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"You are simply a tourist, as a skunk is a skunk, a parasitic variation of the human species, which exists only to be tapped like a milk cow or a gum tree."-Robert ByronTourist Bashing is one of the great old noble sports with origins going back at least as far as Strabo. And still thriving. For Tourist Baiting: see footnote(And for a similar sport, academic bashing, muse on the quasi-profundity of the Erik Satie quote, "Quiconque habite une tour, est un touriste" Whoever lives in an [ivory] tower, is a tourist.)Tourists. Gods be praised I'm not one of them! I'm a Traveller, YOU are a Tourist. And vice-versa of course.Strabo, a travelerAh to be a traveler, a great one.But in this day and age is it possible to be a great traveler? Maybe not. But we can be better at it. It isn't really complicated. Just takes work.Before leaving home:Learn as much of the language of your destination as possible. Even if that is just please, thank you, hello and goodbye. For help on doing that, ask Judith Meyer.Learn as much as possible about a place before you get there. More knowledge always makes a better experience. Even if it is just one small guide book and the wikipedia articles about the country and city.Examine as many maps as you can findSearch for pictures of the place to stimulate your visual memoryListen to music from the place to stimulate your aural memoryGo to restaurants in your home town that serve the specialties of your destination so you learn the flavorsRead all the threads on QuoraThen at all the travel websites from Trip advisor to Time Out(Then read everything else you can find: travelogues, as many primary sources as possible. books on the history, customs, culture, culinary specialties. Translations of books from your destination about current social issues, or popular trends. Novels that take place there. Magazines published there. Old editions of guide books are often enlightening the old Bleu and Michelin green guides have loads of info ration that has been dumbed down out of them. Often there will be an English-Language newspaper or journal on the web like France24 or The Turkish Daily News/)When you get there:Strive to adapt to local customs and not too needlessly disrupt the lives of those who live there. Be Alert. Observe. Interact with people. When you see something that is strange to you do not judge it before you understand it. Try everything new you are not absolutely certain is morally wrong.Afterwards: Enjoy the fact that you are a subtly different person because a traveller takes part of a place away with them inside themselves.Otherwise you would be one of the touristsTourists off the Place de La ConcordeThose damned sneaker-wearing, flourescently-garbed, loud-mouthed, gaping hordes of befannypacked barbarians clogging the sidewalks of Paris or Manhattan. At times they so throng the sidewalks that coming home from work or doing your shopping becomes a frantic obstacle course fueled by barely-repressed fury. They create havoc in the Metro by persisting in having 22 of 'em lining up together to buy tickets while the leader spends 32.6 minutes trying to negotiate some kind of deal with the teller. "Bahnjehr Mersyer, existe une Discount pour groups? Ou Seniors?"They mill cluelessly around the top of stairs blocking ingress and egress, immune to every plea of "Pardon, Excusez-Moi, Pardon, J'AIMERAIS BIEN SORTIR S.V.P!" They dine at unreasonable times, en masse, so if you arrive at your table at 20h00 your entrées (the word we use for appetizers here, not main courses) don't come till 21h00 because there are 37 of the pesky creatures clamoring for dessert at the same time.Even in small numbers, their aesthetic crimes are heady. Labeled with North Face and Patagonia, brightened by unlikely brash colors, they make a semi-civilized urban landscape look like an assisted-living snowboarding expedition.We're not like them. No way. Not ever. Right. Well, hmm. I try not to be. At least I try. I mean, well, there are tourists and then there are tourists. Right? But I remember a trip to Arizona over the christmas season a few years ago. Wearing the necessary Paris drizzle protection my long dark overcoat. Dress shoes. Walking--not driving--along the edge of the road. There were no sidewalks. People looked at me like an alien. Our friends were all starving by the time we were willing to sit down to dinner and we were invariably the last people in restaurants (how very weird for us to be last in the restaurant when finishing our meal often as early as 22h00).I was a tourist. Traveling insulated from my environment, peering out at it, oblivious to the effect my strangeness had on it. How many people had to swerve around me on their daily motorized commute? Did it irritate them? Probably. So okay. We're all tourists sometimes. And the hordes bring in money, and keep things we like, such as restaurants and winebars, in business. Their admission fees keep museums and archeological sites from shutting down.So what's wrong with tourists?In some form they have been here as long as there were other civilizations somewhere "over there" to visit. The soldiers in Alexander's army when on leave probably curiously poked around ruins and gaped at the sites. The ancient grafiti on monuments at places like Baalbek and The Valley of the Kings attests to it. The Pax Romana made travelers safe to flock to Rome for commerce or to Athens to acquire a veneer of culture. In the middle ages the pilgrimage of the Camino de Santiago to St. James of Compostela which was a kind of "Haj" of christendom brought many travelers across Europe. (Pilgrims from families fortunate enough to have one would add the scallop shell to their escutcheon as a signal honor much like the turban from the Haj). The Great Tour was a tradition that lasted hundreds of years. Wealthy young English, Scandinavian, German and later American men would set out, often with a tutor and a guide, to travel the continent for a couple of years and acquire the accouterments of worldly wisdom.Baalbek ancient when Alexander and his soldiers scribbled on the stonesBut these earlier tourists, whether by choice or no, were more travelers than tourists. Their motives for travel were different from most modern tourists, sure. But it is really technology that made modern tourists qualitatively unlike their predecessors. The great 19th century train networks were the first step in a tremendous democratization of travel. This democratization made the experience of the countries entertaining them very different. But it was really the speed of the transit that fundamentally changed the experience for the traveller, transforming him often against his will into a tourist.(Or her, the shift from Madame de Staël to the Cook's tourist springs immediately to mind).When previously a journey required time, you were forced to adapt to new surroundings as you advanced. Each day more time was spent hearing the language, observing the culture, climbing or descending the topography, smelling the flora, ingesting the foodstuffs and drinking the local wine. You became part of the place you visited. And it became part of you. But now you could board the boat connecting train in London, and exit and St. Lazare in Paris without any need to adapt along the way.