Tiananmen Incident - Mourning

Mourning

In Chinese culture, people celebrate the 106th day after the winter solstice as Qingming Festival, also known as Tomb Sweeping Day. In 1976, the Qing Ming festival fell on April 5. Even before the tomb sweeping Day that year, citizens who mourned Premier Zhou's death began to place paper wreaths and white paper chrysanthemums at the foot of the Monument to the People's Heroes in Tiananmen Square.

On April 4, for example, hundreds of thousands of Beijing residents came to the square to lay wreaths at the Monument. Hundreds of mourners posted handwritten poems there as well. Many of the poems seemed to refer to and commemorate ancient Chinese historical events, but most were intended to criticize China's current leaders. It was an indirect way of expression without compromising the possibility of arrest by security forces (see Jan Wong's account of these poems in Red China Blues). An example is a poem implicitly criticizing Jiang Qing by attacking the Empress Wu Zetian, a 7th century Tang Dynasty empress who ruled after her husband died.

The large number of mourners and intensity of the public outpouring of sentiment alarmed government and Communist Party officials. The Politburo met in emergency sessions in the Great Hall of the People, which lies a few yards west of Tiananmen Square. The leaders decided to remove all the wreaths, flowers, and poems.

Public security forces acted during the night of April 4–5 and cleaned the area around the Monument. On April 5, tens of thousands of Beijing residents returned to the Monument in Tiananmen Square and were dismayed to find the wreaths and other commemorative materials removed. In addition, public security officers cordoned off the area around the Monument, preventing mourners from approaching.