Melinda Liu
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Aug 6, 2008 08:08 PM
Today I de-camped at dawn to watch the torch relay in that
you-know-which-famous-square. A couple dozen other journalists and I
were herded to a spot facing Mao’s portrait, We 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
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