Author ｜
Pan Tsung-yi
Abstract ｜
Between the May Fourth Movement of 1919 and the June Fourth Movement of 1989, there was the forgotten April Fifth Movement of 1976. The three large-scale unofficial protests not only constitute three defining moments in the Chinese pursuit of political modernity in the twentieth century, but also represent three turning points in the on-going changing meaning of Tiananmen (Gate of Heavenly) Square, the symbolic center of the People’s Republic of China (PRC), which materialized the Chinese cultural memory of the communist-sanctioned revolutionary traditions. The magic numbers of “May Fourth,” “April Fifth,” and “June Fourth” not only signify three prominent watersheds in the history of twentieth-century China but also constitute three decoding codes, or “keywords,” to examine the changing meaning of Tiananmen Square and political culture of the PRC. This article is the first comprehensive inquiry into the significance of the April Fifth Movement from the perspectives of the politics of memory making and social production of space at Tiananmen Square. Through a close reading of the protest literature, such as the Tiananmen Poems and big- and small- character posters, as well as the historical documents of Chinese Communist Party (CCP) and newspapers, this article intends to analyze both the popular and official uses of “May Fourth” and/or“April Fifth” during and after the April Fifth Movement. Especially, the Tiananmen Poems allow us to see how the commemorative monuments and official ritual practices at Tiananmen Square have become the material and spatial foundation to recall and appropriate the past of the communist-sanctioned revolutionary tradition. It is in this way that the dissident protesters during the April Fifth Movement were able to justify their struggle against the Gang of Four in a short-lived public sphere that was created at the state disciplinary space of the PRC. This in turn illuminates the fluidity and constructed nature of the symbolism of Tiananmen Square.In addition to offering a present perspective to observe the genesis and development of the first unofficial social movement since the founding of the PRC, the Tiananmen Poems open a window to look into the dynamics of memory making in which the people from below have conceptualized and endowed alternative meanings with Zhou Enlai,“April Fifth,” and Tiananmen Square in their popular discourse. They explain why the popular mourners came to the particular site of the Monument to the People’s Heroes at the center of Tiananmen Square to commemorate Zhou Enlai. Moreover, the Tiananmen Poems also demonstrate how the dissident protesters during and after the April Fifth Movement legitimatized their prospective envision of Chinese modernity, the Four Modernizations, by appropriating the past of the communist-sanctioned revolutionary tradition such as “May Fourth” while attaching their recollection of Zhou Enlai’s career to the Monument. Furthermore,this article examines how the CCP had redefined and used “April Fifth” as a revolutionary tradition in order to endow Deng Xiaoping’s rise to power and his discourses on the Four Modernizations and the Four Cardinals with social and historical legitimacy in the post-Mao China. This eventually shows how CCP and PRC kept silent about “April Fifth” and turned it into a forgotten revolutionary tradition after the mid-1980s. The official political use of “April Fifth” exemplifies constructed nature of historical memory as well as the power at work in the making of official discourse on the past and the power of discourse making at the present. This process witnessed the changing meaning of “April Fifth” in the popular and official discourse as a keyword to examine the history of the PRC and its relevance with other keywords such as “May Fourth” and “June Fourth.”
keywords ｜
April Fifth Movement, May Fourth Movement, Tiananmen Poem, Tiananmen Square, historical memory