四五运动April Fifth Movement
背景与经过：1976年1月8日，周恩来逝世。文革进入第十个年头，官方对悼念层层设限：不许自发设灵堂，不许佩戴黑纱，外地人不许进京吊唁，报纸上连篇累牍的是“批邓、反击右倾翻案风”。3月间，南京先动了起来：南京大学学生贴出大字报为周恩来鸣不平，“谁反对周总理，就打倒谁”的标语被刷上南来北往的列车车厢，传遍大半个中国，史称“南京事件”。3月下旬，北京市民开始自发前往天安门广场，在人民英雄纪念碑前献花圈、贴诗抄。献花的多是普通工人、市民、学生和机关干部，许多是以工厂、学校、单位的名义。4月4日清明节，广场达到高潮：花圈堆满纪念碑基座，诗抄贴满碑座和松墙，据在场者回忆及后来统计，前后到过广场的群众约二百万人次。Background and course: Zhou Enlai died on January 8, 1976, in the tenth year of the Cultural Revolution. The authorities restricted mourning at every level: no spontaneous memorial halls, no black armbands, no travel to Beijing to pay respects, while newspapers ran endless articles about “criticizing Deng and beating back the right-deviationist wind.” In March, Nanjing moved first: students at Nanjing University posted big-character posters defending Zhou's memory, and the slogan “Whoever opposes Premier Zhou shall be overthrown” was painted on passing trains and carried across much of China — the “Nanjing Incident.” From late March, Beijing citizens began going on their own to Tiananmen Square, laying wreaths and posting poems at the Monument to the People's Heroes. Most were ordinary workers, residents, students and office staff, many in the name of their factory, school or work unit. On April 4, the Qingming festival, the square reached its peak: wreaths piled up around the monument's base and poems covered the pedestal and the pine fences. By participants' accounts and later estimates, some two million people passed through the square.
导火索：不满先从报纸上爆出来。1976年3月初，上海《文汇报》在转载雷锋日记时删去周恩来的题词，又接连刊登影射周恩来的文章。南京大学师生率先贴出大字报质问《文汇报》，并在南京火车站一带的墙上刷出大标语。标语被刷上列车车厢后，南京的消息随着铁路传向全国。据后来统计，从3月下旬到4月4日，送到纪念碑前的花圈达两千多个，许多花圈的挽联落款不是单位，而是“一个老工人”“几个售货员”这样的普通署名。The trigger: The anger first erupted over a newspaper. In early March 1976, Shanghai's Wenhui Daily, reprinting Lei Feng's diary, deleted Zhou Enlai's inscription from it and ran a series of articles insinuating against Zhou. Teachers and students at Nanjing University were the first to post big-character posters demanding answers from the paper, and painted large slogans on walls around Nanjing railway station. Once the slogans were painted onto train carriages, word of Nanjing traveled the railways across China. By later counts, more than 2,000 wreaths were delivered to the monument between late March and April 4; many couplets were signed not by work units but simply “an old worker” or “a few shop assistants.”
广场上的十天：从3月下旬到4月4日，纪念碑周围形成了一个自发维持的世界。送花圈要排队，有人在纪念碑北面的松林里设了简易的登记处，把花圈按单位和个人一一登记；诗抄贴满了碑座，人们用透明胶带和糨糊把纸页固定住，怕风吹走。白天，广场上有自发的演讲和辩论，围观者里三层外三层；入夜，花圈和诗抄无人看管不行，就有人轮班守夜，裹着棉大衣坐在台阶上。来的人什么身份都有：工厂的老师傅带着徒弟来，医院的大夫下了夜班来，中学生把诗抄在小本子上带回学校传抄。人们彼此不认识，靠的是一个共识——总理是被冤枉的，这口气得出。据亲历者回忆，广场上秩序出奇地好，连一个扒手都没有抓到过。In the ten days from late March to April 4, a self-organized world formed around the monument. People queued to deliver wreaths; someone set up a makeshift registry in the pine grove north of the monument, logging each wreath by work unit or individual. Poems covered the pedestal, fixed down with tape and paste against the wind. By day there were spontaneous speeches and debates, listeners packed ring within ring; by night, volunteers took turns guarding the wreaths and poems, sitting on the steps wrapped in padded coats. They came from every walk of life: master workers bringing their apprentices, doctors coming off night shifts, schoolchildren copying poems into notebooks to pass around at school. They did not know one another; what held them together was a shared conviction — the Premier had been wronged, and someone had to say so. Participants recalled that order in the square was remarkably good; not a single pickpocket was caught.
