Tiananmen Square: a Political History of Monuments

Home , Chinese Shadows, Goddess of Democracy, Hu Yaobang, Tiananmen, Tiananmen Square

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 partakes 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 disciplined 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 architectural 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 cityplanning 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 soft- ening into a dream. His mind,so long attentiveto a distantgoal somewhereahead in thislabyrinth of straightlines, so long expectinga climax thatnever seemed to come."8 This old architecturalsymbolism, however, collapsed-at least on the sur- face-when Mao appeared above Tiananmen on 1 October 1949. To the thou- sands of commoners and soldiers gathered under the Gate, it meant that the hidden power had finallyemerged and submitteditself to them.No othergesture could more effectivelyprove the newness of the Communistleadership, and no other act could more convincinglyseal the titleof People's Republic. From that moment Tiananmen was no longer one of many gates, but a monumentwhere yearlyparades would refreshthe memoryof the country'sfounding. To become a monument,Tiananmen had to be isolated and extractedfrom itstraditional context. This process firsttook place on a symboliclevel: after1949 the Gate became an emblem,9its image replicated in isolation on the country's banknotesand coins,on the frontpages of all governmentdocuments, and in the nation's insignia (which was again hung under the eaves of the Gate and thus epitomized its newlygained monumentality;fig. 5). Tiananmen was then physi- cally detached from the rest of the city.From the 1950s to the 1960s, Beijing's walls gradually disappeared from sight.'1The north gate of the Imperial City, called Di'anmen or the Gate of EarthlyPeace, whichbalanced Tiananmen to the south,was leveled to the ground, and withit vanished the dualisticstructure that had characterizedBeijing's traditionaldesign. Almost all the magnificenttower gates of Beijing's Inner and Outer Cities were demolished as soon as the Great ProletarianCultural Revolutionbegan in 1966. The common mind could hardly understand the reason for this massive destruction:the land freed from these ancient buildings seemed incommensurate with the energy and manpower wasted in the project. Some brave historiansprotested, while others proposed compromises such as turningthe citywalls into a continuous high-risepublic

88 REPRESENTATIONS

This content downloaded on Sun, 3 Feb 2013 23:56:42 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions V-1i"(J141R , _ _fi~ 0 FIGURE 5. Emblem of the _A//,,XPeople's Republic of _China. _,i From Renmin ~" X/~k~. . ~.''teI) | huabao(People's pictorial; ':.':t /0 ,"/"X [\S, I $ Beijing) 1, no. 4 (October 1950).

garden. But all these effortswere in vain: Beijing had to be a "revolutionary"city, and revolutionmeant, in Mao's own words,"violence against" the old order. From this giant obliterationemerged the new Tiananmen. Whenever a wall disappeared, the Gate became bigger and grander, its yellow roof and purple columns brighter.Whenever Beijing was freed fromone of its traditionalenclo- sures, the lightof the Gate, hence that of the Chairman and the Party,radiated furtherto everycorner of the country.An immenseavenue was then opened up, runningeast to west in frontof the Gate and buryingthe old north-southImpe- rial Way underneath. Mass parades (and all traffic)had to proceed under Tian- anmen's shadow,not throughits doors. No one could ever claim thatTiananmen was stilla gate. Once the buildingstood as an individualentity, its monumental form became analogous withthe new rulingpower and rulingfigure. It was anthropomorphized, and the logic of its anthropomorphizationwas simple: as both the Gate and Chairman Mao were primarysymbols of new China, theywere naturallyequated. A huge portraitof Mao was installedon the Gate and was updated year afteryear. The 1949 portrait,showing Mao in a three-quarterview facing upward, was soon replaced by a series of frontalimages directlystaring at the onlooker. The Gate was thus also constantlyupdated; togetherwith the Chairman it grew older and became more respectable.Most tellingly,after Mao died in 1976 a memorialcer- emony was held in frontof the Gate. Tiananmen's towerwas leftempty; all the Partyleaders stood below the Gate on a platformbuilt for the occasion. The ceremony reached its climax when the leaders, as well as 500,000 "revolutionary masses" behind them,faced the Gate in silenttribute.

TiananmenSquare 89

This content downloaded on Sun, 3 Feb 2013 23:56:42 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions The Square

The concept of a "square" (guangchang,meaning literallya "broad ground") is politicalin the People's Republic of China. Everycity, town, or village musthave a square forpublic gatheringson important(thus political) occasions- holiday parades and pageants, announcements of the Party'sinstructions, and struggle rallies against enemies of the people. Big or small, a square is always conjoined witha platformbuilt for the leaders (of a city,a town,or a village) to reviewthe mass assemblies.A square thus becomes a legitimateplace for people to meet theirleaders (or vice versa), an indispensablejoint betweenthe high and the low, the brain and its body. As various squares become established in all administrativecenters, they comprise a "square system"corresponding to the hierarchyof the state-a parallel that unmistakablyindicates a square's official function to shape a desirable "public." As the "enemy-classelements" (which change theircontent from campaign to campaign) are generallyexcluded from these public meetings or are only present as targetsof accusation, the masses' identityas "the people" is proved by the square. Among all the platformsnone is more privilegedthan Tiananmen, the stand of the country'sparamount leader. Logically,there mustbe a square-in factthe square-of unmatchable status for the public. The Gate gains its meaning by reinterpretinga traditionalform, but the Square's significancecan be derived only fromits physicalimmensity. Mao must have been troubled by what he saw fromTiananmen's balconyin 1949: even thoughthe ground below was hurriedly expanded before the country'sfounding ceremony, still only some seventythou- sand people could parade throughit. Shortlyafterward he ordered a new square built,a square "big enough to hold an assemblyof one billion."" His words were explained by an officialarchitect: "The Chairman's ocean-broad mind flies beyond the confinesof the old wallsand corridorsand penetratesinto the future. It is exactlyhis visionthat reveals the directionfor constructing the new Square." 2 Behind these bombasticwords is a simple idea: only the biggestpublic, thus the largest square, could match the supreme power of the Chairman and the Gate. Mao's ambitionwas never realized. (Despite all efforts,the new Square completed in 1959 could only [!] hold 400,000 people, and, ratherironically, it was only after the Chairman's death that the Square was furtherexpanded to hold 600,000.) The problems involved in creatinga square of some fiftyacres in the heart of Beijing, which is one of the most densely populated citiesin the world, were more one of destructionthan construction.New monuments,however massive in size, were achieved in shortorder: we are told that the Great Hall of the People and the Museum of National and RevolutionaryHistory were completed withinten months,and that Mao's mausoleum was finishedwithin half a year. It took three decades, however,to destroyall the old structuressurrounding the old Tiananmen Square, includingwalls, gates, roads, steles,artificial rivers,

90 REPRESENTATIONS

This content downloaded on Sun, 3 Feb 2013 23:56:42 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions bridges, sculptured wooden arches called pailo, and numerous administrative buildings left from Imperial China and foreign occupation. This Herculean destructionwas again considered worthwhile:"For the need of the new age, the old Square had to be reformed and replanned as soon as New China was founded."'3 Like the Gate but in a differentway, the Square emerged from a demolitionof the past. In the old days Tiananmen faced a T-shaped walled square (fig.6). The two arms of the T stretchedeast and west fromthe Gate, while the verticalbar of the T extended south toward the Front Gate of the Inner City.Two groups of gov- ernmentministries flanked this square. To the east,among others,stood the Min- istries of Rites, Industry, Population, and Medicine, and to the west, the Departmentsof the Five Armies,Imperial Guard, Police, and Justice.A popular saying went: "Those to the east govern our lives; those to the west govern our death."14 This traditional layout, therefore,was already based on the opposition between the ruler and the ruled. Located at the top of the T, Tiananmen appeared as the head or the brain. Rays of the emperor's power and wisdom radiated from the Imperial City through the Gate to every departmentof the empire. Such an architecturalsymbolism was highlightedby yearlyrituals held there. The grandest of all ceremonies was the issuing of imperial edicts when a new emperor was enthronedor a royalheir was born. The Ministerof Riteswould receive the edict fromthe throne hall in the Forbidden City.Placed on a "cloud tray"under the imperialyellow umbrella, the edict would be carried in a portable "dragon pavilion" onto Tiananmen's gate-tower; officialsand selected commoners would kneel down facingthe emperor behind the Gate. The edict would

S--' . FIGURE 6. of the ....'OI Drawing EP|T^ ...... pp^*P . .: I Qing DynastyTiananmen Wilm,,muzss 11 | E Square. From Zhao Luo and mml~ i s Shi Tiananmen H1 I T L g T 3 Shuqing,

T3a I,,;! , O^ 1. ..

