Honk if you care:
McCarthy, Abigail
HONK IF YOU CARE CHINA NEXT DOOR Those of you who read this column regularly know how often I have inveighed against television because of one of its insidious effects- the tendency of its viewers...
...The worldwide movement cresting in Tiananmen Square was lapping at my doorstep and I was relying on the printed page and the upcoming TV evening news to connect me with it...
...They were for the most part their country's young elite-graduate students who were chosen and sent here to prepare for professions by the very government they were decrying...
...Some days later the Tibetans who had mingled with the Chinese for that first protest staged their own...
...I asked...
...For the past month that park has been the center of protest for Chinese students in the United States and their sympathizers...
...Might they not take you out of school and order you back-send you far away into the countryside...
...The waving signs called for "democracy" but clearly it wasn't the democracy of representative government as we think of it in the West...
...I promised myself that it would not happen again...
...Chants followed speeches...
...It is always the same song," she said, "the international song...
...The city is saying it cares...
...What I learned from talking to those people outside, from touching their reality, is that they are like one being, a being with an almost frightening patience and a common will from which power must eventually flow...
...I had to leave town that day but I saw the vanguard arriving and lining up in an orderly fashion to register their names at a small table in front of the embassy...
...Imagine then my chagrin not long ago when I found that I my self had fallen into that trap-and fallen in connection with one of the most ing series of events in modern times...
...It was just after Zhao, who seemed to be on their side, had been shunted aside by Deng and the signs indicated the coming repression...
...In retrospect, now that we know how brutal the reaction has been, how murderous, they spoke of the possibility with a surprising and stoic acceptance...
...But they quoted and praised Mao, and Gorbachev was their hero...
...I noted all this and I passed by...
...The answer was immensely practical...
...Both the Chinese embassy and the building where I live in Washington look out on a small park...
...My neighbors told me that the march and the demonstration that afternoon were large and impressive...
...They recited the number of schools from which they had come-the University of Pennsylvania, Ohio State, the University of Florida at Gainesville, Duke, the University of Cincinnati, and a host of smaller schools...
...Their exact goals did not become clearer as I talked with them...
...Oh, they may stop it now," said one, "but not forever...
...Prayer flags and banners fluttered in the hot afternoon wind...
...They echoed Patrick Henry's "Give me liberty or give me death"-using the famous words like a slogan...
...It is just large enough for a few benches, a bank of lavender azaleas, a bed of tulips, and one large magnolia tree surrounded by a small lawn...
...Honk," the signs say, "honk if you care about your brothers and sisters in China...
...My mother, my father, my uncles, they all went to the side of the road to stop the soldiers," said one...
...HONK IF YOU CARE CHINA NEXT DOOR Those of you who read this column regularly know how often I have inveighed against television because of one of its insidious effects- the tendency of its viewers to substitute the image for the reality...
...Now, because of the Chinese with whom they had made common cause, "the whole world was watching" and they seized the moment...
...When they broke into a song not immediately recognizable I asked a woman student what they were singing...
...The demonstrators were neat and polite and cleared away their signs and debris...
...On May 20 they came from all over the country to march up the avenue and demonstrate before the embassy...
...They felt an immense pride in their own unity and their own efforts to support the movement in China...
...And, if they begin that, we can ask for political asylum...
...If they had anything to fear they did not show it...
...The Internationale...
...So far by day and night there has been a cacophony of response-for some reason sporadic by day, more sustained when night falls...
...Like so many others I seemed to prefer experience strained through a mechanical and form-ridden selection process to raw experience I could sort through on my own...
...But they were worried about the students in China...
...A year, two, more, but we keep on...
...After they signed their names they strolled back in groups of two or three to the point where the march was to begin a mile or so away...
...I have been out again and I know they are pleading for our support, pleading to keep our attention, to keep the spotlight on their homeland...
...When, the next week, the student protest resumed-Chinese students, or perhaps simply the students of the eighties, don't seem to skip tests and classes to demonstrate-I went out to mingle and to talk with them...
...It was not until I was settled into my air-conditioned living room and opening the new copy of Time that I realized what I had done...
...The people keep on...
...But other things did...
...They are more impassioned now, more intense...
...They were in touch with relatives and friends at home...
...Our attention will wane, of course, but theirs will not...
...Tall Buddhist monks in saffron robes moved through a mixed crowd of Tibetans in traditional costume and Americans, Chinese, and Tibetans in standard student dress...
...For the past year a forlorn but steadfast one or two had been standing in the park in cold or heat facing the inbound traffic and holding "Free Tibet" banners...
...As I write, the voices from the park are audible in the background...
...Like other observers I had wondered what exactly they and their models in China wanted...
...As I came from parking my car I found the little park alive with a colorful assembly...
...What they seemed to want was more personal freedom and more control over their own lives within the context of communism...
...Even then they seemed to know that the government would inevitably react with force...
...Aren't you afraid of reprisals...
...There are too many of us...
Vol. 116 • July 1989 • No. 13
