We are all familiar with that now iconic photograph of a lone man standing in front of tanks in Tiananmen Square. No one even knows what became of the man, although it is assumed he was one of the many killed on that now infamous day on 4 June, 1989 - 20 years ago.
There has much analysis of the event on the anniversary of that black day.
Peter Ellingsen was China correspondent for The Age from 1988 to 1991. He writes in The Age of his personal recollection and reflections of the day and his "place" in the Sqaure that day:
"I have a favourite photograph of Tiananmen Square. It is a horizontal shot. A man rides a bicycle in the foreground - behind him there are serried rows of upright figures, thousands and thousands of figures.
The photograph was taken in May 1989. The figures are students celebrating their occupancy of the famous square. But in the photograph they seem like odd dots against the vastness of the blue sky.
It was two weeks before the tanks rolled in, a time when it was still possible to imagine the tall light poles lining the square as palm trees. Apart from the ominous bulk of Mao's tomb, the scene has a balmy feel; it could be a giant street market.
I look at this picture, rather than the others I have - all burnt-out buses and charred bodies - to remind me of the hugeness of China and the impossibility of my accounting for it.
Tiananmen Square became an urban killing field, one that I witnessed without knowing what I was seeing, or how to see it. Fifteen years of reporting certainly did not prepare me for that night 20 years ago when China's ageing governing despots unleashed a modern army on the capital.
I watched as soldiers fired randomly into houses and at darkened street corners where people stood dazed with shock and disbelief. I peered into blackness, first glimpsing flashes of gunfire, before hearing a delayed crack, like a whip, and the deep-grinding rumble of armoured personnel carriers.
People slumped onto the footpaths outside their homes; others were ground into the bitumen beneath the tanks. I told myself not to look away, but what I saw was not enough - or too much. It overwhelmed and invaded me."
There has much analysis of the event on the anniversary of that black day.
Peter Ellingsen was China correspondent for The Age from 1988 to 1991. He writes in The Age of his personal recollection and reflections of the day and his "place" in the Sqaure that day:
"I have a favourite photograph of Tiananmen Square. It is a horizontal shot. A man rides a bicycle in the foreground - behind him there are serried rows of upright figures, thousands and thousands of figures.
The photograph was taken in May 1989. The figures are students celebrating their occupancy of the famous square. But in the photograph they seem like odd dots against the vastness of the blue sky.
It was two weeks before the tanks rolled in, a time when it was still possible to imagine the tall light poles lining the square as palm trees. Apart from the ominous bulk of Mao's tomb, the scene has a balmy feel; it could be a giant street market.
I look at this picture, rather than the others I have - all burnt-out buses and charred bodies - to remind me of the hugeness of China and the impossibility of my accounting for it.
Tiananmen Square became an urban killing field, one that I witnessed without knowing what I was seeing, or how to see it. Fifteen years of reporting certainly did not prepare me for that night 20 years ago when China's ageing governing despots unleashed a modern army on the capital.
I watched as soldiers fired randomly into houses and at darkened street corners where people stood dazed with shock and disbelief. I peered into blackness, first glimpsing flashes of gunfire, before hearing a delayed crack, like a whip, and the deep-grinding rumble of armoured personnel carriers.
People slumped onto the footpaths outside their homes; others were ground into the bitumen beneath the tanks. I told myself not to look away, but what I saw was not enough - or too much. It overwhelmed and invaded me."
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