111 w~~~~~Tiananmen Square 91 . QIII ft5Q B9 [

TiananmenSquare 91

This content downloaded on Sun, 3 Feb 2013 23:56:42 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions I T ' 1i iH^. ;.k i . :..A;.. *:i :^i "i' ~:"'i

XX-s4..XE_0......

FIGURE 7. The 1959 National Day rally;captions read: topleft, "Chairman Mao on Tiananmen is wavinghis hand to the 400,000 people in the rally";middle left, "Chairman Mao sees the young generation";bottom left, "Chairman Mao sees the growingforce of peace"; right,"Chairman Mao sees the masses who are wavingtheir hands at him." From Renminhuabao 1, no. 1 (July 1950).

then be put in the mouth of a gilded wooden phoenix thatwas lowered bya rope to another "cloud tray"below. Again itwould be put in a "dragon pavilion"carried to the Ministryof Rites,where it would be copied and sent around the country. What we find in this ornate performanceis how the ancient Tiananmen Square worked. Rather than forminga staticpair, Tiananmen and the Square, hence the ruler and his subjects,communicated with each other through rites. Neither the ruler nor the subjects, however, were present: they were represented-the formerby an elaborate set of ritualparaphernalia and the latter bychosen representatives.While any trace of individualitywas obliteratedin this ritual (even the representativeshad to kneel withtheir faces to the ground), the monolithicpower of the imperialauthority was enhanced. We may wonder how much the mass parades in modern Tiananmen Square differfrom this ancient rite. It is true that the ruler of the new dynastyhas emerged above the Gate, and thatthe assembliesin the Square are several thousand timesbigger than the old ones. But the basic logic of ritualremains. In those

92 REPRESENTATIONS

This content downloaded on Sun, 3 Feb 2013 23:56:42 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions grand modern operas, such as Mao's frequentreviews of the Red Guards that mobilized the Cultural Revolution,the enormous Square was covered with"rev- olutionarymasses" (fig.7). I imagine thatlooking down fromTiananmen's tower, a half millionmen and women musthave formeda vastocean; on itssurface red flags and slogans were waving and floating.The size of this crowd seemed immense, yet any attemptto identifyit as "the people" would have been illu- sionary: it stillconsisted of representativeschosen by the man standing on the Gate through an elaborate bureaucratic system. I then imagine the camera changing its angle to some individualsin the Square: in the remotedistance they would hardly be able to make out the Chairman's tinysilhouette. Yet theycried out withjoy and excitement,because the Chairman was there, above the Gate mergingwith his giant portrait,and because the Chairman, or his portrait,was looking at them. A desirable "public,"not "the people," was thus formulated. The Square has another,less glamorous,aspect thatcan be again traced to its past. In traditional China the ground before Tiananmen was also a place of death. According to Imperial Law, twicea year a High Court would be set in the Square's T-shaped enclosure to reviewall death sentences.Every fall the accused would be brought to a row of officialsto answer a simple question: "Is your sen- tence just or unjust?" Most of the sentences were confirmed;according to one source, many prisoners had been tortured so severelythat they could hardly speak.'5 Occasionally there was a lucky person, and in this case he would be received by his relativesoutside the Square. A stringof hawthornwould be hung around his neck, indicatingthat this person had at least one more year to live, because his case would be reviewedagain the next fall.'6 This ritewas abolished afterthe fallof the Qing; the new rulersof China only updated the ancient edict-issuingceremony associated withthe Gate. For more than two decades theirrule seemed to have succeeded. The endless pageants in the Square presented a disguised realityof a contentedpeople cheeringat their leaders. Then, in 1976, everythingsuddenly changed: the Chairman died; the Gate was empty; the heated Cultural Revolution had turned into a nightmare; the Gang of Four was about to seize power. From all directionspeople came to the Square, of their own will and to express theirown will. When theytried to speak out and prove theywere "the people," theywere arrestedand beaten. Suddenly the colorfulpuppet shows ended; the Square was once again associated withoutlaws, the accused, and death. Suddenly the submerged dark side of the Square jumped back out. The age-old memoryof Tiananmen Square as a place of public abuse and humiliationwas refreshed,challenging the officialmyth surrounding the purple Gate. In retrospectwe realize that the antagonism between the ruler and the ruled had been always there, in the very opposition between a public ground and a privilegedplatform, and it will continue to exist as long as the regime is unable to identifythis opposition.

TiananmenSquare 93

This content downloaded on Sun, 3 Feb 2013 23:56:42 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions The Monument

But when people went to the Square in 1976 to hold the firstpublic demonstrationin post-1949 Beijing, theydid not passivelyfill in the vast Square. They gathered around the Monument to the People's Heroes and turned this monument,which had been part of the regime'spolitical rhetoric, into theirown symbol. Completed in 1958, the Monument to the People's Heroes rises 37.4 meters high at the centerof the Square (fig.8). Topped witha smallroof in the traditional Chinese wudianstyle, the graniteobelisk resemblesan infinitelyenlarged stele,a common formof stone structureused in traditionalChina for commemorating importantevents and for engravingauthorized versionsof the Confucian Clas- sics. While the Monument itselfis builtof stone blocks,a single-pieceslab of sixty tons is inserted in the frontside to bear a gilded inscriptionwritten by Mao in 1955: "Eternal gloryto the people's heroes."'7 A longer texton the back drafted by Mao in 1949 is shown in Zhou Enlai's calligraphy.The east and west sides of the obelisk are carved with "red stars,"flags, pines, and cypresses,identified as symbolsof "eternalrevolutionary spirit." Directlyunder the verticalcolumn is a double plinth.The upper plinth is decorated on all four sides withcarvings of eightlarge wreathsof peonies, lotus, and chrysanthemums-symbolsof nobility,purity, and perseverance.Ten white marble reliefsbuilt into the lower plinthnarrate the revolutionaryhistory of the Chinese people since 1840. Each reliefis two metershigh, and the 170 figures depicted are all life size. None of these figures,however, is an identifiableper- sonage. As the designersemphasized, the strengthof these carvingsderives from the figures'collective anonymity.'8 Two flightsof stairs on a double terrace lead visitorsto these reliefs.Both layersof the terrace are surrounded by whitemarble balustrades; and the floor plan of the lower one, whichcovers an area of more than three thousand square meters,derives its shape froma crab apple blossom. To the north,the Monument faces Tiananmen Gate over the open vista of Tiananmen Square; to the south, hundreds of large pine treesin forty-fourrows cover the area between the Mon- ument and the FrontGate.'9 The designingprocess of the Monumentstarted in 1949, but the stone structure was only unveiled a decade later. Considering its rather simple structural and technicalrequirements, as well as the amount of manpower thatthe regime could easily muster,the project took an unusually long period (as already men- tioned, other far more complex buildingsin the Square were all finishedwithin a year). The problems involved were more those of theologythan aestheticsor technology.A few published reportsof the project,though all followingthe official interpretation,allow us to glimpsesome major debates regardingits location, form,and decoration, and enable us to speculate on the motivationbehind the finalplan.20

