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20 years ago, I was in Beijing. My grandmother on my mother's side had an apartment that was a couple kilometers away from Tiananmen square for retired veterans (both my grandparents on my mother's side fought in WW2 and in the Korean war).
I was two days away from turning 5. I remember my mother running into my bedroom, grabbing me and telling me to lay down on the floor. A helicopter flew overhead shining a searchlight and announced "surrender the tank" before I heard machinegun fire. Apparently a student had hijacked a tank and fired on the helicopter - the tank was downstairs from our 6-story building. I could feel the ground rumble. The machinegun fire missed the mark and hit our building - bullets ricocheted into the halls outside our apartment.
My grandfather, a veteran and former army colonel, ushered everybody towards center of the house, and told everyone to stay low. I wanted to look out the window but my mom wouldn't let me.
A couple days later we were finally able to leave our apt. The entire time I remember my grandfather staying by the door refusing to let anyone go outside. He was also the one who prevented my parents (who were both teachers at the time) from joining the protests. I remember hearing a woman screaming next doors. They lost a daughter, who was 19, to the massacre. I remember that the mother screamed "they're using real bullets... they've used real bullets."
On my way to my other grandmother's house, who lived farther away from the chaos, I remember my mother telling me to not look at the ground. There were patches of blood everywhere, apparently the fighting had spilled into the hutongs and sidestreets. Bulletholes riddled bus stops and metro stations, as well as our own apartment building (these holes are patched up and still visible in 2006, when I was last there.)
So that's my account of the event - whats sad is that my younger cousins, who are 21 and 20 respectively, have NO knowledge of this incident where over 2000 unarmed people died. But luckily for us, we still have access to the wikipedia article: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tiananm...otests_of_1989
which allowed me to fill in a lot of the back story on why it happened...
I was two days away from turning 5. I remember my mother running into my bedroom, grabbing me and telling me to lay down on the floor. A helicopter flew overhead shining a searchlight and announced "surrender the tank" before I heard machinegun fire. Apparently a student had hijacked a tank and fired on the helicopter - the tank was downstairs from our 6-story building. I could feel the ground rumble. The machinegun fire missed the mark and hit our building - bullets ricocheted into the halls outside our apartment.
My grandfather, a veteran and former army colonel, ushered everybody towards center of the house, and told everyone to stay low. I wanted to look out the window but my mom wouldn't let me.
A couple days later we were finally able to leave our apt. The entire time I remember my grandfather staying by the door refusing to let anyone go outside. He was also the one who prevented my parents (who were both teachers at the time) from joining the protests. I remember hearing a woman screaming next doors. They lost a daughter, who was 19, to the massacre. I remember that the mother screamed "they're using real bullets... they've used real bullets."
On my way to my other grandmother's house, who lived farther away from the chaos, I remember my mother telling me to not look at the ground. There were patches of blood everywhere, apparently the fighting had spilled into the hutongs and sidestreets. Bulletholes riddled bus stops and metro stations, as well as our own apartment building (these holes are patched up and still visible in 2006, when I was last there.)
So that's my account of the event - whats sad is that my younger cousins, who are 21 and 20 respectively, have NO knowledge of this incident where over 2000 unarmed people died. But luckily for us, we still have access to the wikipedia article: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tiananm...otests_of_1989
which allowed me to fill in a lot of the back story on why it happened...
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