By Jim Mendenhall
Photographer: Jim Mendenhall
Figure 1: Chinese Judges during a murder trial, stop the court to thank the photographer for covering the trial. Photographer Jim Mendenhall shot for the 1989 for the Day in the Life of China book. His assignment was to cover a major industrial city, Tsing Tao. One of his few assignments was to shoot the Tsing Tao brewery, but the workers were on holiday the day the book was shot. What turned out to be his primary assignment was a murder trial.
Figure 2 Figure 3
Figure 2: Changing China, at the same time the democracy protests at Tiananmen Square were going on in Beijing.
Figure 3: Photographer Jim Mendenhall outside the railing to make a group photo of the judges. When he decided to leave the courtroom for his next assignment, the court was adjourned so the judges could say goodbye. On the spur of the moment, he felt the least he could do to return the respect, was to make their portrait. But with his 85mm lens he needed to get further away from the doorway where the judges were posed for the good light.
On April 15, 1989, Jim Mendenhall was among 90 photojournalists in China for an epic book project: 'A Day in the Life of China.' Little did they know, a monumental event would take place that day -- one that ignited the democracy protests at Tiananmen Square, brutally repressed seven weeks later. Jim combed his work and memories to recall China on that day -- a China on the hidden cusp of great upheaval. You never know when history is going to happen.
Quiet ... a little too quiet: Qingdao, east bay, at sunrise on April 15, 1989. On April 15, 1989, Hu Yaobang died of a heart attack at the age of 73. An important Chinese Communist leader, Hu pushed for reforms, especially in political freedom. He was ousted as general secretary in 1987, but remained a hero to many in the burgeoning democracy movement.
A few days before he died, we dined in a banquet hall at the Great Hall of the People in Beijing. Glistening silk threaded tapestries swept across the walls from ceiling to floor. A football field could probably fit in the place.
We were 90 photojournalists from five continents, official guests of the Chinese government, preparing to spread across the country to create a photographic book, "A Day in the Life of China," to be released on the 40th anniversary of the People's Republic of China later that year. Our goal was to make "extraordinary images of ordinary life" on that April 15. Hu's death rallied the movement for personal liberty and free speech in China. Mourners went on to gather in Tiananmen Square, which became the focal point for the democracy demonstrations.
As I went about my work that day, there was not a hint of dissent in the areas I visited. The next morning, most of us returned to Beijing for our flights out. Only a handful of photographers who stayed in country were there to observe the growing protests.
The "big story" was under our nose, but virtually invisible at the time. But we did capture a portrait of the Chinese nation at a time when its history turned.
Many became one
Clumps of vacationing pedestrians were sparsely scattered across the expansive stone plane of the national monument grounds, Tiananmen Square. Generally, each family unit included two thirty-something adults, one small child in arm or a little older and a grandmother.
Of course, The Forbidden City of former kings and The Great Hall of the People, the center of government, anchor adjacent corners. The ancient grounds of the palace and temples were cut off from the central square by a torrent of spinning spokes and pumping knees forging as a single organism at the end of the workday.
The delicate clicking of Flying Pigeon bicycle chains droned on near the curb-less avenue. None talked while riding, it seemed, or glanced at the Heavenly Gate adorned with the oversized portrait of ever watching Chairman Mao or us 90 photographers having a group portrait made below his.
Time forgotten
Two furloughed uniformed military men with childlike faces wandered in the Forbidden City and wondered at the intricate handcrafted multi-chromed woodwork and tiles from the architecture of faded dynasties. They walked aimlessly with one's hand gently secured inside the others as they floated across a courtyard paved with precisely fitted stones carved in relief to resemble ripples in pond.
The government representative assigned to "help" me was relentlessly glued to me, shoulder to shoulder and arm to arm. It was common behavior for friends.
He was affable
On introduction, he shared an ornately embossed tapestry patterned putty colored card, identifying him as "Secretary" with the "External Culture and Academic Exchanges Association of Qingdao." However, to Chinese he issued a similar pale amber card. It called him "Inspector" with the "Propaganda Department, Qingdao Municipal Committee of the CPC."