(Some thought this was a horrible thing. The great observer and hater of 19th century modernity, Gustave Flaubert, you can hear the bile and contempt dripping off his razor-like tongue:"le public va rester indifférent à cette collection de chefs-d'œuvre ! Son niveau moral est tellement bas, maintenant ! On pense au caoutchouc durci, aux chemins de fer, aux expositions, etc., à toutes les choses du pot-au-feu et du bien-être ; mais la poésie, l'idéal, l'Art, les grands élans et les nobles discours, allons donc !"The public is going to be feel completely indifferent to this collection of masterpieces. Moral standards have fallen so low these days! They think of Vulcanized Rubber, The Railroads, Exhibitions and shows and of everything like a warm pot of stew on the fire and feeling good; but Poetry, The Best, Art, Noble Impulses and Lofty Discourse? Tut Tut!)And here comes aviation. Then the boeing 747. Transforming us all willy nilly from whatever remained of being travelers to complete tourists. You can do the if-it-is-thursday-we-must-be-in-Rome whirlwind tour of Europe 12 countries in 10 days. Then there were low cost carriers and Airbus A380s. You can go the USA of and see 6 states in 7 days, Route 66, the Grand Canyon, New York, San Francisco AND Alaska. Now if you are so inclined, you can pop over from L.A. to venice for the weekend. But what you will see and manage to retain in your memory of that city's riches in 2 jet-lagged days?(Actually the low cost carrier has engendered a plague worse than package tourism, it has created the Spring Breaker and the Stag Weekenders flocking to, say Tallin or Prague to roam the streets of foreign capitals shrieking and vomiting, having chosen the place simply because the beer is cheaper and the bars open later than at home)What's wrong with tourists? Tourism helped create the climate for our modern version of Gastronomy and serious restaurants. The once-useful and still influential Guide Michelin was written for motoring tourists to find good places to eat. In many parts of the world, even some parts of western Europe, it is still primarily tourists that allow higher end restaurants to exist. Until recently locals in Southern Italy and Languedoc-Roussillon wouldn't--or couldn't--support better establishments. While cooking at home was of a very high level, good restaurants were hard to find.Yeah. But. In France, for example, due to the astronomical number of tourists we receive each year, the effects of various kinds of tourism on restauration are enormous. In Paris even more so. One of the more obvious problems associated with this is what I'll call relative clienteles. If a restaurant has a large percentage of revenue coming from a clientele, a market niche, it will obviously tend to pay most attention to that group. If more and more of the clientele is made up of tourists then it will bend towards serving what tourists want and what tourists like."So what?", one might say, since we are all tourists at some point then it doesn't matter. But it does. Because the one commonality for tourists is that they are not from here. So the things they like will not be the things from here. Yes, some tourists, and particularly culinary-minded ones, will order the Os a Moelle, the ris de veau, the rognons, the pigeon, the sanglier, the langue, the biche, the pieds et paquets, etc. But not very many. And places that depend on tourists will serve fewer and fewer of these local authentic things. They generally won't like the local theatre because most of them, not being French, don't understand it. But, if you produce a big sound-and-light show….Similarly, simply because they aren't from here, their taste will take time to develop for things from France. A lot of restaurants with a healthy tourist population will stay away from serving the stronger cheeses. French and Anglo-Amercian taste in beef tend to differ a bit. With the Anglo-American side prizing tenderness, and often requesting their meat more well done, (you can learn more about that in the Meat section of my answer What are some good restaurants in Paris to go to alone?) a restaurant that has many of them as guests will naturally tend to buy more of the cuts that work that way. Few chefs can afford to keep buying cuts of meat that don't sell.And that is only restaurants. This extends to most aspects of the influence of tourism on the economies and cultures of the countries they visit.Another thing that follows from "tourists aren't from here" is that they aren't at home either. So many tourists, (particularly these days the English football fans, ouch) don't behave the way they do at home. Or maybe just the way they do at home, but more so. That's normal. If you're on holiday, you're going to relax. But you also are experiencing new things and sometimes not adapting well to the local schedule or practice.This can create other problems. From the large loud tables of bickering yanks to the boorish roast-beef footballers. Imagine what often happens to service when a clientele becomes primarily touristy. If most of the customers are unfamiliar with both the food AND the language? Maybe it is no wonder that the stereotypical Parisian waiter is sneering and rude. I've barely scratched the surface here, but I'm not really trying to invoke anti-tourist sentiment. I'm only saying that, yes, tourists have a huge impact on the places they visit just by being who they are. Sometimes that's actually a good thing when it encourages a restaurateur to make better things, find fresher ingredients, push his staff to a new level. Sometimes great music festivals, or art expos will take place that wouldn't otherwise find funding. But often, simply the existence of a large customer group, with money and low--or just foreign--expectations can make the a theatre aficionado or restaurant patron feel like the Robert Byron quote at the beginning of this post.A bear baiting a tourist in a 17th century print*Tourist baiting, on the other hand, is a slowly dying art; probably due to the quality of the prey. It also doesn't pay so well anymore. The Florentines and the Romans still practice it some. Ask directions in front of the Duomo for, say, Oltr'arno or the Piazzale Michelangelo. Make sure you have an attractive female in tow. Approach that group of well-dressed young men lounging by the sacristy. Ask them if they speak English, French or German. Do not let on if you speak Italian. Play your part as a naive and gullible tourist to the hilt.You are likely to spend an amusing afternoon. As they guide you through town you will learn much of dubious educational value, but watch closely the faces of your indigenous friends. They will not smile or laugh. Tourist baiting is serious business.That the Signoria was a debtors' prison and is now a municipal girls boarding-school will challenge your basic ability to swallow anything, but persevere! You are the tourist, it is your role in this time-honored practice. When told that the Ufizzi was built as a torture-chamber by the Holy Office and recently converted to an amusement park by the Walt Disney corporation, nod, smile, and say something innocuous like, "interesting, that explains the long lines". At the Ponte Vecchio, accept appreciatively the information that those houses on top are built so that at the time of the yearly flood, when the Arno rises, people can cross the river by scampering across the rooftops. If you have played your part well by this point, a suggestion from you to stop at that delightful winebar--just across the bridge--will be accepted.Surprisingly this building is the office of the Chief Garbage Collector. Really.And after a bottle of Montepulciano, or