94 REPRESENTATIONS

This content downloaded on Sun, 3 Feb 2013 23:56:42 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions FIGURE 8. Drawing of the Monument to the People's Heroes. From Wu Liangyong, "Renmin YingxiongJinianbei de i chuangzuo chengjiu" (The I architecturalachievement of the it Monument to the People's , Heroes), Jianzhuxuebao XI (Architecturaljournal) 2 (1978), fig. 10. _ 'o'1- T '

The location of the Monument,as one findsit now in the Square, has aroused the strongestcriticism from art historians and architectsall over the world. Calling the granitegiant a "good sneeze" in "a concerthall atjust the mostexqui- site and magical point of a musical phrase," the French art historianSimon Leys has expressed his outrage at its assault on the sublime architecturalharmony of old Beijing ("the brutal silliness,""the Maoist rape of the ancient capital," a "revolutionary-proletarianobscenity in the middle of the sacred way,"an "insig- nificantgranitic phallus receiv[ing]all its enormous significancefrom the blas- phemous stupidityof itslocation").21 China's Communistleaders, however,might take his outrage as a joke, for Leys was denouncing exactlythe effectthey were seeking. "Someone thinks,"we read in an officialdocument, "that the view along [Beijing's] central axis .. . should not be blocked. But throughstudying we have recognized thatthe axis of the presentSquare is no longer the past Imperial Path. The importance of the Monument will be most effectivelyaccentuated by this central position."22 This passage, writtenby a chief designer of the Monument in 1978, is mis- leading, however,on two accounts: it seems to suggest 1) that the location was determinedby him and his professionalcolleagues and 2) thatthis decision came after the new Tiananmen Square was completed. An examination of historical evidence immediatelydiscloses the falsenessof both impressions:the location of the Monument was decided by none other than the Partylong before the expansion of the Square and even before the establishmentof the People's Republic of China. As soon as Mao's armytook over Beijing in March 1949, a special consul- tative committeewas organized under the Party'sleadership to design a com- memorativemonument for the futureregime. The firstquestion delivered to the committeewas about the monument'slocation. Differentopinions were offered:

TiananmenSquare 95

This content downloaded on Sun, 3 Feb 2013 23:56:42 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions some membersof the committeesuggested placing the monumenteast of Tian- anmen or west of Beijing; others proposed to build it atop an ancient structure such as the Front Gate or the Duanmen behind Tiananmen Gate. The last plan was simply(and perhaps rightly)called "absurd" by Mao. Taking the matterinto his own hands, Mao's chief assistantZhou Enlai "worked hard on the issue. He took special tripsto Tiananmen's tower,from where he contemplatedthe square and studied the relationshipbetween Tiananmen and the [future]Monument in termsof theirdistance and relativeproportion. He finallyarrived at the decision to build the Monument on the axis between Tiananmen and Zhonghuamen [a gate destroyedin 1976 to make room for Mao's tomb]."23This plan was passed unanimously in the First Plenary Session of the Chinese People's Political Con- sultativeConference on 30 September 1949, the day before the new republic's founding ceremony.In the same meetingMao also wrote an inscriptionfor the Monument (whichwas laterengraved on itsback). Coming out of the conference hall all the chief officialsof the government(who had received theirposts in the same meeting)went directly to a spot south of Tiananmen Gate, where Mao took a shovel and laid the Monument'sfoundation stone. The actual planning and constructionof the Monumentstarted in 1952. The designers now faced the question of orientation.Should the Monument face south according to a classical rule in Chinese cityplanning? In such a position it would become one of many south-facingbuildings punctuatingthe central axis of Beijing. This plan, agreed upon by all members of the planning committee, was changed at the last minutebefore the centralslab (for Mao's inscription)was insertedinto the obelisk.An instructioncame down fromthe top: the Monument should face north. Again it was Zhou Enlai who made this decision with Mao's special permission. This change was made withgood reason in the new ideological context.After having been turned around towardTiananmen, the Monument became a direct counterpartof the Gate, and these twojuxtaposing structuresthen embraced the Square in the middle. But more profoundly,the new scheme signifiedan inten- tion to group all architecturalelements in the Square into a self-containedunit independent fromthe restof Beijing. Once thisunit was formed,a new perspec- tiveand a new hierarchicalstructure of the cityemerged: the Square became the meeting point of the four directionsand thus the heart of the capital and the whole country.The same scheme also meant that all architecturalforms in the Square had to be planned according to theirinternal coherence. They provided one another withstandards and referencesin form,proportion, orientation, and distance. The Monument had to be viewed from the Gate; the Gate had to be approached from the Square; and the Square only became real when it was enclosed by the Gate and the Monument (and lateralso bythe Great Hall and the museum to the east and west). In drawinga figurea child firstpaints a head and then adds arms and legs; in modern Beijing the Tiananmen Complex has deter- mined the restof the city. 96 REPRESENTATIONS

This content downloaded on Sun, 3 Feb 2013 23:56:42 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions a b c

d e f g

h i j

I- / k I m

FIGURE 9. Designs of the Monument to the People's Heroes. From Wu Liangyong,ibid., figs.6-8.

But a central question stillremains: What is the Monument-both as itself and in itsphysical context? We can pursue the answerin two differentways. First, the Monumentembodies some fundamentalvalues of the Partypositively insisted upon by the authoritiesthroughout the planning process. Second, its values are also realized negativelythrough the screening,rejecting, and criticizingof com- peting approaches (fig. 9). These two parallel processes, which had already become clear in deciding the Monument'ssite and orientation,continued to control the planning. A third debate centered on the form. Some architectskept proposing theirnaive plans blind to the Party'sneeds. They designed gatelikelow buildings witha heavy roof and open passages (fig.9d); the idea was stillto har- TiananmenSquare 97

This content downloaded on Sun, 3 Feb 2013 23:56:42 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions monize the Monumentwith the old city.These plans were mostseverely criticized as attemptsto "restore ancient ways"; the Monument, according to the official approach, should be a solid high rise,a formthat could "best representthe lofty spiritand unsurpassable achievementsof the people's heroes."24In the next stage of selection,therefore, only vertical shapes were considered (figs.9e-l). Two types of plans were again eliminated.The firstkind, derived fromStalinesque proto- typesto place heroic figure(s)on top of a stone column (figs.9e-f), was rejected on the grounds that such three-dimensionalstatues would unavoidably over- shadow Mao's inscription,which could only be engraved on the column base under the figure'sfeet. The second type of design, made by those who tried hardest to followthe Party'sline, translatedMao's words into images. Once Mao had stood above the Gate and said that he hoped one day to see hundreds of chimneys (symbols of China's modernization) from there. In a hurry,some designersdrew diagrams showinga "monument"consisting of threechimneylike high rises (fig.9g). Even the Partycould not accept such a plan. Afterthe low terraces,classical building styles, and anthropomorphicimages had all been eliminated,the designers'minds were now focused: the Monument had to be a verticalform suitable for Mao's inscription(figs. 9 m-n). In other words, theyfinally realized that what theyshould look for was not a monument but a "monumental medium" for the Chairman's writing;the ancient stele then became a logical solution. Such a process ran throughoutthe designing of the Monument and was repeated on differentlevels at differentstages. Even when the "stele"form was agreed upon, new debates startedall over again about details: should the Monument be hollow inside so visitorscould climbonto it? Should its terrace be a platformfor reviewingmass assemblies?Should its base be turned into an exhibitionhall? Again these plans were one by one rejected: "To permit people to enterthe Monumentwould harm itsdignity; to combinethe Monument witha museum would confuse its purpose; to design it as a platformwould con- tradictthe primarystatus of the Gate."25We must realize that such a process, no matterhow lengthyand tedious,was considered necessarybecause the designers themselvescould be educated and reformed.Through it,the inevitableoutcome was a correctand unanimous understandingof Mao's inscriptionwritten on 30 September 1949: Eternalglory to thepeople's heroes who laid downtheir lives in thepeople's War of Lib- erationand the people'srevolution in thepast three years. Eternal glory to the people's heroeswho laid downtheir lives in thepeople's War of Liberationand thepeople's revo- lutionover the past thirty years. Eternal glory to thepeople's heroes who from 1840 laid downtheir lives in themany struggles against internal and externalenemies for national independenceand thefreedom and well-beingof the people. To those who are not familiarwith Mao's rhetoric,this passage may seem redundant and almost meaningless.But to the Chinese who have been schooled in the Confucian tradition,a sacred textalways implies secret codes. Mao's riddle

