Yvonne, Tiananmen Square

Yvonne, Tiananmen Square

Originally uploaded by PhiloTBG.

This is a picture of University of California, Santa Barbara SFTer Yvonne in Tiananmen Square, in front of the clock that counts down to the Beijing 2008 Olympic Games. She is holding a sign that says “China Stop the Genocide in Tibet.” Here is her account of this courageous action:

Me and Michelle went to Beijing with a tour and we arrived in Tiananmen on the 4th and last day of the tour. It was freezing cold and around a nice fuzzy -5 Celsius degrees. The tour guide took us to this gigantic countdown to the Beijing Olympics. They have countdowns like this sprawled out all over Beijing, but this one was especially large. It was in front of a governmental building in Tiananmen Square.

There were soldiers marching by in different black, green, and blue uniforms. So to keep it safe, we waited until most of our tour took pictures, then I whipped out my SFT sign and told Michelle to get ready to snap a quick shot. We took one shot then I asked if she wanted to take a picture, so we switched places but as soon as we were done, more soldier marched right past us, a close call.

But we were not quick enough for the tour guide or some other members of the the tour to catch us. The tour guide basically told us not to take it out again and that most Chinese soldiers now are multi-lingual and know how to read our sign. It was too dangerous with so many soldiers. She then told us that we could have had the whole tour arrested in addition to ourselves. I’m not too sure if that would be true or not… but it certainly spooked us enough not to do it again in the main area of Tiananmen Square (where Mao’s body laid).

This turned out to be a GREAT idea since there were 10 times as many soldiers, marching, sitting, standing, guarding, and watching all of us. In addition to that, there were a lot more cameras and not enough people so that we could get away quickly. Our tour guide then watched us warily after that, which was okay (and funny), at least we got away with some shots.

We also were able to take pictures with the sign on the Great Wall of China!

Free Tibet!