At North Central College, the East Meets West (EMW) music ensemble carried on a tradition they have been marking for the past 16 years—a concert to commemorate the June 4th Tiananmen massacre in China. While the bloody skirmish that killed hundreds (thousands by some accounts) is a taboo subject in Mainland China, in Naperville, the melodious echoes of that tragic event rang loud and clear. Scores of people attended EMW's June 3rd concert, many driving several hours from other states.
The audience was treated to Rachmaninoff's Piano Concerto No. 2 while Dr. Yang Fengshi, Director of EMW, read a verse befitting the memory of the Tiananmen massacre. Her soft voice moved the crowd to tears. As she read by flickering candlelight, the audience silently recalled those who were slaughtered 17 years ago.
Goes into exile
Lonely, goes into exile
Magnificently, goes into exile
Goes into exile
Sadly, goes into exile
Luckily, goes into exile
Refusing to betray the soul and to sign the contract
You have no other alternatives
Other pieces performed by EMW included Rachmaninoff's Prelude in C-Sharp Minor and Barber's string quartet. Dr. William Goldenberg from Northern Illinois University played Schumann's piano piece "The Soaring," and the Ruibo Chorus from Chicago sang a Chinese song entitled "Non-Regret Pursuit." Dr.Yang Fengshi and Dr. Wang Chengyong composed the work 12 years ago, and the performance was greeted with gracious applause from the audience.
But the concert was not merely for musical enjoyment. Song Yongyi, an accomplished scholar on the history of the Great Cultural Revolution and Gao Wenqian, author of Later Years of Zhou Enlai, were keynote speakers at Saturday's concert. They referred to the eve of June 4th 1989 as "The darkest page in China's contemporary history."
Gao Wenqian explained his past as an assistant researcher at the Chinese Communist Party Central Archive Office and Director of China's ex-Prime Minister Zhou Enlai's biography research team. In 1989, Gao took the institution staff to the streets to support the student democratic movement. This act triggered his removal from office and left him bereft of all titles. Gao left for the U.S. in 1993.
In 2003, Gao published Later Years of Zhou Enlai, which soon became the most popular book in China, Hong Kong and Taiwan and was applauded as "the most authoritative biography on Zhou Enlai." This book transformed Gao from an "officially hired scholar" to an independent writer.
Gao revealed that the CCP tried all means to prevent him from publishing the book. "Now it is [the CCP's] turn to fear," Gao told the crowd in Naperville, commenting that history would inevitably disintegrate the foundation of the totalitarian authority.
Gao urged every Chinese person to defeat the innermost feeling of fear, exercise his or her inalienable rights, refuse to lie, and refuse to forget. "The day that each person defeats his own fear is the day the communist totalitarian authority collapses."
At the end of the presentations, Dr. Huang Weiti, who initiated a protest in Chicago against the CCP's slaughter 17 years ago, proposed 3 Chinese characters to sum up the spirit of last Saturday's concert: "Recalling June 4th, Reflecting on History, Refusing to Forget."
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