TIANANMEN SQUARE

Coming-of-age novel meets roman à clef in this pensive tale of life under totalitarian rule.

“In China, you may not be particularly interested in politics. But politics sure has an interest in you.” So writes Wen in a novel so closely intertwined with her life that it’s difficult to separate the fictional from the autobiographical. As a young girl, Lai’s close friend is a bright boy named Gen, who shows her bits of a world that lies behind the curtain of official life: a crematorium, for example, that bears the false title “Beijing Children’s Hospital,” of whose denizens, citing his minor government official father as a source, Gen says, “They will...never get better.” The lie is emblematic of the Politburo’s relationship with the people, something Lai will not learn from her own father, withdrawn after being denounced during the Cultural Revolution, and mother, scornful of anyone who imagines that things will ever change. As Lai grows into young adulthood and enters university, she discovers alcohol, reformist politics, bohemian romance, and much more, all under the disapproving gaze of Gen, who has become a student leader against the backdrop of the Tiananmen Square uprising of 1989. Proclaims Gen, “The university is not a parent or a politician, and still less a dictator. It is our communal home....And every man should have autonomy in his own home.” It’s a daring statement, much braver than Lai can muster until, even more daringly, she helps stage a production of Brecht’s Mother Courage before a phalanx of soldiers poised to break up the demonstrations. Surprises abound in Lai’s narrative about what becomes of her, of Gen, of a flamboyant actress called Madam Macaw, and, in an intriguing turn, of the character known to history as Tank Man.

Read as history as much as fiction, a revealing addition to the literature of the democracy movement in China.