China: Tiananmen Square

    Tiananmen Square is a large city square in the center of Beijing, China, named after the Tiananmen gate (Gate of Heavenly Peace) located to its North, separating it from the Forbidden City.It has great cultural significance as it was the site of several important events in Chinese history.

    Outside China, the square is best known in recent memory as the focal point of the Tiananmen Square protests of 1989, a pro-democracy movement which ended on 4 June 1989 with the declaration of martial law in Beijing by the government and the death of several hundred or possibly thousands of civilians.

  The Tiananmen Gate to the Forbidden City was built in 1415 during the Ming Dynasty. Towards the demise of the Ming Dynasty, heavy fighting between Li Zicheng and the early Qing emperors damaged (or perhaps destroyed) the gate. The Tiananmen square was designed and built in 1651, and has since enlarged four times its original size in the 1950s.

  The most notable events are 

-protests during the May Fourth Movement in 1919, 

-the proclamation of the People's Republic of China by Mao Zedong on October 1, 1949,

-the Tiananmen Square protests in 1976 after the death of Premier Zhou Enlai, 

-theTiananmen Square protests of 1989, which resulted in military suppression and the deaths of hundreds, if not thousands, of civilian protestors.

   One of the most famous images that appears during these protests was when a man stands in front of a moving tank and refuses to move. This became a revolutionary icon in fighting against the government at the time.

-Jiani (22)