China presents itself in a more questionable state as the first hand memories of a regretted day comes back to life with the release of Rowena Xiaoqing He’s Tiananmen Exiles: Voices or the Struggle for Democracy in China.
Seen from the seventy years old eyes of a Chinese national living in the present where the country has become a capitalist centre of power, it seems they have suffered the witnessing of the entire Chinese wind of change from the Maoist revolution to the time of Japanese control before the civil wars.
June 4 is remembered as a day of great loss it the world, when caught in the cruel bullets, the protesters of Tiananmen were mercilessly slaughtered. This book sheds light on the sufferings and miseries of the lives of three of the leaders of June 4. The tragic tale of the Tiananmen exiles who had to experience estrangement from their country and bear how even their own called and mocked them as terrorists.
Rowena He revives a verbal story of the three men. Shen Tong, was one who managed an escape to the US with Wang Dan having to serve his two prison sentences of nine and four years each. This book has opened many eyes towards the reality of the past. So many people were blinded by information fed by the all powerful government of the country and the media controlled by it.
The Tianamen protesters of 1989 exiles are considered national traitors by their government, even till date. But as the book uncovers some crucial events from the true history of the struggles in China, the facts can now be analyzed in a better light with a clearer view. Rowena He’s book, which includes her own horrible experiences of that time, is not just a story that we will read but a bleeding and beating part of the sad Chinese past itself.
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