98 REPRESENTATIONS

This content downloaded on Sun, 3 Feb 2013 23:56:42 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions has three keywords: the dates "threeyears," "thirty years," and "from1840." The last two dates, in Mao's historiography,periodize China's modern historyinto two phases: "the democraticrevolution of the old type"from 1840 to the 1920s, and "the democratic revolutionof the new type"since the 1920s (it differsfrom the previous type in being under the Communist Party'sleadership). The last date refersto the Civil War period against Chiang Kai-shekfrom 1946 to 1949. The inscriptionhas other key words that do not periodize historybut link separated historicalphases into a continuum.The monotonous phrase "Eternal gloryto the people's heroes who laid down theirlives in the people's War of Lib- eration and the people's revolution"is repeated over and over.To the Communist theologiciansand theirconverts, the repetitionitself signifies a universal theme runningthrough China's modern history.Still, the inscriptioncontains yet a third secret code in its narrativestructure: the "revolutionaryhistory" is told in flash- back. It is, therefore,a retrospectivereconstruction of the past from a present vantage point-it is Mao's visionof history. The ten reliefson the lower plinthof the Monument representthe "revolutionaryhistory" by mimickingthese codes. (In fact,unless one deciphers these codes it is impossible to comprehend these pictures.)The subjectsof the reliefs were selected not byartists but byFan Wenlan,the leading historianof the Party's historyduring the 1950s. The principal scene of the series (fig. 10), entitled "Crossing the Yangzi River (1949)," appears on the frontside of the Monument and documents Mao's finalvictory over the Kuomintang.Two smaller reliefs- "Supporting the Front" and "Welcomingthe People's Liberation Army"-flank thisprincipal carvingjust as in ancient art donors surround a king or a god. This central scene, which stands for the three-yearWar of Liberation from 1946 to 1949, leads the spectatorto trace the previous chapters of the "revolutionaryhistory." The sculpturedfrieze on threeother sides of the plinthis divided

......

.... 1.~...... :~ . .... ~'~%- :~

A - , .....

FIGURE 10. The principalrelief on the Monument to the People's Heroes, Crossingthe Yangzi River. From Liu Kaiqu, Liu Kaiqu diaosuji(Sculptures by Liu Kaiqu; Beijing, 1961), fig.4.

TiananmenSquare 99

This content downloaded on Sun, 3 Feb 2013 23:56:42 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions into two equal parts.The tworeliefs on the east side and the firstone on the south side depict the three mostimportant events during "thedemocratic revolution of the old type": "Burning opium" in Canton (1840), which initiated modern Chinese history; "the Jintian Uprising," which began the Taiping Rebellion (1851); and "the Wuchang Uprising," which ended China's dynastic history (1911). To the west,opposite these reliefs,are three other scenes that stand col- lectivelyfor "the democraticrevolution of the new type": the anticolonialmarch on 30 May 1925, the birth of the Communist militaryforce in 1927, and the guerrillawar againstthe Japanese duringWorld War II. A scene connectingthese two sub-sequences in the middle of the south side representsthe May 4th Move- ment (1918); its positioncorresponds to its historicalstatus as "the turningpoint fromthe democraticrevolution of the old type to the democraticrevolution of the new type."26 While Mao's visionof historyis presentedby selected flashbacks, the historical "continuum" expresses itself in the repetition of forms. Some sculptors first thought to portrayhistorical figures-leaders and participantsfor each event. But this plan was soon ruled out because the Monument,and hence its carvings, were supposed to stand for a collectivebody of people. Instead of drawing por- traits,therefore, the artists'major taskbecame to casta singleidealized archetype, which was then repeated and multiplied,and whose manifestationswere com- bined into ten compositions.The resultis almost surreal: a single actor seems to appear both synchronicallyand diachronicallyone hundred seventytimes in ten acts of a lengthydrama. No matterhow busy he is, however,his face remains expressionless and his gesture(s) and movement(s) highly disciplined. The monotonyof the reliefsperfectly echoes Mao's charmlikeinscription.

This investigationleads us back to our originalquestion: What is the Monu- ment? It seems that although the structurewas not unveiled until 1958, it was establishedthe day before 1 October 1949, when Mao laid its foundation stone south of the Gate and when his inscriptionwas approved by the congress. All later decisions were already implied, and the finalform of the Monument grew from this seed. Our question can be thus rephrased: Why did the Monument have to precede the People's Republic, and whydid it have to be located before the Gate? What is the relationshipbetween the timingand the placement? The precise timingsignifies an attemptto put a punctuationmark in the flow of history,to separate the past from the present. It means that at that very momentthe previous chaptersof historywere frozeninto a permanentform (an "implied" monument whose existence was attestedby its foundation stone and inscription).The possibilityof summarizingthe past-to fixand affirmit-fur- therindicates a present-mindedvantage point that,in thiscase, was attributedto the victoriouspeople who were to build this monumentfor theircollective pre-

100 REPRESENTATIONS

This content downloaded on Sun, 3 Feb 2013 23:56:42 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions decessors. But what is the people's past? While in traditionalhistoriography the past encompasses (at least theoretically)all previous happenings, in Maoist his- toriographythe past is explicitlydualistic: one past is heroic and virtuous,the other decadent and evil. The formeris "the revolutionaryhistory of the people"; the latteris China's twenty-fourdynasties (of the Slave Society,the Feudal Society, and the Semi-Feudal and Semi-Colonial Society). Before the triumph of the people only the second historycould be and had been documented, but now it was time to forgea new history. This new historywas necessarybecause it would legitimateand corroborate the establishmentof the People's Republic. It was a "revolutionarycalendar" that served to "provide an a priori frameof referencefor all possible memory."27In fact,logically speaking nothingbut the past can assume the role as witnessof the present. But in Mao Zedong and Zhou Enlai's minds the issue was far more prac- tical and visual. Neither of these two men had much knowledgeabout cityplanning. What theydid have was a pointof view: the Monumenthad to be measured according to the presence of the Gate, where the Chairman would soon announce the regime'sbirth. While the Monumentembodied the past of "the revolutionary history,"the opposing Gate, withall itsnewly bestowed glory, stood forthe present and futureof thatsame history.The timingand the placementof the Monument, therefore,meant thatwhen Mao ascended Tiananmen on 1 October the Monu- ment was already "there,"as a witnessand legislator.It was understood that all the mortalbeings gatheredin the Square would die, so thatthe Monumentwould eventuallybecome the onlywitness and legislatorof the event. The Monument is dedicated to the deceased heroes, but these heroes remain impersonaland conceptual. The monotonousinscriptions and reliefsdo not bear people's livingmemories, and no veteran of the revolutionhas ever dedicated a wreath to the Monument in the memoryof his dead comrade-in-arms.If the Monument has any commemorativevalue, the subject of commemorationis the founding of Mao's China. Its reliefsand inscriptionsare copied in textbooksto be memorizedand to inspire awe. In fact,the Monument is not intended to be connected with any individual except Mao. The inscriptionsand reliefs,as we have learned, all manifesthis interpretativeparadigms. When he stood above the Gate he faced his own words in his own calligraphy,and when he was not there his huge portraitstared down at them.The opposition of the Gate and the Mon- ument thus stemmed from Mao's own bifurcation:as he had created both the past and the present of the people's history,he stood for both past and present, the people and history. For more than twenty-fiveyears this official ideology dominated the construction and interpretationof the Square. All new structureswere added to confirm it. The Great Hall of the People and the Museum of National and Revolutionary Historywere hurriedlybuilt before the regime's tenthanniversary, during the period of the Great Leap Forward that,in a prevailingview, foresaw the Great

TiananmenSquare 101

This content downloaded on Sun, 3 Feb 2013 23:56:42 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions o ui. t.....? i - tn-- - Harmony-| ~..-

~f I | | a

and formed a second pair of juxtapositions between the past and present (figs. 11 and 13). Figure 12 shows the symbolicstructure of the Square in 1959: Present (Tiananmen)

Present Public Past (GreatHall of the People) (theSquare) (Museumof History)

Past (theMonument)

FIGURE 12. Tiananmen Square in 1959.

