Tiananmen memoir: Yu Hua 余华

I guess the memory literature of Tiananmen is probably it's own subgenre, one that characteristically combines personal memories of the days surrounding June 4, 1989 and more general reflections on the prospects for political reform in China.


I'm a writer, who cares if I wear plaid with stripes?

One that is going around this year is Yu Hua's op-ed in the New York Times, translated by Allan Barr (he of the Pu Songling fame!).

Yu Hua wasn't really close to the action of the 1989 crackdown; for him, watching the television is a good trope to connect personal memory with general political critique:

Every day the television repeatedly broadcast shots of students on the wanted list being taken into custody. Far from home, in my cheerless hotel room, I saw the despairing looks on the faces of the captured students and heard the crowing of the news announcers, and a chill went down my spine.

Then one day, the picture on my TV screen changed completely. The images of detained suspects were replaced by scenes of prosperity throughout the motherland. The announcer switched from passionately denouncing the crimes of the captured students to cheerfully lauding our nation’s progress.

Yu Hua's point is clear: using mass communication, China's leaders were able to repress the feelings of revulsion, fear, and indignation that the memory of the 1989 actions tended to inspire.