This month marks the 35th anniversary of the June Fourth Incident, which is known outside China as the 1989 Tiananmen Square massacre. “Tiananmen Square,” a new autobiographical novel by Lai Wen, the pseudonym of a Beijing-born immigrant living in Britain, wraps an emotionally satisfying coming-of-age tale around a riveting account of the months-long student protests and the horrific, fateful night that Chinese troops cracked down with bullets and tanks. Somewhere between 50,000 and 100,000 students gathered in Tiananmen Square between April and June 1989, demanding democratic and economic reforms in protests that were supported by many Beijingers.
Eventually, paramount leader Deng Xiaoping and his government decided to clear the square with murderous force. Hundreds of students were gunned down by the Chinese military, some run over by tanks. The iconic image the rest of the world remembers today, despite the Chinese government’s attempts to erase and suppress mentions of June Fourth on social media and across its internet, is that of “Tank Man,” the single protester blocking the progression of a column of tanks.
Spiegel & Grau “Tiananmen Square” By Lai Wen Spiegel & Grau. 528 pages. $22 The book begins long before that, with Lai as a child in the late 1970s.
Ominous manifestations of death and danger color her childhood. In one early scene, she follows her friend Gen to a building she believes is the Beijing Children’s Hospital. “That’s what everyone thi.
