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Tian'anmen in pictures: then and now

By Mu Qian (China Daily)
Updated: 2009-07-28 10:50

Wu Qun, Lin Yang and Yang Zhenya (from left to right) on Sept 30, 1949. [China Daily/Courtesy of Hei Ming]

Yang Zhenya in 2009. The other two passed away in the 1990s. [China Daily/Courtesy of Hei Ming]

A month later, they received the photo. To share it with relatives, they mailed the negative to Shanghai to develop more copies. Besides sending copies to others, they had one enlarged and colored to keep as a family treasure.

When Duan learned about Hei's project from the newspaper 37 years later, she and her sister decided to join up, though their parents had passed away. Again they came to Beijing from Xinjiang, but this time it only took them 4 hours to fly from their home in Urumqi.

"We found the place where we stood with our parents. We tried to pose the same way as we did in our teens, only to find that we could no longer squat as easily as we could. Our parents, who stood behind us, will never be with us again. We could only recall our parents and our youth by taking a picture at Tian'anmen," Duan says.

The oldest picture that Hei has collected was taken on Sept 30, 1949, the day before the founding ceremony of the People's Republic of China. The three persons in the picture were photographers with North China Pictorial, who photographed the founding ceremony.

This May, 85-year-old Yang Zhenya, one of the three people in the picture, stood before Hei's lens at Tian'anmen for a new photo. His two colleagues passed away in the 1990s.

"When the three of us took the picture in 1949, I didn't realize that it would become a historical photo," says Yang. "How time flies, both Tian'anmen and me have changed a lot."

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In a picture taken in 1966, four "red guards" gathered around a portrait of Mao in Tian'anmen, all in armbands, smiling and holding books of Mao's quotations.

When Hei took a new version of that picture in 2007, however, only one person remained in the picture. Zheng Panqi, now 60, held a book of Mao's works and squatted alone before Tian'anmen. The four young men came from various areas in Beijing full of "revolutionary" spirit. They met in Tian'anmen Square, and took a photo together as a memento. Then they went their own ways and lost contact.

Zheng, who was a middle school student at that time, was a soldier and a college student in the years that followed, and is now a professor with Tianjin Professional College of Art and Design.

"This picture depicts an exciting moment in my life. For the first time, I was at Tian'anmen, and I felt that I was with Chairman Mao," he says.

Today, Tian'anmen is still a popular spot for photos, but people no longer have to condense all their emotions in a picture as before.

"In the past, any one who left or came to Beijing would have to take a photo at Tian'anmen," said 54-year-old Yang Lang, vice-president of the SEEC Media Group. "People seem to have exalted the political meaning of Tian'anmen. Today I drive past Tian'anmen every day, but no longer have that kind of feeling."

Hei has already finished shooting, and is now working on the text for each group of photos. He hopes to release a book and hold an exhibition of all the photos in September, before the 60th anniversary of the founding of the People's Republic of China.

"I hope to present history through the details of the common people," he says.

The heart of the city

Built in 1420, Tian'anmen or "Gate of Heavenly Peace" is the entrance to the Imperial City of Beijing, within which the Forbidden City is located. It was where the emperors issued imperial edicts during the Ming (1368-1644) and Qing (1644-1911) dynasties, when no building in Beijing was allowed to exceed Tian'anmen Rostrum's height of 32 m.

On Oct 1, 1949, Mao Zedong announced the founding of the People's Republic of China on the Tian'anmen Rostrum. Tian'anmen continued to be a national symbol, with a portrait of Mao positioned over the central gate, along with the slogans: "Long Live the People's Republic of China" and "Long Live the Solidarity of the World People".

Tian'anmen Square, located to the south of the Tian'anmen Rostrum, is the largest square in the world. Many a celebration and political activities have taken place here.

Since 1988, the Tian'anmen Rostrum has been open to the public. The ticket charge is 15 yuan.

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