Yet today, 25 years later, there is no trace of what happened at apartment block 27 on Fuxingmenwai Boulevard. The holes caused by ricochets, one of which killed the son of a senior government official in a nearby building, have been plastered up. There are no memorial plaques.
Residents in the building have been struck by the same collective amnesia that surrounds all the Communist party taboos, from the Great Famine through to the madness of the Cultural Revolution.
"1989, 1989, no, I can't remember anything that happened here in 1989," said one old lady with a perm. "My recollection is not clear," said a man in his early 50s, with a steely look.
From eye witness accounts of the time, however, it is hard to imagine how anyone living in the area could not have seen anything that day. By the time Jiang Jielian reached Muxidi Bridge, he was part of a human wall of tens of thousands of people, which the soldiers' tear gas and rubber bullets had failed to disperse.
Under a hail of rocks, the soldiers fired warning shots in the air before firing their AK47s directly into the crowd. Trapped by roadblocks they themselves had set up to keep the troops at bay, many of the protesters were trampled in a stampede to escape. It was pointless bloodshed, born though as much through accident as design. "The troops were not trained for the task," wrote Timothy Brook in his book, Quelling the People. "Most were rural boys who had never walked through a city, let alone rehearsed combat in one."
The security forces were also short of rations, trucks, and functioning radios, while what riot equipment they had they were not trained to use properly. Riot squads fired tear gas that blew back into their faces. Units came in at the wrong times and places, stumbled over each other, resulting in military casualties. By the time they reached Muxidi bridge, their frustration and anger had boiled over.
"Some soldiers who were hit by rocks lost their self control and began firing wildly at anyone who shouted 'Fascists!' or threw rocks and bricks," said the Chinese State Security ministry report that was subsequently leaked. "At least a hundred citizens and students fell to the ground in pools of blood."