The strictand staticscheme of thismonumental complex externalizedMao's vision of revolution,history, and people on a geographic plane. The Square was surrounded and defined by the monuments,as were the public gatheringssur- rounded and defined by the past and present assigned to them. It seemed that once thisstructure was fixedand affirmedit would last forall time,and indeed it remained unchallenged even during the mostchaotic period of the Cultural Rev- olution (1966-76). But in 1976 the situationbegan to change. In JanuaryZhou Enlai died. While the Gangn 1 of u by Mao's wife,was pushing the bloody

102 REPRESENTATIONS

This content downloaded on Sun, 3 Feb 2013 23:56:42 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions "class struggle"to another limit,Zhou, who had become the only hope for ratio- nalityand peace, was condemned, and people were prohibitedfrom mourning him.All the anxiety,frustration, disillusion, and anguish thathad troubledBeijing residentsfor more than a decade merged intoa shared feelingof grief,and from thisshared feelinga grass-rootsmovement began to take shape. "When Premier Zhou died," one mournersaid, "manypeople wereweeping-in the streets,on the buses. A mournfulsilence reigned [in the city].It was uplifting,really uplifting. There was a sense of relief.In the past, for so long in China, there had been no occasion when you could feel your feelingsuplifted.... But withZhou's death, you came to realize when other people were weeping that your griefwas their grief,too. We were isolated before,but thenpeople became close."28 On 23 March, a single wreath of white paper, the traditionalsymbol of mourning,was placed at the foot of the Monument. The two ribbonsstreaming fromthe wreath bore an inscriptionin commemorationof Zhou Enlai. For the firsttime in its history,the Monument was associated withthe intimatememory of an individual. Further dedications and gatheringswere forbidden,but the prohibitiononly brought more wreaths,people, and finallythe proteston 4 April, the day of the Qingming Festival(the day for holding memorial servicesto the dead in traditionalChina). One hundred thousand people came in thisand the followingdays, on their bicyclesand with theirchildren. The assemblyhad no organizer and no plan; if there was a single factorthat attractedpeople to the

FIGURE 13. Plan of It;Pjlg~~~ Tiananmen Square in 1959. 1) Tiananmen; 2) to the 3 Monument People's "^I nrm1Am= Qis, Heroes; 3) Great Hall of a []E H14"1 ni^GS^the People; 4) Museum of - Fe t2 U [ History.From Wu i (i i I2 " '4 , Liangyong,"Tiananmen H^ de he i~1 31 _- D^ R Guangchang guihua ,i L-a(|a^| pasheji" (The plan and 1 E| ^cit^^^ ]1^-^ _f[ sFS Imdesign 0 of Tiananmen 1U^rgia~Ji Lo3LJ I Square), inJianzhushi lunwenji(An anthologyof =s*-^3-architectural______l history),2 ~"^J-y^t~l~~ ^ R vols. (Beijing, 1979), 2:29.

TiananmenSquare 103

This content downloaded on Sun, 3 Feb 2013 23:56:42 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions Square, it was not the Gate but the Monument. Gradually,white wreathswere covered by red flagsand slogans,and weeping was replaced by songs,the beating of drums, the celebratorypopping of firecrackers,and poems: Chinais no longerthe China of before Its peopleare no longerwrapped in ignorance Gone forgood is thefeudal society of the First Emperor.9

Then, on the nightof 5 April,the bulbous lightsaround the Square suddenly flashedon the Monument and the demonstratorssurrounding it. Some ten thousand armed police, soldiers, and "worker militiamen"rushed into the Square. Some demonstratorstried to explain; theywere beaten to the ground and taken away.Before dawn the stainsof blood on the Monument were carefullycleansed (though some were missed). The meaning of the Monument,however, was never the same. This historicalfabrication had come to life,and itsempty inscription- "Eternal glory to the people's heroes"-had gained real meaning. It was now a livingmonument that wove people's recollectionsof theirstruggle and death into a whole. Surrounding it a new public emerged.

From the Mausoleum to the Goddess

Both the Square and the Monument are ironiesbecause in a changing political discourse theirintact physical forms (like repeated visual "quotations") destroytheir previously established meanings.3 Mao's Mausoleum (fig.14), which was unveiled in 1977 at the anniversaryceremony of the Chairman's death, is again an irony,but itsbecoming so took no time:by adding thismonument to the Square its patrons had unconsciouslyundermined the symbolicsystem they had establishedand tried to perpetuate. Fewer words are needed to commenton thismonument. Three detailed official reports on its symbolicstructure and decoration have enabled a number of Westernscholars to writeon it.31Above all, thismonument is insignificant,even to document some substantialbeliefs of the Party in the late 1970s. It was a product of pragmatism,established to strengthenthe short-livedHua Guofeng government.32As Hua's reign soon terminated,the monumenthas been largely ignored if not openly loathed. If it possesses any importance,it is thatthis 1977 addition, quite unexpectedly,acknowledged the achievementof the mass movementin theprevious year. The Mausoleum changed themap ofthe Square as ittook over the Monument's original role to become the counterpartof the Gate. The opposition and connectionbetween the past and the presentof"the revolutionary history"was then most graphicallyexpressed by thisnewjuxtaposition: while the livingMao's image was stillhung on the Gate, his embalmed corpse dwelt in the Mausoleum (fig. 15). Thus we finda new scheme of the Square (fig. 16):

104 REPRESENTATIONS

This content downloaded on Sun, 3 Feb 2013 23:56:42 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions (Beijing,capital of China;Present Beijing, 1986), 22.~~~~~~~~i FIGURE 15(top right). Plan of TiananmenSquare in 1977.ILLY- 1) Tananen; ) (Tiananmen)Moumen to he Poples Heoes 'i 3)JGreat Hall oftePol;4 Msu fHsoy Present Public Past (GreatHall of the People) (theSquare centered (Museumof History) on the Monument)

Past (theMausoleum)

FIGURE 14 (topleft). Tiananmen Square in 1977, viewed fromthe south. From Wang Guang, ed., Zhongguoshoudu Beijing (Beijing, capital of China; Beijing, 1986), 22. FIGURE 15 (topright). Plan of Tiananmen Square in 1977. 1) Tiananmen; 2) Monument to the People's Heroes; 3) Great Hall of the People; 4) Museum of History; 5) Mao Zedong's Memorial Hall. FromJianzhu xuebao, 1977, no. 4, p. 7. FIGURE 16 (bottom). Tiananmen Square in 1977.

