When The Mayo News brought Tiananmen Square to a halt

INNOCENT FUN Chinese students with The Mayo News in front of the portrait of Chairman Mao. The picture almost got Achill native John Gielty into trouble with local soldiers.

Achill man John Gielty recalls how a decade ago taking a photo of The Mayo News in front of Chairman Mao almost got him into trouble

Anton McNulty

A VISIT to China which was supposed to be a trip of a lifetime for Achill native John Gielty nearly ended in real drama for the adventure seeker.
In February 2009, John and his wife Doreen travelled from their home in Edinburgh to Beijing to visit their daughter Kerry, who worked as a chemical engineer with an oil company. They planned to spend a month in China and take in some of the sights of one of the world’s most ancient civilisations.
Kerry’s work at the time brought her all over Asia and it gave John and Doreen an opportunity to visit places like Vietnam and India. A keen photographer, John would often bring a few copies of The Mayo News with him on his travels and take a picture of someone reading it in front of an iconic landmark.
One of the sites John wished to visit was the world famous Tiananmen Square in the capital Beijing which was the scene of the infamous Tiananmen Square Massacre in 1989, when hundreds of demonstrators were gunned down by the military following pro-democracy protests.
While Kerry and Doreen decided to visit some of the city’s markets, John made his way along to Tiananmen Square with his copy of The Mayo News and his camera.
“Like I always do, I walk about taking all sorts of images to tell a story of my travels to all the family and friends in Scotland and Achill. As I walked about I remember two guys seemed to be not far from me as I just clicked away, but I took no notice,” the Dooagh man recalled to The Mayo News.
When John stopped to eat some lunch close to the giant portrait of Chairman Mao, he was approached by local students who asked if they could speak to him to practice their English. John was happy to oblige and then he got a great idea, or so he thought, to ask the students to pose with The Mayo News in front of Chairman Mao.
“I took the photo and thought it was a great shot with Chinese students reading The Mayo News. After I took the shot, I instinctively took one of the cards from my camera and slipped it into my pocket, it was a dual card camera. As I went to sit down, I was confronted by a group of soldiers who shouted at me in Chinese.
“They began shouting louder and I didn’t have a clue what they were saying. It was very uncomfortable and suddenly it felt like everyone in Tiananmen Square had come over to see what was going on.
“I went to sit down and they immediately made me stand and at this stage I was starting to worry. These two guys, who I noticed earlier, must have been agents and one started to look through my camera and another took The Mayo News and went through it and started to gesture at the articles.
“He had no English and it was difficult to try to explain that it was my local paper. Luckily they got a guy who spoke a little English and I tried to explain about The Mayo News. They went through every page and I had to say who Enda Kenny was and try to explain the GAA, politics, pictures, the flashes from Achill and they even went through the death notices. They wanted to know about everything.
“Then they started to laugh and everyone laughed as well. I had no idea what they were laughing at so I started to laugh. It was the fakest laugh but I thought it was the best thing to do at the time!
“When the interpreter spoke to the soldiers they smiled and relaxed a little, which was a relief. They handed me my paper and camera back, gestured me to be on my way. I walked through the crowds turning back every now and then making sure I wasn’t followed. Then I jumped on a bus, any bus to get as far away from that square as possible,” he said.
When John met up with his wife and daughter and explained the story, he said his daughter Kerry explained he was lucky he was not taken away for questioning but later laughed that The Mayo News had brought Tiananmen Square to a halt.
“Looking back now it is easy to laugh and think it was a great yarn but at the time it was anything but. I was trying to keep calm but I was like a duck, calm above the water but below it kicking like hell. I didn’t know if I would be thrown in jail and forgotten about.
“When the soldiers saw the students talking at a westerner reading a foreign newspaper they must have thought The Mayo News was a propaganda paper against the regime. All I wanted was to get a cracking shot!”