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( . . and then the screens went dark.)

The final few days of the Democracy movement in Tiananamen Square. After seven weeks, it ended quickly with a death toll still disputed but varying from 300 to 20,000. The crackdown came, the organizers and sympathizers were located, rounded up and imprisoned or executed and China tried desperately to pretend it never happened and hoped everyone would forget.

Twenty years later, they're still trying.

A postscript: Right after publishing this entry I got a note from John Amato pointing me in the direction of a Chinese-American guest blogger who covered for her students after the Tiananmen Square protests of 1989. I urge you to check it out. G.S.

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(Not thrilled to be there)

As the numbers swelled into the hundreds of thousands, the political tug-of-war continued. The students called off their hunger strike and rumors were everywhere. Deng Xiao Peng fell in step with the hardliners and pledged to break up the demonstration by sending in troops at dawn on the 21st if the student leaders didn't quit.

Dawn came and went and the PLA were still outside the city limits of Beijing, reluctant to move against the students, with thousands of students swarming to meet the troops pleading with them to join them. The waiting game was in full gear.

Here are clips from May 19-21, with reports and speculation flooding the airwaves.