TiananmenSquare 105

This content downloaded on Sun, 3 Feb 2013 23:56:42 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions Comparing thisstructure with the old one (fig. 13), one factbecomes imme- diatelyrecognizable: the Monument no longer defined the southernlimit of the Square but stood in the middle of the public space (which had now been expanded to hold an assemblyof 600,000 instead of 400,000). The Monument was now isolated inside a ring of encirclementsconsisting of the four structures in the four directions.As ordinarypeople were restrictedfrom entering these buildingsin 1977,33the Monumentbecame the only place in the Square thatthey could freelyvisit, and they did go there with their recollectionsof the recent demonstrationand its tragicending. In fact,after the 1976 demonstrationand the 1977 addition of the Mausoleum, the Monument had become superfluousin the officialsymbolism but indispensablefor a growingdissident public. The Party seemed to have been controlledby some invisibleforce to establisha monument for this public or to yielda monumentto it. Its glorious past was now symbolized by Mao's corpse,34leaving the Monument to the living. In a recent article, Pierre Nora classifiesmonuments into two types called "dominantand dominated lieuxde memoire(sites of memory)":"The first,spectac- ular and triumphant,imposing, and, generally,imposed-either by a national authorityor by an establishedinterest, but alwaysfrom above-characteristically have the coldness and solemnityof officialceremonies. One attendsthem rather

FIGURE 17. A stone pillar in a traditionalChinese graveyard.Reproduced fromEdouard Chavannes, Missionarcheologique dans la Chineseptentrionale, vol. 2 (Paris, 1913), plate 37, no. 61, by permission.

10 R...N......

106 REPRESENTATIONS

This content downloaded on Sun, 3 Feb 2013 23:56:42 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions than visitsthem. The second are places of refuge, sanctuaries of spontaneous devotion and silent pilgrimage,where one findsthe livingheart of memory."35 The Chinese case allows us to see that a single monument can be either type depending on what kind of memories associated to it and what kind of activity related to it. The Monument to the People's Heroes was built as a "dominant" monument,but in time it has become a "dominated" monument-dominated by other "dominant"monuments surrounding it. Once the Monument was imbued withnew memories,it was re-interpreted. In official documents the Monument derived its shape from ancient stele recordingimportant political events or authorizingstandard versions of the Clas- sics, but in an ordinaryperson's eyes it began to look like a tabletthat would be builtin the familygraveyard (fig. 17). Justas one visitsand revisitsa familygraveyard to traceone's origin,so people visitedand revisitedthe Monumentto refresh their memories of previous strugglesand sacrifices.The Monument gradually became theplace for protests.A kin feelinglinked it to the protestors:someone they knew had died there, and like them, the Monument was also isolated and imprisoned. Gathering around the Monument they could feel hostile eyes secretlywatching them fromall sides, and armed soldiersabout to rush out from the Gate, the Great Hall, and the Mausoleum to punish them.36

The 1989 student movementbegan as a repetitionof the 1976 demonstration. On 15 April Hu Yaobang died; like Zhou Enlai he was believed to be an open-minded leader and a supporterof the people, and again like Zhou Enlai he had been condemned and ousted by the Partybefore his death. But unlike 1976, by 1989 a disillusioned public had gradually formed,and the Monument had assumed a new identity.The 1976 protestoccurred a hundred days afterZhou's death, but only a few hours after Hu's death wreaths and white flowershad already appeared before the obelisk.What we findhere is an intimateconnection between "memory"and "event."Memory, though invisibleand hidden, bridges separated eventsinto a continuous process. The memoryof the 1976 movement resurfacedand was revitalizedduring the firstfew days of the 1989 demonstration. But soon new demands were raised and people gained new momentum.In the same way thismovement will again provide futuredemonstrations with a new point of departure. Similarprocesses also operate withina singlemass movementand interweave it into a whole. During a politicalexplosion, eventsare oftennot determinedby conscious plans or explicitlogic; theyseem to occur individuallywithout much premonition.No one-neither the centralcommittee of the protestingstudents nor any political group-commissioned the statue of the Goddess of Liberty.It appeared suddenly-as several pieces shipped to the Square on tricycles.With amazement the crowdwatched a ten-meterstatue gradually take shape and began

TiananmenSquare 107

This content downloaded on Sun, 3 Feb 2013 23:56:42 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions FIGURE 18. Hu Yaobang's portraitplaced before the Monument to the People's Heroes. Photo: Abbas; reproduced fromHuman Rightsin China, ChildrenoftheDragon (New York,1990), 44.

to respond to it.The eventwas spontaneous; the Goddess was unheard of before. Still, there are clues to trace her origins in previous events and images in the movement. An importantchange in the 1989 demonstrationtook place four days after Hu Yaobang's death.37On 19 April, a portraitof Hu made by studentsfrom the Central Academy of Fine Arts,the top art school in the country,was carried to the Monument. Placed above the plinthit directlyopposed Mao's portraiton the Gate (fig. 18), and under the new image representativesof differentcolleges gave memorial speeches. Around 6 P.M., a man climbed onto the plinth and intro- duced himselfas a veteran of the 1976 demonstration.He said to his audience that the movementshould not stop at commemoratingthe dead. More impor- tantly,he suggested, people should speak openly about the future. His appeal was welcomed by the crowd and his own lecture,which was on democracy,initiated a long series.Among those who followedhim, a studentread a poem entitled "A Stele": "Like a stele thatremains silently under wind and rain,you-my coun- trymen-have been only taught to know how to meeklysubmit to oppression." The rapid development of the movementduring the followingdays proved thatthe poem could onlyrefer to the past. From22 April,scattered activities were

108 REPRESENTATIONS

This content downloaded on Sun, 3 Feb 2013 23:56:42 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions consolidated into an organized political protest. "Democracy" and "freedom" became the most frequent catchwords. In response to the government's announcement to "clear" the Square, more than 200,000 people poured in, occu- pied the Square, and established their headquarters beside the Monument.38 Martial law was declared on 20 May, but the number of people in the Square increased to more than one million;a giantwhite banner appeared on the Mon- ument, whose four-characterinscription read: "Long Live the People." On 23 May, three young men from Mao Zedong's birthplacedefaced the Chairman's portraiton the Gate (fig. 19); one of them was a twenty-two-yearold artist.On 25 May a replica of the Statue of Libertywas paraded through the streetsof Shanghai and was set in frontof City Hall (fig.20). On 30 May,after three days of preparation,students of the Central Academy of Fine Artserected the statue of the Goddess of Democracy in the Square before Mao's portrait(fig. 21). Although these events seemed to have no direct connection,they signified consecutivestages in a pursuitfor a visual symbolof the new public. This image- making movement began by portrayinga new, public hero (Hu Yaobang) in protest against the old, officialhero (Mao Zedong). This act implied further developments of the movementin two directions;the firstwas to forge a more general symbol and the second was iconoclasm. The Statue of Libertywas a ready-made general symbolas she externalized the protestors'shared demand

w * , ? FIGURE 19. Mao's ' portrait _! ... 5 splashed withpaint. Photo: Shunsuke Akatsuka; reproduced fromibid., by permission.

TiananmenSquare 109

This content downloaded on Sun, 3 Feb 2013 23:56:42 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions FIGURE 20. Replica of the t Statue of Libertyin Shanghai. From Beijing xueyunwushiri (The fifty \ , days of the Beijing S e studentdemonstration; Taibei, 1989), 127. i

for freedom. As this foreign image was replicated (as were the English words "democracy" and "freedom" on numerous banners and flags),the iconoclastic tendencywas vented in a physicaldefacement of Mao's portrait.The appearance of the Goddess of Democracy represented the finalstage of the process: a borrowed symbolwas modifiedinto a new image. No matterhow much the Goddess owed its formand concept to the Statue of Libertyor other existingmonuments, it was not a copy. According to Tsao Hsing-yiian,who closely observed and recorded the makingof the Statue,the Federationof Beijing UniversityStudents firstsuggested thatthe sculpturebe a replica of the Statue of Liberty,like the one thathad been made by Shanghai studentsa fewdays earlier.But a Chinese image -a healthyyoung woman-was preferredinstead.39 A female studentposed for the Goddess and some picturesof the Statue of Libertywere consulted.0 But the question arises: Why did people not stickto the Monument as their symbol?Probably because even the Monument was stilla borrowed monument. It seems that the movementhad reached such a heated stage that politicalmes- sages could no longer be implied: these messages had to be shouted out loud so people could be heard. The giant memorial stele could no longer convey such messages. In fact,there had been an attemptto transformit into a more vivid

