Category: Essays

Tank Man on display in Beijing’s Military History Museum – David Moser

I was in Beijing, and it was 1989. This fact did not seem at all remarkable to me at the time, of course. It was January, I was on the campus of Peking University, and there were no telltale signs that the coming spring would be such a momentous one, though in retrospect numerology provided an omen with the confluence of all those auspicious nines – 1919 for the May Fourth movement, 1949 for Liberation, even 1789 for the French Revolution.

There was, to be sure, something in the air – a feeling of seismic shift. Deng Xiaoping’s decade had unleashed a torrent of creative chaos, and students felt a growing sense of impatience and empowerment. I had heard accounts of a professor called Fang Lizhi who was openly talking about democratic reform to auditoriums full of college kids, and there had already been a brief wave of student demonstrations in Shanghai and Beijing, the rumblings of which could still be felt on the Peking University campus, known as Beida.

Cruising the Shenzhen strip for a nosh  – Brendan O’Kane

Needless to say, there was a problem.

The signature strip on the back of my card had worn off from a year’s worth of pocket-borne abuse (I guess I’ll have to start keeping my sandpaper in the OTHER pocket). And without my signature, nothing – not the signatures on my passport or voter registration card or school ID or expired learner’s permit; not pleading; not whining “Come on, be a pal!” in Mandarin; nothing – would convince the bank teller to let me withdraw cash.

Dylan Levi King on Liang Xiaosheng’s untranslated masterwork Floating City

It’s one of the best novels published in Chinese in the last three decades—and since it hasn’t been translated into English, you’ve probably never heard of it. With so many worthy contemporary Chinese novels untranslated, I know that’s not saying much, but believe me when I say: this is my number one on the list of books that need to be translated into English, stat. Liang Xiaosheng’s Floating City (Flower City Publishing House, 1992) is the missing link between Republican Era science-fiction and dystopian visionaries like Chan Koonchung. It also manages to be funny as hell, equal parts subversive and sentimental.

Jiang Zemin’s intriguing appearance on American TV – Frank Beyer

On June 4th 1989, the day before he took the famous ‘Tank Man’ photo, American photographer Jeff Widener was in Tiananmen square. Soldiers were arriving to break up the pro-democracy protests that had been ongoing since April. Widener saw an armoured car hurtle into some steel barriers erected by the protesters and crash. He imagined himself getting the Pulitzer prize if he could take a photo of what happened next. He walked towards the chaos, but a brick smashed his camera and ripped his forehead open. A soldier appeared from out of the prone vehicle with his hands raised, surrendering, but protesters descended on him with bricks and pipes. Standing there with blood dripping into his eyes, Widener woke up to the fact that the mob could be about to beat the soldier to death, and balked at taking a photo. He got the hell out of there.

The next day, Jeff was on the roof of the Beijing Hotel when a line of tanks moved towards Tiananmen square below. He had to get a photo of this and it was a near thing – he was almost out of film. He felt like a NBA star with one shot to win the game: make it and you’re a hero, miss it and you’ll regret it forever. Then it happened. A man, a lone protester, walked in front of the line of tanks, and Jeff took the photo which would become famous.

Laszlo Montgomery’s other life in Chinese manufacturing

In my China History Podcast series I have touched on China trade going all the way back to the times of the Han Dynasty adventurer Zhang Qian. Trade with China has always been exotic and unique. Silk, tea, lacquerware and other valuables ware sold along the fabled trade routes to all points between Rome and Asia. Zhang Qian, Marco Polo, the Silk Road, the Tea Horse Road, Zheng He, Macao, the Canton System, the Noble House. For an old China hand, what isn’t there to love about this world of China trade?

But when I first started out as a China watcher, back in the day, I didn’t realise that in my professional life I would become part of it myself.