Today, after watching the military parade, I found myself deeply moved. Sixty-six years ago, Chairman Mao stood atop the Tiananmen Gate Tower and shouted words that shook the hearts of the people—"Long live the people!" From the moment Chairman Mao cried out those words, the phrase "long live," which had been shouted in China for thousands of years, fell, for the first time in history, upon the heads of all the toiling masses.
Before those words were shouted, "long live" in China had always belonged to emperors, or to those who wished to become emperors. Some of those people were heroes, some were tyrannical overlords; some were capable, while some had merely been born into the right womb. Never once had those words fallen upon the people. Not even "a thousand years," a rank below it—though it had been bestowed upon imperial relatives and even upon eunuchs—had ever fallen upon the people.
"Long live the people"—those four words opened an era and a nation the likes of which human history had never seen.
"Long live the people"—that cry was the oath of a king as the lion of the East awoke from its slumber.
Sixty-six springs and autumns flashed by. Through how many storms and upheavals, how many generations of Chinese had risked life and limb, sacrificed in silence, for that cry? Today, atop the Tiananmen Gate Tower, that cry of "Long live the people" received an affirmative echo—an oath just as great: "The people will triumph."
Yes, the people will triumph! Every one of us alive today will have the honor of becoming a witness to this ringing declaration of the Chinese nation.
We will witness those who stand on the opposite side of those words inevitably becoming dust in the annals of history and memory, fading into obscurity!