十里长街：要理解四月广场的情绪，先要回到一月。1976年1月11日，周恩来的遗体送往八宝山火化，灵车经过长安街时，沿途站满了自发赶来的市民，据当时的报道和后来的回忆，送行者达上百万人，很多人从清晨等到深夜，这就是后来所说的“十里长街送总理”。追悼会规格被压低、邓小平致悼词后即在批邓运动中靠边站，让民间的不满有了具体的指向。到了3月，《文汇报》事件点燃南京，南京的标语上了火车；北京的工人、学生开始私下串联，议论着清明要去广场“给总理献个花圈”。四五运动的群众基础，就是在这一连串的压抑里形成的：人们要悼念的既是一个人，也是一种过日子的指望。Ten li of farewell: To understand the mood of April's square, go back to January. On January 11, 1976, as Zhou Enlai's body was carried to Babaoshan for cremation, the hearse passed along Chang'an Avenue lined with citizens who had come on their own — by contemporary reporting and later recollection, a million or more, many waiting from early morning until deep into the night: the famous “ten-li avenue farewell to the Premier.” The downgraded funeral arrangements, and Deng Xiaoping's sidelining in the anti-Deng campaign right after delivering the eulogy, gave public discontent a concrete target. In March, the Wenhui Daily affair ignited Nanjing and its slogans rode the trains; in Beijing, workers and students began quietly talking among themselves about laying wreaths at Qingming “for the Premier.” The movement's mass base formed in this accumulation of suppression: what people wished to mourn was both a man, and a way of life they had hoped for.
清场与冲突：4月4日深夜，中央政治局开会，把广场活动定性为“反革命事件”。当夜，花圈、诗抄被卡车全部拉走，广场被清扫一空。4月5日清晨，来献花的人发现花圈一夜之间不见了，愤怒的人群聚集到人民大会堂东门外，高喊“还我花圈，还我战友”，要求接见、要求解释，与值勤的民兵、警察推搡冲突。混乱中，停在广场一侧的广播车和几辆小汽车被点燃。当晚，首都民兵约一万人、卫戍部队五个营和三千名公安人员手持木棍冲入广场清场，不少群众被打伤，二百多人被抓走。The clearing and the clashes: Late on the night of April 4, the Politburo met and labeled the square gatherings a “counter-revolutionary incident.” That night, trucks hauled away every wreath and poem, and the square was swept clean. On the morning of April 5, people arriving to lay flowers found everything gone. An angry crowd gathered outside the east gate of the Great Hall of the People, chanting “Return our wreaths, return our comrades,” demanding to be received and to be given an explanation, and scuffled with militia and police on duty. In the confusion, a loudspeaker van and several cars parked by the square were set on fire. That evening, some 10,000 capital militia, five battalions of garrison troops and 3,000 police charged into the square with wooden clubs; many people were beaten and injured, and more than 200 were taken away.
具体的人：这场运动没有领袖，站在前面的是普通人。献花的队伍里有整班组的工人，有推着自行车来的市民，有把诗抄工工整整抄在练习本上的中学生。有人自发守夜看护花圈，怕被人偷走；有人把诗抄抄下来带回车间、单位传看。4月5日被抓走的二百多人，绝大多数是工人和普通市民；工人韩志雄因在广场上发表演说、带头到大会堂东门交涉而被逮捕关押，平反后被称作“四五英雄”之一。清场之后，清查迅速扩大：抄过诗的、贴过诗的、在单位议论过的，轻则审查交代，重则判刑、劳教。北京第二外国语学院的十六位教师顶着压力，把冒死保存下来的诗抄编成《天安门诗抄》，化名“童怀周”，取“同怀周恩来”之意。The people: The movement had no leaders; ordinary people stood at the front. In the wreath-laying crowds were whole work teams from factories, residents who came by bicycle, middle-school students who copied poems neatly into exercise books. Some stayed up all night guarding the wreaths against theft; others copied poems and carried them back to workshops and offices for colleagues to read. Of the more than 200 seized on April 5, the great majority were workers and ordinary citizens. Worker Han Zhixiong was arrested for speaking in the square and leading the delegation to the Great Hall's east gate; after rehabilitation he was honored as one of the “April Fifth heroes.” After the clearing, the purge widened: anyone who had copied a poem, posted one, or talked about the events at work faced investigation at best, prison or labor camp at worst. Sixteen teachers at Beijing Second Foreign Language Institute, at real personal risk, compiled the poems they had hidden away into Tiananmen Poems, signing themselves “Tong Huaizhou” — “together cherishing Zhou.”