maybe the Tignanello if you're flush, (but NOT the Sassicaia however great there are no indigenous Tuscan grapes in there), or two, someone will proffer the nugget that this very ramshackle building in which you sit was designed by none other than DaVinci. Solemnly but deferentially suggest instead that it might have been Marcus Agrippa. Or Virgil. Someone will smile. And someone else will state categorically that this VERY building was built by Julius Caesar. Da Verro! And more players will begin to smile and even giggle. The session of tourist baiting will end with much laughter and goodwill all around. Probably with drunken toasts to increasingly improbable historical figures punctuating the early evening.Ah, the fine old tourist baiting of old. The moments of daring and courage. The Neapolitan graduate student guide, with a straight face, intoning in the middle of the Cloaca Maxima of ancient Neapolis, that this was an underground road for moving evil Roman soldiers in an out of an oppressed Naples. How charmingly ironic what with all of the excrement that once flowed through that passageway. The Turkish curator and the footprint of the Prophet. The Spanish professor at Ronda and the bullfighting costume of Hemingway. Oh, so many memories of a great art. I'm sure you have your own.)This post is dedicated to all my favorite travelersLike Captain Sir Richard Burton traveling to Mecca incognito. Or Lady Jane Digby heading out to Palmyra. (Jane Digby). Laurence Durrell, Ford Maddox Ford, and even--here's your bonus trivia for making it to the end of the page. What famous traveler married a relation of an equally famous WWI German fighter pilot? The answer follows the picturesFrieda von RichthofenManfred von RichthofenLorenzothe curmudgeonly D.H. Lawrence "Lorenzo" eloping with his professor's wife, Frieda the Baroness von Richthofen--and yes she was related to the Manfred von Richthofen, the Red Baron--to wander Europe, Mexico and America. The man she left for him, the philologist Ernest Weekly, is believed to be the model for Henry Higgins from Shaw's Pygmalion and My Fair Lady.

Well, it depends on how you define embarassment. I certainly WAS embarassed. Yet, in a way, I was not really responsible for the situation.Here’s what happened. I had just gotten married (little more than a year) before leaving India for the US. I had been to the US earlier but my wife had never been out of India. I knew that there was a possibility (theoretically) that, at some point, we would experience racism in some form. But I never really thought about it.I came to the US as a student and was living on the stipend that a Graduate Teaching Assistant earns. Still, I had brought some money with me. There was a restaurant across from my university. It looked really good — not just expensive but beautifully decorated and with a wide range of food and so on. I thought that I would take my wife there because the semester had not yet started and we were under no pressure of any type. To be honest, I wanted to impress her a little by taking her to a nice restaurant. I wanted it to be a good memory of our first few days in the US.So, we dressed up and went there, prepared for an expensive but enjoyable evening. We sat down and started looking at the menu and so on. The restaurant staff were friendly and helpful. They gave us an excellent table that was in a kind of a quiet corner yet gave us a good view of the whole place. I was really pleased with myself.There was a family sitting at the table next to ours. They had already been sitting there well before we arrived and they were talking and eating and so on. We passed them on the way to our table but didn’t really pay any attention to them. And then the entire family sitting next to us told their waiter that they needed to move to another table because they did not want to sit next to “those people”. I heard the wording of the request because the lady who made the request made no effort to be subtle or to keep her voice down, etc.Understand that we had no exchange with the family. We did not know them. We did not look in their direction or say anything about them or gesture toward them or anything like that. We just happened to be sitting at the table next to theirs. My wife asked me why the family had moved. It was an innocent question. I knew the answer. But I was mortified. I was beyond embarrassed! I felt stupid for taking her to the place. I didn’t (and don’t) blame the management of the restaurant. I didn’t know what to say to her. But I am sure that she figured it out on her own because she didn’t insist on an answer.I’ve been divorced for several years, now, but I still feel bad that she had to endure that. After that incident, I’ve always been to the restaurant where I want to invite someone, before actually going with them. I’ve never been embarassed in that particular way since, as a result.

From Canadian reporter on the scene:"But on June 3, 1989 as I walked through what is generally regarded as the planet’s largest city square the world was just a few hours from seeing China at its most ruthless and ugliest.What follows is a personal eyewitness account of the events leading up to and including the attack on Tiananmen Square—a night that remains indelibly etched in my memory.The square that day was a hot, grubby place, strewn with refuse, canvass tents and other makeshift dwellings. Under the towering “Heroes of the Nation” obelisk demonstrators cooked rice and soup while others linked arms and sang a spirited rendition of the “Internationale,” the world socialist anthem. Thousands of others dozed under flimsy lean-tos or blasted music from boom boxes.Near the middle of the square, the 30-foot tall “Goddess of Democracy,” a pasty white statue constructed by art students and made of styrofoam and papier-mâché, stared defiantly at Mao’s giant portrait—almost mocking the founder of modern day China. A truck swept by periodically spraying billowing clouds of insecticide and disinfectant over everything and everybody in its path.Hawkers guiding pushcarts containing ice cream, soft drinks, rice cakes, candy and film encircled the students doing a brisk business. Even if the students in the square had not been able to topple China's ruling hierarchy, at least there were profits to be made.One enterprising entrepreneur raked in several hundred yuan within a few minutes after he began renting stepping stools for the thousands of amateur photographers and tourists who arrived to have their pictures taken next to students or at the base of the "Goddess of Democracy"statue. Tiananmen, I wrote at the time, had evolved into a “Disneyland of Dissent.”By June 3 the number of students occupying the square had dwindled to about 20,000 as thousands had already packed up and headed back to their provinces. But some students I talked with that afternoon were not ready to leave and a few shared an intense sense of foreboding.One of those was Chai Ling. Chai, who had been elected "chief commander" by the dissidents, was the only woman among the seven student leaders of the pro-democracy protests. As we sat cross-legged on the hot pavement she talked about the protests and just what the students had accomplished during their 7-week-long occupation of Tiananmen.