Thread by @EmilyWaiYi

#June4th Today I want to talk about how I went from thinking that the Tiananmen crackdown was "necessary" to what I know now, which is the truth.

I was born and raised in Hong Kong but my mum is from mainland China. Growing up she was quite a tiger mum [1/]

and she almost never let me watch TV. She also didn't agree to let me subscribe to any newspaper. My only source of current affairs was mostly her own opinions.

She never liked the student protesters involved in the democracy movement that led up to the #June4th massacre. [2/]

I should point out that she herself was a student at a university in China during 1989, so she actually had first-hand knowledge of how the protests began, progressed and ended. I guess this was one of the (many) reasons why my younger self had believed her so firmly. [3/]

Here's what she told me:
- The protests started with good intentions
- The protests soon escalated into riots because some "bad people" had taken control of it for their own malicious purposes
- Many students only participated because they could skip class when protesting [4/]

What she told me (cont'd):
- Many students thought it was fun to have an excuse to criticise their schools and teachers because of the protests
- My mum did take part in 1 or 2 protests held in her school, but she said she only did it because of "peer pressure" [5/]

What she told me (cont'd):
- She found the protests a bit "idiotic and silly"
- The person she respected the most throughout the 1989 protests was one of her professors who acted as if nothing unusual was happening. He just went on with his teaching and research undeterred. [6/]

In conclusion, she said the killings that happened on #June4th was "very sad" but "necessary". If that didn't happen, China would unravel into absolute chaos and we would never be able to enjoy the prosperity we have today. She also said democracy is very nice and all that, [7/]

but China is a big country with a huge population, so what works for the US doesn't necessarily work for us. So this is what I believed growing up: the CCP made a very painful but necessary decision on June 4th, 1989, so that they could protect the majority of the people. [8/]

Throughout my childhood and adolescence, I've never really given much though about #June4th because I didn't have any reasons to. My Chinese history education covered every dynasties in detail, but everything after WWII was just a blur. [9/]

I have no recollection of being taught anything regarding the Tiananmen Massacre. As mentioned, I didn't get to watch tv or read newspaper very often, so I wasn't entirely aware of the annual vigil that would take place in Victoria Park. [10/]

High school went by and soon I was a freshmen at a local university living in a dorm. We have democracy walls on the ground floor of the dorm for students to share their thoughts on the school and current affairs. A week before #June4th, a title was put up: [11/]

"What does #June4th mean to you" (can't remember exactly but it was something along this line)

Naturally, the responses were heavily critical of how the CCP had handled the crackdown. Many also demanded justice for those who were killed and injured. [12/]

I managed to ignore all these messages because I always assumed only the most extreme of people would write on the democracy wall, and this would never represent what the average student would think.

One passage written by a mainland Chinese student caught my attention. [13/]

It began like so - "To me, China is my birthplace and the mother that nurtures and nourishes me." 「對我而言，中國是我土生土長的地方，是孕育我長大的母親。」It went on to describe how even the best parent would struggle, and sometimes there isn't a perfect solution [14/]

for every problem. Thus, we should not be so critical of the CCP and we should understand that they did the best they could.

I thought to myself, "finally something on the democracy walls that actually makes sense and isn't being extreme". [15/]

So I was very surprised when none of my peers agreed with me. A friend actually scoffed at that passage and told me she would like to ask the author whether he/ she has been brainwashed. [16/]

Only then did I realise that the "extreme" views criticising the CCP were actually widely accepted by my peers. In fact, I was the odd one out. In true teenage fashion of not wanting to be left out, I went on a google spree regarding #June4th . [17/]

I remember watching a documentary on YouTube alone in my dorm room. Soon I was in tears. I had no idea that the crackdown was targeted at peaceful protesters, some even on a hunger strike. I had no idea that Zhao Ziyang, a top CCP official that supported the students, [18/]

was placed under house arrest indefinitely after 1989. I also had no idea that a million Hong Kongers marched in support of the students in Beijing despite a typhoon and heavy rains. I was so ignorant.

Forgotten bits of my mother's stories also started to resurface. [19/]

She said one of her friend at school was a fervent protester. He would actively participate in the marches and assemblies held. He would go up onto the stage and speak passionately about their cause. After #June4th , however, every school began their mini crackdown, [20/]

and my mother's friend was almost expelled. In the end he was spared from expulsion because he "repented" with a 10,000 words essay and he publicly apologised at school. A few years after his graduation, he landed a job in the USA and he has been living there ever since. [21/]

Now I wonder whether his decision to leave China was related to his experience at school. My mother still insists that it was just a career move. Given that my mum thought that the protests were "silly", I wonder how much truth her friend would dare to share with her. [22/22]