110 REPRESENTATIONS

This content downloaded on Sun, 3 Feb 2013 23:56:42 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions FIGURE 21. Opposing icons: the statue of the

and forcefulicon: whiteflowers buried itsplinths, Hu's portraitwas placed there, and the banner inscribed"Long Live the People" covered Mao's "Eternal Glory to the People's Heroes." A new symbolicform was demanded, a human figurefor the living rather than a gravestonefor the dead. And here was the Goddess of Democracy, a young woman who stood bravely against Mao to challenge the whole bureaucratic and ideological system.Soaring above the cheering demonstrators,she was immediatelyunderstood by everyonein the Square: "She sym- bolizes what we want,"explained a young worker.Then, stabbinghis chest,"She stands for me."4 The message was also received by pltheauthorities and the matterwas dealt withas a great emergency.For severaldays People Daily,the Party'sofficial news- paper, denounced the statue; the evidence,however, was stillthe old Tiananmen myth:

Someoneerected a statueof the"Goddess of Democracy"without authorization in digni- fiedTiananmen Square and thisevoked various comments among the people. According to people'scommon sense, the erection of any monument in Tiananmen Square must first be approvedby the government and mustbe basedon a relevantgovernment decree. In theSquare theTiananmen rostrum, the flag poles, the Monument to thePeople's

TiananmenSquare 111

This content downloaded on Sun, 3 Feb 2013 23:56:42 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions Heroes,the memorial hall, the museum, and theGreat Hall of thePeople are all builtin good orderand thelayout is seriousand solemn.The Squareis a siteto holdgrand cere- moniesand majorstate activities and is an importantplace for domestic and foreigntour- iststo visitwith reverence. It is theheart of thePeople's Republic and is thefocus of the world'sattention. Allcitizens have the duty to cherishand protectTiananmen Square. This is equal to cherishingand protectingour motherlandand our nationand to cherishingand protectingour ownrights. The Squareis sacred.No one has thepower to add anypermanent memorialor to removeanything from the Square. Such thingsmust not be allowedto happenin China!42

Three days afterthis articlewas published the Goddess was destroyed: "A tank like a roaring crazy beast ran over the students'tents. It then drove full speed ahead toward the statue of the Goddess of Democracy. With a loud crash the Goddess fell on the ground into fragments.She was dead, lyingtogether with those murdered youths."43

When I heard about the destructionof the Goddess I recalled an earlier report: one of the sculptorssaid theyhad made the statue as large as theycould

FIGURE 22. SuicideProject No. 1, by Wei Guangqing and others.Photo exhibitedat the FirstModern Art Show, February1989, Beijing. Photo: Instituteof Fine Arts,Academy of Literature and Arts,Beijing.

112 REPRESENTATIONS

This content downloaded on Sun, 3 Feb 2013 23:56:42 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions so the governmentwould not be able to simplyremove it: "If theydecide to do this they'llhave to smash her into pieces, therebyexposing theirantidemocratic faces." I remembered that some leaders of the demonstrationhad predicted the massacre and suggested retreat,but the majorityof studentsanswered thatonly their blood could provoke the Chinese people and inspire furtherstruggle. I recalled also an "art event" staged at the firstnational Avant-GardeExhibition held in Beijing a few monthsbefore the Tiananmen Movement: a young artist and her boyfriendshot at her sculpture,which depicted a man and a woman making calls (to each other?) in two separated telephone booths. The work was damaged and the artistand her boyfriendwere arrested. RecentlyI was able to see some two hundred slides of worksexhibited in or submittedto the show.One work again caught my eye. Created by a group of Beijing students,it is entitled "Suicide Project No. 1" (fig. 22): a wounded man swathed in white bandages is lyingacross railroad tracks,waiting for a trainto run him over. None of these incidentsseem coincidental.Together they indicate an attempt to carryout a kind of "planned" suicide. This attemptemerged either froman absolute disillusion or from desperation, that suicide had become one's only means to influencethe future.The statue of the Goddess of Democracy was a monument that was intendedto be destroyed,because its monumentalitywould derive fromsuch self-sacrifice.In thisway, this statue separated itselffrom those permanent "revolutionarymonuments" whose photo images fill a textbook. These permanent monumentsare consequences of revolutions-like the Monu- ment to the People's Heroes built to mystifya glorious past-but not revolutions themselves.The veryconcept of "permanence" seems so alien to the idea of revolution, which, after all, means to rebel against supposed "permanence." The constructionof such monuments,therefore, announces the end of revolutionand the beginningof a "permanent"order. The statueof the Goddess of Democracy is differentbecause what it intended to invokewere not memoriesof the past but memories of itself;and to leave such memoriesto the future,it was prepared to be destroyed. In this way,the Goddess of Democracy became a "martyr."But unlike those murdered demonstrators,her image could be replicatedand throughreplication she could be reborn. We have heard about so manyreplicas of the Goddess built around the world. In Hong Kong's VictoriaPark, replicas of the Goddess and the Monument were placed face to face. A single traditionalsymbol-the Chinese characterfor memorial-replaced Mao's inscriptionon the Monument,while the livingstood togetherwith the Goddess and paid theirsilent homage to the dead. The war of monuments is still continuing in Tiananmen Square. Even though the Goddess of Democracy was destroyed,her image still haunts the triumphantregime in Beijing. We have learned that for the victorymarch commemoratingthe fortiethanniversary of the regime,another statue-a unityof a worker,farmer, soldier, and intellectual-was built in frontof Tiananmen Gate

TiananmenSquare 113

This content downloaded on Sun, 3 Feb 2013 23:56:42 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions FIGURE 23. The new statue erected by the governmentin Tiananmen Square after itscrackdown on the studentdemonstrations. From Newsweek,9 October 1989, 54.

(fig. 23). The figuresare submissive:their eyes and hands are no longer raised; and expressionlesslythey hold a steelrod, grain,a gun, and a book to signifytheir assigned duties. The politicalmap of the Square has thuschanged again: thisnew symbolof "the people" is now placed rightbelow Mao's restoredportrait, in the shadow of the Gate. Like an abandoned battlefield,the vast and now deserted Square has been leftbehind. A sense of tightenedsecurity has been achieved, but at the price of retreatingto a smallerenclosure. This new statueis, in fact,a weak and forced response to the democraticmovement. Most tellingly,it was built at the veryspot where the Goddess once stood. No other act can betterreveal the regime's intentionof repressionand its fear,and the subjectof this fear is again the memoryof the Goddess of Democracy.

Notes

I want to thank Tsao Hsing-yuanand James Cahill for providingme witha firsthand record of the making of the Goddess of Democracy.My gratitudealso goes to Judith Zeitlin,John Fairbank,John Czaplicka, Neil Levine, Irene Winter,John Shearman, James Acherman, Froma Zeitlin,and Ellen Widmer,who have read the draftsof this paper and have given me theirsuggestions and encouragement.