“There will be a price to pay for all of this,” the 23-year-old child psychology graduate warned, tears streaming down her cheeks. “Some people will have to die for democracy, but it will be worth it.”Chai, the object of a year-long nationwide search by the Chinese government after the violence in the square, would eventually escape China to Hong Kong sealed for five days and nights in a wooden crate in the hold of a rickety ship. She managed to elude capture in China by adopting a series of disguises, by learning local Chinese dialects and by working variously as a rice farmer, laborer and maid. Eventually she would come to the United States, be nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize and graduate from the Harvard Business School.Sleeping protesters:Barely eight hours after my conversation with Chai her warning would become reality. Late in the evening of June 3 and during the early morning hours of June 4 the lethargy of weary demonstrators and the cacophonic concert of boom box music would be replaced by shrieks of terror, gunfire and the guttural roar of tank and armored personnel carrier engines as the People’s Liberation Army rolled into the square, crushing tents and firing indiscriminately at protestors and anybody else who got in their way.A couple of hours before the violence erupted a few of us foreign correspondents had enjoyed a quiet meal together in the venerable Beijing Hotel on Chang’an Avenue a few blocks from the square.While dining we discussed the events of the night before when several thousand young unarmed military recruits were sent marching toward the students in Tiananmen Square. Before they got very far an estimated 100,000 Chinese civilians poured from their homes near the square and confronted the soldiers—berating them for even thinking of entering Tiananmen to clear it of the thousands of students who had occupied it since late April.This rather benign event was nothing more than a probe to determine what kind of resistance armed troops might face when they stormed the square. For several weeks some 200,000 Chinese troops—most from provinces far away from Beijing—had been massing on the outskirts of the city.As Beijing entered its 15th day of martial law, it was also obvious that the government was still unable to enforce that decree. The government did admonish members of the foreign media to "observe regulations on news coverage" as they relate to martial law."Foreign journalists must not talk with student protesters and any news coverage of any kind in Beijing must receive prior approval," said a statement by Ding Weijun, spokesman for the city.The statement also warned the hundreds of foreign reporters still in Beijing against inviting Chinese citizens to their offices, homes or hotels to conduct "interviews regarding prohibited activities." Several foreign reporters had been expelled from the country for violating those rules.The morning of June 3, ignoring marital law rules, I had driven outside of the square and into several neighborhoods where streets leading toward Tiananmen had been shut down by angry civilians intent on keeping the Chinese Army from reaching the students. Dozens of intersections were blocked with buses, trucks, and makeshift barricades. Neighborhood leaders proudly showed me their arsenal of weapons—rows of gasoline-filled bottles complete with cloth wicks, piles of rocks and bricks, shovels, rakes, picks and other garden tools.“We will protect the students,” a man named Liang Hong, told me.“But how?” I asked. “The army has tanks, machine guns and armored personnel carriers. They will kill you.”“Then we will die,” he replied. Several dozen others quickly echoed his words. “Yes, we will all die. These are our children in the square. We must help them even if it means death.”Several days after the attack on the square when the authorities allowed people to travel once again in the city, I drove back to this same neighborhood. True to their word, I was told that Liang Hong and several of his neighbors had died or were wounded attempting to keep the army from entering the square.After dinner in the Beijing Hotel I decided to take one more stroll through the square. As I rode into the square on the red and white Sprick bicycle I had purchased after my arrival in Beijing from Tokyo two weeks before, I could see that many of the students were obviously spooked—not only by the unarmed incursion of the night before but by the intelligence pouring in from the neighborhoods surrounding the square that the army was on the move.“I think something will happen tonight,” one of them told me. “I am very afraid.”I stopped at the foot of the Goddess of Democracy. The statue was illuminated by a couple of small spotlights as it looked toward the Forbidden City andMao’s portrait. On the edge of the square I bought a bottle of Coca Cola then pushed my bicycle toward the four-story KFC restaurant on the south end of the square. It was about 8:30 p.m. and the restaurant (the largest KFC store in the world) was almost empty.I then rode the 2 miles down Jinguomenwei Avenue to the Jinguo Hotel where I was staying. I needed to file a story on the day’s events—specifically my conversation with Chai Ling and the other students that afternoon. I finished writing my story around 10 p.m. and decided, despite the curfew, to ride my bicycle back to the square for one more look around. I parked my bicycle on Xuanwumen Dong Avenue near the hulking Museum of History and Revolution on the east side of the square and began walking toward the “Heroes of the Nation”obelisk which had become the headquarters for the students.The Attack beginsI hadn’t gotten very far when the sound of gunfire erupted. The firing seemed everywhere, amplified by the massive buildings that surrounded the square. I ran toward my bicycle, not wanting to be trapped in the square should tanks roll in. Moments later I ran into BBC correspondent Kate Adie who was walking toward the square with her camera crew.“What’s going on,” she asked.“Looks like the army is making a move tonight,” I answered. I explained that I hadn’t seen any troops or tanks in the square at that point, but I did see muzzle flashes from the roof of the Great Hall of the People on the west side of the square. A day before several hundred troops had massed behind the Great Hall and I assumed they had been positioned on the roof.I rode my bicycle north toward Chang’an Avenue and hadn’t gotten very far when I noticed a line of Armored Personnel Carriers moving toward the square flanked by hundreds of soldiers with fixed bayonets. Seconds later the dark sky was interlaced by red and yellow tracer fire and I could hear bullets ricocheting off of concrete. I turned my bike around and raced back toward the south end of the square. Like a lot of my fellow correspondents I never thought the government would use deadly force against the students.As the firing intensified thousands more residents poured out of their houses and formed human blockades where streets entered the square. They quickly became targets for the machine gun and small arms fire. As the casualties mounted, the crowds became increasingly belligerent. They armed themselves with bricks, bottles, iron rods and wooden clubs and attacked some of the military contingents, including tanks.An infuriated mob grabbed one soldier and set him afire after dousing him with gasoline. They then hung his still smoldering body from a pedestrian overpass. It was one of the many examples of instant justice. The crowd accused the soldier of having shot an old woman to death.I watched the wounded and the dead being carted from the square and the area surrounding it on the flatbeds of three-wheeled vehicles