TONY AND JUDI LAWLER AT TIANANMEN SQUARE 4th June 2019

Tiananmen Square looking to the Forbidden City

During a recent holiday in China we found ourselves in Tiananmen Square on the 4th June, the day of the 30th anniversary of the Tiananmen Square massacre.  We were warned not to say anything controversial or do anything to attract attention to ourselves.   Security was intense and there were an extra 10,000 plain clothes police in the Square.  We were told visitor numbers were down compared to normal as it took so long to get through security, but there were still close to 100,000 visitors in the Square and the adjacent Forbidden City.

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Regular patrols in the Square

Interestingly, rather than student protests there seemed to be greater concern with activists unfurling pro Tibetan flags, which apparently happens reasonably often.
The gardens we saw in every city were superb and we were lucky to be in China in late spring.

What was also interesting was China’s reaction to Americas comments after the Hong Kong rallies.  The headline of an article on page 4 of the China Daily June 15-16 read “US should improve its own human rights record” before going on to tell the US to stay out of China’s internal affairs.  The article backed up what most English speaking Chinese made to us – they were prepared to sacrifice personal freedoms for economic advancement, given that the Communist Party has lifted 800 million people out of abject poverty.

At the Terracotta Warriors in Xian we spied one of the warriors who bore a remarkable resemblance to Judi!