Hour after hour passed as Chen Guang stood, gun trembling in his hands, behind the doors of Beijing's Great Hall of the people, waiting for the order to clear Tiananmen Square of its student protesters. It was 1989, and Chen was a 17-year-old soldier from a small town whose life was changed by his role in the bloody crackdown. His account offers a sharply different perspective of the events of June 3 and 4, 1989, when martial law troops fought their way into the center of Beijing, killing hundreds of people, mainly on approach roads into the square. "They said, 'Clear the square!' but we didn't know how to clear it," Chen Guang told me when we met last year. "There were so many people there. How do you make them leave? We were just waiting for orders. Whatever the highers-up said, we'd do." That blind obedience was something he would start to question only much later on. At the time, it never occurred to Chen — having been subject to weeks of political indoctrination — that not obeying
For One Soldier At Tiananmen, A Day 'Never Forgotten'
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June 4: The Day That Defines, And Still Haunts China
As China prepares to mark the 25th anniversary of its brutal repression of protests around Tiananmen Square, its leaders have presided over an unprecedented pre-anniversary crackdown. Rights groups say at least 50 people have been detained, put under house arrest or disappeared . Silence surrounds this anniversary. So, too, does repression: For the first time, activists trying to hold private commemorations have been detained. Police are even warning foreign journalists not to go to Tiananmen Square. Why do the events of June 4 remain so potent? Why is June 4 such a taboo? When I saw him last year, I asked the celebrated artist Ai Weiwei. "Why the [Chinese Communist Party] cannot talk about it? Because that's the time they lost their legitimacy," he replied. To claw back its legitimacy, the party had to offer something to the masses. And that thing turned out to be economic prosperity and material gain. The "grand bargain" is tidily summed up by Chen Ziming, a Beijing academic who
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In Australia, Decades Of Abuse Against Military Recruits Comes To Light
Editor's Note: There are descriptions of rape and other forms of sexual abuse in this story. All that remains is a pair of yellow gates, perched on the crest of a hill dotted with gum trees and cypresses, overlooking the blue sea. The natural beauty of the site stands in stark contrast to the central role it played at the heart of a sex abuse scandal dating back decades. The scandal has roiled Australia's Defence Forces and caused one of the most senior figures in the armed forces to apologize in front of a Royal Commission investigating the abuses. The Army Apprentice School, which once stood on this hill, was, along with a naval institution, HMAS Leeuwin, the site of horrific abuse of 15-year-old and 16-year-old recruits in the 1970s, while senior officers turned a blind eye. Daryl James strides through the parking lot, which was once the parade ground of the Army Apprentice School in Balcombe, Victoria, in southeast Australia, pointing out landmarks. He was 15 and an aspiring
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Inventor Who Made Chinese Easier To Read, Dies
Copyright 2018 NPR. To see more, visit KELLY MCEVERS, HOST: The inventor of Pinyin - that's the system of transcribing Chinese characters in the Roman alphabet - has died. Zhou Youguang had just celebrated his 111th birthday. He was also a political dissident, which made him a thorn in the government's side. Six years ago on this program, NPR's Louisa Lim sent us a profile of Zhou after meeting him at his home in Beijing. We decided to share it with you again. (SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED BROADCAST) UNIDENTIFIED CHILDREN: (Speaking Chinese). LOUISA LIM, BYLINE: A class of Chinese kids learns Pinyin, a system for spelling out Chinese words using the Roman alphabet. This is the first step towards literacy in China, one that hundreds of millions of people have taken over the past half century. Pinyin is largely the work of one extraordinary and extraordinarily modest man. As a young man, Zhou Youguang moved to the States and worked as a Wall Street banker but returned to China after the 1949
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Australia's Prime Minister Is Ousted By His Own Party
Copyright 2018 NPR. To see more, visit NOEL KING, HOST: All right, some interesting news out of Australia this morning. For the sixth time in 10 years, Australia has a new prime minister. This comes after a week of partisan feuding. And the man who finds himself in the top job is a complete surprise. Louisa Lim is reporting for NPR News from Melbourne. LOUISA LIM, BYLINE: It's been a head-spinning week in Australian politics and has produced a new prime minister, who until two days ago swore he didn't want the job. Former Treasurer Scott Morrison won the post in a surprise twist during an internal leadership contest in the ruling Liberal Party. ScoMo, as he's known here, is a conservative famed for his tough stance on asylum-seekers. (SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING) PRIME MINISTER SCOTT MORRISON: My plan for this country is for an even stronger Australia, to keep our economy strong, to guarantee the essentials that Australians rely on, to keep Australians safe from terrorism. LIM: His
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North Korea's Stepped-Up Rhetoric: Is It More Than Talk?
