In 1989 after the first year of being in the Hotel, Tiananmen Square happened. It had been building up for a while, but the night of the shooting came as a shock to all of us – it was never meant to have happened this way! Sunday morning and Marg was being summoned to pack one bag and get ready to leave for the airport. We were having lunch in the Atrium at the time and expecting to enjoy a relaxing Sunday! As it was, Marg did not fly out until the Monday along with most of the other expatriate staff. We had 72 expatriates in the Hotel, including the spouses and finally just the five of us stayed, with the other four being the General Manager, Financial Director, Chief Engineer, Sales Director along with myself, a lowly Executive Sous Chef hanging in there! Marg left for Japan and then later down to New Zealand and the others went either to Japan or Hong Kong. We waited with our belongings packed in the room to see if the fighting would escalate, but finally the two armies did not clash and after about three weeks, some people slowly trickled back in. If the fighting had started, I dear say we would have lost everything. I went on holiday about a month later when I met Marg in New Zealand and then we both came back for another year, – a slightly quieter year this time, as you can imagine!

There were a couple of things about this period of time. The photos that are shown here were taken on my only bicycle trip in China, when one of my cooks took me into the square about a week before the shooting. I was about the only foreigner there at the time and the students took me for a Press person, so were happy to have their photos taken. When I left on holiday, I took the film with me and developed it outside and left it with a friend. Over the years it went missing and luckily enough when I unpacked my belongings last year – there was a set of prints in prime condition! I always remember that we had two Philippine girls working in the catering office – one kept saying she was scared in the lead up to the shootings and the other was all bravado. On the day though, the scared girl walked the back streets to beside the square and picked up our Chief Engineer, who had spent that particular night in the Beijing Hotel, overlooking the square. She then bought this big, ocker Aussie back to the Hotel – a very brave thing to do! Fred was a great guy and very typically Australian, but even he appreciated the helping hand from this slightly built girl. The other bravo one went to the airport with all her belongings instead of just one case, asked all and sundry to help carry them and to help get everything onto the plane. A very selfish attitude and fitting for a person that I also did not get on with over the time there!

The Holiday Inn down the road had some machine gun firing around it, our Hotel had nothing happen and the new Trade World Hotel had glass panes shot out, being a lovely target for young soldiers to fire at and shatter! That is why there are some different coloured panes of glass on the building today! The Hotel Chinese workers Union sending food and giving soft drinks to the Students prior to the shooting, but then afterwards, it was realized that this was a “mistake” and so all the hotel staff (Chinese persons) had to attend re-education classes. Needless to say, it was the kitchen team that got into trouble for not taking these classes seriously. I have two books, one from Hong Kong with good writing inside and the Chinese version, with less writing but more graphic pictures.