“The stirring national anthem “March of the Volunteers” serves to remind the Chinese people—and the world— that China is determined to rise and march on in the years and decades to come and let no one doubt its resolve.

Why would I want to attend the daily flag-raising ceremony at the sprawling Tiananmen Square in the center of Beijing at the ungodly hour of 4 in the morning?

That was the question I asked myself on the second day of the “Silk Road Rediscovery Tour of Beijing” organized by the People’s Government of Beijing Municipality and China Radio International for 12 foreign journalists from 26 June to 4 July.

The Tagalog-speaking guide assigned to translate for the two Filipino participants in the 2018 edition of the media tour told me that the wake-up call by the hotel would be at 3 a.m. so we could catch the bus that would take us to Tiananmen.

I hesitated at first to join the early-morning event because that would have meant sleeping for only a few hours after a hectic and tiring second day of visits to several business enterprises and the office of Beijing Radio International. But I eventually agreed to join the Tiananmen event as this was a rare opportunity to set foot on the historic site where Mao Zedong proclaimed the establishment of the People’s Republic of China in 1949.

At exactly 3:50 a.m. of 28 June, our bus left the Novotel Hotel and navigated the short distance to Tiananmen in about 15 minutes. Our guide told us not to take pictures of the event and to leave our cameras behind. He said we should expect strict security measures at the site as authorities did not want a repeat of protest actions by the religious group Falungong in the past years nor a mass gathering of political dissidents in 1989 that was eventually dispersed by the military and produced the iconic photograph of an anonymous man in white shirt stopping a column of advancing tanks.

“The official flag-raising ceremony lasted I think no more than 15 minutes from start to finish.

At one of the entrances to Tiananmen we were met by representatives from the Beijing local government who had arranged our visit. From where stood waiting upon our arrival, we could make out in the dim early morning light large groups of people trooping to the center of the square. I saw many primary school pupils being led by their teachers who carried small flags for identification of their respective groups. Young and old mingled together as they walked briskly towards the tallest flagpole in the area.

We were escorted to a pedestrian underpass where young Chinese men with ramrod-straight postures, short cropped hair and civilian clothes, apparently members of the People’s Liberation Army (PLA), led us to a site where we could get nearest to the flag-raising ceremony.

We waited for about 15 minutes inside the pedestrian underpass before we were ushered into a section of the square roped in by metal barriers. Around 200 of us spectators, including school-age kids accompanied by their teachers, were already there.

After a few minutes, a hush fell over the assembled crowd as a platoon of goose-stepping PLA soldiers garbed in different uniforms representing the various branches of the military emerged from within the building emblazoned with the giant Mao portrait and marched in cadence towards the highest flagpole, surrounded by four smaller ones, one in the center of Tiananmen.

Seconds later, the soldiers unfurled a huge Chinese flag, attached it to flagpole and the ceremony began with the loudspeakers blaring out the opening bars of the national anthem “March of the Volunteers.”

The Chinese national anthem is said to have been composed by the noted poet and playwright Tian Han with music composed by Nie Er. The piece was first performed as part of a 1934 Shanghai play and its original lyrics are the official lyrics of the national anthem.

In 2004, a provision was added as Article 136 in the Constitution of the People’s Republic of China that the “March of the Volunteers” would be the national anthem.

“Arise! All who refuse to be slaves!/Let our flesh and blood become our new Great Wall!/As the Chinese nation faces its greatest peril.”

“All forcefully expend their last cries./Arise! Arise! Arise!/ Our million hearts beat as one,/Brave the enemy’s fire, March on!/Brave the enemy’s fire, March on! March on! March on!”

The official flag-raising ceremony lasted I think no more than 15 minutes from start to finish. But it appears that in those precious minutes the Chinese citizens who were there felt a surge of patriotism and love of country and reinforced their sense of nationhood, especially since China has emerged from war and poverty to become an economic and military behemoth in the post-Mao era. The stirring national anthem “March of the Volunteers” serves to remind the Chinese people—and the world—that China is determined to rise and march on in the years and decades to come and let no one doubt its resolve.

To take a close look at the Chinese soul and history and where China is headed, go no farther and witness first-hand the daily pre-dawn flag-raising at Tiananmen Square as it embodies its past, its present and its future in one brief but awe-inspiring ritual.