By Bruno Savill De Jong — Over 30 years later, the events in Tiananmen Square still hold a powerful resonance. Those widespread protests seem particularly resonant given the current resurgence in support for Black Lives Matter. Even if Tiananmen Square’s demonstration are not exactly comparable, they still function as an important cautionary tale. Often the protests are only remembered for their tragic end, when the Chinese government violently dispersed the gatherings and continued to eradicate them from their official history. But in Tiananmen 1989, Lun Zhang, with assistance from journalist Adrien Gombeaud and artist Ameziane, provides a first-hand account of the inner-workings of the protests, detailing the political tensions within Beijing as youthful hopes for reform were dashed against the hardened and uncompromising state.

Tiananmen 1989 provides an excellent overview of the protest’s build-up and historical backdrop, from the death of Mao Zedong and subsequent purging of his ‘Gang of Four’ in 1976. In its conceited way, it signaled a distancing from the excessive cruelty of the Cultural Revolution, particularly given the ‘perestroika’ of Communism in the 1980s found in China’s economic reforms. Chinese university students were encouraged that such economic relaxation could be extended to further democratization. Zhang’s heartfelt monologue which narrates Tiananmen 1989 emphasizes the idealism of these young intellectuals, who used the momentum from the memorial of reformist (and politically-exiled) politician Hu Yaobang to occupy Beijing’s Tiananmen Square on 15th April 1989, fortifying it as a platform for criticism and change. Zhang underlines how these protestors did not seem themselves as the government’s opposition, but the legitimate concerns of Chinese citizens who non-violently demanded their conditions be improved. Indeed, they are so reasonable that the first attempt at martial law failed, as the soldiers ended up sympathizing with them. Yet even then Zhang was aware such an occupation could not last forever, each page of Tiananmen 1989 increasing the tension of when their platform will collapse, until, inevitably, tanks and troops use lethal force to eliminate the demonstrators.

Lun Zhang was not personally present when this massacre occurred, an absence he relates led to incredible survivor’s guilt. Yet in a sense, June 4th is the most documented and least important day in Tiananmen 1989. This is a comic about the communities before the climax, with deeply research insight into both factions (protestors and the government) and the failed attempts to negotiate. Tiananmen 1989 is a solid and well-told documentary, even if Zhang’s narrative voice feels just slightly mis-calibrated. It is neither exactly a subjective autobiography on the events, nor a detached objective assessment. Zhang offers his personal reflection, but it feels mainly in hindsight, lacking a feeling of what the daily reality of the protests were. However, this is mostly an academic quibble, as reading Tiananmen 1989 offers a healthy balance between political context and on-the-ground reactions, delivering modern Chinese history in both a detailed and accessible way. Similarly, Ameziane keeps his artwork neat and realistic, colors ranging from bright optimism at the protest’s beginning, to dark and muddy ones that reflect its collapse. His artwork nicely accompanies Zhang’s narration even if it never quite gets to lead it.

Despite all attempts, history is often a wildly uncontrollable force. Even if they could not achieve it domestically, the Tiananmen Square protests were hugely influential on the Communist thaw across Europe in 1989, including the fall of the Berlin Wall. This is bitter comfort to those killed or imprisoned in China, which still censors information around Tiananmen Square, and whose democratic reforms only reversed into greater totalitarianism afterwards. But Tiananmen 1989 shows that those protests still mattered despite their ‘failure’, and the importance of them being researched, documented and remembered.

Tiananmen 1989: Our Shattered Hopes - REVIEW

Tiananmen 1989: Our Shattered Hopes
Writer: Lun Zhang and Adrien Gombeaud
Artist/Colorist/Letterer: Ameziane
Publisher: IDW Publishing / Top Shelf
Price: Print, $19.99. Digital, $9.99
Follow the story of China’s infamous June Fourth Incident—otherwise known as the Tiananmen Square Massacre—from the first-hand account of a young sociology teacher who witnessed it all. Over 30 years ago, on April 15th, 1989, the occupation of Tiananmen Square began. As tens of thousands of students and concerned Chinese citizens took to the streets demanding political reforms, the fate of China’s communist system was unknown. When reports of soldiers marching into Beijing to suppress the protests reverberated across Western airwaves, the world didn’t know what to expect. Lun Zhang was just a young sociology teacher then, in charge of management and safety service for the protests. Now, in this powerful graphic novel, Zhang pairs with French journalist and Asia specialist Adrien Gombeaud and artist Ameziane, to share his unvarnished memory of this crucial moment in world history for the first time. Providing comprehensive coverage of the 1989 protests that ended in bloodshed and drew global scrutiny, Zhang includes context for these explosive events, sympathetically depicting a world of discontented, idealistic, activist Chinese youth rarely portrayed in Western media. Many voices and viewpoints are on display, from Western journalists to Chinese administrators. Describing how the hope of a generation was shattered when authorities opened fire on protestors and bystanders, Tiananmen 1989 shows the way in which contemporary China shaped itself.
Release Date: June 2020
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Bruno Savill De Jong is a recent undergraduate of English and freelance writer on films and comics, living in London. His infrequent comics-blog is Panels are Windows and semi-frequent Twitter is BrunoSavillDeJo.