114 REPRESENTATIONS

This content downloaded on Sun, 3 Feb 2013 23:56:42 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions 1. Quoted fromSamuel Taylor Coleridge in Rene Wellek,A Historyof Modern Criticism, 2 vols. (New Haven, 1955), 1:211. 2. Sir Claude MacDonald, the commander of the army,reasoned that this march was necessary"lest the Chinese, withtheir infinite capacity for misrepresentation, should inferthat some supernaturalpower had intervened,so thatthe Allied forceshad been affectedby fear of the consequences of invadingthe sacred precincts";Peter Fleming, TheSiege at Beijing(Oxford, 1986), 245. 3. The Outer Cityof Beijing,which encloses the southof the Inner City,was builtduring the sixteenthcentury. The original plan was to constructa citywall that would surround the entire Inner City.The plan was never completelyrealized, but it showed the intentionto continue expanding Beijing based on the ancient model. 4. Before the Ming, Beijing had been the capital of the stateof Yan (403-221 B.C.), the Liao Dynasty(916-1125), theJin (1115-1234), and the Yuan (1279-1368), but Tian- anmen was firstbuilt during the Ming Dynastyin 1420. 5. For the originand the politicalsymbolism of thisancient design, see Wu Hung, "From Temple to Tomb: Ancient Chinese Art and Religion in Transition,"Early China 13 (1988): 78-116. 6. These walls actually created endless "extrinsicspaces" that, in Rudolf Arnheim's words, "control the relation between independent object systemsand provide them withstandards of referencefor their perceptual features";New Essays on thePsychology ofArt (Berkeley, 1986), 83. For applicationsof thisarchitectural device in earlyChinese cityplanning, see Wu Hung, "From Temple to Tomb," 80-86. 7. Han Feizi (3rd centuryB.C.), sec. 5, "The Wayof the Ruler"; based on Burton Watson's translationin Basic Writingsof Mo Tzu, Hsiin Tzu, and Han Fei Tzu (New York, 1963), "Han Fei Tzu," 17-18. 8. WilliamWilletts, Chinese Art (New York, 1958), 678-79. 9. Emblemis used in the followingsense: "Those nonverbalacts whichhave a directverbal translation,or dictionarydefinition [which] is well knownby all membersof a group, class or culture"; Paul Ekman and Wallace V. Friesen,"The Repertoireof Nonverbal Behavior: Categories,Origins, Usage, and Coding," Semiotica1, no. 1 (1969): 1. 10. Part of the walls of the Imperial City had been destroyed during the Republican period. See Zhu Qie, Ming-Qingliangdai gongyuanjianzhi yan'getu kao (An examination of the constructionsof Ming and Qing palaces and gardens based on old diagrams; Shanghai, 1947), 85. The destructionof the walls of Beijing's Inner and Outer Cities, as Simon Leys suggested,lasted for twelveyears, from 1950 to 1962; ChineseShadows (New York, 1977), 55. 11. Quoted in Wu Liangyong, "Tiananmen Guangchang de guihua he sheji" (The plan and design of Tiananmen Square), in Jianzhushilunwenji (An anthologyof architectural history),2 vols. (Beijing, 1979), 2:26. 12. Wu Liangyong,"Renmin YingxiongJinianbeide chuangzuo chengjiu" (The architectural achievementof the Monument to the People's Heroes),Jianzhuxuebao (Architec- turaljournal) 2 (1978): 4-5. 13. Ibid., 19. 14. Zhao Luo and Shi Shuqing, Tiananmen(Beijing, 1957), 22. 15. Ibid., 25. 16. Ibid. 17. This piece of stone was found in Shandong provincefor this particularpurpose. Its original weightwas 280 tons, which was then reduced to 103 tons afterrough pro- cessing. By all possible means of transportationthis stone was shipped to Beijing, where it was furtherembellished into a slab of 60 tons. 18. Wu Liangyong,"Renmin YingxiongJinianbei,"8.

Tiananmen Square 115

This content downloaded on Sun, 3 Feb 2013 23:56:42 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions 19. This pine forestwas destroyedin 1977 to make room forMao's mausoleum. 20. These reports include: Wu Liangyong, "Renmin Yingxiong Jinianbei" and "Tian- anmen Guangchang"; and Zhao Dongri, "Tiananmen Guangchang" (Tiananmen Square), Jianzhuxuebao (Architectural journal) 9-10 (1959): 18-22. 21. Simon Leys, ChineseShadows, 53-54. 22. Wu Liangyong, "Renmin YingxiongJinianbei." As the author notes, his article representsthe officialview. 23. Ibid., 4. 24. Ibid., 5. 25. Ibid., 6. 26. Zhou Dingfang, "Renmin Yingxiong Jinianbei" (The Monument to the People's Heroes), inJinriBeijing (Today's Beijing; n.p., n.d.), 949. 27. Pierre Nora, "Between Memoryand History,"Representations 29 (Spring 1989): 19. 28. Anne F. Thurston,Enemies of the People (New York, 1987), 5-6. 29. Ibid., 21. In thispoem the FirstEmperor of the Qin alludes to Mao Zedong. 30. Roland Barthes: "Stated by the discourse itself,the ironic code is, in principle, an explicitquotation of what someone has said; however,irony acts as a signpost,and therebyit destroysthe multivalencewe might expect from quoted discourse"; S/Z, trans.Richard Miller (London, 1975), 44. 31. These officialreports are collected in a special issue ofJianzhuxuebao (Architectural journal) 4 (1977). Worksby Western scholars include Reginald Yin-wangand Annette Kwok, "Le Mausolee du president Mao," L'Architectured'aujourd'hui 210 (February 1979): 51-53; Eleni Constantine,"Mao's Mausoleum Echoes JFK Center,"Progressive Architecture60 (May 1979): 30-32; FredericWakeman, Jr., "Revolutionary Rites: The Remains of Chiang Kai-shek and Mao Tse-tung,"Representations 10 (Spring 1985): 146-93; Ellen Laing, The WinkingOwl (Berkeley,1988), 90-97; Lothar Ledderose, "Die Gedenkhalle fur Mao Zedong," in Jan Assmann and Tonio Holscher,Kultur und Geddchtnis(Frankfurt, 1988), 311-39; Rudolph Wagner also gave a talkon the subject at Harvard University. 32. Although during this period Mao's widow and other membersof the Gang of Four were arrested and put on trial,Hua needed to prove that he was the legitimatesuc- cessor of Mao. Mao's Mausoleum was part of his propaganda. 33. Even the Museum of National and RevolutionaryHistory was closed during the Cul- tural Revolution. 34. During Deng Xiaoping's reign thismausoleum has become a collectivememorial hall for deceased Partyleaders, includingZhou Enlai, Zhu De, and Liu Shaoqi. 35. Pierre Nora, "Between Memoryand History,"23. 36. During each politicaldemonstration in the Square there were rumorsthat the Com- munistleaders were watchingthe demonstratorsfrom the top of the Great Hall and Tiananmen, and thatsoldiers were shipped to these buildingsthrough secret tunnels. 37. The followingevents are recorded in Wu Muren et. al., 1989 Zhonggongminyuanjishi (A factual record of the 1989 Chinese Democratic Movement), 2 vols. (New York, 1989), 1:12-23. 38. "Studentsdeclared," we read in a report,"that they will continue to occupy the Square and thateven death cannot threatenthem to leave"; ibid., 1:27. 39. Tsao Hsing-yiian,"A Beijing Chronicle: An Account of My Experiences in Beijing fromApril into EarlyJune 1989," transcribedby James Cahill. Manuscriptprovided by the author; a shortversion of the essay was published in the Los AngelesTimes, 18 June 1989. 40. New Yorker,23 October 1989, 43; Liang Tieshan, "Minzhu Nishen yongzai woxin- zhong" (The Goddess of Democracy will always live in my heart), Zhongguozhichun

116 REPRESENTATIONS

This content downloaded on Sun, 3 Feb 2013 23:56:42 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions (China's spring)8 (1989): 76. But accordingto Tsao Hsing-yiian,stylistically the Statue was more stronglyinfluenced by "the Russian school of revolutionaryrealism and specificallythe styleof the woman sculptorVera Mukina, whose monumentalstatue of 'A Workerand CollectiveFarm Woman,' placed originallyatop the Soviet Pavilion at the 1937 Paris World'sFair, is stillmuch admired in China"; "Beijing Chronicle,"5. 41. John Gittings'sreport from Beijing, Guardian,31 May 1989, 10. 42. Wu Ye, "What does the statue of the Goddess of Democracy whichappeared in Tian- anmen Square indicate?"Renmin ribao (People's Daily), overseas ed., 1 June 1989; a translationof the articleis provided in NationalAffairs, FBIS-CHI-89-104, 28. 43. Liang Tieshan, "Minzhu Ntishen,"76.

Tiananmen Square 117

This content downloaded on Sun, 3 Feb 2013 23:56:42 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions