Han and Fan are my roommates for the last year, and not so different from any other college students. When I make my rounds closing the library late at night, I usually find one or the other – sometimes both – squirreled away somewhere at the study desks, earphones jacked in and shooting their way through a video game. Han spent a recent Asian festival snapping photographs, so I can see myself Japanese taiko drumming. Fan's desk has several Japanese anime magazines shelved; a hobby we both have in common. Our apartment's front door is still decked out in Chinese banners and a giant sticker proclaiming the lunar new year; I wonder if I can talk them into giving me the paper lanterns they took down? There's even a lucky charm stuck on my bedroom door, just like theirs.
In China, it is said that the generation born after 1989 have no clue what happened that spring. State censorship of media and information is strict. In a documentary I watch four Beijing university students shown a picture of Tank Man standing before the tanks; they study it intently then surrender. One whispers, “1989,” but none grasp the context of the image. “Is this a work of art?” asks another.
Han and Fan agree to an interview, with Tiananmen Square the topic. I want to see how close I can get to Tank Man via their memories and experiences, and how far the historic myopia travels.
Han sits on the couch and fiddles with his glasses when he's choosing his words carefully. When he thinks deeply, considering his answer, he leans forward, elbows on his knees, hands clasped, and hmphs. He's been to Tiananmen Square, the symbolic and beurocratic heart of China, twice. Once as a child of nine with his parents, and again as an adult at twenty.
“Who do I think Tiananmen Square is?”
“Yes. Like a person. If Tiananmen were a person, what would it be like?”
“I never thought of that. Hmm. It looks great,” he spreads his hands wide (the Square is the largest public space in the world), “and well-protected. Maybe... a middle-aged person with strong honor. A person of high honor. Like status.”
Fan is a bit more nervous. I hear him speak English less than Han most of the time. “Sit here, sit down,” says Han at the beginning, but Fan hovers around the counter separating kitchen from small living room. His hair poofs up, where Han's is combed flat and short. Yet both have glasses, and the same wispy college-stubble on their chins. “I think... it's a symbol of government. Government power. A symbol of freedom of government.”
“Both?”
“Blood was there. It was covered in blood. Like a river.”
“1989?”
So they had both heard of it, of the protests and the crackdown afterward. But each had started down a different road.
“I did not know until I came here,” said Han. “Here, the teacher talk all about Tiananmen Square. In China I don't know. Nobody knows. The censorship is very tough. I was shocked.”
“I knew,” breaks in Fan. “The internet. I see pictures. That man in front of the tanks.” Internet censorship in China is monolithic, but like many in the younger generation, Fan can get around it. “So I knew, but I learn much more. I talk about it with friends, on the internet, here. But I wouldn't tell a police man!” he laughs.
“So you saw the Tank Man?”
“Yes.”
“Nobody really knows what happened to him. What do you think happened to him?”
“I heard he was run over by the tank. Dead,” says Fan.
“I don't know,” says Han. “Probably arrested.”
“Do you think something like that, Tank Man, the protests, do you think it could happen again in China? I mean not in some future, but in your lifetimes?”
Han squints. “Ahh... I don't know. I just don't know this thing.” But Fan is nodding his head, “Yeah.” “He's going to Beijing in summer,” Han points at Fan. But he won't be visiting Tiananmen. “I'm just flying through, but a few days in Beijing. I'll go around the city.”
“But not to Tiananmen Square?”
“No,” he shoves away from the counter laughing, “I don't like the Party.”
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