Olivia Zhang learned about the Tiananmen Square massacre, one of the most important moments in the history of her hometown, Beijing, three years ago.
She was in a theater arts class during her freshman year at the University when her professor showed some clips of the protests.
“I was so speechless. I didn’t know what to say. I was shocked. The tanks and the person, that famous picture,” she recalled, shaking her head. “After the class, I went to YouTube and Wikipedia to try to understand everything about it because we don’t mention it at all in China.”
This was Zhang’s first experience with uncensored Internet content and was an introduction to a very difficult first year away from home.
Zhang, 21, left her life in Beijing and came to the University to study electronic media and business in 2007. She has spent the past three years challenging herself to excel in everything she does — and she does a lot.
In addition to studying constantly for five classes, she founded a magazine for Chinese students, helped produce the University play “Lotus Lessons,” worked for Ethos Magazine, began learning Russian and started playing the accordion. Dressed in all black with black-rimmed glasses and diamond studs in her ears, even Zhang’s appearance is perfect, but it hasn’t always been this way. Her freshman year was isolating and miserable.
“I was really struggling then. I have learned a lot of truths here, which I couldn’t know in China. Very political. I was really shocked because I was a believer. So I really got some ideology and personal belief conflicts,” she said.
She completely uprooted her life in 2007. There weren’t many other Chinese students at the University, and she struggled with her English. She was learning things about her native country that she’d never heard before and had no one to talk to about it.
Her theater arts class was an important turning point in her life, providing her with difficult but illuminating experiences that helped her to grow.
“I remember for the final we had a personal performance … I performed my five-minute performance in half-Chinese and half-English. I had a lot I wanted to say, but I couldn’t at the time because of the limit of language. I almost cried during the performance. I think some of my classmates were very moved,” she said.
Since then, Zhang has overcome many of her first-year frustrations and found inspiration in a quote most Oregon students overlook every day: “And the truth shall make you free.”
“I always go to the Knight Library, and the label above the door … that finally grabbed me,” she said. “I released myself because, whatever you believe, there is truth there. So now I only believe in truth. I love my country and I also love the truth.”
When Beijing hosted the Olympic Games during the summer of 2008, Zhang was still in Eugene. Some of her Chinese friends got together at her house to watch the opening ceremony, and when the national anthem came on, they all stood and admired the Chinese flag she had hung behind the TV.
“It was a very happy feeling. It was beautiful,” she remembered.
She returned to Beijing halfway through the Olympics and visited the Bird’s Nest stadium with her family. She recalled the Internet censorship being slightly more lenient during the games, but said it became even more strict after the games than ever before.
“It was kind of frustrating. I went back to China last December, and I received an e-mail from my Facebook from my friend … So I received the message, but I can’t reply,” she explained.
Last summer, Zhang took a class about the Russian mafia and learned more about Internet censorship. She discovered that the government watches e-mail and records Skype conversations, so she stopped talking to her parents about the political issues she was learning about, like Tiananmen Square.
After she looked up Tiananmen Square online, she bought the famous book “Prisoner of the State” by Zhao Ziyang, the general secretary at the time of the protests who attempted to stop the massacre. The book is banned in China, so she bought it on Amazon in Chinese from Hong Kong, the special autonomous region where Google is currently redirecting Chinese Internet users to avoid extreme censorship.
“I read (the book) … Now I really have a peaceful attitude towards all the political conflict,” she said. “Once you’re not totally blocked, you see all the information, you know the truth, and then, when you see the different views, it makes you go, ‘Oh my God.’”
Yet despite these discoveries, she said the freedom of the U.S. is too lenient in some cases and points to things like the Pacifica Forum as examples of problems with absolute freedom of speech. That said, she agrees that China’s restrictions, especially on the Internet, are too strict.
“U.S. and China, two examples of two extremes. I would like to see some changes in China first. We are doing it, but it’s a long way away. I know I am very small, but I would love to be one of the powers to push China to be more democratic,” she said with a smile.
Zhang has appreciated her time in the U.S. She enjoys the beauty of Eugene that could only be found in the parks of Beijing, and she is grateful to have had this time to learn and think by herself. She has one year left at the University and plans to “learn and study everything” in her remaining time, but she knows she will return to China someday.
“It’s such a big culture, and young people are forgetting. I’m being weird and being unique because I’m the one who doesn’t want people to forget. I’m trying to dedicate my life so people can remember,” she said.
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