“Only the biggest public, thus the largest square, could match the supreme power of the Chairman and the Tiananmen.”[1]
Surrounded by four massive buildings – one of them is the Forbidden City – and punctuated by a 10-story high stone obelisk in the lower center of the “surreally” vast open space, Tainamen Square – literally means “The Gate of Heavenly Peace” – today is China’s most recognized public space. The underlying structure of the square, apart from tourist’s perspective as one of the “must-sees,” is the memory of the place through a course of controversial history. Having hosted more than half a dozen key events in the history of China in the twentieth century, Tiananmen Square has been a symbol of culture vis-à-vis people’s opportunity to express their liberality against any impulses of political injustice.[2] Apart from its excessive size, the square wins no admiration. The vastness and monotony of the public space does not entail the least sense of human scale. Surprisingly, none of the preceding was the original purpose of the square. It was built for people to gather in, but not to express their freedom – rather, to abide by the Communist rule. That is to say, the square was meant to be a space for surrenderers, not for protestors. In addition, in the center of the Square is located a “necktie” – the Monument to the People’s Heroes – a physical manifestation of Mao Zedong’s political statement. In the reading, Wu Hung narrated his own first-hand experience of the events associated with the political tendencies using the square as a middle ground.
A photo I took in the summer of 2009 in front of the Gate of Heavenly Peace
According to the University of Chicago historian Wu Hung’s historical account, Tainanmen Square is by no means new. Despite the fact that most people in our time recognize the square from the June Fourth Movement (1989) and its bloody result; especially, the unmistakably classic photo of a brave man who stood for the rights of democracy in front of the fearsome tanks,[3] making Tiananmen Square “China’s political space” for the world the same way as London’s Hyde Park and Washington’s Lincoln Memorial. The history of the square dated back to the time of the Qing dynasty; at the time it did not have a name. The T-shaped square in front of the Forbidden Palace was the interstitial space between the rows of civil service offices on both sides, acting as a ground that allowed delaying visitors in accessing the series of gates into the Forbidden City. The square was uncomplicatedly planned in accordance with Chinese correlative cosmology – the east-west spanning of the upper part of the T denotes the beginning and the end of life (as east is for the “birth” and west is for the “death”: the road ran left and right of the Forbidden City’s Chang’an Gate), suggesting the functions of the offices that were situated along the span. In addition to the use for government examinations and High Court’s judicial activities, the square was used as a point of crossing a threshold to the emperor’s territory, insofar as the hierarchy of the ancient city prevailed. That is, the square did not have a specific function; instead, it was a “space between,” symbolically used for hierarchical purposes. The rebirth of the square, with extreme complication of political tensions, did not start until 1949 when Mao “ascended Tainanmen Square and declared the founding of the People’s Republic of China.”
Not only has the notion of a large empty public plaza never been part of Chinese town tradition, but such a notion of a terrifyingly big empty ground has never been found anywhere in the history of urban placemaking. As far as the Cultural Revolution was concerned, the making of the square was to represent a devastation of the past. In other words, for Mao Zedong and the communist party, there was no need for history as it could be reconstructed by means of the present, an agenda of which the remaking of the square was part. The destruction of old buildings to make way for the “square for one million people” was a symbol of the replacement of the old with the new urban ideology. The square, according to Wu, was meant to be a public realm surrounded by the monuments of the past and present.[4]
“Eternal glory to the people’s heroes!”[5] — Translation of Chinese inscription at the front of the Monument to the People’s Heroes
Added to the south of the center of the square was the stone memorial stele, Monuments for the People’s Heroes, a controversial monument, which was de jure a design of the “Committee for Constructing the Monument,” which included Beijing’s mayor Peng Zhen, the architect (again) Liang Sicheng, the sculptor Liu Kaiqu, and Xue Zizheng.[6] The design of the monument is truly historical, representational, single-sided, contains no abstraction, and considered by the visitors very banal – in other words, the monolithic appearance of monument does not encourage people’s spiritual involvement. Again, Liang Sicheng showed evidence of being only a great educational reformer, not a designer. His advocacy of the design of the monument, which was attached to the historical form Liang himself previously experience, slowed down the leaping toward the invention of built form. Nevertheless, thorough several contentious stages of design, every detail of the design of the monument was, alas, politically controlled and determined by political leaders. The process of creating the monument was complicated. The monument was meant to embrace nothing but the image of one individual: Mao Zedong. That is to say, the “heroes” were those who took part in Mao’s seminal triumphal events in between 1839 and 1949. – in other words, the “heroes” were Mao himself. Therefore, from its location to its design, inscriptions, and decorations, every part of the monument was carefully selected to fulfill its politicized purpose, which, of course, encouraged debates among those who were involved in the plan. All of this had to do with the issue of history. By erecting forceful “built form” and using it as a strong urban representation, the Communist government believed that they could construct the new history thus create the new social agenda for the entire nation: Tiananmen Square was the center of China and the Monument to the People’s Heroes was the spiritual center of the socialist nation.
