Tian’anmen Square

We are touring at a hectic pace and I am having trouble keeping up but I’ll post as fast as I can.  We visited Tian’anmen Square a few days ago but was having technical issues with the pics so this post is delayed.  Better late than never.

We have a great tour guide in China.  Evan is his English name and he’s very friendly and open to all of our questions. Rarely, and only when it is super congested with tourists, he will use a little teddy bear on a stick so we can find him in the throng.

We usually have time during bus trips from place to place to ask him questions. I took the opportunity to ask him whatever happened to Peng Shuai? (She’s a Chinese tennis player who vanished after accusing a govt official of rape.). Evan admitted that, “She was disappeared.  It happens. You don’t want to publicly disgrace the government.”  Poor Peng. While on the tennis tour, she forgot she was Chinese I guess. 

The smog is so thick on our trip, I asked Evan what was causing it. He said “It’s country people burning leaves”.  I replied sarcastically, “C’mon man! That’s not smoke from leaves!!” 

And he sheepishly admitted “Some people think it might be pollution from factories”. No kidding, dude. Nice try. Burning leaves. As if. 

A couple of evenings ago we visited Tian’anmen Square, which means “The gate to the heavenly peace”. When we entered the square, Evan told us not to ask him anything about the revolt of 1989 and to know that there were eyes and ears everywhere so to be careful what we said. (That turned out to be true. Every once in a while, you would see a Chinese person sidling up to our group while Evan talked, listening into what we were saying.)

In general, in China, there are cameras everywhere. Times that by 10 at Tiananmen Square. There were also a huge amount of fearsome looking policemen. I asked one of them if I could take a picture and was given a very firm no!

The square is the largest in the world and can accommodate 1 million people at a time. There weren’t nearly that many people there when we visited, but you could tell the square was quite revered by the Chinese.

Some back story: 1911 marked the end of over 2000 years of a feudal system.  No more emperors. And in 1949, after all the world war foolishness was over, Chairman Mao formed the People’s Republic of China, uniting all the regions of China in a Communist state. 

The red of the flag of (PRC) represents the blood of the victims  who died in the revolution. The little stars represent:

Farmers

Laborers

Bourgeoisie

National Bourgeoisie

Everyone in China seems to love Chairman Mao. He’s like a god. He died in 1976 and, despite his wish to be cremated, they embalmed his body and put him in a crystal coffin and he’s been on display ever since. 

Monument of the People’s hero:

I got a creepy vibe from this place. Probably because of the retinal scans and security and police yelling. 

- Ruth