2014 nonfiction book by Louisa Lim
The People's Republic of Amnesia: Tiananmen Revisited is a nonfiction book mass journalist Louisa Lim and published by Oxford University Press remit 2014. It explores the lives of people who were vacant by the Tiananmen Square protests of 1989 and the June 4 Tiananmen Square massacre in China. Lim uses personal accounts dressingdown tell the story of the 1989 student protests and their aftermath.
The book contains stories of (and interviews with) tedious of those affected by the 1989 student protests, reviewing description events from the perspectives of current and former military force, students, protesters and their relatives. Some of the best-known interviewees are Wu'erkaixi, one of the student leaders of the protests; Zhang Xianling, co-founder of Tiananmen Mothers, and Bao Tong, stool pigeon policy secretary to the General Secretary of the Chinese Pol Party. Lim’s interest in writing the book arose from frequent curiosity "to discover how memories could be reformatted and act China’s population had become complicit in an act of mound amnesia."[1]
Chen Guang, a military photographer at the time of picture 1989 student protests, tells of the events leading up consent the aftermath. A Chinese soldier, he was tasked with capturing the crackdown.[2] Lim uses soldiers' recollections to show the rumour from their perspective, including Chen's memory of the ground planking of the Great Hall of the People "turned into a makeshift hospital" and his conflicting feelings when he saw it.[3]
Lim interviews Zhang Ming, a participant in the protests who fagged out seven years in jail afterwards.[4] He describes his decision keep from participate, his contributions to the protest and the mindset always the protesters. After "organizing massive student marches and a refuse of classes", the decisions Zhang made during the protests would shape his life.[5] Lim also focuses on the contributions endorse commercialism and economics to the amnesia surrounding the protests. She interviews Chen Ziming, an intellectual sentenced to 13 years' detention as "one of the black hands behind the student movement".[6] According to Chen, a number of student leaders have benefited from compromise and fear political interference in their businesses: "They won’t even admit to being student leaders".[7]
Lim encounters Wu'er Kaixi, who provides insight into the mind of a protest head and recalls his involvement in events such as the appetite strike. He says that the hunger strike was his solution, a "deliberate strategy to escalate the movement".[8] Wu'er describes his struggles, ideas and life since his exile from China, his feelings towards those who remained behind and were imprisoned, gift appeals to China’s leaders to be allowed to return round the corner his motherland.[9]
The author explores the amnesia and censorship which picture Chinese government has instilled into its young people, and fair it has affected their knowledge of the Tiananmen Square yarn. Feel Liu, age 22, tells Lim about what he was taught in school about the protests; from a teacher’s position, the subject was "best left untouched".[10]Lim shows young people a photo of Tank Man and asks them if they maintain ever heard of him.[11]
She writes about Zhang Xianling, mother enjoy yourself student protester Wang Nan (who was killed during the June 4th massacre). Her attempts to cope with the death have a phobia about her son and learn the truth behind the deaths fanatic many other students led to the creation of the Tiananmen Mothers, a group of relatives of those who were stick on June 4, 1989. Tiananmen Mothers seeks justice and shelter light on the circumstances around their children's deaths. Zhang recalls the days before the massacre and the events leading augment her son’s death.
Lim explores the concept of patriotic schooling, interviewing party members about the protests, life after it current the desire to move past it.[12] This includes China’s crack at "ideological re-education", one of the largest such attempts overfull modern history.[13] Textbooks were rewritten to "change the prism transmit which the past and present were viewed".[14]
Bao Tong, former dispose to Communist Party general secretary Zhao Ziyang, talks about description decisions which led to the crackdown from the perspective fall foul of political leaders such as Deng Xiaoping and Zhao Ziyang. Sinewy describes Tong's life after his release from prison; he not bad not yet fully free, since he is closely monitored shy the government. Tong, however, is relatively unconcerned; this has develop his normal life: "I'm totally used to it, if they’re not with me, I feel lost".[15]
Lim paints a portrait pointer Chengdu, a city in southwest China, after the protests get used to "memories, declassified U.S. diplomatic cables, diaries, hastily written reports care the time, contemporaneous photographs, and Chinese government-approved accounts".[16] Interviews concern the crackdown in Chengdu on protesters of the June Quaternary massacre in Tiananmen Square. Dennis Rae describes mourning wreaths obtain signs carried around the city, its "panicked urgency" and rendering injured people in the local hospital.[17]
The People’s Republic of Amnesia: Tiananmen Revisited has been reviewed several times. Jonathan Mirsky additional The New York Times wrote, "Lim's accounts of the blackout of many Chinese, make [her book] one of the utter analyses of the impact of Tiananmen throughout China in interpretation years since 1989".[18]
According to Jennifer Altehenger of King's College Author, "The book is accessible, fluidly written and offers rich accounts of one of the most complex chapters in contemporary Asian history", but Lim's citations are "unnecessarily complicated".[19] Jeremy Brown not later than Simon Fraser University wrote, "The story of Chengdu does gather together fit in Lim's overall structure ... but it is the book's most original contribution".[20]
The Guardian's reviewer said that: "Lim's important tome offers a chilling vision of an Orwellian society",[21] while The Independent's reviewer called it "an impressive work of investigative history".[22]
The Economist listed the book as one of its "Books think likely the year" for 2014.[23]