through a pall of smoke. The stinging stench of tear gas hovered over the embattled city and burned my eyes.Bodies Removed, and stacked“Tell the world!” the crowds screamed at me and other foreign journalists. “Tell the United States! Tell the truth! We are students! We are common people-unarmed, and they are killing us!”Around 2 a.m. at the height of the armed assault, a maverick tank careened down Jianguomenwai Avenue in an attempt to crack open the way for troop convoys unable to pass through the milling crowds.With its turret closed, the tank was bombarded with stones and bottles as it sped down the avenue. Young cyclists headed it off, then slowed to bring it to a halt. But the tank raced on, the cyclists deftly avoiding its clattering treads by mere inches.On the Jianguomenwai bridge over the city's main ring road, where a 25-truck convoy had been marooned for hours by a mass of angry civilians clambering all over it, a tank raced through the crowd. It sideswiped one of the army trucks, and a young soldier clinging to its side was flung off and killed instantly.The worst fighting of the night occurred around the Minzu Hotel, west of the square, where grim-faced troops opened fire with tracer bullets and live ammunition on crowds blocking their access to the square. Bullets ripped into the crowd and scores of people were wounded. The dead and wounded were thrown on the side of the road among a pile of abandoned bicycles as the troops moved on to take the square.One tank ran into the back of another that had stalled on Chang’an Avenue. As they hurriedly bounced apart, the machine guns on their turrets began to train on an approaching crowd of about 10,000. The machine guns erupted, sending tracers above the heads of the crowd. Men and women scurried for cover, many crawling into the piles of dead and wounded along the side of the road.In my haste to return to the square I had forgotten to bring my camera. Even though it was night, the square was illuminated by street lamps and the sky above it was lit almost continuously with tracers and bright flares. I decided not to ride my bicycle in order to avoid becoming a larger target. At the same time, I didn’t want to lose the only form of transportation I had, so I pushed it wherever I went, sometimes crouching behind it. Finally, I found a small tree and padlocked it to the trunk.For most of the night I found myself caught between trying to cover the tragedy unfolding in and around the square and watching my back. I didn’t want to be caught in the sites of some trigger happy soldier.At one point several hundred troops successfully occupied a corner of the square and I watched as a crowd of some 3,000 howling unarmed students surged toward them on foot and by bicycle, intent on breaking through their line with their bare hands. A few in front of the main body rammed their bikes into the troops and were quickly beaten to the ground by soldiers using the butts of their rifles or clubs.“Fascists! Murderers!” the crowd chanted.As the main body of the crowd got within 50 yards of the first line of troops, an army commander blew a whistle and the soldiers turned and fired volleys of automatic rifle fire. Screams of pain followed.The protesters threw themselves and their bikes on the pavement of the Avenue of Eternal Peace. Dragging their bikes behind them, they crawled to safety, pursued by rifle fire and the throaty war cries of the soldiers.When the firing momentarily stopped, the crowd regrouped and slowly crept back toward the square. Then the volleys rang out again, more intense this time. Two lines of soldiers began to chase the mob, alternately firing tear gas and bullets. I watched several people stagger and fall to the ground.The acrid smell of tear gas triggered a paroxysm of coughing in the crowd. People ripped off shirt sleeves and used them as handkerchiefs over their mouths. The bodies of three women were laid out on the pavement of a side street to await transport. A crowd gathered around them, waving fists and cursing the government.The attack on the Square begins“How many people did you kill?” they shouted at steel-helmeted soldiers who stood stonily with AK-47 assault rifles cradled across their chests.The fighting continued throughout the night as exhausted students and other dissidents engaged in hit and run battles with soldiers, tanks and APC’s. Some students, many of them wounded, scrambled aboard abandoned buses seeking refuge and aid. I watched soldiers pull them out and beat them with heavy clubs.Several of the students, bleeding from head wounds, ran toward where I had taken cover behind a low stone wall. One of the students, a girl of maybe 16, had been shot through the shoulder and was bleeding profusely. She was falling in and out of consciousness and looked to be in shock. I looked behind me to see if there was some way to get her assistance. In the distance I saw a man waving at me from a doorway of a brick wall. He was motioning me to bring the girl and other wounded students to him, all the while carefully watching for soldiers. I pulled her up and with the help of another reporter, dashed with her and several other wounded students to the gate. The man quickly wrapped a blanket around the girl and took her inside the compound with the other students.“Thank you,” he said. “I am a doctor. I will take care of them.”I jogged back to the low wall where I had been kneeling before. I recall thinking that if I were wounded at least I now knew where I could go for help. For the next few hours I moved from one location to another, trying to find a spot where I could see what was happening while making sure I had an escape route should I come under fire.The square was finally cleared at dawn when four personnel carriers raced across it, flattening not only the tents of the demonstrators but the “Goddess of Liberty” statue. I looked at my watch. It was about 5:30 in the morning and dawn was breaking over the city.Ten minutes later a negotiated settlement allowed the hard-core remnants of the democracy movement—some 5,000 students and their supporters—to leave by the southeastern corner of the square. As they left singing the Internationale, troops ritually beat them with wooden clubs and rods.The army had been ordered to clear the Square by 6 a.m and it had done so, but at a terrible cost.As daylight broke over the Avenue of Eternal Peace dazed knots of Chinese, many of them weeping and all of them angry at their government, stood at intersections, reliving the events of a few hours before when tracer bullets and flares turned the black Beijing sky into a deadly torrent of crimson.Along the roadside leading into the square lay several wounded, some perhaps already dead.“They murdered the people. . . . They just shot the people down like dogs, with no warning,” said a man whose shirt was soaked with blood. “I carried a woman to an ambulance, but I think she was dead.”