The Tiananmen Square memorial boulder, dedicated to the victims of the Tiananmen Square massacre, was unveiled on the Alten Road frontage of St Andrews Presbyterian Church on 17 September 1989. The event was organized by two Chinese poets in exile, Yang Lian and Chu Geng, who had been in New Zealand at the time of the massacre, The stone represents the geographical shape of China. The plaque has texts in both Mandarin and English. The English version reads:
This stone stands as a witness for those who can no longer speak. In memory of the victims of the Peking Massacre of 4 June 1989 and all those who have given their lives for the ideal of freedom in China.
A smaller plaque below records that the commemorative plaque itself was vandalised in October 2007 but restored on 4 June 2008.
See: Hilary Chung, ‘Ghosts in the City: The Auckland Exile of Yang Lian and Gu Cheng’, Ka Mate Ora, no. 11, March 2012, pp. 5-26; ‘A memorial to Tiananmen Square’ in The Free Library.
Bruce Ringer, Auckland Libraries, 2014