诉求原文（有出处）：广场诗歌后被编为《天安门诗抄》（1978年12月人民文学出版社出版）。其中广为传抄的包括李先辉《向总理请示》、白晓朗《悼总理》等。挽联中最著名的一副写道：“人民的总理人民爱，人民的总理爱人民”——字面悼念周恩来，字面之下是对“四人帮”的不满。另一副挽联则直白得多：“谁反对周总理就打倒谁。”这些诗文在1976年4月8日《人民日报》社论中被定性为“反动诗词”。（出处：《天安门诗抄》1978年版；《人民日报》1976年4月8日社论）Original demands (sourced): The square's poems were later collected as Tiananmen Poems (People's Literature Publishing House, December 1978). Widely copied works included Li Xianhui's “Petitioning the Premier” and Bai Xiaolang's “Mourning the Premier.” The best-known couplet read: “The people's Premier is loved by the people; the people's Premier loves the people” — mourning Zhou on its face, and beneath the surface aimed squarely at the Gang of Four. Another couplet was blunter: “Whoever opposes Premier Zhou shall be overthrown.” The poems were condemned as “reactionary” in the People's Daily editorial of April 8, 1976. (Sources: Tiananmen Poems, 1978; People's Daily, April 8, 1976)
各地的回声：北京不是孤例。南京事件之后，郑州、杭州、西安、太原、成都等地都出现悼念周恩来的集会和大字报，规模不等，内容相似：悼念总理，影射“四人帮”，要求为蒙冤者说话。西安群众在钟楼一带贴出大标语，杭州有人在西湖边设灵棚。这些地方活动大多被当地压了下去，组织者被追查。有学者后来指出，四五运动是文革十年中唯一一次在全国多个城市同时出现的、自发的群众性政治表达——它在北京达到顶点，是因为花圈找到了纪念碑这个全国性的象征。Echoes across the country: Beijing was not alone. After the Nanjing Incident, commemorations and big-character posters appeared in Zhengzhou, Hangzhou, Xi'an, Taiyuan, Chengdu and other cities — varying in scale, similar in content: mourning the Premier, insinuating against the Gang of Four, demanding a hearing for the wronged. In Xi'an, crowds posted large slogans around the Bell Tower; in Hangzhou, someone set up a mourning altar by West Lake. Most of these local actions were suppressed and their organizers investigated. Scholars have since observed that the April Fifth Movement was the only spontaneous, nationwide political expression to appear simultaneously in many cities during the Cultural Revolution's ten years — and that it peaked in Beijing because the wreaths had found in the monument a symbol belonging to the whole country.
清查：清场之后是清查。中央发出文件，要求追查“反革命分子的后台”和天安门诗抄的来源。各单位成立清查组，人人过关：4月初去过广场的要登记，在广场上抄过诗的要交代，保留诗抄的要上交。北京第二外国语学院等单位受到重点整肃，保存诗稿的人被反复审查。被追查者轻则写检查、受处分，重则以“反革命宣传煽动”判刑、送劳改农场。清查持续了两年多，直到1978年平反才陆续停止。这也是为什么《天安门诗抄》日后出版时要用化名——编者们在1978年底仍不确信，清查的账会不会再翻出来算。The purge: After the clearing came the purge. Central directives ordered an investigation into the “backers of the counter-revolutionaries” and the sources of the Tiananmen poems. Every work unit set up an investigation team and everyone had to account for themselves: those who had been to the square in early April had to register; those who had copied poems there had to confess; those who had kept copies had to surrender them. Institutions such as Beijing Second Foreign Language Institute came under special rectification, and people who had preserved manuscripts were interrogated again and again. The investigated were made to write self-criticisms and accept discipline at best; at worst they were sentenced for “counter-revolutionary propaganda and incitement” or sent to labor farms. The purge lasted more than two years, winding down only with the rehabilitation of 1978. That is why Tiananmen Poems, when finally published, still used a collective pen name — at the end of 1978 its editors could not be sure the purge's accounts would not be reopened.
