Wu Renhua’s “Day-by-Day Chronicle of the 1989 Tian An Men Incident”

我爱北京天安门 (I love Beijing Tian An Men) is a children’s song.
It is mostly about Mao Zedong, but still popular – see that video.

The following is an overview of some old translations – Tweets by Professor Wu Renhua (吴仁华), posted from April 15 to June 9, 2011, commemorating the Tian An Massacre, and remembering the months of hopes and ambitions before that. In fact, the emphasis is on how the Democracy Movement started and how it went – it’s the people’s history, not so much the “People’s Liberation Army’s” or its role in killing the people and their hopes.

My translation of it (which may include mistakes) starts with Wu’s April 15 post and ends with the April 25 post. The links within my translations are no longer valid, but there’s a re-post of Professor Wu’s work on “Wenxue City”.

The Weeks before June 4, 1989	Intro
The Weeks before June 4: Wu Renhua’s Introduction	Professor Wu
The Weeks before June 4 – a Desire to do Better than in 1987	April 15, 1989
The Weeks before June 4 – Towards the Sun	April 17, 1989
The Weeks before June 4 – a Trip to North Korea	April 19 – 20, 1989
The Weeks before June 4 – Asserting Authority	April 21, 1989
The Weeks before June 4 – Hu Yaobang’s Funeral	April 22, 1989
The Weeks before June 4 – Role Allocations	April 23, 1989
Struggling for the Ideological Switch Stands	April 24, 1989
Deng Xiaoping’s remarks and the April-26 Editorial	April 25, 1989

If you do a translation yourself, please let me know, and I’ll link there.

On the Whim of an Idiot

Huawei advertising, 2018 (“2019 becomes big thanks to 6.21 inches display”)

Once in a while, I have to update myself, technically, to stay informed about current affairs. In the beginning of my share in the digital age, I had a website, but noticed that only few people would care to write an e-mail to discuss anything. So I switched to blogging, fifteen years ago. Then there were opportunities to take part in discussions and getting answers to questions – for a while. Then the English-language, China-related “blogosphere died down, and everyone moved on to Twitter and other “social media”. I followed the stream in 2020.

I find Twitter rather scary. My use of it serves its purpose, to stay informed about what keeps people busy, but it isn’t really about what they think, but about what they feel. The world according to Twitter is a jitterbug, and a pretty aggressive one at times. For a few months now, it has also had ownership issues (or Musk issues) which have led to a rather unpredictable future of that platform.

Once I had seen a pretty informative microblog from China hacked and all requests to Twitter to restore it ignored, I understood that the numbers of followers you have don’t matter – or shouldn’t, if you look at it reasonably -, because you can see it reduced to zero on the whim of just one idiot.

As far as I’m concerned, blogging on WordPress remains worthwile. Maybe it wouldn’t if I was looking for traffic, trying to make money on advertising, etc. But when you blog, you think. You study. You read. By reading, you “listen” carefully, often to people and messages you disagree with, but whose information is still useful.

You don’t get that on Twitter. It may give you the impression that it is a nice distraction from the daily grind – you can even abscond to your account there for a minute (or more) at your workplace. But you might as well have a few chocolate bars instead, also within a minute.

It would be about as healthy as tweeting.

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Related

The state of Taiwan, Sept 8, 2022
Radio or the Internet, both or neither, June 9, 2020
My first ten days on Twitter, Jan 30, 2020
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My first ten Days on Twitter

Thinking about it, these have been ten days within Twitter. Nothing or little of what I tweet would actually surface, except for a small chatroom of interested readers.

Press PR: “Because every word trains your head” (Archive)

My original motivation to start using a Twitter account was to draw more attention to this blog. But I’m beginning to suspect that this isn’t going to happen, for a number of reasons.

One is that there is a certain dialectics at work: you have to keep banging on the same subject, and kicking at the same objects, much of the time, if you want to attract readers. (There are exceptions, of course.)

Much of the news – especially many videos – can hardly be fact-checked.

I find it hard to confine my tweets to one speech bubble only – frequently, a message takes about three bubbles.

Then why should I keep using a Twitter account at all?

Probably because I find Twitter informative (even though my previous impressions may suggest otherwise). Provided that you remain skeptical, you may actually get a lot out of the constant stream of news, maybe-news, and opinion. Looks like promising material for blog posts. You cut yourself off the stream of information if don’t read along where the crowd is.

It used to be the blogosphere which informed readers. Now, to write good, up-to-date blogs, you probably need to follow Twitter users.

A Comment, instead of a Comment: Europe and China

Hi Jixiang,

blogspot.com sucks. I have tried posting a comment on your blog for ten minutes, until clicking fire hydrants, buses and traffic lights (to prove that I’m no robot) had sent me into a state of trance.

Anyway, here goes. This would have been my comment.

… and it would be most effective if the EU as a whole would draw them.

I agree, but believe that EU countries won’t react to the challenges in the same speed. In many ways, it’s the commerical base that shapes the policies, because there is no primacy of politics in Europe.

Countries like Germany, Sweden or the Netherlands are more likely to draw comparatively “early lines”, because they and China are the most immediate competitors, on similar markets, and all of them post trade surpluses.

It would be great if human rights and fundamental rights counted in Europe, but I don’t think they do.

P.S.: Yes, Jixiang, and Foarp, too: blogspot.com sucks. Try wordpress.com.

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Related

RAE, CRI, Universal Topics, March 22, 2018
AIB maintains RTI membership, July 7, 2017

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Yellow Blogging

Oh so famous!

A long-running Taiwan Blog is closing

Michael Turton announced closure of The View from Taiwan sixteen days ago. The blog had its drawbacks, but it will hopefully remain online, as an archive of pan-green views, information, and dogmatism – and as a rare collection of photos, showing everyday life in Taiwan.

There are too few English-language windows on Taiwan, and it is bad news that The View isn’t posting anymore.

This Blog is turning Nine

I wouldn’t have been aware of it, but the WordPress stats informed me that I wrote my first blogpost nine years ago. Nine years of decline, if you go by the statistics.

No, not quite. 2011 was the maximum years in terms of clicks (they didn’t count visitors back then), and 2012 was a close second. In 2013, clicks halved, and since then, there has been a gentle descent.

And it’s a sad fact that in all these years, there hasn’t been a single reader from Greenland, from a number of African countries, and from Svalbard. Not according to these statistics, anyway.

Top-five countries: America, Australia, Germany, United Kingdom, and Taiwan.

Top-five posts: China: authoritarian or totalitarian? / China – a nation state? / Reality check: is Taiwan a province of China? / The BBC Globescan poll champion / How ugly sex and dogs can be.

WordPress is a great platform. Hopefully, it will remain the place for many good bloggers and blogs for the years to come.