“Please,” he said, “you must tell the world what has happened here. We need your protection from our government.”Perhaps the defining moment of the massacre came a bit later that morning when a student jumped in front of a column of tanks on Chang’an Avenue and refused to move. This student, as yet still unidentified, shouted at the tank commander: "Get out of my city. … You're not wanted here." Each time the tank would attempt to maneuver around the student, he would jump in front of it. The column of tanks turned off their motors and then several other students ran out and pulled the student to safety. To this day nobody is sure who the student was or what happened to him. Most Chinese still refer to him as the “tank man.”I walked back to where I had left my bicycle and rode to the Jianguo Hotel. As I peddled along mostly deserted streets I tried to make sense out what I had seen. With the students already dispersing from the square or planning to, the attack by the army was unnecessarily brutal.There was little doubt that what I had witnessed was an assault designed to punish the demonstrators for embarrassing China’s leadership—Premiere Li Peng and Deng Xiaoping, the ailing leader of China’s Communist Party.China's hard-line rulers, clearly in control after the bloodbath, issued a statement that morning that said:“Thugs frenziedly attacked People's Liberation Army troops, seizing weapons, erecting barricades and beating soldiers and officers in an attempt to overthrow the government of the People's Republic of China and socialism.”China’s leaders have not forgotten the pro-democracy demonstrations of 1989. Unnerved by recent turbulence among Tibetans and always nervous about the possibility of human rights protests in the heart of the capital, China barred live television coverage from Tiananmen Square during the 2008 Beijing Olympics—just as it had in 1989.It remains to be seen whether or not government censorship has exorcised the ghosts of June 4, 1989 that still hang over Tiananmen Square. But there is little doubt that time has not healed the deep wounds inflicted on China’s people that terrible night 24 years ago."---------------------------------------------------End of First Post---------------------------------------------------The follow edit is a reply, concerning killings on the Square proper, and concern regarding the above.(The concern? note the picture labelled by the original author of "The Attack Begins"; note that the sky appears to be dusk- note the lights apparently of the square- THAT PICTURE DOES NOT JIVE WITH FIVE OTHER ACCOUNTS- by former students that were AT the SQUARE... the attack took place in the DARK!Read On:The following account is approximately transcribed from a Youtube (British) interview of former leaders at the square then. It sheds much more on the incidents IMHO, and a reply to a guy strictly concerned with 'numbers', and the 'Square'.(begin excerpt from a Video, complete with Videos of much of the action, particularly the shot Ambulence at the end; also some picture are too gross to publish)The first killings were a reaction to the protesters repeatedly blocking their drive towards the square. Whether there were 1,800 unarmed citizens killed, or 2,600 (as quoted from the Chinese Red Cross, but quickly retracted), should be less of a concern to you, then considering just why they died.Concerns with the number and location of bodies is a misdirect!Unrest had broken out on Tiananmen Square just days before Gorbachev arrived in Beijing on a state visit to reestablish normal relations between the two communist powers. In 1989, both the Soviet Union and China were in the midst of contentious debates about political reform. Gorbachev had staked his reputation on political liberalization — free speech and competitive elections — in an attempt to revitalize the Soviet Union's stagnant economy and decrepit political institutions.China, too, was debating political reform in 1989, and many Chinese believed that the country should heed the "Ambassador of Democracy" and follow the Soviet Union's political reforms. Students at Peking University invited Gorbachev to speak to them about perestroika and glasnost. A student delegation from the city of Tianjin traveled to Beijing to greet the Soviet leader. And the protesters who occupied Tiananmen Square looked to Gorbachev's reforms as a model for changing China.One woman on the square carried with her a copy of Gorbachev's book "Perestroika and New Thinking."In Beijing, Gorbachev noted that Chinese students "welcome what the Soviet Union is doing along the road of perestroika and glasnost" and called on the Chinese government to work with pro-democracy protesters. If a situation like Tiananmen arose in the Soviet Union, Gorbachev told journalists, his government would resolve it "in the spirit of democracy and glasnost."But unlike in the Soviet Union, the most powerful officials within China's ruling Communist Party were uninterested in democracy and saw the Tienanmen protests, as one leader put it, as a "stinking mess."Immediately after Gorbachev left Beijing, China's leader Deng Xiaoping purged the Communist Party of reform-minded officials and put several former leaders under house arrest. Democracy — or "Western-style" democracy, as Chinese officials described it — was of no interest to China, Deng explained. "China's greatest interest is stability — anything that benefits China's stability is a good thing. I never give an inch — ever." Deng ordered troops to crush the protests on June 4, 1989.Understand that the demonstration originated with a funeral rally of students, and these students were the children of the elite; they wanted take part in a 'memorial' in recognition of Hu Yaobang and his liberal political beliefs. They simply didn't want his goals to die.Meanwhile, the Government of China was occupied with a visit from Russia's President, who had to 'sneak in the back door' during the Occupation. A huge Styrofoam statue copy of the Statue of Liberty (ala New York, via France) reaching out towards the did not impress the Russian visitors.The initial group of soldiers had been interacting with the gatherers at the Square for four days. Mostly these soldiers were the children of country people, and freely discussed that they would not harm Chinese citizens. The folks at the square were feeding the soldiers, asking them to defend the people and be on their side, and to realize they were simply after freedom of speech and putting an end to corruption. These became puzzled soldiers, as local children would come to them and say: “How are you brother soldier, I hope you enjoy our city.”Then, this initial group of soldiers were withdrawn (to cheers; but they were regrouped with MORE soldiers outside the City.) For ten days, the military hung back, while military groups from all over China were requested to converge on Beijing. (If there was going to be carnage against their own people, all army divisions would participate – and they did).Meanwhile, the pause was read by the public as being a hint of success; newspapers were uniquely being publishing freely and honestly about the events, and papers from different towns were stapled on common walls for all to read; word spread outward, so the demonstration, (and virtual celebration) occurred in over 400 cities; -the military 'pause', and the 'free press' gave a false impression that something good was going to come out of this – the Government was 'pondering' their position. Meanwhile, Hundreds of tanks andRTV's, and 300,000 troops were gathering outside Beijing, particularly to the West.Word of the large Military gathering on all sides of Beijing was soon common knowledge, as was the Party Edict: “Tienanmen Square must be cleared by dawn of June 4th. -this prematurely informed the protesters of the military goal, and allowed them to prepare a defense; they begin blockading streets with anything they could lay their hand on, to stall military advancement towards the Square.When this second entry began, mostly from the west of the City, people