Photo ©2004 Hiroaki Mada Dissident Poetry makes waves off the coast of Asia Compiled from various reports September 6 saw the culmination of the Huabiao Oratories, summer-long series of lectures and poetry readings throughout various locations in the far East. The series began five years ago as a pro-democracy forum in Taipei, Taiwan. This year the tour started late in May and continued on, making two stops in Japan ending in Singapore. Much of the rhetoric was directed against China for their "policies of oppression," others chastised the United States for turning their back on Taiwan and other Asian trading partners in favor of China, and others condemned Korea for proliferating nuclear arms. The readings were planned to commemorate historical events, particularly the fifteenth anniversary of the Tiananmen Square Massacre, the twenty-fifth anniversary of diplomatic relations between China and the US, and the eighty-fifth anniversary of the demonstration against the Treaty of Versailles which allowed Japanese interests to infiltrate China, later leading to invasion and the annexation of Manchuko (Manchuria). The event drew more than 3,000 attendees, most of them student representatives from area universities and colleges. While dissidents of virtually every political slant and persuasion attended, the theme of peace which filled the rhetoric was also echoed by the nearly sixty participants, mostly educators and journalists. Although most speakers participated read only at their home venue, one who made the entire tour was Hong Kong native Wu Hai Tien of the international Highway Poets. An outspoken opponent of Chinese incursion in Taiwan and a survivor of Tiananmen, Wu (shown at right with his late wife, Liu Hangji days before the 1989 massacre) is currently pursuing his Doctorate in Chinese Language.

"If Tiananmen Gate, the entryway into the inner vastness of the Forbidden City as well as the exit from that imperial and bureaucratic world into the zones of public space and revolutionary memory, has traditionally been the place where the pronouncements of China's rulers have been read to their people, Tiananmen Square is where in the 20th Century the people made their voices heard to the rulers. Just outside Tiananmen Gate stand two "Huabiao," sculpted pillars. They derive from the practice of leaving a wooden board, the "wood of direct speech," outside the palace on which common people could write any complaints they had about the court. This wooden plaque was eventually fixed to decorative columns, but even after they became more ornamental than functional, the huabiao were still supposed to symbolize the people's right to speak up against official injustice. Reality was quite different." Says Wu. The actual death toll from three days of rioting in the one-hundred-acre square has never been determined, but is believed to total between 3,000 and 6,000. Principal among the forces behind the demonstration-turned-riot-turned-massacre was the government suppression of the "Democracy Wall," a modern huabaio, where complaints against the government could be posted with impunity, and the subsequent arrest of several activists, the most famous among them being Wei Jingsheng, who was sentenced to fifteen years. Had he not died in prison, his release would have been due on September 6. The original version of the Tiananmen was built in the 1420s when an emperor of the ruling Ming Dynasty, which controlled China from 1368 to 1644, moved the capital from Nanjing on the Yangzi River to Beijing.