The Land of the Not So Great Wall

I arrived in Beijing not with hopes of finding the evolution of mass media, but at the very least, I expected to find some freedom, as trivial as it may be, in the exchange of discourse, both political and artistic, in media outlets such as television, internet, and perhaps even in public spheres such as Tiananmen Square.   I remembered watching then, and reading about the student protests at Tiananmen Square in 1989.  As a child, I hadn’t the slightest clue the important and tragic event that was about to unfold.  The Chinese government-controlled media outlets reported an unreliable slew of statistics, with deaths of protestors ranging anywhere from under 100 to as many as a few thousand.  To this day, the world is still unsure of the events that truly happened but forever ingrained in my memory was the “tank man” - a male protestor who stood defiantly in front of a row of military tanks.  This fueled my desire to at long last visit the Square and question the locals as to what actually happened. 

I arrived at Tiananmen Square with a local Beijing tour guide, unbeknownst of my intentions.  I surveyed the area cautiously and finally found a local photographer who offered tourists a picture in front of the Square for 50 Yuan, or 8 US Dollars.  I quickly removed a $50 Yuan bill from my wallet and before a word is uttered, shoved the bill into the photographer’s hand.  A click of a button later, he walks up to me and shows me the fresh image he had captured.  In my best effort to sound like a local, I asked, in broken Mandarin what happened with the “tanks” and "protestors" in Tienanmen Square in 1989.  However, my lack of expression for the words “tank” and "protest" in a language other than English prompted a lightening quick turn of the head from my tour guide, in which she raced over and carefully yanked at my jacket, whispering to me not to talk about tanks, or ANYTHING related to the protests of 1989.  The photographer instantly dashed away with the same rapidity that my tour guide had exerted.  She then discreetly pointed with her head in the direction of military police and proceeded to explain the different color uniforms and their significance.  She begged me to not talk about anything “controversial” or "political" at the square or anywhere where there was police presence.  The look in her eyes told me that she had every intention of protecting me, therefore I obliged. 

The rest of my trip was fruitful, however, as I’d managed to capture images of several types of media (advertisements mostly) that may have a correlation to Western influence.  I left Tienanmen Square, exhibiting a confused and somewhat foreign feeling of being watched.  I’d always been somewhat of a conspiracy theorist about big brother here in the States, but having experienced what I did firsthand in China, I’d had my eyes opened, then, to the sad reality that there exist places in other parts of the world that place little to no value on the basic human right of freedom of speech.