just flooded out into the intersections and the huge crowds blocked the roads. So three or four military convoys, all trying to enter Beijing were completely backed-up, sitting mostly in their convoy trucks, and lines of personnel carriers, and the tanks turned-off their engines; they couldn't advance, and they couldn't back-up.The locals were telling them: “What are you doing here? We have no problem here.”And lectures to the trapped military boys sitting in their trucks on how they are on the wrong side, “Brother soldier, do you know what we are doing here? You should be defenders of the people.”After all the students initiating the rally were the children of the elite; they sought reform, not revolution- but this 'Student' goal was perceived by the government to perhaps be shifting focus, as thousands of Country Chinese came into the City on buses over the last week of th 10 day period, such that the demonstration was moving towards a 'Worker's Revolt, something the Government could not tolerate. They could conceptually deal with student concerns, but not a shift to a 'Workers' uprising, as the Chinese Communist Party had easily used the Workers to set forth their regime, now those in Government were truly terrified that the workers could take it back. They had to keep the Military away from 'improper' influences by the demonstrators (unlike the first group), so any large troop movements took place at night.The carnage began in Beijing as the military forcefully moved toward the square along Guangchang Road, coming in from both sides of the city, mostly in trucks, buses, and troop carriers which led the parade. As the military slowly advanced through crowded intersections during the day, they became more 'forceful' as evening came on, and so too did the demonstrators, which came to a bottle neck at the Muxidi Bridge/Overpass area. Government high-rise tenanments had a ring-side seat to this first major battle. (Since then, an over-pass has been added to the Eastern Side of the area).As Reported in the L.A. Times:(begin paste)BEIJING — The sky flickers orange and black over the bridge at Muxidi as flames roll through two buses. Bullets whistle and zing. Tear gas canisters boom. "Fascists! Fascists!" chants the crowd.The People's Liberation Army has entered Beijing to liberate the city from the people.Saturday evening and into Sunday, Muxidi Bridge, a gateway to the inner city, was the site of pitched battles. Local citizens sought to defend themselves from heavily armed Chinese troops instructed to quell the unrest.S oldiers with AK-47 rifles fired indiscriminately into crowds of demonstrators and onlookers. Many died, one at the feet of this reporter. The local hospital laid out 21 bodies in a makeshift mortuary Sunday afternoon to commemorate the heavy loss of life.Soldiers also were hurt. Two from a tank crew were beaten senseless by a crowd that attacked the tank with Molotov cocktails. Civilians briefly commandeered the tank before setting it ablaze. Red flags reading "Democracy" and "Freedom," flapped from its turrets.This is how one battle unfolded:Saturday, 8 p.m.:Two buses stand as barricades on the bridge. A steelworker who has joined the uprising stands nearby. Blood soaks his shirt. A bandage covers one eye."We moved those two buses on the bridge to block it good," he says."I was in the front waiting to fight them. The troop trucks were west of the bridge, about 100 (meters) away. (They) had their lights on so we couldn't see anything. When they hit me I didn't know what was happening. Three guys with sticks and a rifle just moved in on me and smashed away."10 p.m.:Workers and students have pushed back the first wave of incoming troops, who charged them with sticks and tear gas. Burning rugs from a nearby apartment have been chucked onto the buses. One gas tank explodes and then another.11 p.m.:"Live fire! Live fire!" a student shouts moments after he's hit in the leg by a bullet. Soldiers fire into the crowd.They are shooting low, hitting many in the legs and stomach. Blood, pooling on the pavement, splatters the bridge at Muxidi.The night, balmy with a calm breeze, echoes with the explosion of blank shells. The blank rounds send the crowds fleeing up a nearby side street. They quickly return, rocks in hand to face the oncoming troops.Midnight:Armored personnel carriers are smashing through buses. Soldiers fire into the crowd."Clear the street, clear the way!" yells a medic.Li Fengde, a 28-year-old electrical worker, has been hit in the stomach."Look at me and think," he says as he lies groaning on a three-wheeled pedicab with another wounded man who is silent. "I love the student movement and democracy. This is what I get."The troop trucks have come. A row of 50 storm through the crumpled roadblock.Stones still fly from the citizens, huddled now in bushes and behind walls near the bridge.A housecleaner on the 14th floor of one building is killed by gunfire as she looks out the window. Another woman is hit by a shell as she looks out from an eighth-floor balcony.Sunday, 5 a.m:With a huge explosion, an electric trolley, driven by a man in a white headband, crashes into a tank as it crosses Muxidi Bridge."Running dogs!" the people scream as they attack fleeing soldiers.Machine-gun fire crackles as troops react to rocks with deadly fusillades. Many fall. A youth jumps on an abandoned tank. "I can drive this thing!" he shouts. "I can drive anything!"Comrades join him, placing their flags in its machine gun turrets.Haltingly, the tank begins to move. People in the crowd emerge from their hiding places to cheer."Stand up and fight!" they yell. "Blood for blood, avenge the deaths." Under attack from soldiers, the youths withdraw. A gasoline bomb explodes.Through the yellow flames, the outlines of hundreds more troop trucks, each carrying upwards of 50 soldiers, move steadily toward the bridge at Muxidi.”(End paste; Ref: It's 'Live Fire! Live Fire!' in Muxidi Battle)After clearing that area, and marching on, blockades were set-up repeatedly at each intersection by the protesters, and locals from western suburban areas. Ramming of these blockades, some which were human chains of protesters, and shooting of others in the area began in earnest. Tall apartment houses along Chang'an and Guangchang were sprayed with bullets as well, and innocent on-lookers became victims.The AK-47 bullets used were field class; very large copper jacketed rounds that were designed to expand in the victims, causing severe (fatal) internal damage.The wounded were brought to the 3 hospitals in the area, mostly by bicycle, and laid on the sidewalk in front as the hospitals filled up, as the overwhelmed medical bustled about in shock. Many of the those bringing wounded had blood on their face, as they acquired the blood while attempting mouth-to-mouth resuscitation. It was a goolish scene. The shootings of unarmed citizens so shocked and angered the communities, that the streets filled with even more with more enraged citizens on the day of the 4th.Slowly, the main streets feeding the square from the west and east were filled with retreating protesters, as their human barricades failed to stop the advancing army.By 1:30 AM the repeated Blockade/Carnage events at each intersection had pushed the crowd into Tienanmen Square.Repeated loud recordings announced that anyone remaining in the square would be responsible for what would befall them. Random shooting echoed throughout the square, and groups would lie down on