Tiananmen Moon: Inside the Chinese Student Uprising of 1989

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This compelling book provides a vivid firsthand account of the student demonstrations and massacre in Tiananmen Square in 1989. Uniquely placed as a Western observer drawn into active participation through Chinese friends in the uprising, Philip J Cunningham offers a remarkable day-by-day account of Beijing students desperately trying to secure the most coveted political real estate in China in the face of ever more daunting government countermoves. Tiananmen Moon takes the reader into the thick of the 1989 protests while also following the parallel response of an unprepared but resourceful Western media. Cunningham recounts rare vignettes about life in Tiananmen Square under student leadership, including a near riot when a reporter is mistaken for Gorbachev, the saga of a tearful leader who quits and dictates her last will and testament to the author, and a dramatic account of futile resistance in the face of an unforgiving crackdown. He chronicles the opportunistic and awkward tango between naive student activists and jaded foreign journalists, in which, after a month of mutual courting, the tables turn and the now-savvy students watch the journalists, seduced and confused, run circles just trying to keep up. During the hunger strike under the light of a full moon, China bares its conflicted soul to the world, the mournful cry for reform amplified by the footsteps of a million peaceful marchers. This remarkable testament to a searing month that changed China forever serves as a witness to the rise and fall of an uprising, capturing the plaintive and lyrical beauty of a dream that endures and continues to haunt the country today.

