Tiananmen Square Coming of Age Ceremony

BEIJING - Beijing's Tiananmen Square was closed to the public on Wednesday for a government-organised coming-of-age ceremony for 18 year olds, an apparent attempt to thwart any student commemorations.

Wednesday marks the 86th anniversary of the May Fourth Movement of 1919, the first mass protest in modern Chinese history, and also of the beginning of the student democracy protests on May 4, 1989, and there had been speculation that protesters would gather in Beijing.

It has been sixteen years but it seems the communist party in China has finally gotten the message from the Tiananmen Square protestors of 1989.





Remember this brave young man who stared down tanks stopping their advance for over half an hour to prove his coming of age?
















Who can forget the image of the Coming of Age Goddess?















Isn't it swell that the PRC marks the anniversary of the Tiananmen Square massacre with a coming of age ceremony? They were just precocious youngsters anyway.








Let us not forget those hundreds or perhaps thousands of young men and women who never got the chance to come of age.







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