6-4

In China, important dates are referred to by the number of the month and day. So the anniversary of the June 4, 1989 Tiananmen confrontation is called Six-Four, or Liao-Si.
This picture is of my Hong Kong students coming out of the subway at Tiananmen in May 1990.

I arrived in Hong Kong in July 1989 for my Fulbright year. Hong Kong was still a British colony then with eight years before it would be turned over to China. Tiananmen raised fears about what would happen in 1997. Although Hong Kong was a British colony and residents had British Passports, people discovered the words "right to abode" had disappeared when their renewed passports arrived. They were no longer allowed to move to England. There was a huge market for magazines that discussed ways to get foreign passports.



In May 1990, I went with a group of my Hong Kong students on a study trip to Beijing as guests of the China Training Center for Senior Civil Servants. We were careful to arrange the trip so that we would be back in Hong Kong two weeks before the first anniversary of Tiananmen. Nevertheless, at least one of my students was not allowed by his parents to come on the trip, because they thought it too dangerous.




This was a typical street scene in Beijing in those days.



















I think this is at People's University.






This is after an official meeting to learn about Chinese Civil Service Reform.





Although 6-4 has been erased as much as possible from the minds of people in China, I do think it is important that we take a moment today to remember what happened.