Reviews

In offering a candid view of the student leadership based on his interviews and interactions with the protestors, Cunningham's account reveals the dissent and factionalism within the student ranks. A welcome addition to our understanding of a convoluted and perplexing historical black mark that media and scholarly pundits have only begun to unravel after nearly two decades of silence, this book will be appreciated by both interested general readers and scholars. * Library Journal *
Cunningham, an American-born Asia specialist, was living on campus at Beijing Normal University during the weeks-long popular uprising that ended with the deaths of hundreds of Chinese students and intellectuals on June 4. The historic and bloody eventstill the object of a 'soul-chilling silence' by Chinese officialshas been much written about in the West, but Cunningham offers the intriguing point of view of a Chinese speaker who both took part in the demonstrations and covered them as a freelance journalist for the BBC. His vivid, highly personal account begins in early May, when he joined Chinese students in orderly sit-ins at the New China News Agency to protest the lack of press freedom. Amid campus rivalries, the uprising grew to include a bicycle demonstration, slogan-shouting in front of the Peoples Daily offices and a mid-May hunger strike that gave new urgency to the protest. Cunningham re-creates the headiness of the time and the hopefulness of young Chinese wearing headbands and carrying red flags and hand-painted posters. His many extended conversations with student leaders and others reveal the frequent mistrust among the demonstrators as well as their shared grievances over corruption and class privilege in Chinese society. As the war of nerves between protesters and government officials heated up, Cunningham experienced his own inner turmoil as a Westerner who was highly sympathetic to the uprising but nonetheless viewed with suspicion by many in the crowd. He concludes with an account of the violent government crackdown. The author says the upheaval at Tiananmen accelerated reform, and he remains in awe of the 'remarkably peaceful, transformative, and uplifting weeks' that preceded the arrival of troops and tanks. His inside view of these chaotic days offers a deeper understanding of the yearning for freedom that drove youths and workers into the streets of a closed society. A fresh perspective mainly for students and specialists. * Kirkus Reviews *
Tiananmen Moon is at its best when Mr. Cunningham captures the disarray as the protests evolved and especially as the massacre began. . . . [Cunningham] deals with events that cannot be discussed in China today. The media censorship is so strong that students have little idea of what their counterparts did 20 years ago. But more than a million Beijingers had publicly supported the students, and memories must linger in the minds of many, not only in the capital but throughout the country. * The Wall Street Journal *
A superiorand often brilliantwriter. . . . [Cunningham] presents richly drawn characters and dramatic threads that pull us in like a novel, while providing remarkable yet organic insights. In Tiananmen Moon, Cunningham's high pointswhich are manyare equal to the best of any nonfiction author writing today. The book is not just a well-wrought story, though; it is a seamless blend of memoir and history, past and present, narrative and reflection, gemlike description and unadorned information. . . . Tiananmen Moon provides the . . . steady, reflective, nuanced eye of someone who knows China and is not afraid to let the truth fall where it may. * Asia Times Online *
Philip Cunningham wrote his journal-like book with such honesty and power of observation that he captured my imagination. Tiananmen Moon is a fascinating look not so much at a series of events, but at the incomprehensible nation of China itself. Like Philip Cunningham, we'll never be able to fully understand it, but Tiananmen Moon is a good place to start. * The Internet Review Of Books *
Offers fascinating detail of the events and glorious description. . . . Tiananmen Moon is a valuable addition to the literature of that Beijing Spring. * Pacific Affairs *
[A] splendid firsthand account that anyone interested in modern China should read. Cunningham evokes powerfully the smells, sounds and shifting mood on the streets, making the reader feel like one is there alongside him as he tries to figure out what is going on, where the protests are heading and how the peaceful movement morphs into bloodshed. . . . This memoir serves as a moving tribute to all those young Chinese who risked so much to better their world. . . . In finally publishing this animated chronicle, he challenges two decades of organized forgetting and revisionism concerning what happened and what was at stake in 1989. * Japan Times *
There is great attention to detail, recounting Cunningham's student life, simple pleasures in a developing country with strict government controls. One highlight of Tiananmen Moon is a fascinating interview with protest leader Chai Ling. Like Cunningham himself, the reader begins as an outsider to the movement and gets drawn further and further in, first out of curiosity and then a sense of solidarity. The authorfriends with students and other liberal Chinese, and fluent in Chinesegets as far inside perhaps as a Western eye can get. His account, accessible and readable, is a foreign perspectiveperhaps being partially outside the frame helps to see the greater picture at times, to ask the right questionsbut one with an insider's fondness for and grasp of China's idiosyncrasies. It is deeply personal and the reader invests much in the outcome, a tribute to Cunningham's highly convincing and moving recounting of events. This is a ground-level view of the struggle, not just ring-side but inside. -- Ezra Erker * Bangkok Post *
Philip J Cunninghams experiences, as portrayed in Tiananmen Moon: Inside the Chinese Student Uprising of 1989, provide another perspective to approach 4 June: memories as related by ordinary people who participated in the uprising. His vantage point, then as a foreign student, makes his observation unique and invaluable. . . . As one of the participants in the 1989 uprising, I believe that ordinary people who participatedintellectuals, merchants, workers, farmers, and even the militaryplayed a very important role. . . . In fact, the real force that drove students at that time to uphold their courage and enthusiasm, to steer the movement to a new stage, came from vast popular support . . . which is so clearly portrayed in Cunninghams book. This is why Cunninghams observations are invaluable. What he provides us with is a personal account, partly as insider and partly as outsider. He tries to give readers a picture of different reactions from different levels of society about the movement and what ordinary people felt during that time. He has succeeded admirably. -- Dan Wang, Taiwan National Tsing Hua University * China Information *
An exciting window on China and the Chinese; an important story and a valuable contribution to contemporary Chinese history. -- Bill Kovach, founder of the Committee of Concerned Journalists
There is no American more qualified to write about China today than Philip Cunningham. He speaks and reads Chinese, his descriptive writing evokes a clear sense of place and time. He was one of the marchers back in 1989 during the student movement and crackdown at Tiananmen Square. His book, written with the dual perspective of a participant in the movement and as a freelancer working with the international press, is the first and last word on that historic and horrific moment in the rise of modern China. -- Gay Talese, author of A Writer's Life

Author Bio

Philip J Cunningham is professor of media studies at Doshisha University in Kyoto, Japan.