Tuesday marked the thirtieth anniversary of the Tiananmen Square Massacre, when China’s People’s Liberation Army opened fire on pro-democracy activists, killing between a few hundred and a few thousand civilians. That the death toll remains unknown is a symptom of the Chinese government’s thirty-year project to scrub Tiananmen Square from the Chinese cultural memory. The event has never been publicly reckoned with by the government, and conversation about the massacre is considered taboo in Chinese culture. Jiayang Fan joins the guest host Eric Lach to discuss the legacy of Tiananmen Square, and how the Chinese government’s unwillingness to address the trauma has had lingering effects on Chinese culture.
