Activist and blogger He Yanguang tells his story.
By Huang Aihe
On April 14 He Yanguang received two text messages both calling on people to stop purchasing goods from the French retailing giant Carrefour. His initial thought was instinctive: “This kind of strong sentiment will spread throughout the country like a contagious disease. This is really worrying.” He responded almost immediately by posting a new blog on the Internet entitled, ‘I am not for boycotting Carrefour.’
In the blog He posed the question, “In the face of the unprecedented threat to the Olympic torch relay, should we demonstrate nothing but anger? Shouldn’t we look at the matter from a different perspective?” This argument triggered an earthquake on the Internet far beyond his expectations. Thousands upon thousands of people responded, with the majority reacting angrily at such a suggestion.
Born in 1951, He Yanguang serves as the photographical superintendent of the China Youth Daily newspaper and is considered something of a heavy-weight figure within Chinese photography circles. His best known piece is the iconic ‘Hello, Xiaoping’ which features a group of Beijing University students hoisting a banner bearing the words, ‘Hello Xiaoping’ as they passed the Tiananmen Rostrum during the National Day parade celebrating the 35th anniversary of the founding of the People’s Republic of China. However, in April 2008, He became the target of a blizzard of charges and accusations. One such example, typical of some of the more inflammatory responses read, “You used to be young but you’re so muddleheaded now. See, you have degenerated into the punching bag of young people today. One lesson must be learned: Never indulge in narcissism when you’re getting old!” On May 2, He Yanguang posted another blog claiming that he would change the tile of his first blog from “I am not for boycotting Carrefour” to “I am opposed to boycotting Carrefour.” Explaining that, “My perception of the world is shaped by my experience: any transformation in my outlook did not occur overnight, it is part of a cumulative process that spans over 20 years.”
A Political Tremor: Signs of Frenzy Stamped Out
He Yanguan’s father is a veteran Communist who actively participated in the Chinese revolution as early as 1938 and He Yanguagn himself grew up in an army compound. During his time as an elementary school student, China and the former Soviet Union had split and were engaged in a high-profile debate over issues concerning the international communist movement. One day He’s teacher asked his students to make a sentence using the word ‘still’. He came up with the sentence, “Joseph Stalin made many mistakes. Still, he is a great Marxist.” This ‘masterpiece’ instantly became a good example of sentence construction for his schoolmates.
It should be said the political zeal demonstrated by little He Yangyang was far more hectic than the passion displayed by the young people today. For many in China it seemed at the time that the country was surrounded by enemies on all sides. He remembers there were three major “anti-China waves,” one during the Korean War (1950-53), the other around the late 1950s and early 1960s and the third during the Cultural Revolution (1966-76). Each time, the Chinese, burning with righteous indignation, took to the streets to stage demonstrations.
Assisted by his ‘family origin’, He joined the Red Guards, a radical group of young students, organized in 1966 at the outset of the Cultural Revolution. “I was extremely excited because I had finally caught up with the revolution. My father and his peers were just in time for the War of Resistance Against Japan, the War of Liberation and the Korean War. Now there I was, just in time for the great world-shaking revolution. I was determined to do everything Chairman Mao Zedong let us do. I had not an iota of doubt about Chairman Mao.”
In the late 1960s and early 1970s, when colleges and universities had long stopped functioning, millions of middle school students across the country answered Mao’s call to go to the countryside to be ‘re-educated’ by the peasants. He went to Northeast China’s Heilongjiang Province, which borders on Russia, and became a member of the farm-based corps, a paramilitary organization for opening up idle land and growing grains.
By 1971, He had become a lieutenant company commander. In mid- September that year, their units were suddenly put into the highest degree of combat readiness. They slept fully dressed at night, holding guns in their arms. All people thought they were going to fight the Soviet Union.
One day in October, all the leaders from the company level up were summoned to Jiamusi for ‘study sessions’ - sentries were posted around the abandoned barracks where He and his colleagues were staying. He recalls, “That day, we sat in a big room, listening to our regiment commander reading out a central authorities’ document to the effect that Lin Biao had fled the country and crashed to his death on September 13 in Mongolia en route to his defection.”
All people on the spot were caught offguard and dumfounded by the bombshell. Why Lin Biao of all people? He was Chairman Mao’s hand-picked successor. This had been written into the Party Constitution in black and white. The air froze. Nobody ventured to say a word.
The September 13 incident was no less than a devastating political earthquake for He Yanguang and his peers. From that time on, their unshakable faith in the orthodox political creed began to shatter. This was, in fact, the case of many people of his generation. All of them claim that the incident was a watershed after which they began to think independently, instead of following others blindly.
April 5 1976 The Tiananmen Incident: A Martyr’s Mindset