Fourteen years ago today, the peaceful pro-democracy demonstrations in Tiananmen Square were crushed by Chinese troops under orders from Deng Xiaoping. The Chinese, those who know the enormity of the incident and its aftermath, call it liusi, “six-four,” though there is still no admission of wrong by the central government. While there are no exact counts of the dead and wounded, most estimate that it was between 2500 and 3000.
Check out Ian Buruma’s Bad Elements and Jan Wong’s Red China Blues for more (relatively unbiased) accounts.
Just out of curiosity, what’s the meaning behind six-four? I imagine the usual association of four with death due to the phonetic similarity has something to do with it, but I’m not clueful enough to pick up the whole meaning.
Left by Jordan on June 5th, 2003
Nope, simpler than that… It started on June 4, 1989… 6/4/89, hence the “six-four.”
Left by John on June 5th, 2003
You could probably come up with some phonetic similarity. I know “liu” also means “to flow”, and “si” means “to die.” And death surely did flow, or at least blood did.
Left by Andrew on June 5th, 2003
Liu Si means Six Four exactly though ’si’ is the same pronunciation of ‘death’ in chinese
but here ’si’ means ‘four’. and ‘liu’ means ’six’.
Left by cn on December 10th, 2003