In 1989, my father wrote a letter to the Chinese Ambassador to Australia, a man I had previously met over spicy jellyfish during a banquet he hosted in my father’s honour.
Dear Sir,
Having recently witnessed the heartbroken tears of my sixteen-year-old daughter I am compelled to write to you to condemn, in the strongest terms, the actions your government has taken against your own citizens.
I am disappointed that the bridges we built together during my posting as Defence Attaché to Beijing, have come to nothing. In the eyes of my daughter, the very places she walked are now stained with the blood of a people she had a great fondness for.
When we first arrived in Beijing, in 1982, we walked to Tiananmen Square from our hotel, not yet officially open. I skipped down Chang An, marvelling at the lightness of my feet in maroon velvet mary-jane shoes, bought along the way from the Friendship store.
We would rollerskate to Ritan Park, where shy tongzhi in navy and green suits would crowd around touching our blond hair, or trying to speak English with us. The guards on the gates at our diplomatic apartment compounds made it clear that Chinese weren’t allowed to make friends with foreign devils.
The twelve students from my entire fourth grade at the International School took a field trip to file reverently past the glass case of the embalmed Mao Zedong. Afterwards, we squatted on the concrete under the permanently grey sky, as we ate mandarins and spat sunflower husks onto the vast open space of Tiananmen Square.
Sarah Bonnar 