Why We Still Remember

Twenty-odd years is long enough for a generation to grow up, and long enough for an event to turn from news into an encyclopedia entry. Yet 81192 has not faded — which is itself worth asking about: why do people still remember?

One answer: what is commemorated is never the event itself, but the weight of the choice a person made within it. Wang Wei was simply carrying out a routine mission; when the risk arrived, he did not step aside. What people remember is that refusal to step aside.

Another answer: commemoration is a way of handing something down. It passes the fact that "someone paid for this" to those who were not there. As long as someone is willing to speak it, the matter will not exist only in archives.

So this site does something simple: it updates a counter each day and rotates a line of remembrance each day, so that remembering becomes something that needs no deliberate upkeep and never stops.