Like a cowboy movie
In views of the countryside during a 14-hour train ride south between Beijing and my assignment in Qingdao, only one tree could be found. A solitary soul was pulling a cart with solid wooden wheels like a mule. The former tree was his freight. It was a long wide log that might have burdened a mule. Across the open plains from horizon to horizon there was no tree to picture.
That was a slowly unfolding truth, unlike the steam engine pulling a train t
hat powered past us on the other of two tracks running parallel. I knew that one out of three Chinese trains still working, were steam engines. Nonetheless, it seemed as if the train were passing through an American Western film.
hat powered past us on the other of two tracks running parallel. I knew that one out of three Chinese trains still working, were steam engines. Nonetheless, it seemed as if the train were passing through an American Western film.Especially when we came upon the next notable scene that I recall from old cowboy movies. A work crew of a few hundred men, all bent over the rails and rocking back and forth, up and down, pounding with picks and sledges. No horsepower of any kind was visible. Everything there was powered by human endurance. During the entire train ride between cities, we could spy no machinery of any kind. No old tractors, no plows or other implements from industry.
Qingdao: not just for Tsingtao beer
Our train pulled into outskirts, the back door to my host city, Qingdao. (It's home of the famous Tsingtao Brewery, a legacy of the late 1800s German colonial period.) It was an area that my helper would not take me to later.
I was unprepared to take a picture that is emblazoned in my mind's eye. A gentle slope fell away from a low brick tire factory toward the tracks, perhaps 50 feet lower than the factory floor. Slick, smooth and shiny black liquid glossed the lifeless slope. As I began to realize what I was seeing, we rolled past a brilliant orange flow reminiscent of molten lava flowing in a channel through the black ooze and trickling away into smaller branches as it slowed.
Today, it is unrecognizably filled with high-rises (see the photo below right) where mostly three-story brick structures with tiles roofs stood on our visit.
Inside the 'Enterprise Zone'
Overt experiments with "Enterprise Zones" popped up a few cities risking a sip of the capitalism cocktail.
In Qingdao a high-ranking policeman who stationed there offered me a strand of pearls in a pasteboard box as a greeting. He walked throu
gh the center of the tented street with his hands clasped behind his back. Common household items and clothing were for sale by vendors on either side for a block or two.
gh the center of the tented street with his hands clasped behind his back. Common household items and clothing were for sale by vendors on either side for a block or two.The most notable was the young man with a cloth tape measure around the bust of a bride to be wearing her potential gown. The traditional dress is fire engine red.
A murder trial with access
My best assignment proved to be a murder trial. (The brewers were on holiday.)
The introduction of "A Day in the Life of China" says the assignment editors learned never to accept "yes" as an answer from the Chinese, because they would say "yes" but it did not mean it would happen.
This time it did.
Unbelievably, I was permitted to do anything to make pictures in the courtroom, unlike ours in the United States. Mounting clamps for a couple of radio-controlled battery-powered strobe lights on the window frames to flash soft light off the ceiling for each exposure of the new Kodachrome 200 film was OK. Whirling motor drives on my cameras solely for my convenience was OK. Walking behind the judges was OK. Standing between the judges and the defendant's box was OK. Everything was OK.
The day before the assignment, we scouted the courtroom that was newly whitewashed and a fresh, cotton sheeting hung flat completely covering the wall behind the bench. The national crest in red and gold was secured to the center. The freshly painted resplendent red bench for the four judges was finely constructed with raised panels and it stretched across the room, unlike the tiny waist-high square pen for the defendant.
During the trial, for a couple of seconds an officer held high the tennis shoes that were the focus of the dispute before the killing. From the back of the courtroom, where I was wandering because I could without a specific target in mind, the vantage provided an opportunity to shoot one frame before the shoes were lowered.
My government helper, orbiting like a moon around a planet, urgently asked: Did I want the officer to hold the shoes over the defendant's head again so I could get the picture? No…thanks. In one flashing moment on the other side of the world, I either got it or not.
When I told my pal that it was time to go to the next assignment, the judges interrupted the proceedings so they could walk to the door of the two-story stucco courthouse with a walled dirt courtyard that had the guard’s laundry hanging on the clotheslines, so they could tell me goodbye.
Anywhere else, under nearly any other circumstances, and it would have been hello and goodbye in the same sentence.