事后处理：4月7日，邓小平被指为事件的“总后台”，撤销党内外一切职务。毛泽东逝世、“四人帮”倒台后，为四五运动平反的呼声不断。1978年11月，北京市委宣布天安门事件“完全是革命行动”，为被捕人员平反、恢复名誉，被关押者陆续获释。相关事件页：四五运动（1976）Aftermath: On April 7, Deng Xiaoping was named the incident's “chief backer” and stripped of all Party and state posts. After Mao's death and the fall of the Gang of Four, calls to rehabilitate the movement grew. In November 1978, the Beijing Party Committee declared the Tiananmen incident “entirely a revolutionary action”; those arrested were rehabilitated and released. See: April Fifth Movement (1976)
平反的经过：平反不是一天完成的。1977年邓小平恢复职务后，要求为天安门事件翻案的呼声在党内和社会上不断升高，主持中央组织部工作的胡耀邦把为四五运动受害者平反列为清理冤假错案的重点之一。1978年11月，正在举行的中央工作会议上，与会者联名提出为天安门事件平反；11月14日，中共北京市委宣布：1976年天安门事件是“完全的革命行动”，因事件被捕、受审查的人一律平反、恢复名誉。12月召开的十一届三中全会肯定了这一结论。此后两年，全国各地因四五运动被判刑、劳教、处分的人陆续得到平反和补偿，被没收的诗稿、笔记本有的发还，有的在清查中已经销毁。How rehabilitation came: Rehabilitation was not accomplished in a day. After Deng Xiaoping returned to office in 1977, calls inside and outside the Party to reverse the verdict on the Tiananmen incident kept rising, and Hu Yaobang, who ran the Party's Organization Department, made redress for the April Fifth victims a priority in clearing up unjust cases. In November 1978, delegates to the Central Work Conference jointly demanded rehabilitation; on November 14, the Beijing Party Committee announced that the 1976 Tiananmen incident had been “an entirely revolutionary action,” and that everyone arrested or investigated over it was rehabilitated and restored in honor. The Third Plenary Session in December endorsed the conclusion. Over the following two years, people across the country who had been sentenced, sent to labor camps or disciplined over the movement were rehabilitated and compensated; confiscated manuscripts and notebooks were returned where they survived — many had already been destroyed in the purge.
诗选与作者：《天安门诗抄》收录的作品中，流传最广的句子出自一首署名作品：“欲悲闻鬼叫，我哭豺狼笑。洒泪祭雄杰，扬眉剑出鞘。”短短二十个字，把悼念写成了宣战，在1976年的广场上被抄了无数遍，作者的真实身份后来有不同说法。李先辉的《向总理请示》以设问写成，问“四化”的前途何在；另一位作者白晓朗在诗中直接质问当权者。这些作者几乎全是普通人：工人、营业员、解放军战士、中学教师。他们写诗的工具是圆珠笔和练习本，发表的版面是纪念碑的石壁。诗抄编辑成书时，大部分作者仍用化名，真名与原稿的对应关系，一部分永远无法确认了——这也是这份档案天然的缺口。The poems and their authors: Among the works collected in Tiananmen Poems, the most widely circulated lines come from a signed poem: “I would grieve, but hear ghosts wail; I weep, and jackals laugh. We shed tears for the fallen hero; brows raised, swords drawn.” Twenty characters that turned mourning into a declaration of war; in the square of 1976 they were copied out countless times, though the author's true identity is still given differently in different accounts. Li Xianhui's “Petitioning the Premier” is written as a series of questions about the fate of the Four Modernizations; another author, Bai Xiaolang, interrogates those in power directly. Nearly all these authors were ordinary people: workers, shop clerks, PLA soldiers, schoolteachers. Their tools were ballpoint pens and exercise books; their page was the stone wall of a monument. When the collection was edited into a book, most authors still used pen names, and the correspondence between real names and manuscripts can in part never be recovered — a gap built into this archive itself.
