Last year, the twenty-fifth anniversary of the 1989 Tiananmen student movement and its brutal crackdown made major headlines. China-watchers, journalists, and academics commemorated June 4—as the event is called for short—with articles and books, and with lectures and roundtables.
Read more at: https://origins.osu.edu/connecting-history/remembering-tiananmen-umbrella-movement-s-wake-politics-commemoration-hong-kong.
May 17th in Hong Kong marked the opening of a two-week ‘Umbrella Festival,’ a pro-democracy sit-in protest that lasted from September to December 2014. The Umbrella Movement was one of the largest political demonstrations the city had ever seen.
Read more at: https://cpianalysis.org/2015/06/04/exhibiting-hong-kongs-umbrella-movement-an-end-or-a-beginning/.
This year, the 43rd annual Hong Kong Arts Festival commissioned a chamber opera in three acts called Datong: The Chinese Utopia. Depicting the life and times of Kang Youwei (1858-1927), a philosopher and reformer of China’s last Qing dynasty, it premiered in the theater of the Hong Kong City Hall.
Read more at: http://www.chinafile.com/reporting-opinion/culture/new-opera-and-hong-kongs-utopian-legacy.
This week’s “Report on the Recent Community and Political Situation in Hong Kong” underscores the way the Hong Kong government has and continues to portray its position vis-à-vis the Umbrella Movement. Local media reportage has focused on Pan-Democrats and activists’ objections to the way the movement is represented.
Read more at: http://www.chinafile.com/conversation/what-does-hong-kongs-post-protest-report-signal-relations-beijing.
A week ago today I sat together with you outside the Chinese University of Hong Kong’s library, a teacher among other teachers, a university member beside students, 13,000 strong. The weeks before had felt quiet.
Read more at: http://www.chinafile.com/reporting-opinion/viewpoint/against-my-fear-i-see-you-hope.
Last week at Hong Kong’s Chinese University, a crowd gathered around a replica of the statue Goddess of Democracy. Beneath hand-lettered banners calling on fellow students to “shoulder their historic mission,” several generations of student union presidents discussed a proposal to boycott classes. Read more at: https://www.thenation.com/article/what-hong-kongs-occupy-movement-can-learn-history/.
In between memory and forgetting, there is commemoration. Twenty-five years ago this month, a protest in Beijing’s Tiananmen Square ended in tragedy. As historical event, the contours of the Tiananmen student movement have long since entered textbooks in the West.
Read more at: http://origins.osu.edu/milestones/june-2014-remembering-tiananmen-view-hong-kong.
