cities, but after the war the country was nothing for a really long time. You bombed them into stone age, so it didn't even matter whether the country was communist, democratic or whatever else at that point.

Re: Hidden Away for 28 Years, Tiananmen Protest Pictures See Light of Day

#100

Post by [deleted] »

vtange wrote: post #43
SurrealSoul wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To be fair, USA hardly ever reports positive articles about China. We didn't report on their moon landing until a year after it happened and many people don't even know it happened at all. Same goes with their space station. The only coverage went to their previous one that is leaving orbit into earth. I know that this is a small sample size and only related to their space program as well as my personal observations,…

For the past couple months the media has pointed out China's successes in tech in Shenzhen, how they have a much better stance on climate change than Trump, and how they have the most prudent position (that doesn't involve all-out war) on North Korea. That's pretty positive if you ask me.

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