The Goddess of Democracy

So today's the anniversary of the crackdown at Tiananmen Square -- at least, that's what the news says. Here in America, anyway.

Most people here know Tiananmen Square for one thing. They know it was where one guy, holding a shopping bag, faced down a line of tanks. It's a pretty famous picture. The little guy, for most of us, represents democracy, and the tanks represent communist totalitarianism.

Because today was the anniversary, the LA Times ran an interesting article about that brave little man.

Most people in China don't know he even exists. And nobody anywhere knows who or where he is.

(John Vanderslice wrote a pretty good song about that.)

He has become a cipher. An indeterminate figure. An icon.

From the above-linked article:

On the eve of the anniversary this week, Tiananmen Square was crowded with thousands of tourists and locals milling under floodlights — presumably watched by plainclothes policemen. Brigades of bicyclists passed on the crowded boulevards that surround the square, and a group of old women drew a curious crowd as they exercised to the beat of a drum.

Yet several people nearby said they had never heard of the tank man or his moment of fame.

"I've never seen him," one man said. "Was he Chinese?"

A couple dressed in Western clothing, holding hands as they walked along the sidewalk, said they were too young to recall the incident.

A nearby cab driver in his early 40s was old enough to remember the crackdown. But he said most people had just tried to forget what happened. When told of the exploits of the lone protester, he said, "He must have been a very brave man."

But the thing with the Tiananmen Square protests wasn't that one guy stood up. It was that thousands did.

The protests were partially an outgrowth of the funeral of Party Secretary Hu Yaobang, a (disgraced) pro-democracy official, and partially an observance of the anniversary of the "5.4 Movement", when students gathered in 1919 to protest foreign influence in China. So this was, in some ways, a very patriotic observance for the Chinese -- students, journalists, Beijing citizens were all together, protesting for rights guaranteed by their own constitution by gathering in the imperial square named for the Gates of Heaven. The problem was that public will and the Communist Party were at odds... and the Party was supposed to be the embodiment of public will.

Instead, after days of blockading the city and hunger striking in that vast public square, the mass of protestors chose a different icon for themselves.

They called her The Goddess of Democracy.

She was thirty feet tall, made of styrofoam and papier mache, and served as a rallying point for the city-within-the-city -- facing down the towering, paternal portrait of Mao Zedong that dominates Tiananmen.

Even now, looking at old news photos, it's a tremendously iconic moment. A replica of that statue now stands in San Francisco, looking to the East just as Lady Liberty salutes the West.

Thinking about the Goddess of Democracy -- of democracy embodied as a female principle -- makes me think of one of the oldest symbols for my own country. Older than Uncle Sam. Older than Lady Liberty (although a close cousin, or perhaps a maiden aunt). Her name is Columbia.

You've seen her. At the movies...

In front the university that bears her name...

Or perhaps in more antique representations...

In her heyday, Columbia represented everything good and just and kind about America. She was, in her own way, an avatar of The White Goddess, that principle Robert Graves (and Sir James Frazer before him) described as the Moon Mother, an embodiment of poetry, transformation, and dreams for a wiser tomorrow. In America's mythic history, Uncle Sam only comes around when our young country is mouthing off and spoiling for a fight. Before that, when our military ambitions were dedicated only to defending the fragile dream of democracy, the spirit of the land was seen as a woman, this woman, Columbia, the Goddess of Democracy.

And 15 years ago today, she stood, briefly, in Tiananmen Square, before the tanks came.

I can't help but wondering, though -- styrofoam and papier mache can't stand up to tanks, but goddesses? They go where they are summoned, by need and by adoration.

So I'm wondering.

Where is she now?

Posted by grant at June 04, 2004 10:48 PM