Sensitive Anniversary, Edited Memories

Andre Fenton, neuroscientist

The New York Times recently reported that New York neuroscientists have discovered an experimental drug that has the effect of immobilizing a critical “memory molecule” in a specific part of the brain.  As a result, the drug can prevent memories from forming, and potentially erase already formed memories.

Project leaders highlighted the immense therapeutic benefits:

“If this molecule is as important as it appears to be, you can see the possible implications,” said Dr. Todd C. Sacktor, a 52-year-old neuroscientist who leads the team at the SUNY Downstate Medical Center, in Brooklyn, which demonstrated its effect on memory. “For trauma. For addiction, which is a learned behavior. Ultimately for improving memory and learning.”

In other words, memories edited…for a better world.

But what about the risks?  The article continues:

Millions of people might be tempted to erase a severely painful memory, for instance — but what if, in the process, they lost other, personally important memories that were somehow related? Would a treatment that “cleared” the learned habits of addiction only tempt people to experiment more widely?  And perhaps even more important, when scientists find a drug to strengthen memory, will everyone feel compelled to use it?

Western framing of Tiananm3n: Democracy vs Pragmatism

As we approach this sensitive anniversary, a post at The Peking Duck highlights the widespread lack of memories of June 4, 1989.  In China, the day will largely be a non-event, according to the post.

The day will be a non-event at Chinese universities because students today are different that those 20 years ago, according to most Western press accounts.  For example, the Financial Times concludes that “China’s students put jobs over democracy” and that unemployment is of bigger concern than issues like corruption and political liberalization.  In other words, pragmatism is the central aspect of students’ worldview today.  Financial Times:

Shi Guoliang, who researches the political and social attitudes of the young generation at China Youth University for Political Sciences in Beijing, says those sorts of pragmatic concerns are the main difference between the Tiananmen generation and those of today. “The ’89 student movement was a generation of fanatics while today’s students are a generation of reason,” Mr Shi says.

His view is very much that of the political establishment, but some civil rights and freedom of speech activists agree. Zhou Shuguang, a 28-year-old university drop-out who is one of China’s best-known bloggers, says to him the 1989 student leaders’ speeches feel like over-emotional grandstanding. “They were brought up in a socialist tradition, and that’s what they knew.”

Shi remarks: “Students don’t do sit-ins, they blog and use Twitter.” (Elliott: now, I think this interview must have been a setup!  No one in China Twitters!)

The New York Times, in a piece entitled “Tiananmen Now Seems Distant to China’s Students“, also highlights the concerned, but pragmatic view of students today:

“There is a stereotypical view that students are not interested in democracy. I don’t buy it,” Cheng Li, research director of the China Center at the Brookings Institution, said in an interview. “At the very least, they have a mixed opinion of the Communist Party.”

Xia Yeliang, a Peking University professor, said many students supported democracy in theory but did not want to risk their futures to fight for it. Students joke that they will get involved once pro-democracy forces gather steam, he said. “A rather high percentage of students are not interested in politics,” he said. “They say, ‘We know this is a good thing, but what relation does it have to us?’ They think about their personal affairs, how to get a job, how to go abroad.”

Edited memories, and consensual amnesia, for a more harmonious world

While the elite students interviewed by the New York Times and Financial Times are largely aware of the events of June 1989, Chinese society at large will mostly see that sensitive anniversary come and go with little fanfare.  The Peking Duck highlights this collective, and largely consensual, amnesia:

This morning I received a request from a reporter I know asking if I could comment on how my Chinese friends and acquaintances were responding, if at all, to the upcoming 20th anniversary. (The reporter was not in China.) I replied that to the best of my knowledge they mostly were not responding at all, because to them there was nothing to respond to. As far as airbrushing June 4 from the collective Chinese psyche is concerned, Mission Definitely Accomplished.

But being thorough and obnoxious, I spent the next hour or so buttonholing people and calling friends and asking them all the same questions: were they hearing any “buzz” about the impending anniversary? Are their friends talking about it? Have they heard of any plans to commemorate the dead?

The answers were unsurprising. June 4 will be a day like any other that will come and go without any particular fanfare. The day is mainly meaningless for them and the event has “been faded from people’s memories,” as one said to me. (I like that used of words, that it’s “been faded,” as though someone had done the fading, not just the passage of time.)

