東亞觀念史集刊　第七期
2014 年 12 月　頁 107-203
Between “May Fourth” and “June Fourth”:
“April Fifth” as a Forgotten Revolutionary Tradition
at Tiananmen Square and Its Political Use
*
Pan Tsung-yi
Abstract
Between the May Fourth Movement of 1919 and the June Fourth
Movement of 1989, there was the forgotten April Fifth Movement of 1976.
The three large-scale unofficial protests not only constitute three defining
moments in the Chinese pursuit of political modernity in the twentieth
century, but also represent three turning points in the on-going changing
meaning of Tiananmen (Gate of Heavenly) Square, the symbolic center
of the People’s Republic of China (PRC), which materialized the Chinese
cultural memory of the communist-sanctioned revolutionary traditions.
The magic numbers of “May Fourth,” “April Fifth,” and “June Fourth” not
only signify three prominent watersheds in the history of twentieth-century
China but also constitute three decoding codes, or “keywords,” to examine
the changing meaning of Tiananmen Square and political culture of the
*
Pan Tsung-yi is Assistant Professor of the Department and Institute of History
at National Dong Hwa University.
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東亞觀念史集刊
PRC.
This article is the first comprehensive inquiry into the significance of
the April Fifth Movement from the perspectives of the politics of memory
making and social production of space at Tiananmen Square. Through
a close reading of the protest literature, such as the Tiananmen Poems
and big- and small-character posters, as well as the historical documents
of Chinese Communist Party (CCP) and newspapers, this article intends
to analyze both the popular and official uses of “May Fourth” and/or
“April Fifth” during and after the April Fifth Movement. Especially, the
Tiananmen Poems allow us to see how the commemorative monuments
and official ritual practices at Tiananmen Square have become the material
and spatial foundation to recall and appropriate the past of the communistsanctioned revolutionary tradition. It is in this way that the dissident
protesters during the April Fifth Movement were able to justify their
struggle against the Gang of Four in a short-lived public sphere that was
created at the state disciplinary space of the PRC. This in turn illuminates
the fluidity and constructed nature of the symbolism of Tiananmen Square.
In addition to offering a present perspective to observe the genesis
and development of the first unofficial social movement since the
founding of the PRC, the Tiananmen Poems open a window to look into
the dynamics of memory making in which the people from below have
conceptualized and endowed alternative meanings with Zhou Enlai,
“April Fifth,” and Tiananmen Square in their popular discourse. They
explain why the popular mourners came to the particular site of the
Monument to the People’s Heroes at the center of Tiananmen Square
to commemorate Zhou Enlai. Moreover, the Tiananmen Poems also
demonstrate how the dissident protesters during and after the April Fifth
Movement legitimatized their prospective envision of Chinese modernity,
Between “May Fourth” and “June Fourth”: “April Fifth” as a Forgotten Revolutionary Tradition at Tiananmen Square and Its Political Use 109
the Four Modernizations, by appropriating the past of the communistsanctioned revolutionary tradition such as “May Fourth” while attaching
their recollection of Zhou Enlai’s career to the Monument. Furthermore,
this article examines how the CCP had redefined and used “April Fifth” as
a revolutionary tradition in order to endow Deng Xiaoping’s rise to power
and his discourses on the Four Modernizations and the Four Cardinals with
social and historical legitimacy in the post-Mao China. This eventually
shows how CCP and PRC kept silent about “April Fifth” and turned it
into a forgotten revolutionary tradition after the mid-1980s. The official
political use of “April Fifth” exemplifies constructed nature of historical
memory as well as the power at work in the making of official discourse
on the past and the power of discourse making at the present. This process
witnessed the changing meaning of “April Fifth” in the popular and
official discourse as a keyword to examine the history of the PRC and its
relevance with other keywords such as “May Fourth” and “June Fourth.”
Keywords: April Fifth Movement, May Fourth Movement, Tiananmen
Poem, Tiananmen Square, historical memory