清查中的个案：清查落到个人头上，是些什么滋味，可以从后来的平反材料里看到。有人因为在广场上抄了三首诗，被单位隔离审查八个月，写了几十份检查；有人把诗抄藏在粮票盒子里，清查时被搜出，以“保存反动诗词”记大过、降工资；有解放军战士因为在悼念诗上签了真名，被勒令退伍回乡。这些处罚大多不上法庭，没有判决书，只有一份份塞进档案袋的处分决定，当事人此后多年的提职、入党、分房都受影响。1978年平反时，这类处分被成批撤销，不少人第一次看到自己档案里关于四五的记录，气得当场落泪。平反文件能撤销处分，撤不掉的是两年多的提心吊胆。Cases within the purge: What the purge felt like at the level of a single life can be read in the later rehabilitation files. One person, having copied three poems in the square, was isolated and investigated by his work unit for eight months and wrote dozens of self-criticisms; another hid copied poems in a ration-coupon box, had them found in a search, and was given a demerit and a pay cut for “preserving reactionary poems”; a PLA soldier who had signed his real name to a mourning poem was ordered demobilized back to his village. Most of these punishments never reached a court and produced no judgment — only disciplinary decisions slipped into personnel files, affecting promotions, Party membership and housing allocation for years afterward. When rehabilitation came in 1978, such sanctions were revoked in batches, and many people, seeing their April Fifth files for the first time, wept on the spot. A rehabilitation document can annul a punishment; it cannot annul two years of living in fear.
留下的东西：四五运动留下的最具体的东西，是那本《天安门诗抄》：普通人写的诗第一次结集出版，成为文革后一代人的政治启蒙读物。更深的影响在示范本身——没有组织、没有领袖的市民，可以在广场上用花圈和诗公开表达政治态度。1978年的平反直接为随后十一届三中全会的思想松绑铺路；十三年后，1989年春天，又一代年轻人走进同一个广场，献上的仍然是花圈。What it left behind: The most tangible legacy is the book Tiananmen Poems — verse written by ordinary people, published as a collection for the first time, and read as a political awakening by a generation after the Cultural Revolution. The deeper legacy is the example itself: citizens with no organization and no leader showed they could state a political position in a public square with wreaths and poems. The 1978 rehabilitation paved the way for the loosening of minds at the Third Plenary Session that followed; thirteen years later, in the spring of 1989, another generation walked into the same square, again carrying wreaths.
纪念：《天安门诗抄》1978年12月由人民文学出版社正式出版后风行全国，接连重印，成为当年最畅销的书之一。此后每逢清明，都有人到纪念碑前献花；这场运动在官方话语中被定格为“四五运动”，写进了中学历史教材——但教材里只剩下结论，当年在广场上守夜护花圈、抄诗、挨棍子的普通人的名字，大多没有留下。Commemoration: When Tiananmen Poems was formally published by People's Literature Publishing House in December 1978, it swept the country through repeated printings and became one of the year's best-selling books. Every Qingming since, people still lay flowers at the monument. In official language the movement is fixed as the “April Fifth Movement” and written into middle-school history textbooks — but the textbooks keep only the conclusion. The names of the ordinary people who guarded wreaths through the night, copied poems, and took the clubs in the square have, for the most part, not survived.
数字与档案：四五运动的伤亡和受迫害数字，至今没有完整的官方档案可查。4月5日当晚被捕人数，公开说法在二百至四百之间；清场中的受伤人数无从统计，但公开记录中未见当晚死亡的报告。清查两年间全国受株连者的总数，官方从未公布，只能从各地平反工作的规模推断为数以万计。本站这一条目的叙述，主要依据1978年出版的《天安门诗抄》、1976年4月8日《人民日报》社论的反面自述、1978年平反报道，以及此后数十年亲历者的回忆文章。互相矛盾的细节，本站取多数来源一致的说法，存疑处注明。Figures and sources: No complete official archive of the April Fifth Movement's casualties and victims has ever been made public. Arrests on the night of April 5 are put by published accounts at between two and four hundred; injuries during the clearing were never tallied, and published records report no deaths that night. The total number of people implicated nationwide during the two-year purge was never announced; judging by the scale of the rehabilitation work, it can only be inferred to run into the tens of thousands. This entry rests mainly on Tiananmen Poems (1978), the inadvertent testimony of the People's Daily editorial of April 8, 1976, the rehabilitation reporting of 1978, and participants' memoirs published over the following decades. Where accounts conflict, this site follows the version on which most sources agree and flags what remains in doubt.