the ground, as some of those among them would scream, or drop, and blood would spurt from them, when they were hit. Muzzle flashes could be seen at the top of the People's Great Hall. A very large contingent of troops had gathered at the front of the Hall, as well as the Museum of Revolutionary History, as the shine of their helmets and rifles gave them away.Many of the protesters still could not believe they were being shot at with live ammunition, and they stood their ground; you could see tracer bullets in the sky coming from roof tops of the main buildings, going into the crowd; a thunderous sound of shooting took place. It was bloody chaos, people were running in all directions.Just past 4 in the morning, all the lights in the square were turned off, total darkness other than fires, and the sound of tanks entering the square was the only eerie sound. You could hear the strange sounds of crunching; after 15 minutes of total darkness, the illumination lights of the Great Hall were turned on, and you could see more soldiers streaming out of it. Protesters ran to the monument, watching the killing going on around them and they gathered and stood or sat down, in expectation of their death too.As they were surrounded by the armed soldiers, one with a bull-horn offered them amnesty if they quit, and left the area. The students there put it to a vote, and it was obvious the 'stay' votes were much much stronger, by a student leader at the time, Feng Congde, said “The 'Lets Leave' have it- and 3 - 5,000 students left by the South East corner.The next day, tanks, and lines of soldiers were blocking all the entranceway's to the square, while the army mopped up the bodies in the Square in the background, no one was allowed in.Frantic parents gathered in front of the soldiers, attempting to locate their missing children, and hassling the army. A general with a loud speaker announced: “I'm going to count to ten, and then I'm ordering the army to fire.” The parent group began to run, and 40 to 50 people were shot in the back. Then, after about 45 minutes, parents would again start approaching the soldiers, and again they would be fired upon after a warning, and again 20 – 30 people would be shot. This repeated about 6 times during the day. When an ambulance came in to tend to the wounded at one point, the soldiers shot-up the ambulance as it approached, and the doctors and nurses too. This was the true Tienanmen Square Massacre; the targeting and shooting down of totally innocent civilians as they sought information.Tienanmen Square became off-limits, and the gathering of more than three citizens within AK-47 range was not acceptable, -and punishable by death.On the next day, no one was attempting to interact with the military- the city was vanquished. Military officers walked about with 45 caliber pistols in their hands; one dare not approach them, or get too close.Then, the day after that, as the tanks were leaving, Tank Man stood in their way, and blocked a single file line of tanks a mile long. Shooting in the area could still be heard as he stood there, but perhaps not related to him. The huge line of tanks stopped, and they turned off their engines... and he climbed on the tank, wishing to express his outrage; and that the City may seem quiet, but it was NOT vanquished. He got off to the side of the tank, and the tank started back up, and he jumped in front of it again.A gentleman on a bike rode out to the Tank Man, and two other men came out, -they were dressed similarly, and each took an arm and led him away from the tanks. No one knows who the men were, or what became of Tank Man, although rumors persist.What Tank man did actually affected the world, as Russian demonstrators said if this man in China can do that, We can bring the Wall down! (And they did!) His image still resonates that a single voice has rights and power! Those that commited much less than he, were tried in courts and executed, so there is hope he remains alive and well, and mute!China sorted out participants in the demonstration for the next year, followed by arrests, and followed by televised of executions, or incarceration. The amnesty promised at the Square was a lie. The event was painted as an 'Attempted Revolution' by students radicalized by Americans, (and certainly not a 'Worker Rebellion,' which is what it was becoming).With 750 million peasant farmers, in a population of a Billion, it appears that the current regime is NOT trying very hard to bring them into the 21st century, and that leaves 750 million individuals displeased with the current Government. MARKED positive changes have indeed occurred, towards increasing capitalistic free enterprise among its city dwellers, and trade with the U.S.- but the initial concerns of the students: Government corruption and lack of a free expression, remain a illusory.A foreigner's two cents:I've been part of Anti-war demonstrations in the U.S. in the early seventies, and seen peaceful demonstrations taken over by those attendee's that prefer to throw bricks at police, rather than sing. Just a 2-percent 'bad eggs' can change the entire event. The nightly set-up of flaming street blockades occurred every night for weeks at intersections on Telegraph Avenue in Berkeley, while the peaceful demonstrators slept, or prepared new placards. The Police here too would gather at one end, and ram the blockades, creating a mess. Throwing bricks down randomly from tall apartments onto police vehicles was another favorite ploy.Early on, poorly trained, and incorrectly armed Army Reserve marched down the noon street in Berkeley, and upon being met with bricks being tossed down from an adjacent Coffee House, shot the individual doing the tossing. It wasn't a student that was shot, - he was a recent arrival from L.A. looking for trouble, and he found it. Multiply the U.S. errors in the Seventies by a thousand, and you have the Tienanmen associated errors.Chinese leaders at that time believed they were above discussing political issues with students, as they were occupied by visitors from Russia- that was the first mistake. Perhaps a lack of transparency of Government inner workings is China's biggest flaw. Abandoning stealth in the march to the Square was another major error, as was publicizing the 'Party Edict' to clear it by dawn. The militant protesters had time to prepare and organize- which they did. After the clearing of the square the shooting those in the back who approached/fled the Square margins was the most heinous act of all; and the policy maker that brought that to bear should be held accountable IMHO.I encourage Chinese Officials and Military to visit the U.S. police to discover just how we manage an angry mob without killing (too many). The use of Pizza, rubber bullets, and anger management classes for the troops all come to the party. I can foresee that if China doesn't do this, there could be a repeat of the Tienanmen Square Massacre.Times have changed, so that the perceived complicity of a temporary 'free press' then, is back in play now via the Internet; which is why the Chinese Internet censors remain vigilant .. and confine it (for now) to the more affluent city dwellers.If you click on the video below, It MAY take you to the Youtube source of the above; called "Tank Man" but I doubt it; I'm leaving out the "www." it's: youtube.com/watch?v=g0gD523fwU8from video recorded testimony of 5 former student leaders, including: Zhou Fengsuo, Dr. Tong Yi, Jan Wong, Lu Jinghua, among others.