Jeanne Boden
Photograph by Japanese press photographer Sadayuki Mikami (三上貞行)
On May 18, 1989 demonstrators carrying portraits of former rulers Mao Zedong and Zhou Enlai march through the streets of Bejing on their way to join the students striking at Tiananmen Square. The demonstration in 1989 is often referred to as a 'student demonstration'. In reality, all sorts of social groups joined in, not only in Beijing but all over China.
Just two weeks before the June Fourth Tiananmen crackdown these worker demonstrators self-confidently smile while carrying slogans like: “Big brother is anxious (老大哥急了) and “Mama is crying” (妈妈在流泪), and “Workers from Northern [X] express their support” (北 [X] 工人声援).
On June Fourth 1989 the optimism of the 1980s during which the Chinese Communist Party had moved from autocracy towards intra-party democracy, collective leadership, policies to separate party and state, administrative decentralization, a clearer differentation of the roles and functions of the state and a more distributed power structure came to a sudden halt when the army was called in to stop the demonstrations; countless people died. This was a turning point for China and for the world. This part of history is banned from official history books in China, but the people who went through it are still alive. They remember.