It was 6/4, 1989. I was in the 3rd grade and in the middle of class when teachers abruptly sent us home. I don't remember any explanation given, but we were happy to end school early. On the school bus home, I remember seeing swarms of panicked people on the streets and distinctly remember a man with blood covering half of his face. When I got home, my mom told me that there was gunfire in front of Tiananmen Square...something about college-age kids being killed by the military.
That night, my mom and I were at my dad's office waiting for his phone call. He was already in the U.S. We never got a call because all the phone lines were down. All I could hear, as my mom and I fell asleep in his office, was the distant sound of non-stop gun shots.
Some reports claim that some 3,000 protesters were killed. A massacre, indeed.
This is something else I find conflicting about my home country - a country that places so much emphasis on education and intellectual property but in turn, do not know how to handle intellectuals when they use their knowledge to question their country. How do you expect to encourage your citizens to learn as much as possible, but try to limit what they're exposed to at the same time. It's like telling a dog to explore the yard, but making him stay in his cage.
Tiananmen Square Massacre
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