What does it mean?

Everywhere one goes in China, one sees lots of banners in public places. Tian'anmen Square, in the very center of Beijing, is no exception to this rule, particularly around the National Day Holiday, or 国庆节 (rising tone “guo”, falling tone “qing”, and a rising tone “jie”). The National Day Holiday and the Spring Festival are China's two one-week long holidays. National Day falls on the first week of October and celebrates Mao's October 1, 1949 proclamation of the founding of the People's Republic of China, which he made from the south entrance of the Forbidden City to a huge crowd in Tian'anmen Square.

I took the above photo a couple of weeks before this year's National Day holiday. The obelisk like tower in back of the banner is the Monument to People's Heroes, while the flat roofed building just poking above it is the Mao Memorial House. The banner’s Chinese phrase, “改革开放共谱和谐篇章,” is said as “gai (falling and rising tone) ge (rising tone) kai (flat tone) fang (falling tone) gong (falling tone) pu (third tone) he(rising tone) xie (falling rising tone) pian (flat tone) zhang (flat tone).”

The slogan on this banner is best translated into English as “Together we play a harmonious tune.” The characters 开放 is the verb to play, as in play music or open up a concert—Mandarin uses an entirely different verb, 打 (falling and rising tone “da”), when it comes to playing most sports—while the last two characters, 篇章, are used to denote both a tune and chapter in a book. Finally, the 和谐 character combination means “harmony” and “harmonious”. This banner's content is very much in line with the current emphasis the government here places on building a harmonious society, or 和谐社会. The last two characters in this quartet, a falling tone “she” and “hui”, is the Chinese word for “society”.

As long as I'm doing a Mandarin mini-lesson, I could note that the characters in Tian'anmen, 天 (tian [flat tone]), 安 (an [flat tone]), and 门 (men [rising tone]), stand for “heavan”, “peace”, and “gate” respectively, or “Gate of Heavenly Peace.” This name was also the title of what I believe was the first book I read on Chinese history, which was written by the eminent Yale historian, Jonathan Spence; it was subtitled, “The Chinese and Their Revolution.” This was one of Spence’s early books, and he went on to write many others, the most notable of which was TREASON BY THE BOOK. One could a lot worse for reading material about Chinese history!