North Korea has cut its last military hotlines with South Korea and yet again stepped up its rhetoric, rattling nerves in the region. Thousands of North Koreans rallied in central Pyongyang, chanting "Death to the U.S. imperialists." Their leader, Kim Jong Un, has been calling for "scores to be settled" with the U.S. This is just the latest phase in a propaganda war. Pyongyang also released a video showing an invasion of Seoul. In the video, North Korean forces fly across the border to destroy American bases in South Korea. Pyongyang also cancelled the armistice agreement that ended the Korean War. But experts are skeptical about North Korea's threats to attack American bases in Guam, Hawaii and the U.S. mainland. "I do not think they are capable of launching this type of attack against the United States," says Kim Heung-kyu, a professor at Sungshin Women's University in Seoul and an adviser to South Korea's last president, Lee Myung-bak. Kim says provocations are likely against South
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For Chinese Women, Marriage Depends On Right 'Bride Price'
Women hold up half the sky, China's Chairman Mao famously said. But in China, the one-child policy and the traditional preference for boys mean that 117 boys are born for every 100 baby girls. By one estimate, this means there could be 24 million Chinese men unable to find wives by the end of the decade. As China's economy booms, the marriage market has become just that: a market, with new demands by women for apartments and cars. But are women really benefiting from their scarcity? Let's Make A Deal It's Derek Wei's big day: his wedding day. He arrives at his bride's house early in the morning, knocking on the door accompanied by his groomsmen. It's locked, as tradition demands. This wedding ritual, called chuangmen has resurfaced recently, along with other traditional practices like demands for a betrothal gift, sometimes known as "bride price." "Red packets! Red packets!" shouts the niece of Lucy Wang, the bride, demanding the men stuff red packets full of money through the door.
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Chasing The Chinese Dream — If You Can Define It
Forget about the American dream. Nowadays, the next big thing is the Chinese dream. In Beijing, it's the latest official slogan, mentioned on the front page of the official People's Daily 24 times in a single week recently. With this level of publicity from the official propaganda machine, the Chinese dream even looks set to be enshrined as the new official ideology. But what exactly is it? According to Chinese President Xi Jinping, the Chinese dream is "realizing a prosperous and strong country, the rejuvenation of the nation and the well-being of the people." He first invoked the concept within two weeks of being elevated to party chief in November. Since then, the Chinese dream has been on everyone's lips, even visiting U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry. "I heard today a very specific discussion from the president of China about the China dream," he said after his weekend visit to Beijing earlier this month. "I think that it's fair to say that the United States wants to do its part
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Chinese Dreams: Freedom, Democracy And Clean Air
"What is your Chinese dream?" With Chinese leaders and the state-run media now talking about the notion of the Chinese dream, we posed this question on our NPR Weibo account . In China, Weibo is the equivalent of Twitter. Within several hours, we received more than 100 replies. Looking over the first 100 answers, 13 mentioned the word "freedom," including LuP whose Chinese dream was that free people would be able to live their lives freely. For those seeking more freedom, Ziweixiong offered an ironic solution: emigration. Taking that even further, Kongyijun summarized his Chinese dream as becoming an American. Others invoked China's Constitution, which has become an acceptable way of hoping that the government will respect the rule of law. One prominent figure who responded this way was Liu Xiaoyuan, a lawyer who has some 88,000 followers on Weibo and is the legal adviser to dissident artist Ai Weiwei. Liu said his dream was realizing what is in the constitution. Bushuobukuai521 dreams
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To Silence Discontent, Chinese Officials Alter Workweek
How do you prevent protests in China? Move the weekend. That's the Orwellian step taken by local authorities in the southwestern city of Chengdu, the capital of Sichuan province. May 4 is a sensitive date commemorating an influential student movement in 1919. It's especially potent in Chengdu, where it marks the fifth anniversary of a protest against the construction of a $6 billion crude oil refinery and petrochemical facility in Pengzhou, 25 miles away. As text messages circulated calling for another protest, authorities decided to fiddle with the calendar: For many, Saturday became a workday, and the day of rest was moved to Monday, May 6. So as Saturday dawned, schoolchildren straggled reluctantly back to class, and employees at government-run work units discovered the day was taken up by urgent meetings. The authorities are fearful of public shows of discontent ahead of the Fortune Global Forum in June. The conference is a coming-out party for the city, crowning the construction
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Five Years After A Quake, Chinese Cite Shoddy Reconstruction