A personal account from a Chinese national

Last year, my colleague “Grigo” made me aware of these edited memories.  Grigo was born in China in the late 1970s, and only first became aware of this sensitive anniversary while studying in Hong Kong in 2001.  She writes:

It may be the most historical event in my life so far although I was too young to fully understand what and why every thing have happened.  Even today, I still don’t fully understand the cause and result.

But, I was lucky enough that when I went to graduate school in Hong Kong in 2001, I was able to access all kinds of information (texts, images, video) from Internet and learned as many as I can about this historical event. Student Union of my college in Hong Kong has special memorial events on this day. They have been doing the similar thing for more than 10 years when I first experienced it. I know local Hong Kong people may get used to it (as they have been staying at the campus for 1-4 years). But people like me, from Mainland China, I felt more respectful to Hong Kong  for its openness and tolerance.

I have asked my couson who is born in 1992 if he ever knows about this. He doesn’t, as this historical event is not yet in History class; and in really life, he doesn’t have any channel to learn a word about it: TV, newspaper, Internet. No media is pushing this to readers or audience unless you are driven by strong curiousity and dig online + you can understand at least one language besides Mandarin. I’ve aslo asked my interns (all in colleges now) who are born in 1985 or 1986. Only one of them knows it.

The elite students at PKU and Tsinghua may very well have access to downloaded copies of “The Gate Of Heavenly Peace.” (link)  But if you’re Chinese and less well-educated, not fluent in other languages, and young, you probably don’t know a lot about what happened in 1989.

Like the neuroscientists who can erase memories, the Party has erased this painful trauma in the interest of stable development.  And what has happened in the last 25 years?  Progress.  A better world.  500 mm people lifted out of poverty, according to the World Bank (via Wikipedia)

But what other memories have been lost?  What collateral damage has been suffered?

According to one Beida student, interviewed by the New York Times,

One senior recalled an excruciating roundtable discussion with foreign journalists who visited Peking University in 2007 and asked about the government crackdown on student demonstrators in 1989. “They always ask about this June 4 incident, and we just keep silent,” she said. “It is not because we don’t want to talk. It is because we have no idea what exactly happened!

“I felt a little bit humiliated because we don’t know our own history,” she said.

Those historical memories have been made to fade.  Twenty years ago, I was in Hong Kong and I followed the drama, the bravery and the petty pridefulness of the student movement.  For some reason, it makes me sad that today, my younger Chinese friends have no memory of an event that ultimately will be an important historical event for their country.  I share The Peking Duck’s sentiments:

Still, I find it heartbreaking that here, in what 20 years ago was the vortex where it all took place, there remains in the minds of the young no image of the men and women who died in the crackdown, no stories of the bravery or even of the daily turn of events, the “Goddess of Democracy,” the sort-of hunger strikes, the meeting of Wu’er Kaixi wearing his pajamas with Li Peng, etc.

I look forward to the day that a confident government and a confident people will feel that the better world that they’ve built now allows for these memories to resurface.

Update 5/22:  Ahistoricism is NOT part of the Chinese cultural tradition

I read an interesting interview with Orville Schell and PBS dated 2005.  Schell witnessed the events in China during that year.  But what I found most interesting was his point that the Ahistoricism cultivated under the Party is really an anomaly when considered against the longer-term cultural tradition of China:

But I don’t think one has to be too indelibly Western to believe that the past does live on, and indeed nobody had a greater and deeper appreciation of the relevance of history than China itself. In traditional times, dynastic histories were written. They were always studied; lessons were learned. When things went awry, China had a way of turning back to look at … several millennia to see what was the proper way to rule, what was rectitude for a leader, what were the values that needed to be restored to society. To be so ahistorical now … is in a certain sense a violation of a whole tradition in Chinese culture of using the past to correct the future, to keep straight with the past.

This is not a case of imposing Western ideals on China.  It is a case of restoring Chinese ideals to China.

Update 6/7: More pieces on lost memories

James Fallows posts multiple responses to his piece, including my email to him.  These posts are:

Update #1 (including my email to him), Update #2, Two more about June 4, This evening in Beijing, Last two about June 4.  The final piece also references a NYT editorial by author Yu Hua, who starts the article: “This is the first time writing about Tiananmen Square.”  I found the collection of responses that Fallows posted a great snapshot into the collective amnesia of Chinese society over this event.

Photo credit: NYTimes, SVDC