Capitalism Comes to Tiananmen Square by M.P. Prabhakaran

We were a group of nine on a 10-day tour of China. The tour began in Beijing on a beautiful April morning in the year 2002. Our first destination was Tiananmen Square.

The roads were already crowded, mostly with bicyclists. There were rows and rows of them, at times taking up the entire width of the road, making it difficult for motorists to overtake. Eight million bicycles and 1.3 million automobiles, which 14 million Beijingers use, were jostling for space in the morning rush hour. It was quite a spectacle.

Tiananmen Square was another half-hour bus ride away. But my mind was already there. The rich history of the square was only part of the reason for it. Tiananmen in Chinese means the Gate of Heavenly Peace. It was the gate of the Forbidden City. The Forbidden City was the seat of imperial power from 1368 to 1911, when the Ming and Qing dynasties ruled China.

It was at the gate of the Forbidden City that Mao Zedong proclaimed the People’s Republic of China, on October 1, 1949. Tiananmen Square, when it was the courtyard of the imperial palace, was much smaller in size than it is today. After the communists came to power in 1949, they tore down most of the buildings around the courtyard that were used by imperial ministries and expanded it into the sprawling Tiananmen Square that one sees today. Today, it is of the size of 60 soccer fields. During the Cultural Revolution (1966-76), Mao used to review parades of up to a million people at the square. When he died in 1976, another million assembled there to pay their last respects.

All those details about Tiananmen Square were impressive, indeed. But my preoccupation with it had to do with something else. It had to do with what happened there in 1989. In the spring of that year, the place was the nerve center of a pro-democracy movement in China. The movement that started in Beijing in April quickly spread to other major cities of the country. Tiananmen Square was the scene of daily demonstrations by students demanding democracy and freedom. A state visit by Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev, who had begun to reform the Soviet communist system through perestroika and glasnost, gave added stimulus to the student movement. Quite coincidentally, the Gorbachev visit also became instrumental in the students’ activities being broadcast live to the whole world. The world media had descended on Beijing to cover the visit.

But their activities ended abruptly on the night of June 3-4 when the army moved in and massacred hundreds of unarmed demonstrators and injured thousands of them. Of those who survived, thousands were arrested and charged with ‘counterrevolutionary’ crimes. Most of them have served, and many are still serving, prison terms. Some were executed.

Thirteen years later, I was on my way to the scene of the tragedy. I couldn’t contain my anxiety. What I watched on television on that infamous June night in 1989 came back to mind: soldiers firing into the crowd; soldiers clubbing demonstrators until they collapsed; and, most vivid of all, a courageous young man defiantly standing in front of an advancing column of army tanks. The courage he displayed that day had captured the imagination of the whole world. Thoughts about him and others who sacrificed their lives to bring democratic reforms to China had taken me to a different world when an announcement from our tour guide brought me down to earth. We were already at Tiananmen Square, the guide said.

The square’s storied past suddenly disappeared from my mind when a crowd of hawkers swarmed us as we alighted from the bus. They were young men and women from nearby villages who made a living peddling their wares among tourists. The crude and aggressive way they did it would put their counterparts in any capitalist country to shame. A few yards away from the vociferous hawkers stood the famous Mao Mausoleum. Inside the mausoleum was lying in state the embalmed body of Mao, the father of communist China.

China’s rapid growth in the capitalist world market may owe nothing to the communist ideals Mao preached. But it owes a great deal to his memory. Outside the mausoleum was a bazaar selling Mao memorabilia -- Mao busts, bags, badges and musical lighters playing short renditions of “The East is Red.” It also sold key rings, thermometers, face towels, handkerchiefs, address books and cartons of cigarettes. Mao, in case anyone wonders why cigarette was sold as part of his memorabilia, was a chain-smoker. About the commercialization of Mao’s name, a commentator has this to say: “Mao might have ruined the Chinese economy, but sales of Mao memorabilia are certainly giving the free market a boost these days.”

The hawkers continued to pester us. They shoved their merchandise in our hands and shouted: “Five dollars,” “Ten dollars,” “Eight dollars.” The price was what they fancied at that moment. But there was no fancying about the currency in which they preferred the transaction. It was American dollar, not Chinese yuan. They wouldn’t take no for an answer. They kept insisting that we quote our price.

