Tiananmen Square

6/4 marks the 20th Anniversary of the Tiananmen Square Massacre. I was nine years old and living in Hong Kong. My family was planning a visit to Beijing later that summer, which was subsequently canceled later that month.

I remember waking up in the middle of the night, my parents quietly huddled in front of our small TV. I think my oldest brother was awake as well. They hushed me back to sleep. Told me I shouldn’t watch TV with them and that I had nothing to worry about. The next day at school, we all wore a black arm bands on our sleeve to mourn the dead. We wore them for a month. I didn’t understand what was happening, but a tower of uncertainty and fear loomed over our heads.

We held a moment of silence at the school yard. I remember a classmate telling me that I was supposed to cry at the moment of silence because something very sad happened. People died. I tried to squeeze tears out, but I couldn't. I was too frightened. I remember hearing talks that soldiers can’t be responsible for killings. The people saw inhuman anger in the soldier’s glazed red eyes that can only be explained by the gunpower the troops were fed before marching into the square. Two decades later, I am still as confused as I was in the summer of 1989.