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Tiananmen Square: a Political History of Monuments

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Tiananmen Square: a Political History of Monuments WU HUNG Tiananmen Square: A Political History of Monuments A FEW MONTHS AFTER JUNE 1989, we began to view the Tiananmen movementas history,and as history,the eventis transformedinto words-chron- icles, memorial speeches, analyses-and images of three kinds. Recordedimages are subjects of photo journalism, broadcast to us in "full coverage,"edited and preservedfor documenting or reconstructingthat heated period of fiftydays and nights(16 April-4 June). A condensedimage is a "particular[that] represents the more general";' it is extracted from chronologyto become a symbol: a single recorded image-a young man in a whiteshirt standing motionless before a row of slowlymoving tanks. The precise timeof the eventis rarelyremembered, and no one even knows the brave man's name. Printedon magazine covers,posters, and T-shirts,however, this stillscene stands above the rest and embodies them. Then there is an enrichedimage-Tiananmen Square, a vast open ground centered on and defined by a series of monumentsconstructed over a period of some five hundred years. Many Westernersperhaps only recentlylearned its name, but to everyChinese froma college freshmanto the country'sparamount leader, the Square has always been the center of politicaltension and attention. A series of mass movements taking place there have become landmarks in modern Chinese history:the demonstrationon 4 May 1919 in protestagainst the Treatyof Versailleshanding over Chinese lands to Japan; the patrioticmarch on 18 March 1926; the demonstrationon 9 December 1935, whichstarted the resis- tance movement against the Japanese invasion; the anti-autocraticmovement during the Civil War on 20 May 1947; the mass memorial to the formerprime ministerZhou Enlai on 5 April 1976; and finallythe 1989 studentuprising. Par- allel to these grass-rootsmovements runs another sequence of "demonstrations" mobilizedby authorities to displaypower: the VictoryMarch in 1900 bythe Allied Armycelebrating their occupation of Beijing;2Gen. Zhang Xun's grand ritualon June 1917 to commemoratehis restorationof the imperial order; the establish- ment of the puppet regime under Japanese patronage; the parade celebrating the recaptureof Beijing byRepublican troops; the foundingof CommunistChina on 1 October 1949; and, finally,the elaborate National Day parade shortlyafter the People's Liberation Army blood-washed the Square in 1989. As these two 84 REPRESENTATIONS 35 * Summer 1991 ? THE REGENTS OF THE UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA This content downloaded on Sun, 3 Feb 2013 23:56:42 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions chains of eventsare tied to Tiananmen Square, everythingthere partakes of the fate of the state and of its one billion people. Correspondingly,the Square par- takes of everyevent and consequentlychanges its meaning. Its vast vistarecords nothing,and itsmonuments are too complex and diverseto express any coherent ideology. As historicalmemory itself,the Square is renewed and enriched by ongoing eventswhile at the same timeencompassing them. This essay is about the Square, an architecturalcomplex thatprovides a locus of coalescence for political expression, collectivememory, identity, and history. The Square has been and will continue to be a prime visual means of political rhetoricin modern China to address the public and actually to constitutethe public itself. The Gate In the earlymorning of 30 May 1989, Beijing'sresidents awoke to find a new statue of some seven meters high in the Square. Representinga young woman holding a torchwith both hands, itraised the totalnumber of monuments in the Square to six. Along the centralaxis, Tiananmen or the Gate of Heavenly Peace enclosed the Square to the north; above its closed and guarded central passage a giant portraitof Chairman Mao stared silentlyat the crowds below. Directlyfacing Mao was the new statue-the Goddess of Democracy-who after a few hours would engage the wondermentof the world. Then there was the Monument to the People's Heroes, betterknown in China as the Monument to the People's Martyrs,standing in the center of the Square like a needle on an enormous sundial. South of the Monument was Mao's massive Mausoleum, reportedlystill holding the Great Helmsman'scorpse in a crystalcase. Away from the centralaxis, two enormous buildings-the Museum of National and Revolu- tionaryHistory and the Great Hall of the People-flanked the Square to the east and west. One rarelyfinds such a strangeassemblage of monumentsof contra- dictorystyles in such orderlyformation. Their architecturaldisharmony and dis- ciplined layout signifycompetition for dominance, not cooperation to define a common space. The war of monumentsin the Square began in 1949. When