Writer Liao Yiwu wrote an essay titled 19 days, which briefly recounts his experiences each year on June 4 between 1989 and 2008. This translation, in Paris Review, includes a postscript which includes an entry for 2009:
June 4, 1989
A massacre took place in the capital city of the People’s Republic of China. The size of it shocked the world. Nobody knows precisely how many innocent people lost their lives. The government put the number of “collateral deaths” at two hundred or less. But many Chinese believe that it was more like three thousand innocent students and residents who were slain.
I didn’t witness the killings in Tiananmen Square. I was home in Fuling, a small mountain town well known for its pickled and shredded turnips. When I heard the news, I was outraged. I composed an epic poem, “Massacre,” to commemorate the government’s brutality against its people. With the help of a visiting Canadian friend, I made a tape, chanting my poem into an old toothless tape recorder. My wife Axia was also present.[…] Postscript: June 4, 2009
The police had started to remind me of the anniversary in May. They came to see me frequently, telling me to be “low-key” and not to do anything subversive. On the afternoon of June 1, public security officers invited me to their office and interrogated me. They had heard that I had written an article called “Nineteen Days.” They wanted to know what my motives were.
Watch an interview with Liao on BBC from 2008.