决策链：四五运动的处置命令链条，多年后由当事人的回忆逐渐拼齐。4月4日白天，广场人数达到顶点时，北京市已向中央报告；当晚，中央政治局在人民大会堂开会，会议由华国锋主持，形成两点意见：定性为少数人制造的“反革命事件”，连夜清除花圈和标语。会议情况经毛远新向病重的毛泽东汇报，毛泽东表示同意。4月5日清场后，政治局于4月7日再作两个决议：华国锋任国务院总理，邓小平撤销党内外一切职务、保留党籍——两个决议都经毛泽东批准，并在当晚的广播和次日的报纸上公布。4月8日，《人民日报》发表社论《天安门广场事件说明了什么》，把运动定性为“邓小平刮起的右倾翻案风”的产物。这条从会议、批示到社论的链条，说明镇压不是临时失控，而是逐级批准的决定——这一点，是本站把四五运动同时列为迫害档案的依据。The chain of decisions: The chain of orders behind the handling of April Fifth was pieced together over the years from participants' recollections. During April 4, as the square's crowds peaked, Beijing reported to the center; that night the Politburo met in the Great Hall of the People under Hua Guofeng and reached two conclusions: the events were a “counter-revolutionary incident” manufactured by a minority, and the wreaths and posters were to be cleared overnight. The meeting was reported through Mao Yuanxin to the gravely ill Mao Zedong, who assented. After the April 5 clearing, the Politburo on April 7 adopted two resolutions — Hua Guofeng as Premier, and Deng Xiaoping stripped of all posts inside and outside the Party while retaining membership — both approved by Mao and announced by broadcast that night and in the next day's papers. On April 8, the People's Daily editorial “What Does the Tiananmen Square Incident Show?” fixed the movement's label as a product of “Deng Xiaoping's right-deviationist wind.” This chain — meeting, instruction, editorial — shows the suppression was no loss of control in the moment but a decision approved level by level; that is why this site files April Fifth also as a persecution record.
研究现状：关于四五运动，公开出版物以回忆录和诗抄研究为主，官方档案基本不开放。亲历者的回忆散见于1980年代初的报刊和后来的网络存档，细节互相出入之处不少，本站采信时以多源互证为准。运动中的许多关键文件——4月4日政治局会议的记录、清场的命令链——至今没有公开文本，叙述只能依据当事人的事后回忆重构。这一点本站如实标注：四五运动是本站“抗争记录”中最早的条目，也是档案缺口最大的条目之一；它的不完整，本身就是那个时代信息管制的遗迹。State of research: Published material on the April Fifth Movement consists mainly of memoirs and studies of the poems; official archives remain essentially closed. Participants' recollections are scattered through the press of the early 1980s and later web archives, and they differ on many details; this site relies on cross-corroboration between sources. Key documents — the record of the April 4 Politburo meeting, the chain of orders for the clearing — have never been published, and the narrative can only be reconstructed from participants' later accounts. This site states the limitation plainly: April Fifth is the earliest entry in these Resistance records and one of those with the largest archival gaps; its incompleteness is itself a relic of that era's information control.
花圈的去向与八十年代的回声：4月4日夜里被清走的花圈和诗稿，据当时的传闻和后来的回忆，被卡车运往八宝山一带焚毁——这个说法没有公开文件佐证，本站按传闻记录，但它符合亲历者对那个夜晚的共同记忆：一夜之间，广场干净得像什么都没发生过。物质的东西烧得掉，抄在小本子上的诗烧不掉。1978年平反前后，《天安门诗抄》的手抄本在工厂、学校里再次流传，正式出版后成为伤痕文学之外另一条记忆线。1980年代，每逢清明仍有老人到纪念碑前献花。1989年4月，北大学生进广场悼念胡耀邦时，不少人重读了当年的诗抄——十三年的时间里，两个广场的记忆就这样接上了头：老一辈人说，那年我们也是这样开始的。Where the wreaths went, and the echo of the 1980s: The wreaths and manuscripts cleared away on the night of April 4 were, by contemporary rumor and later recollection, trucked to the Babaoshan area and burned — a claim no published document confirms, recorded here as such, though it matches participants' shared memory of that night: by morning the square was clean, as if nothing had happened. What is material can be burned; poems copied into notebooks cannot. Around the 1978 rehabilitation, hand-copied Tiananmen Poems circulated again in factories and schools, and the published book became a line of memory parallel to scar literature. Through the 1980s, elderly people still laid flowers at the monument each Qingming. In April 1989, when Beijing students entered the square to mourn Hu Yaobang, many reread those poems — across thirteen years, the memories of two squares joined end to end, and the older generation said: that year, we began the same way.
