Irvine -- As the world outside China recalls the brutal massacre in Beijing on 4 June 1989 thirty years ago, we look back at how students, faculty and staff at UCI responded back in 1989 to the student protests in China and the eventual massacre. Significantly those participating in a remembrance event 7 June 1989 outside then-Paley Library were many shocked students from the Peoples' Republic of China. They would not be among those subsequent students from Mainland China who would suffer from Party-enforced "politicized amnesia".
 |
| Participants pack the steps and balcony at UC Irvine three days after the massacre |
At a memorial service speakers paid tribute to those who sacrificed their lives as the People's Liberation Army (PLA) tanks rolled over the student protestors. Objects of scorn were "Paramount Leader" Deng Xiaoping, with one protestor carrying a small bottle, a play on his name. Another was Premier
Li Peng, the "Butcher of Beijing," who had imposed martial law and ordered the PLA to crack down. In contrast, one student raised a pole with stuffed toy turtle, in apparent support of ousted Party Secretary Hu Yaobang, whom Deng had called dismissively "turtle egg Yaobang" when briefed 24 April 1989 by Li Peng about a politburo standing committee meeting in April that year, according to Richard Baum's
Burying Mao. News of the slur had leaked out; calling someone turtle egg is akin to calling someone a bastard. Hu had met with the protesting students and was sympathetic.
Taking photographs at the time of the memorial at UC Irvine in 1989, I remember the shock and grief among those gathered facing a "coffin" and speaker set up borrowed from KUCI, the campus radio station. It was only four years later, in 1993, I would start my weekly Subversity Show on KUCI.
In 1989 the over 4,300 Asian and Asian American undergraduate students made up over a third of the 13,000-strong undergraduate UC Irvine student body (according to a
news article in the
Los Angeles Times, 16 May 1989). Weeks before the massacre, the University announced the hiring of Chinese scholar Pauline Yu, grabbed from Columbia University, to head the recently approved East Asian Literatures & Languages Department. She was slated to start work on 1 July, 1989. The Executive Vice-Chancellor at the time who hired Yu was Tien Chang-lin, who would soon go back to UC Berkeley to become UC Berkeley Chancellor.
The student newspaper
New University did not cover the UC Irvine remembrances on its front page in the next issue. Instead, it issued a humor edition called the New Ewe. (The digitized copy of 12 June 1989 "archived" online at UCI is incomplete, lacking many pages, and superimposed with a later issue).
But a
New University issue of 29 May 1989 did cover UCI students from Taiwan and China participating in solidarity protests in Los Angeles. A photo shows UC Irvine marked on two banners or flags carried, with biology and economics senior Philip Huang and biology junior Tony Lee identified in the caption, which notes that "about eight other UCI students" joined the march in Chinatown Los Angeles the previous Saturday. The marchers went from the Sun Yat-sen statue to the Chinese Consulate.
 |
| UCI students among those gathered at UCI |
 |
| UCI student raises turtle on a pole |
Tony Lee, the incoming Republic of China Student Association president, thought the protests might "at least" make the authorities there more open to democracy. Jennifer Wang, a senior biology major and president of UCI's Chinese Association (for students from China) was working on a letter-writing campaign to members of Congress, hoping to inform Congress "that there are a lot of people who support (the Chinese students) and to get the President... to take a stronger stand."
A vice-president elect of ROCSA, Philip Huang said, "If we get people across the globe to recognize what students want to achieve and to bear pressure on the CHinese government, maybe" Chinese leaders will move for some change.
 |
| Continuation of New University article |
But a UCI Political Science Professor at the time, Mark Petracca, who had taught at Beida the previous year, disgreed, echoing what has become the Party line, in China as well as in Hong Kong, regarding anti-government protests: "I don't know why the Chinese government would pay attention to what a group of students do abroad... Foreign influence in China over the last 150 years has always been suspect." Petracca, having left UCI recently, was not reachable to see if he has changed his mind.
The previous Friday, ROCSA had held a petition drive plus donation collection in Gateway Plaza at UCI. ROCSA sent a support letter the group worked on for two weeks to the
New University, which published it in the same issue. Signed by its President, Wayne Wu, the Taiwan student club commended, in the gendered language of the time, "our fellow brother students" in Mainland China "for their dedication and perseverance in the pursuit of life, liberty and democracy." Although students from Taiwan, "we still feel a sense of brotherhood among the Chinese race, and an unspeakable passion of patriotism toward the country of our forefathers," a call not likely to be echoed in today's Taiwan except by Kuomintang supporters.
"It is the common goal of all Chinese, regardless of background or origin, to one day see a united body of China striving for the progression and advancement of our beloved country." Adding that "what they are fighting for is just and good," the statement ends: "Our spirits, as well as our hearts, will go out to them in an endless wave of support until the endless conflict has been resolved and victory is in sight."
Of course, hopes were extinguished after the army moved in to wipe out the protest just six days after the letter was published.
 |
| ROCSA statement in New University 29 May 1989 |
Seventeen years later, in 2006, Tiananmen student leader Wan Dan would address a packed audience at UC Irvine on China's future. See our
blog entry. He spoke in English. The audio link is
here.
Despite the current influx of many international students from China, many of whom may think 6/4 is just foreign propaganda, there is reason to trust that truth will prevail and justice will eventually prevail. -- Daniel C. Tsang. Photos copyright © Daniel C. Tsang 1989.
