It started, as so many things do, with a funeral. Or rather, the absence of one befitting the man being mourned.
Hu Yaobang was no saint, but in the rigid pews of Chinese politics, he was a bit of a heretic—a reformer, a believer in openness, someone who thought perhaps, just perhaps, the people deserved to be spoken with rather than at. Naturally, this got him booted. And naturally, when he died on April 15, 1989, the students of China—sharp, fed up, idealistic as only the young can be—gathered in Tiananmen Square to mourn not just the man, but the vanishing possibility he represented.
And on this day, April 21, they came in droves. Around 100,000 of them. Some carrying wreaths. Some carrying poems. Some carrying the kind of furious, trembling hope that only arises when you realize the grown-ups have failed you and you might have to do something unthinkable—like demand change.
Now let’s be clear: these weren’t pitchfork-wielding radicals. These were students. Students who wanted dialogue. They wanted transparency. Freedom of the press. An end to the bloated, bubbling cauldron of corruption that burbled just beneath the smooth stone of Party slogans. Reasonable things, really—until you ask them of a system that believes the only thing more dangerous than dissent… is memory.
And so the standoff began. Days turned to weeks. The square turned to a city of tents and chants and hunger strikes. The world watched. And the government waited.
Then came June.
And with it, tanks.
And we all know the image, don’t we? A man with two shopping bags—because even defiance must pick up the dry cleaning—standing in front of a column of tanks. Still. Alone. Iconic.
Unless you live in China, of course. In which case, that image doesn’t exist. Nor do the deaths. Nor the protests. Nor, apparently, the very notion that a citizen might confront a government without being crushed for their trouble.
Because what followed was not only a massacre—but an erasure. History, rewritten by the victors. Mourning, reclassified as sedition. And those students? Vanished. From the textbooks. From the search results. From the national consciousness.
But here’s the thing about ghosts: they’re terribly persistent.
You see, that same spirit that filled Tiananmen Square? It flickers today in Hong Kong’s protests. It echoes in the cries of the Uyghurs. It murmurs in Taiwan’s self-determination. And it twitches nervously in every Western tech company boardroom when Beijing calls to request another app, another name, another truth be quietly… removed.
This is no longer just about China. It’s about all of us. About whether we still believe that history should be remembered, that questions should be asked, and that sometimes, mourning can be an act of revolution.
Because Tiananmen wasn’t just a moment.
It was a mirror.
And the question now, thirty-six years on, is whether we’re brave enough to look into it—and recognize ourselves.
