Inscrutable Chinese

Chinese Symbols

The main square in Beijing (once called Peking) is pretty big, but the surrounding Chinese buildings are also big, so the size of the square no longer strikes American visitors as terribly unusual. Tiananmen Square has hosted periodic riots and demonstrations for a long time, with four or five notable ones taking place in recent memory during the past hundred years, many more, of course, in the last thousand years, after each of which it settles down to its usual resemblance to a deserted parking lot in a large shopping center. The most recent riot took place on June 4, 1989. Something like a million students from forty universities demonstrated, provoked military retaliation, and ended up with uncountable thousands of them killed, imprisoned, and mistreated. We are told the demonstration was in support of a national leader who had just died, but who had previously been ousted because of his support for greater personal liberty. The students wanted his name restored to a place of honor. In retrospect, we can see that although the Tianenmen massacre was followed by a period of harsh repression, in time the Chinese nation moved in the direction of greater personal and economic freedom. So, the face-saving description of this matter could be that it was a defeat, a punishment, or a victory, hard to say.

Although there was enough modern technology around so almost every American watched this horrible event on television, read about it the next day in their newspapers, or had at least seen several pictures of the scene. Eye-witness news, we call it. There may have been a number of Philadelphians at the scene, but they have not made themselves known in fifteen years, except for the Sundermans. Doctor Sunderman was emeritus professor of Medicine at Thomas Jefferson University, and because of his notable scientific career had been able to visit many Chinese friends in the Chinese medical community. His prolonged tour in 1989 ended up in Beijing, and he had arranged that he would give a report on his tour when he got back.

It happens that Jefferson has the tradition of a weekly staff meeting at 8 AM. Because of jet lag most travelers have no interest in sleep when they land. So, Dr. Sunderman get in a cab at the airport, and arrived to sit in the front row of the crowded conference room, just as it began. Every person in the room, of course, knew about the Tianenmen massacre, and there was a good deal of interest in hearing from someone who had just got off the plane from there. The medical part of the meeting was shortened a few minutes, and Sunderman was called on to give his impressions of the current state of Chinese medicine.

Everyone in the room knew about the massacre, except Dr. Sunderman. As he began to talk, praising the Chinese for their progress and humanity, and particularly praising the glories of Beijing and its famous Tianenmen Square,it slowly began to dawn on the audience what had happened. In his last day or two in China, the authorities had isolated the foreigners from the news, hustled them aboard airplanes, and kept them away from newspapers. The chairman of the Jefferson meeting was not up to coping with this unanticipated awkwardness, and simply let the speaker run on, increasingly puzzled by inappropriate squirming and muttering of his audience. He was finally thanked, and allowed to leave the room, to find out about the matter however he might.

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