Hi, readers:

During the introduction to this course, one word, in particular, stood out to me the most, “Memory”. I believe in the importance of the collective memories of a society, I believe that the collective memories of a society defines its character, and keeps it from repeating its own mistakes. As a result, in every culture and society, there is always a mechanism for keeping the memories. That mechanism maybe books and movies, it can be monuments and museums, or it may even be verbally told from one generation to another, but no matter the format, memory always seem to find a way.

But sometimes we seem to forget, by conscious decisions. Societies, for the most part, love to cling on to its proudest moments, while tending to ignore the wrongdoings in its more recent past. This dangerous pattern allows history to repeat itself, stopping the process where the society learns from its own mistakes. While some communities like UBC choose to make its own wrongdoing one of the most important parts of its memory, others don’t seem to be as enlightened.

During my time in China, the events took place in Tiananmen Square was never really brought to my attention, all the knowledge I had of this event was that there was a protest of some sort. Of course, it was more than that. During Tiananmen protest of 1989, groups of student advocating free speech gathered at the Tiananmen Square, the symbol of Chinese government’s power and authority. At the height of the event, an estimated one million people gathered at the square. The event can to an abrupt end on June 4th, 1989. Around 300000 troops were mobilized into Beijing because the leader of CPC (Communist Party of China) considered the protests a threat to the party’s rule. In the aftermath of the event, several hundred were killed, with much more imprisoned or exiled. Before I learned about this, free speech was merely a concept, I even thought that no major damage can really be done by not letting people talk. But the knowledge of this protest changed the way I think, made me a firm believer in the freedom of speech, and allowed me to fully appreciate this right of expression. The memory of this event along with some other things is still systematic “forgotten” in China, creating generations with zero to none awareness in politics, and no respect for free speech.

This is not a singular case of forgetting, for example, the Japanese education system is choosing to forget about the atrocity Japan committed against countries in the Asia Pacific region during WWII, nowadays Americans tend to forget about the acts against the native Americans… What we can and should do to combat this is to remember and to spread these memories, so that they are not forgotten and will not be repeated.