Tiananmen Square

See also: Tian'anmen Square

English

Alternative forms

• Tian'anmen Square, Tian An Men Square (also using Hanyu Pinyin)
• Tienanmen Square (using Wade–Giles)

Etymology

Partial calque of Mandarin 天安門廣場／天安门广场 (Tiān'ānmén Guǎngchǎng, literally “square/plaza of Tiananmen ("the gate of Heaven's peacemaking" or conventionally: "the gate of heavenly peace")”).

Proper noun

Tiananmen Square

1. A large plaza in Dongcheng district, Beijing, China.
   • 1979, Govind Kelkar, China After Mao‎^[1], New Delhi: USHA Publications, page 85:

     On my return from the meeting with Dr Fry, I spent some time walking about Tiananmen Square and took some photographs. Though I had not seen any wall posters there, I did notice six large portraits of Marx, Engels, Lenin, Stalin, Mao and Hua. In the middle of Tiananmen Square there were several small open air photography stalls around which people were queuing up to have themselves photographed at the great revolutionary centre.

   • 2022 June 4, Vic Chiang, “Tiananmen vigils gain prominence in Taiwan as Chinese threat looms”, in The Washington Post‎^[2], →ISSN, →OCLC, archived from the original on 04 June 2022, Asia‎^[3]:

     On the 33rd anniversary of the crushing of pro-democracy demonstrations in Beijing’s Tiananmen Square on June 4, 1989, Taiwan has emerged as one of the last places in the Chinese-speaking world remembering the deaths of thousands at the hands of the Chinese Communist Party, after authorities banned such demonstrations in Hong Kong.

   • 2023 November 2, “China mourns late ex-Premier Li Keqiang”, in Deutsche Welle‎^[4], archived from the original on 02 November 2023, China‎^[5]:

     He is to be cremated later Thursday at a ceremony likely to be attended by the country's top leadership.
     Flags were seen flying at half-mast in Beijing's Tiananmen Square. China's state news agency Xinhua reported that flags would be lowered at government buildings across mainland China, semi-autonomous regions of Hong Kong and Macau, and in consulates abroad.

   • For more quotations using this term, see Citations:Tiananmen Square.
2. A protest event held in the square on June 4, 1989.
   • 1994, Dan Quayle, Standing Firm: A Vice-Presidential Memoir‎^[6], 1st edition, HarperCollins, →ISBN, page 121:

     The situation had its parallels to the one that developed in China that year: one might not be in the mood to talk with that country's leaders after Tiananmen Square, but if you really wanted to move them in the direction of democracy, and get them to restore the very rights they had trampled on, you were better off talking to them than driving them into hard-headed isolation.

   • 2014 December 16, Nick Kirkpatrick, Justin Wm. Moyer, “Hong Kong’s Occupy Central protest is no more”, in The Washington Post‎^[7], →ISSN, →OCLC, archived from the original on 2015-06-27, Morning Mix‎^[8]:

     After 79 days, Occupy Central — the protests for democracy that swarmed Hong Kong — is gone. On Monday, police began clearing what was called the biggest political protest in China since Tiananmen Square in 1989.

   • 2018 February 8, Rich Lowry, “Yes, we should throw a parade”, in Politico‎^[9], archived from the original on 08 February 2018:

     But now the best argument against Trump's parade is that it will become a cultural-war flashpoint and “the resistance” will try its utmost to ruin the affair. Just imagine a protester in a pussy hat in a Tiananmen Square-style standoff with an M1 Abrams tank.

   • For more quotations using this term, see Citations:Tiananmen Square.

Translations

large plaza in Beijing

• Chinese:

  Mandarin: 天安門廣場／天安门广场 (zh) (Tiān'ānmén Guǎngchǎng)

• Danish: Den Himmelske Freds Plads
• Finnish: Tiananmenin aukio
• Lü: ᦷᦃᧂᧈᦶᦒᧃᧈᦁᦱᧃᧈᦵᦙᦲᧃᧉ (ẋong¹thaen¹ʼaan¹moen²)
• Polish: Plac Tian'anmen m, Plac Niebiańskiego Spokoju m
• Spanish: Plaza de Tiananmén
• Swedish: Himmelska fridens torg

protest event held in the square on June 4, 1989

• Chinese:

  Mandarin: 天安門事件／天安门事件 (Tiān'ānmén Shìjiàn), 六四 (zh) (Liù-Sì)

• Finnish: Tiananmenin mielenosoitus

Further reading

• “Tiananmen Square”, in Collins English Dictionary.
• Tiananmen Square, in Encyclopædia Britannica
• Tiananmen Square, Tian'anmen Square, Tian An Men Square, Tienanmen Square at Google Ngram Viewer
• “Tiananmen Square”, in Merriam-Webster Online Dictionary, Springfield, Mass.: Merriam-Webster, 1996–present.
• “Tiananmen Square” in TheFreeDictionary.com, Huntingdon Valley, Pa.: Farlex, Inc., 2003–2024.