“四五”的名字：这场运动以日期命名，是后来者的叫法——1976年的人只说“天安门的事”。1979年之后，“四五运动”的称谓在报刊上固定下来，与“五四”遥相呼应，有意无意间把它放进了中国现代抗争的谱系：五四、四五、八九，隔着年份，地点都在长安街一带。韩志雄是少数以真名留下系统证词的亲历者，平反后多次接受采访，从广场上的花圈讲到清场时的棍棒，晚年仍在为四五运动的细节接受研究者访谈。2016年，四五运动四十周年，香港和海外有亲历者与研究者举办纪念座谈，把当年的诗抄投影在墙上逐首朗读。一场运动的纪念史至此形成对照：在它发生的城市，它写在教材里，只有结论，没有名字；在它之外的城市，人们对着投影，念出名字。The name “April Fifth”: The movement is named for its date by those who came later — people in 1976 spoke only of “the Tiananmen business.” After 1979, the name “April Fifth Movement” settled in the press, echoing “May Fourth” and, deliberately or not, placing it in the genealogy of modern Chinese protest: May Fourth, April Fifth, 1989 — separated by years, all located around Chang'an Avenue. Han Zhixiong is among the few participants to leave systematic testimony under his real name; after rehabilitation he gave many interviews, from the wreaths in the square to the clubs at the clearing, and into old age still sat for researchers' questions on the movement's details. In 2016, at the fortieth anniversary, participants and scholars in Hong Kong and overseas held commemorative seminars, projecting the poems on a wall and reading them aloud one by one. The movement's commemorative history thus forms a contrast: in the city where it happened, it sits in textbooks with a conclusion and no names; outside that city, people face a projection and read the names out loud.
诗抄的版本：《天安门诗抄》1978年初版收录诗歌、挽联数百首（篇），此后再版多次，选目互有增删：有的版本删去过于激烈的篇目，有的增补了新发现的佚诗。版本之间的差异后来成为研究者的题目——删改的痕迹，恰好记录了不同年代对这场运动的接受程度。诗抄的选译本在海外出版过多种，英译选本让“天安门诗歌”进入世界文学的选集。对本站而言，引用广场诗文时以1978年初版为准，再版增删之处如有涉及，在个案页中另行注明。Editions of the poems: The 1978 first edition of Tiananmen Poems collected several hundred poems and couplets; later printings added and dropped pieces — some editions removed the fiercest works, others added newly recovered ones. The differences between editions have themselves become a subject of study: the traces of editing record exactly how each era received the movement. Selected translations appeared abroad in several languages, and English selections brought the “Tiananmen poems” into world-literature anthologies. This site quotes the square's poems from the 1978 first edition; where later additions or deletions matter, they are noted separately in the individual case pages.
平反之夜：据多位亲历者的回忆，1978年11月平反消息公布后，北京市民再次自发来到天安门广场，有人献上新的花圈，有人在纪念碑前默哀、合影，更多的人只是站着，像要把1976年4月没站完的时间站回来。平反带来的不只是名誉：被开除公职的恢复工作，被判刑的撤销原判、补发工资，被没收的诗稿和笔记本，有的发还，有的在清查中已销毁，只能由单位开具证明作罢。1979年4月，四五运动三周年时，北京的报刊集中刊发回忆文章，广场上又一次出现诗抄——这一次，贴诗的人不必再担心半夜被清走。一场运动的平反完成得到什么程度，看的不是文件，而是人们敢不敢回到同一个地方，做同一件事。The night of rehabilitation: By several participants' recollections, when the rehabilitation was announced in November 1978, Beijing citizens returned spontaneously to Tiananmen Square — some laying fresh wreaths, some standing in silence or taking photographs before the monument, most simply standing, as if to stand back the hours they had not been allowed to finish in April 1976. Rehabilitation brought more than honor: the expelled were reinstated, sentences were annulled with back pay, and confiscated manuscripts and notebooks were returned where they survived — those destroyed in the purge could only be certified as destroyed by one's work unit. In April 1979, at the movement's third anniversary, Beijing's press published batches of memoirs, and poems appeared in the square once more — this time, no one who posted them had to fear a midnight clearance. The measure of how complete a rehabilitation is lies not in its documents but in whether people dare return to the same place and do the same thing.
