LOOKING FOR TANK MAN

A Chinese scholar examines the buried history of the Tiananmen Square Massacre of 1989.

In something of a roman à clef, Jin scrutinizes the historical amnesia that surrounds the pro-democracy student demonstrations that shook China in the spring of 1989. His story begins nearly 20 years later at Harvard, where a Hong Kong exile, Liu Lan, greets an official delegation from the PRC with a sign denouncing the killings. Growls one Chinese student to her, “I lived in Beijing for many years and never heard of the Tiananmen Square Massacre. Look around, see who believes you and your nonsense.” But, intrigued, another young undergraduate student, Pei Lulu, begins to look into the matter, in time deciding to make the massacre the subject of her doctoral dissertation in history. Her fellow Chinese students don’t want to know, while an older professor assures Lulu that the events were very real, saying, “Oblivion and stupidity always go hand in hand. A historian’s job is to present the past truthfully and make others see it clearly.” The author blends a bit of academic intrigue into his story, with one lecherous senior professor—almost a stock character, that—attempting to suppress Lulu’s research in order to gain favor with the PRC government. That element of the novel isn’t as involving as Lulu’s experiences on the ground in her homeland: Her mother and father, both of whom took part in the demonstrations, are alternately fearful but encouraging, while the secret police keep a close eye out on her; one agent, burning the photo of the famed Tank Man who gives the book its title, warns sternly that she may well be “handled as a criminal and get a prison term or be shut up in a mental asylum.”

A skillfully charged blend of history, politics, and storytelling that revisits a moment that many wish were forgotten.