You don’t ‘hang’ in Tiananmen. There’s nothing to see. A dozen vans patrol tourists. It’s hard to get in; with streets petitioned, the massive square is an island. There’s an eerie dialogue between Mao’s eyes and his mausoleum; he watches over his own dead body. I feel like I’m trespassing on a grave. In Tiananmen, you walk through the shadow of China’s struggle for order.

Still, every time I’m in Beijing I’m drawn to the Square by the centrifugal pull of the city. Despite its emptiness, Tiananmen is powerful – a great architectural performance of Chinese identity.

So, 20 years after the 1989 massacre, I’m drawn again.

Do young Chinese know enough about Tiananmen? Yu Hua, author of Brothers, calls it China’s forgotten revolution. Zhao Ziyang’s secret diaries have renewed concern about what has been lost in 20 years. Every one is asking the question. ‘Tiananmen Now Seems Distant to China’s Students’ says The New York Times; ‘China’s students put jobs over democracy’ says Financial Times; ‘… faded from people’s memories’, writes blogger Peking Duck).

The answer is ‘yes’ and ‘no’. And it’s more complicated than whether or not young people ‘care’. The answer has been rewritten for a generation now buoyed by the ability to buy a future their parents never thought possible.

In my early days in Beijing, a Chinese friend took me to a fake Starbucks in Wangfujing. Milk served, hot, on the side. Couches, like in ‘Friends’. Funny music. I listen to this boy talking about the 1989 ‘accident’ – his word. I ask him if he knows how many people were killed in the uprising, beamed internationally because of the Gorbachev visit. He doesn’t know. I don’t tell him.

‘People don’t know what you’re talking about’, he says, ‘And don’t want to know’. He whispers in the same voice he uses to talk about being gay.
It became a pattern. Attempts to share my own opinions, met with baffled reluctance.

But I grew to understand, then sympathise. Who doesn’t want to climb into the future, without the weight of the past?

Young Chinese don’t hang in Tiananmen Square either. Not in memory nor in person. They’re too busy getting ahead. I told another young Beijinger, Andy, that I still remembered the footage of the man in front of the tanks, even though I was 7 at the time. ‘That was the first thing I knew about China,’ I said.

Andy knew about Tiananmen. In fact, his father was a military attache. But opportunity has since replaced politics for Andy, and a good job earning respect and cash is the priority. Andy, like his age group, comes at the end of a long generational line of Chinese suffering. Forgetting what you never remembered is one way forward.

I pushed him further by asking why no one my age took an interest in politics. Even joining the Party was a no-no. There’s practical avoidance, a clever balancing act that most young people in China find native.

‘The system that runs the whole country is like this,’ Andy said. ‘I don’t want to do anything to help this change. I don’t think this one small person can change the whole system. So maybe that’s why a lot of people like me don’t think they can change a thing.’

He’s found himself baggage-free, and he’s happy about it. China’s young people, the hundreds of millions of them, know enough about Tiananmen to avoid it.

Hao Wu, a Chinese blogger and filmmaker, is slightly older and so still has some of this baggage. He finished high school around the end of the 80s. He told me in an interview: ‘I think by ‘87 it was pretty clear the government was welcoming Western thoughts and there were a lot of debates, discussions even, about democracy in China, about changing the constitution and striking out the Communist rule. There was debate in the intellectual circles’. China and Hao were coming of age together. ‘So at that point it was really active in terms of intellectual life. And I was definitely benefiting from that growing up in that environment’. But 89 came, and China’s tentative economic arrangement with its people was radically redrawn in the June 4 crackdown.

There’s so much that hasn’t healed in China, says Hao. ‘I sort of want people to live like the Americans. Happy go Lucky. You know. So memory-free. All they have to look forward to is the future, and feel excited by the future. But on the other hand, I notice my parent’s generation. More and more so, I’m understanding my parent’s generation more, my aunt, my Grandfather’.

‘This China is moving so fast, it doesn’t give the people a chance to reflect,’ he says. ‘And to me that’s kind of sad’.

The ‘forgetting’ of Chinese history isn’t simple. Yes, a 20-year propaganda campaign has limited exposure. But more than this, with young Chinese torn up by traditional expectation and the massive pressure to succeed, they don’t have time to think about the past.

Loitering in the Square is a luxury they can’t afford.