Synopsis
One of the student leaders of the demonstrations in Tiananmen Square describes growing up in China, his rise to leadership in the student movement, the Tiananmen massacre, and his escape to the U.S.
Reviews
YA-- An autobiography of a youth's journey to adulthood amid the tumultuous events in his country culminating in the Democracy movement in 1989. Its protagonist, Shen Tong, went to Beijing University where he became a leader of the "Dialogue Delegation" movement and found himself in the heart of the revolutionary maelstrom. The second half of the book is a day-by-day recounting of the events in which Shen and his fellow student revolutionaries participated from mid-April through late May of 1989, ending in the ultimately bloody events in Tiananmen Square--after which Tong slipped out of China and made his way to the United States. YAs will easily identify with this young man who finds his society out of joint and tries to change it. His reactions to what happened provide valuable insights to students of modern Chinese, Asian, or world history; current affairs; political science; and sociology.
- Richard Lisker, Fairfax County Public Library, VA
Copyright 1991 Reed Business Information, Inc.
Shen Tong was a student leader in China's pro-democracy movement whose dreams were crushed in the Tiananmen Square massacre. Told with modesty and wisdom, written with former Washington Post reporter Yen, his remarkable autobiography is also a spiritual history of China's struggle for human rights. The first half of the book is straightforward, limpid narrative. His parents, reluctant members of the People's Liberation Army, are labeled "counterrevolutionary collaborators" for copying political poems. He discovers Beethoven, Gandhi, Einstein and sexual love. The book's second half is a heartbreaking and electrifying journal of the 1989 Tiananmen Square massacre and the two months of protests leading up to it. Now living near Boston, Shen Tong saw firsthand what others have since confirmed: most of the thousands gunned down on the approaches to the square were not students but workers. No one who cares about modern China should miss this document. Photos. Author tour.
Copyright 1990 Reed Business Information, Inc.
In the spring of 1989 Shen was an undergraduate at Peking University, a dutiful son, proud native of Beijing, romantic poet--and leader of the student movement that was "almost a revolution." Like Liang Heng and Judith Shapiro's Son of the Revolution ( LJ 2/15/83), his account combines shrewd family portraiture with insightful eyewitness history. The memoir does not provide a balanced overview analyzing the dilemmas of stymied reform and stultifying political structure, but it does give a vivid insider's view of the chaos, optimism, egotism, and promise of the student movement in the months before the Tiananmen massacre. The account implies that better student strategy would have averted the tragedy, which neither responsible young leaders like Shen nor government reformers wanted. This deserves a wide readership.
- Charles W. Hayford, Northwestern Univ., Evanston, Ill.
Copyright 1990 Reed Business Information, Inc.
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