For the first few weeks of this term, my ASTU 100 class read Farhat Shahzad’s article “The Role of Interpretative Communities in Remembering and Learning” which is about how people learn and remember from different people in their different social interactions which she calls ‘Interpretive Communities’. These ‘Interpretive Communities’ can be our friends, family, teachers or other people we have a connection to. When reading this essay, Shahzad touched on the topic of how people learn and remember differently when with a person or people they hold to an authoritative stance such as your parents. This made me realize that I have experienced this when my parents told me what happened at Tiananmen Square 26 years ago and also as recently as last year with the Umbrella Revolution in Hong Kong.
26 years ago, thousands of protesters (mostly University students from Beijing) congregated at Tiananmen Square peacefully demanding democratic reform from the communist government. For several weeks, the protesters showed the government their intention by going on hunger strikes and quiet protests, all the while unarmed. However the government imposed martial law and on June 4, 1989 the Chinese military fired their weapons on the students amassed there. The true death toll has never been released from China although the numbers range from the hundreds to the thousands. When my parents told me this, I was shocked that something like this had happened. My parents were living in Hong Kong at the time of the massacre and due to their second hand experience of this event through live television broadcasts and phone calls from friends in other parts of China, I immediately believed them and also due to their authoritative position I hold them to, it influenced my thinking of this event as a true horror.
Last August, “the Chinese legislature’s standing committee ruled that it would not allow open nominations in Hong Kong’s 2017 election for chief executive”. The legislature stated that they would choose the candidates and between those chosen candidates, the Hong Kong residents would have to choose their chief executive. However, the residents of Hong Kong wished for a fully democratic election. Due to this, students protested by boycotting their classes and storming the main government body buildings in Hong Kong. It was during this time that the Hong Kong police responded with unexpected force on the unarmed students. When I first heard about this incident from my parents, I was again shocked at what was happening and I immediately drew similarities between this revolution and what happened at Tiananmen Square, however the Umbrella Revolution held a much larger impact for me as some of my cousins participated in the protests. This emotional connection to my ‘interpretative community’ (my cousins) who were participating in the protests altered my view of the protests in comparison to other people who know about this incident only through news broadcasts or articles. Through my cousins’ view, they wished for a true democratic election instead of an already chosen one. They felt betrayed as they saw the legislature refusing to respect part of the agreement in regards to the election with Britain (Hong Kong used to be a British colony). I felt their desire for this election when I conversed with them over the phone and I am emotionally attached to this incident due to this.
Works cited:
Shazad, Farhat. “The Role of Interpretive Communities in Remembering and Learning.” Canadian Journal of Education 34.3 (2011): 301-316. Web. ProQuest. 1 Sept. 2014.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/onthisday/hi/dates/stories/june/4/newsid_2496000/2496277.stm