Voices from Tiananmen Square

This year marks the 30th anniversary of the Tiananmen Movement, when millions of students and civilians all over China marched together in 1989 to fight for democracy. Hundreds, possibly thousands of people were killed as military troops armed with tanks and assault rifles fired on the protesters. The massacre was a political watershed in modern China that helped speed up the collapse of the Soviet Union and Eastern Bloc.

Meet two survivors of those protests: Rose Tang and Zhou Fengsuo, who will share their stories and talk about how they used their voices to battle inequality. The desire and intention to create political change can manifest in many ways, and our two guests will discuss how their intentions took shape through activism.

The program will begin with a special tour of the Rubin’s exhibition Faith and Empire led by senior curator Karl Debreczeny. Participants will then meet our special guests on the sixth floor in the exhibition gallery.

About the Speakers

Rose Tang is one of the Tiananmen Square survivors and activists and a musician, multidisciplinary artist, poet, and journalist in Brooklyn. She is from Sichuan and of Mongol and Chinese descent.

Tang has performed in New York, Massachusetts, and California. She gave public lectures and speeches on Tibet and China in the United States, India, Prague, Hong Kong, and Taiwan. She taught journalism at Princeton University and was a journalist in Hong Kong and Australia with CNN and the Australian Broadcasting Corporation.

Tang was named “Champion for Freedom of Speech” by the Visual Artists Guild and “Journalist of the Year” by the Society of Publishers Asia.

Zhou Fengsuo is the co-founder and current president of Humanitarian China, a human rights advocate, and a former Tiananmen student leader. As a physics student at Tsinghua University, Zhou organized the first and only free election of a student union in 1988. During the Tiananmen protests in 1989, he built and led “Voice of the Student Movements” on Tiananmen Square. He was number five on the most wanted list of student leaders after the Tiananmen massacre, was arrested, and spent a year in prison. In 2007 he co-founded Humanitarian China, which has provided humanitarian aid to hundreds of families of political prisoners and the Tiananmen Mothers, including human rights lawyers, journalists, writers, labor and feminism activists, political protesters, and persecuted house churches.