From Inside-out China blog:
Last week, many Chinese websites reprinted an article from China Newsweek titled “How the Tiananmen Incident was Redressed.” This title is a bit eye-shocking because the term “Tiananmen Incident” in Chinese has also been used to refer to the 1989’s June 4th massacre. This article, however, is talking about an earlier “Tiananmen Incident” that took place on April 5th, 1976, also commonly referred as the “4/5 incident.”
Common Americans may not be aware of this first “Tiananmen Incident.” It happened after Premier Zhou Enlai’s death in January 1976 and before Mao’s death in September that same year. In the name of the Qingming Festival in April, the traditional time to mourn the dead, Beijing people spontaneously gathered on the Tiananmen Square, placing flowers, wreaths, poems and essays on the “People’s Heroes Monument,” mostly to grieve the death of Zhou Enlai, some also (in subtle and obscure ways) expressed resentment against members of the “Gang of Four” and hopes for Deng Xiaoping’s return to power. The government of the time responded to the peaceful, largely literary, activities with a curfew and armed repression. An unknown number of people were killed and many arrested or denounced. The incident was declared a “counterrevolutionary riot.”
