I was a first-year student at university in Baltimore. It was the end of the academic year and finals were about to start. We had a reading day or two where we could review and study for our exams, so I had spent the day at the library. When I walked into my dorm’s common room on my way to my room, I saw that CNN was on the television and a group of American and French students were standing around, watching without speaking.
I was the only one in my dorm who had been to Tiananmen. It was a year earlier, almost to the date, and I was with a group of students from the high school from which I had just graduated. On that trip to China, my group stayed at a hotel in Beijing with thin, red carpet that reeked of cigarette smoke. In the other cities we visited—Nanjing, Suzhou, Wuxi, and Shanghai—we stayed at university dormitories and met students in the common rooms of those dorms. They spoke of Dale Carnegie and asked about student life in the US.
Standing in my own dorm—a year after that trip—while CNN showed the tanks rolling in and armed soldiers firing into crowds, I thought of those students I’d met in Nanjing, Suzhou, Wuxi, and Shanghai. Where were they now? What were they thinking? I know I was supposed to study for finals, but I couldn’t leave the common room for hours that evening.
Now three and a half decades later, I don’t remember my finals or even the classes I took, but I can picture myself back in that common room, standing amongst other students, numb and shocked into silence. Tears don’t make a sound, but I looked around and saw that we all had them. I wonder how many remember today.
How to cite: Blumberg-Kason, Susan. “Just Another Day: Susan Blumberg-Kason.” Cha: An Asian Literary Journal, 4 Jun. 2023, chajournal.blog/2023/06/04/susan-another-day.
Susan Blumberg-Kason is the author of Good Chinese Wife: A Love Affair With China Gone Wrong. Her writing has also appeared in the Los Angeles Review of Books‘ China Blog, Asian Jewish Life, and several Hong Kong anthologies. She received an MPhil in Government and Public Administration from the Chinese University of Hong Kong. Blumberg-Kason now lives in Chicago and spends her free time volunteering with senior citizens in Chinatown. (Photo credit: Annette Patko) [Susan Blumberg-Kason and ChaJournal.Blog.]
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