Today is the 33rd anniversary of the Tiananmen Square massacre in Beijing. To most Americans, it was not an especially big deal.
I remember it well because, quite coincidentally, the other DrC and I were in Taipei, Taiwan, when it happened. If geography isn't your strong suit, we were 90 miles off the South China coast, halfway between Shanghai and Hong Kong.
We were staying at the then-Sheraton which I am informed is now named something else. We found the angry opinions of the local Taiwanese concerning the events in Beijing fascinating.
Taiwan was one stop on an Asian vacation that, if I'm not mistaken, also included stops in Singapore, Bali and Bangkok. We had planned to go from Taipei to Hong Kong (still a British colony) and by boat up river to Canton (now, and perhaps then, Guangzhou).
We changed our plans and did not enter mainland China on that trip. We believed with some reason China might be nervous about foreigners during a period of internal unrest.
Oddly, we had visited Tiananmen Square some 3 years earlier, also as tourists. Remembering earlier video of that vast square filled with people waving Mao's little red book and shouting "Death to America," we marveled that absolutely no one paid us the slightest attention as we wandered about the empty square and took photos.
The young student from the University of Foreign Trade who was guiding us while perfecting his English, had a headache and stayed in the minibus. His name translated into English as "Stones" and we nicknamed him Rocky.
Having made a career of dealing with college students, we asked him if he had a girlfriend and he did. Was she from the upcountry province Stones called home, we asked. He answered: "No, she is Pekinese." I am proud to report we both, with great difficulty, kept straight faces and didn't laugh.
Later in the hotel we broke up. We had imagined her with long hair and a snub nose, barking. I wonder if Stones' English ever got good enough to realize his designation of her was funny to Americans, and perhaps other English speakers.
Afterthought: For young readers, English speaking countries called Beijing "Peking" until sometime in the 1980s. The delicacy Peking duck still bears that name, and pekinese simply means "from Peking/Beijing," even when it names a breed of small dog thought to originate there.
