Hope
A few days ago, I got together with a close friend with whom I often end up commiserating about the world’s injustices. We ate sticky cinnamon buns in the hot Texas heat as our conversation, as it so often does, turned to all the new oppressive measures around which we now needed to structure our lives: new racist policy proposals, new ways we as women are losing basic rights, new threats to our economic security and future. “When do we know when it’s time for revolution?” she asked wryly.
It is a question I think about often as a historian. What drives people to have the right combination of hope, bravery, and defiance that emboldens them to demand change from people and institutions with infinitely more power than they have? Despite the real-world importance of this question, it is often backwards from how we as a society judge social movements. In popular discourse, our focus is almost always about successes or failures. How did the movement end? Did they achieve their stated goals? Was there immediate, measurable change?
But when I think about June 4th, I find the first question is most meaningful. Around the world, activism is rooted in historical memory. But it lives not in the memory of successes, since most activists know that we cannot only fight injustice when the odds are in our favour. Rather, it is rooted in the historical memory of brave people standing up and saying what is difficult to say and fighting for what seems impossible. It is rooted in a history of hope. My friend and I had our conversation on May 31st—a day when, 34 years ago in Tiananmen square, young people did not know the tragedy about to befall their country. They still believed their actions could create a better society. They still had hope.
This year is a particularly grim year to think about June 4th in terms of hope. This morning when I opened Twitter, my feed was flooded with Hongkongers, young and old, being arrested for holding a candle, wearing a t-shirt, or reading a book because those actions could potentially be read as a public display of mourning. Honestly, a part of me feels ill thinking about even writing about hope on a day like this. But if studying the history of activism has taught me anything, it is that the lessons we learn from history cannot be solely be boiled down to the consequences of our actions. When we instead focus on why people were empowered, felt conviction, or believed that change could be real, we can imagine a future where we, too, can foment change.
This is how I choose to think about June 4th. That movement—not just the massacre but the conviction that preceded it—lives in the historical memory of activism, not as a failure, but as evidence of bravery and conviction.
How to cite: Tam, Gina Anne. “Just Another Day: Gina Anne Tam.” Cha: An Asian Literary Journal, 4 Jun. 2023, chajournal.blog/2023/06/04/gina-anne-tam.
Gina Anne Tam is an associate professor of modern Chinese history at Trinity University in San Antonio, Texas. A current Wilson China Fellow, she is the author of Dialect and Nationalism in China, 1860-1960. She is currently writing a book about the history of women activists in post-war Hong Kong.
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