by G. Jack Urso
On the evening of June 3, 1989, I
was working the overnight shift at WQBK-1300 AM. At the time, the station was
located on an isolated hill outside Albany, New York. The networks were buzzing
with news of the violent crackdown on the pro-democracy protestors in Tiananmen
Square. The teletype clacked away every few minutes with the latest reports. In
the days before the World Wide Web, there was little to do but wait for the
next report to come through.
Looking for more news beyond our
network feed, I began to surf the frequencies on the satellite dish.
Eventually, I picked up an audio feed of an English-speaking announcer for
Radio Beijing who reported the news of the massacre at Tiananmen Square. I’m
not sure if this was a part of a network news feed or just a stray signal I
caught, but I felt an immediate connection to my fellow broadcaster. It was
also obvious to anyone who followed the news that the Communist Chinese government’s
response would fall harshly on those who broke the wall of silence. I wondered
if I would have the same courage had I been in his place.
The audio I recorded from the broadcast is available below,
along with some rare photographs from the massacre, in a slide show I produced in conjunction with my research on this event:
Knowing the historical
significance of the broadcast, I transferred it from reel-to-reel tape to a cart (see Fig. 1).
Carts look like 8-track cartridges and come in varying lengths. They were used for playing everything from station IDs and bumpers, to
commercials, public service announcements, interviews, and music. Looking back
at the state of radio news gathering in 1989, with no computers or Internet, and only
antiquated relics like teletype, carts, and reel-to-reel, I still
marvel at how we got any work done.
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Fig. 1: The cart I recorded the Radio Beijing announcement onto on June 4, 1989. |
Producing History
I produced my first report on this broadcast in
2000 while taking a course in Producing Historical Documentaries for Radio with Professor Gerald Zahavi at the
University at Albany while working on my master’s degree. The web page for the
course, though nearly 12 years old at the time of this writing, is still available at the above link. There, you can find my original short audio documentary, The Lost Voice of Radio Beijing (requires RealPlayer).
Professor Zahavi also broadcast my
report on his Talking History
program on WRPI-90.9 FM, the radio station for the Rensselaer Polytechnic
Institute, in 2000 and 2001.
Transcription of Original Radio Beijing Broadcast - June 3, 1989:
This is Radio Beijing. Please
remember June the third, 1989. The most tragic event happened in the Chinese
capital, Beijing.
Thousands of people, most of them
innocent civilians, were killed by fully armed soldiers when they forced their
way into the city. Among the killed are our colleagues at Radio Beijing.
The soldiers were riding on
armored vehicles and used machine guns against thousands of local residents and
students who tried to block their way. When the army convoys made a
breakthrough, soldiers continued to spray their bullets indiscriminately at
crowds in the street.
Eyewitnesses say some armored
vehicles even crushed foot soldiers who hesitated in front of the resisting
civilians.
Radio Beijing English Department
deeply mourns those died in the tragic incident and appeals to all its
listeners to join our protest for the gross violation of human rights and the
most barbarous suppression of the people.
Because of this abnormal
situation here in Beijing, there is no other news we could bring you. We
sincerely ask for your understanding and thank you for joining us at this most
tragic moment.
While working on the report for
the class, I contacted Radio Free Asia in Washington D.C. in the hope that
someone there might have some information about the announcer. Through an
interpreter, I was able to speak with a former Radio Beijing reporter who was
actually at Tiananmen Square the evening of June 3, 1989. She didn’t know who
the announcer was, but said she would look into it and let me know if she found
out anything.
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Fig. 2: FCC Restricted Radio Telephone Operator Permit:
Issued January 31, 1986. |
About six months later, well
after the course had ended, I received an e-mail from my contact at Radio Free
Asia who informed me of that the announcer’s name is Yuan Neng and he was
transferred from his job for broadcasting the report. The script was by Wu
Xiaoyong, Deputy Director of the English Language Service at Radio Beijing. His
father, Wu Xueqian, at the time was a Senior Council Vice-President. According to my contact, after the
broadcast, Wu was put under house arrest for two to three years and later moved to Hong Kong. His
father’s connections likely played a part in his release.
 |
Fig. 3: Human Rights Watch listing, Dec. 1989. |
China is seeking a balance
between its capitalist ambitions and cultural traditions; however, one wonders
if the threat the Chinese Communist government perceived in 1989 was not so much a fear
of revolution per se, but rather that the moral imperative through which all
governments derive their power, the consent of the people, would vanish in the
face of true competition in the marketplace of ideas.
● ● ●
UPDATE June 4, 2015: Through various
sources, including a reader of Aeolus 13 Umbra and a Canadian film
documentarian, it has been reported that Yuan Neng is alive and living in the
United States, but does not wish to discuss the events of June 3-4, 1989, at
this time.
UPDATE February 2019: The Lost Voice
of Radio Beijing announcer’s full name is reported as Chen Yuanneng (see
comments, below). My previous reporting of Yuan
Neng (see above) is attributed to mistranslations in my communications with Radio Free Asia personnel in late 2000.
UPDATE May 2019: Photos of Chen
Yuanneng and Wu Xiaoyong posted by 881903.com, the official website of
Commercial Radio Hong Kong (thank you Aeolus 13 Umbra reader Lu butsch for the link).
Chen Yuanneng is reported by 881903.com to have been working in the "high-tech industry" in Los Angeles" at the time of the publication of the article, May 13, 2014.
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Chen
Yuanneng Wu Xiaoyong
|
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