Chairman Mao ascended Tiananmen and declared the birthof the People's Republic of China, the ancient building was reborn. Before this moment, Tiananmen was, as its name signifies,a gate. Built firstduring the Ming (1368-1644) and reconstructed during the Qing (1644-19 1 1), itwas one of a seriesof gateslocated on the capital's north-southaxis as the formalentrance to a numberof subcities-the Outer City, the Inner City,the Imperial City,and the Forbidden City (figs. 1 and 2).3 Tian- anmen's particularfunction and symbolismwas understood in a larger architec- tural complex knownas Beijing,4and in particularin itsconnection with the walls TiananmenSquare 85 This content downloaded on Sun, 3 Feb 2013 23:56:42 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions '-i? 3 1 m ': i - FIGl;URE 1. Beijing in 1945, viewed fromtlhe south. Re)producedfiom Nigel C(ameronalndl( Brian Brake, Peking: A llfe ol/fhreeT (Citiesl (New York, 1965), fig. 65, )bypermission. FIGU-(RE 2. 'Ilhe central axis o(fBeijing: 1) \bngdlingmlenl,the Inain gate to the outer citv: 2) Qianmen, the mail gate to the inner citx: 3) l'iananmen, the main gate to the iInl)crial ('itv: 4) the throne hall: 5) Di'anmen. the northerngate of tlle im)erial city. and other gates. Indeed, gates and walls were two principalfeatures of a capital in traditionalChina because theyboth shaped a cityand made it meaningful.The walls created repeated enclosures, one nesting inside another,while the gates allowed a processionpath to penetratethe walls and thusto linkthe broken spaces into a continuum. Without much difficultyhistorians have traced this design back to China's antiquity;a diagram in a 2500-year-oldritual canon showsa verysimilar pattern (fig. 3).5 The differencebetween imperial Beijing and its remote ancestor is not its structurebut itsinfinite horizontal expansion: wallsand gates were added and 86 REPRESENTATIONS This content downloaded on Sun, 3 Feb 2013 23:56:42 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions the centralaxis was elongated. Althoughsuch an unbrokentradition in cityplan- ning maybe admirable,one wonderswhy a culturewould so insistentlyreject any fundamentalchange. In particular,what did these gates and walls mean and why did theybecome an imperialobsession? Perhaps the only logical explanation for this obsession was a political tenet that power could be maintainedonly by keeping it secret(fig. 4). The walls were layers of barriers that repeatedly separated the "inner" from the "outer";6 the gates led to (but did not display) somethingdeep inside the labyrinthof rectan- gles. The walls were fiftyfeet thick; a passageway resembled a dark, tomblike tunnel. When the gates slowlyswung open during a grand audience, ministers and noblemen fellon theirknees in awe before passing throughthem toward the emperor's throne. Outsiders remained outside; otherwisethey would have an access to secrecyand power. The "thing"concealed behind the walls and gates was preciselythe emperor -the embodimentof the imperialorder-who could maintainhis power because he was invisiblefrom the public space and because he, and onlyhe, saw everything outside fromhis privatespace: . ___... - ?..,. ...... ... -, .. ... i ,;I .Z. ..:.../ ** : .. R .. -. .. ..:^^m--<*^****^"****^- - ci.;:O.i: ...spi. i;'",I I..;; , . .*.. :. FIGURE 3. Idealized plan of the Zhou capital. From Yongledadian (The FIGURE 3. Idealized plan of the Zhou capital. From Yongledadian great encyclopedia of the Yongle period; Beijing, 1959),(The1959), 9561.4b. FIGURE 4. Tiananmen, detail of a paintingby Zhu Bang, c. 1500. Reproduced fromJ. D. Spence, TheSearch for Modern China (New York, 1988), by permission. TiananmenSquare 87 This content downloaded on Sun, 3 Feb 2013 23:56:42 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions The Wayof theruler lies in whatcannot be seen,its function in whatcannot be known. Be empty,still, and idle,and fromyour place of darknessobserve the defects of others. See but do notappear to see; listenbut do notseem to listen;know but do notlet it be known that you know.... Hide your tracks,conceal your sources, so that your subordi- natescannot trace the springsof youraction. Discard wisdom, forswear ability, so that yoursubordinates cannot guess what you are about.Stick to yourobjective and examine theresults to see howthey match; take hold of thehandles of governmentcarefully and gripthem tightly. Destroy all hope,smash all intentionof wrestingthem from you, allow no manto covetthem.7 Such a politicalphilosophy was so powerfullymanifested in the design of imperial Beijing that even an early-twentieth-centuryvisitor could not help being bewil- dered by it when walking through its walls and gates: "He passed through one blank wall and beneath one brooding gatehouse afteranother, to findbeyond it only a featurelessavenue leading to yet another wall and gate. Realitywas
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