Thirty five years ago

 June 4, 1989: Tiananmen Square massacre

The student-led demonstrations were violently suppressed after the Chinese government declared martial law.''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''I saw a headline stating that it's been 35 years since Tiananmen Square and it brought back there memories:

So here's something I had not thought about for quite a while.   It's been 35 years since the demonstrations and Chinese goverment actions at Tinememan Square.   Nick had just completed  a year of Chinese language training through the State Department in preperation for out tour in China.  We had a yard sale at my house in Reston with some other LLL Leaders and friends. 

 When we were done with the yard sale,and I went in the house, one of my LLL friends called me and said "they are killing students".   Oh man was that a scary time.  

We were actually heading for Taiwan for Nick's second year of Chinese language training before heading off to Guangzhou,China.   We didn't know at that point what was going to happen or if we were even going to be sent there.

We did go to Taiwan.  We spent a year in Taipei, Taiwan.  Some of our friends there had actually seen the tanks running over student in Beijing.   

 And almost exactly a year later, we were in Beijing and our hotel room had a view of the place where the famous picture of the guy standing in front of the tank was.  Very surreal.

Courtney remined me that I was 35 then and it's been 35 years.  You would never have know

 anything had happened there just one year after the event because the Chinese goivernment had cleaned it all away.  

There were cameras everywhere and the Chinese people avoided ys because they knew they were being watched.

Normally in South East Asia our blond kids attracted a lot of attention.  But not then- at least not in Beijing.