Chen-ou Liu's Translation Project: First English-Chinese Haiku and Tanka Blog

Saturday, June 4, 2022

Vigils in the Pearl of the Orient Tanka

Tiananmen vigils
banned in the Pearl of the Orient --
one candlelight
after another, another ...
in these condo windows


FYI: The New Yorker, June 4, 2019: Memories of Tiananmen Square by Jiayang Fan

June 4, 1989, remains the most unspeakable date in modern Chinese history. It was on that morning that the People’s Liberation Army opened fire on civilian protesters who had been gathering for weeks in Tiananmen Square, in the center of Beijing, to call for political reform...In China, the past is never past, but it is frequently purged. The story is rewritten, the narrative reframed, the villains and the heroes recast. There is a hallucinatory quality to such a society, as if you are living a life that does not and never can fully belong to you.