Five years after the massive Wenchuan quake in China's Sichuan province left about 90,000 dead and missing, allegations are surfacing that corruption and official wrongdoing have plagued the five-year-long quake reconstruction effort. The official press is full of praise for how "all Chinese have a reason to be proud of what the concerted efforts of the entire nation achieved in creating a new life for the survivors." But an NPR investigation shows that behind the impressive facade the old problems still exist. The New 'Tofu-Dregs Construction'? At first glance, the new town of Beichuan is an impressive achievement: neat rows of modern six-story houses, a town center with bicycle paths and leisure facilities including a huge sports center with an outdoor swimming pool. This purpose-built town is on flat ground, 15 miles from the devastated old town, where a full two-thirds of the population — about 21,000 people — died, many of them crushed beneath shoddily constructed buildings
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Children Of China's Wealthy Learn Expensive Lessons
In China, having too much money is a relatively new problem. But the rapidly growing country is second only to the U.S. in its number of billionaires, according to Forbes magazine. And now an enterprising company has set up a course for kids born into wealthy families, who are learning how to deal with the excesses of extraordinary wealth. For a moment, it looks like this high-end shopping mall in the southwestern city of Chengdu has been taken over by baby bankers. Kids in maroon neckties, white button-down shirts and khaki trousers are holding a charity sale to raise money for earthquake victims. They're on a course dubbed a "mini-MBA" at China Britain Financial Education. "Even for me, for all our teachers, we sometimes feel very surprised to hear how much pocket money they have," says Paul Huang, the head of research and development. "One girl told our teacher that each year at the spring festival, she might have more than 20,000 U.S. dollars as pocket money." To put that in
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China's Artist Provocateur Explores New Medium: Heavy Metal
The man ArtReview magazine named the most powerful artist in the world is trying his hand at rock stardom. In 2011, the Chinese artist Ai Weiwei spent 81 days in detention. He was later let go and charged with tax evasion . Now, he has released his first heavy metal song, based on his time in police detention. The video for the song, "Dumbass," opens with a scene showing Ai Weiwei sitting in a chair, a black hood over his head. Written on the hood are the words "suspected criminal." As he paces the cell, two guards pace with him. As he sleeps, one stands over his bed. Even seated on the toilet, they are just feet away, always present. These scenes dissolve into the fantasies of one of the prison guards, including plastic blow-up dolls taking Ai's place in his bed, and the whole video ending with Ai, head shaved, dancing in drag. Ai says this dystopian nightmare — shot by cinematographer Christopher Doyle — reflects his detention experience. "At least you shared my nightmares. I had
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Targets Of Disgraced Bo Xilai Still Languish In Jail
It was 5 p.m. on an ordinary Tuesday, and Li Ping was finishing up the company accounts before going to have a facial. She was working for her brother, Li Qiang, who owned one of the biggest private transport companies in Chongqing, a major city in southwestern China. Suddenly, five plainclothes policemen barged into the room. They asked her name, then put a black hood over her head and drove her to a secret interrogation site. Her ordeal had begun. "I sat on a chair 24 hours a day," Li Ping remembers. "My hands were cuffed and my feet fettered. I sat there for seven days. I wouldn't let them take the hood off because when I was wearing it, I could doze off and they couldn't see." Unbeknownst to her, her brother was undergoing the same treatment. Even though he was a millionaire and a politician — a Chongqing city People's Congress member — he spent 81 days handcuffed in a metal chair. This was July 2009, and Li Qiang's arrest was one of the first in Chongqing party secretary Bo Xilai
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For China's Youth, A Life Of 'Darkness Outside The Night'
Xie Peng, a 36-year-old Chinese graphic novelist, spent six years working on his first book, Darkness Outside the Nigh t . It's been praised by China's first Nobel laureate for literature, Mo Yan , as inspiring people on how to deal with life. It's a psychological journey into the world of young Chinese: a world of competition, stress and anxiety, but not necessarily one of politics. His characters, children of the one-child generation, are anxious and alienated. It's a world Xie knows well: He works 12 hours a day as a computer-games animator; overtime work eats up his weekends. Financial pressures bear down on him, since he married recently and bought an apartment. Darkness is a collaboration between Xie, also known as Eliparvic Xie, who drew the pictures, and Hong Kong-based writer Duncan Jepson, who contributed the words. "It's kind of like a Sibelius tone poem, but it was very visual. It was about anxiety; it was about frustration," Jepson says. "It was, at the same time, about
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Calls For Justice For Tiananmen Met With Silence
Ding Zilin has spent the past 24 years on one mission: seeking justice for the death of her son, 17-year-old Jiang Jielian, who was shot in the back by Chinese soldiers on the night of June 3, 1989. This year, her mood is one of black despair. "It's possible that before I leave this world, I won't see justice," the frail 76-year-old told me. We're sitting in the living room of her Beijing home, near a shrine to her son that includes a wooden cabinet holding his ashes. Ding co-founded the group known as the Tiananmen Mothers, after the Chinese government's crackdown on protesters in Beijing's Tiananmen Square on June 4, 1989. The group's 36th open letter — none has received any official reply — speaks of the "general sense of despair" permeating Chinese society, amid dashed hopes that new President Xi Jinping would bring political changes. "What we see, precisely, are giant steps backwards towards Maoist orthodoxy," the letter reads, casting Xi as just the latest Chinese leader who has
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Belly Dancing For The Dead: A Day With China's Top Mourner
File under "one of the oddest jobs ever": professional mourner. China's funeral rituals date back 2,000 years to the Han dynasty, but were banned during the Cultural Revolution as superstition. Now these funeral rituals have become an income source to a select few who stage funeral extravaganzas, marrying ancient Chinese traditions with modern entertainment. "Our entry into the world is splendidly dramatic, so our exit from this world also needs to be spectacular," says Hu Xinglian, who is known professionally as Dingding, or Dragonfly, Mao — a reference to the two high ponytails that bounce above her ears. One of the top professional mourners in the southwestern city of Chongqing, Mao is famous for her kusang , which literally means crying and shouting. She became a mourner more than a decade ago after she lost her job as a department store clerk in downsizing and was casting around for new employment. Now her fame is such that she has been ferried in a Mercedes-Benz 600 miles to
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After 25 Years Of Amnesia, Remembering A Forgotten Tiananmen
Twenty-five years ago, on April 15, 1989, Chinese students were mourning the death of a reformist leader. But what began as mourning evolved into mass protests demanding democracy. Demonstrators remained in Beijing's Tiananmen Square, day after day, until their protests were brutally suppressed by the Chinese army — on June 4. Hundreds died; to this day, no one knows how many. The media captured some of the story of the massacre in Beijing. But Louisa Lim, NPR's longtime China correspondent, says the country's government has done all it can in the intervening 25 years to erase the memory of the uprising. Lim's forthcoming book, The People's Republic of Amnesia, relates how 1989 changed China and how China rewrote what happened in 1989 in its official version of events. Her story includes an investigation into a forgotten crackdown in the southwestern city of Chengdu — which, to this day, has never been reported. It was in Chengdu, which is now a bustling mega-city with a population of
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25 Years On, Mothers Of Tiananmen Square Dead Seek Answers
The elderly woman carefully handed over the tissue-thin white paper slip. The flimsy invoice was her son's death notice. The words hurriedly scrawled on it in blue ink — "shot outside and died" — were proof to her of the crimes of the state. Zhang Xianling's son, Wang Nan, was just 19 years old when he was killed by a single bullet to the head. It was fired by martial law troops sent to clear protesters from Tiananmen Square in the early hours of June 4, 1989. For the past quarter-century, Zhang has stored this bureaucratic receipt in a cardboard shoebox, nestled between her son's childhood photos and his swimming certificate. The 76-year-old Zhang is a tidy, compact woman, a retired aerospace engineer with sensible hair and comfy slacks. Yet her story is one of extraordinary resilience in the face of despair. "I'm a pretty strong person," she told me. "I don't cry often. This kind of scar is with you forever. It's hard not to despair." She is one of the co-founders of the Tiananmen
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For Many Of China's Youth, June 4 May As Well Be Just Another Day
They peered at the photo blankly, leaning to take in the details. "Is it from South Korea?" asked a student studying for a doctorate in marketing, with no flicker of recognition. "Is it Kosovo?" a young astronomy major guessed. The photo they were staring at so intently was the iconic image of China's 1989 pro-democracy movement — Tank Man — which showed a lone Chinese protester blocking a column of tanks rolling down the wide boulevard toward Tiananmen Square in Beijing. The extent of " the Great Forgetting " is such that only 15 out of 100 students at four Beijing universities identified the Tank Man picture as being taken in their capital in 1989. Nineteen students incorrectly guessed it was a military parade, a higher number than those who recognized it. Among the few that knew the photo, its visceral power produced reactions that were sometimes physical; students tensed up immediately, some even shied away from the photo. "This is a sensitive topic," one undergraduate at Peking
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