The Square is so massive that, truth be told, if you try you can actually see the curvature of the earth.
Wu argues for the underlying meaning of the monument in regards to its location. By interpreting that each building that embraces the square has special connotation in the remaking of Communist state, he argues for the undergirding meanings of the square by means of its historical representation – by using the term “history,” he means the “Mao’s reconstructed history” – which makes sense to a certain degree. Nevertheless, taking into account the vastness of space, to which every man’s sense of scale would fail to associate, it is difficult to imagine the physical articulation meanings. Walking from one side to the other takes fifteenth minutes, once moving from the Forbidden City’s gate to Chairman Mao’s Mausoleum, the impression of the former captivated built form disappears and is naturally replaced by the other. Although I am not convinced by nor perhaps thoroughly understand his argument, I concur to a certain degree that the location of the monument in the square connotes some political agenda. The square was originally made for a certain purpose and to convey a certain message, which was not necessarily being the liberality and freedom of speech – actually, those were the two meanings least desired by the creators. Nevertheless, it cannot be denied that for decades the public meaning of Tiananmen Square has been changed by political controversies – according to Wu: “the Square has been and will continue to be a prime visual means of political rhetoric in modern china to address the public and to constitute the public itself.”[7] I paraphrase Wu to end this essay:
“Tiananmen Square provides a locus of coalescence for political expression, collective memory, and identity and history. It has been a prime visual means of political rhetoric in Maoist and Post-Maoist China to address the public and allows public to address its meaning – the square and its meaning is renewed and enriched by ongoing events while at the same time encompassing itself.”[8]
Non Arkaraprasertkul
April 2012
Cambridge, Massachusetts
Work Cited:
[1] Wu Hung, Representations , No. 35, Special Issue: Monumental Histories (Summer, 1991), pp. 84-117, Tainamem, 23
[2] The events include: the May Fourth Movement of 1919, the Protests in 1976 after the death of Zhou Enlai, the Tiananmen Square protests of 1989 (June Fourth Movement, Tiananmen Square Massacre).
[3] The famous photo was taken by Associated Press photographer Jeff Widener.
[4] Wu, Tainamem, 35
[5] At the back of the monument was engraved the full statement: “Eternal glory to the heroes of the people who laid down their lives in the people’s war of liberation and the people’s revolution in the past three years! Eternal glory to the heroes of the people who laid down their lives in the people’s war of liberation and the people’s revolution in the past thirty years! Eternal glory to the heroes of the people who from 1840 laid down their lives in the many struggles against domestic and foreign enemies and for national independence and the freedom and well-being of the people!”
[6] The Monument’s cornerstone was laid by Mao Zedong and Zhu De on September 30, 1949.
[7] Wu, Tiananmen, 16
[8] ibid.
Life is Urbanism 