清场之夜的广播：4月5日傍晚，北京市委第一书记吴德通过广播发表讲话，称广场上发生的是极少数阶级敌人制造的事件，要求革命群众立即离开广场。讲话播出后，工人民兵指挥部发出通告，限定人群在当晚撤离。通告之后，清场开始：民兵从广场四周向中心推进，用木棍驱赶仍留在纪念碑周围的人群，清场持续到深夜。这次广播讲话的文本后来被研究者反复援引，它让4月5日夜的处置程序完整地显形：先定性，先广播，先设期限，再动手——广场上的人先在舆论上被剥夺了群众身份，清场才在程序上成为可能。此后几十年，每逢广场有事，先行的总是广播和通告，队形从这天晚上就排好了。The broadcast on the night of the clearing: On the evening of April 5, Wu De, first secretary of the Beijing Municipal Party Committee, delivered a broadcast speech declaring that what was happening in the square was the work of a tiny handful of class enemies, and demanding that the revolutionary masses leave at once. After the speech, the Capital Workers' Militia Command issued a notice setting a deadline for the crowds to disperse that night. Then the clearing began: militia pushed from the edges of the square toward its center, beating with wooden clubs those still gathered around the monument, and it lasted deep into the night. The text of that broadcast has been cited by researchers ever since, because it lays out the procedure of that night in full: first the label, then the broadcast, then the deadline, then the clubs. Only after the people in the square had been stripped of the name of the masses in words could the clearing proceed as procedure. For decades afterward, whenever something happened in that square, the broadcast and the notice always came first — the formation was set on this night.
书名的题字：1978年12月出版的《天安门诗抄》，书名由时任中共中央主席、国务院总理华国锋题写。在当时的政治语汇里，最高领导人为一本群众诗集题写书名，本身就是平反的宣示。正式出版之前，诗抄的选编已在内部流传数月；出版之后，各地新华书店排起长队，诗集多次重印，印数以百万计，并被译成多种文字，是文革结束后第一批进入世界视野的中国民间文本之一。四十多年后回头看，这本书的命运与它记录的运动同构：写诗的人被清查，诗稿被没收，最后又由同一套权力亲手把书送上柜台——只是柜台前站着的人，已经换了一茬。The inscription on the book: The 1978 collection Tiananmen Poems carried its title inscribed by Hua Guofeng, then Party Chairman and Premier. In the political vocabulary of the time, the nation's top leader inscribing the title of a book of poems by ordinary people was itself a declaration of rehabilitation. A selection had circulated internally for months before publication; once published, queues formed at Xinhua bookstores, the book was reprinted again and again, its printings ran into the millions, and it was translated into several languages — one of the first popular Chinese texts to reach the world after the Cultural Revolution. Decades later, the book's fate mirrors the movement it records: the poets were investigated and their manuscripts confiscated, and in the end the same machinery of power personally delivered the book to the shelves — by which time the people standing at the counter were a different generation.
南京的账：四五运动算总账时，南京常被当作序章一笔带过，但南京人付的账并不轻。1976年4月之后，江苏全省清查南京事件，贴大字报、刷标语的学生和工人被逐个登记审查，有人被隔离审查数月，有人被下放回乡。运动的引线是南京人点的，火烧起来之后，北京的广场成了中心，南京的参与者却在随后两年多里以地方案件的名义被分别处理。1978年平反时，南京事件与天安门事件一并被定性为革命行动，当年被处理的人陆续恢复名誉。一南一北两座城市，在1976年的春天靠一列火车的车厢连在一起，清算时却各算各的账——这是理解这场运动全国性的另一把钥匙。Nanjing's account: When the bills for the April Fifth Movement were settled, Nanjing was often written off as a mere prelude, but the price Nanjing paid was not light. After April 1976, Jiangsu province investigated the Nanjing Incident across the province: students and workers who had posted posters or painted slogans were registered and examined one by one; some were held in isolation for months, others were sent back down to the countryside. Nanjing had lit the fuse, but once the fire caught, Beijing's square became the center, and Nanjing's participants were dealt with over the following two years as separate local cases. When rehabilitation came in 1978, the Nanjing Incident was declared a revolutionary action together with the Tiananmen events, and those who had been punished were restored. Two cities, north and south, joined that spring by the side of a passing train, settled their accounts separately in the reckoning — another key to how nationwide this movement was.