Repeating “How much, how much,” the followed us all the way to the gate of the Forbidden City. There they stopped, not because of any fear of Mao whose huge portrait overlooking Tiananmen Square was hung over the gate. They stopped because going beyond the gate required paying the entrance fee. Until 1911, entry was forbidden to all except those on imperial business. Hence its name the Forbidden City. Today, the Chinese government touts it as a great tourist attraction and prefers to call it the Imperial Palace or the Palace Museum.

Once inside the Forbidden City, we felt greatly relieved. We were relieved that the hawkers were no longer trailing us. We were also excited to be in an entirely different world -- the world of the 24 emperors of the Ming and Qing dynasties, their eunuchs, their concubines and their superstitions. The pleasure-loving emperors rarely came out of their inner chambers. The business of running the empire was mostly left to their favorite eunuchs.

The architecture of the Forbidden City abounds in symbolism. The dragon was the imperial symbol, red the imperial color and nine the imperial lucky number. The red door of the Gate of Supreme Harmony, the main entrance to the Forbidden City’s central courtyard, has nine rows of nine nails. The Forbidden City, we were told, has 9999 rooms. We could think of a few better things to do than count to confirm the number and visit them all. But we did visit the most important ones, like the Hall of Supreme Harmony, the Hall of Medium Harmony, the Hall of Preserving Harmony, the Palace of Heavenly Purity, the Hall of Union and Peace and the Hall of Earthly Peace. Each hall is associated with a particular function of the emperor. For example, it was at the Hall of Preserving Harmony that the emperor held banquets and, during the Qing dynasty, conducted rigorous civil service tests for appointment to various government positions. The highest scorer in the test also became the son-in-law of the emperor.

We also made it a point to visit the dwelling area of some of the concubines. Their tiny rooms -- and the tiny beds, tiny tables and chairs, and tiny shoes -- made us wonder how tiny they themselves might have been. How could such tiny beings satisfy imperial desires? I wondered.

After wandering through the Imperial Garden at the northern end of the palace, we came out through the northern gate, the Gate of Divine Prowess. There was nothing divine about what we encountered outside the gate, though. It was very earthly. Another group of aggressive salesmen was waiting there to pounce on us. This group was selling not goods, but services: a quick massage while we were waiting for the bus. Each salesman had a chair with him. There was no saleswoman among them and so the five women in our group were spared the harassment. They concentrated on the four men. “Sit, sit,” they shouted, pointing to the chair, “one dollar, one dollar.”

After a few minutes’ pestering, they gave up on my three American friends and turned their attention to me. Being the only Indian in the group, I might have struck them as a soft target. When the pestering became too much, three women from our group came to my rescue. They formed a protective circle around me and one of them said, “I won’t let my husband spend any more money today.”

That didn’t work either. One of the masseurs found that a small area of my buttocks was still unprotected. He reached that area with one hand and started massaging it. With the other hand, he opened the chair and placed it close to my buttocks. “One dollar, one dollar,” he kept shouting, “sit, sit.”

Fortunately, our bus arrived in a few minutes. We all rushed in. I heaved a sigh of relief and said to my friends: “Ladies and gentlemen, I have good news and bad news. The good news is that capitalism has come to Tiananmen Square. The bad news is that it has come in its crude form.”

Just finished reading the piece. You have a gift for words. Your writing style is excellent and you have a knack of making the reader experience the sights and sounds you encounter. Thanks again for telling our story. Most of the items I purchased from the vendors, save the massage, are in the homes of many of my friends as fond souvenirs from China. Thanks for the memories.

(Mr. Robinson was part of the nine-member group whose travel experience is narrated in the article.)

You have a keen sense of observation and history. This piece bears testimony to that fact. But I do not know whether you welcome the "crude" form of capitalism. I guess you get all the rubbish if you opt for "capitalism" whole hog. Looking forward to seeing some more perceptive articles on China.

I also read Kulamarva Balakrishna's book review, "Buddha Presented as a Challenger of Brahminism." It is so incisive and a treat to read.

Akhil Hussain, Ahmedabad, India

December 17, 2003

I've been reading your articles. Your writing is insightful and witty and forces me to think about current events (which I tend to shy away from). The travel articles are, of course, delightful.

As always, your article, "Capitalism Comes to Tiananmen Square, But in Its Crude Form," was enjoyable and enlightening. Keep up the good work.

Suresh Shottam, New York, New York, U.S.A.

December 17, 2003