Today I de-camped at dawn to watch the torch relay in that-famous-square-whose-named-we-all-know. A couple dozen other journalists and I were herded to a spot facing Mao’s portrait, We waited and waited. And waited. The last time I’d waited that long in that place, that early in the morning, was in 1989 during a brief and ill-fated Beijing Spring. Back then I was waiting for Chinese police to come clear the square of hundreds of youthful protestors who’d hung colorful silk banners off official flagpoles in front of the granite obelisk known as the Monument to the People’s Heroes. (Chinese look down on your political movement if you don’t have flags made of luxuriant silk, and if you don’t know how to brandish them just right so that the fabric floats like butterflies’ wings.) These kids in 1989 – about the same age as the youth in the square this morning -- chanted pro-democracy slogans and strummed folk-songs on guitars. That earlier time I had stayed overnight in the square, surrounded by this moonlit and surreal Chinese Woodstock scene, because the next day Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev was due in town for a historic Sino-Soviet summit. I assumed police would come waving their truncheons, and maybe lobbing tear gas, to clear the square of this ragtag assembly of demonstrators before Gorby’s arrival. Otherwise the protestors would be able to hijack the summit spotlight, China’s leaders would be embarrassed, and things woul ...
Anytime
Today I de-camped at dawn to watch the torch relay in that-famous-square-whose-named-we-all-know. A couple dozen other journalists and I were herded to a spot facing Mao’s portrait, We waited and waited. And waited. The last time I’d waited that long in that place, that early in the morning, was in 1989 during a brief and ill-fated Beijing Spring. Back then I was waiting for Chinese police to come clear the square of hundreds of youthful protestors who’d hung colorful silk banners off official flagpoles in front of the granite obelisk known as the Monument to the People’s Heroes. (Chinese look down on your political movement if you don’t have flags made of luxuriant silk, and if you don’t know how to brandish them just right so that the fabric floats like butterflies’ wings.) These kids in 1989 – about the same age as the youth in the square this morning -- chanted pro-democracy slogans and strummed folk-songs on guitars. That earlier time I had stayed overnight in the square, surrounded by this moonlit and surreal Chinese Woodstock scene, because the next day Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev was due in town for a historic Sino-Soviet summit. I assumed police would come waving their truncheons, and maybe lobbing tear gas, to clear the square of this ragtag assembly of demonstrators before Gorby’s arrival. Otherwise the protestors would be able to hijack the summit spotlight, China’s leaders would be embarrassed, and things woul ...