Part I: New Moon
May 3: In Search of the Real China
May 4: The New May Fourth Spirit
May 10: Ten Thousand Bicycles
Part II: Waxing Moon
May 13: Hunger Strike
May 14: Laying Claim to the Square
May 15: Looking for Gorbachev
May 16: Working-Class Heroes
May 17: Rising Tide of Rebellion
May 18: Everyone an Emperor
May 19: Breaking the Fast
Part III: Waning Moon
May 20: Martial Law
May 22: Provincial Vagabonds
May 23: Egg on the Face of Mao
May 24: Tiananmen Headquarters
May 26: Radical Camp
May 28: Last Will and Testament
May 28: Clandestine Interview
May 28: Going Underground
May 28: Midnight Rendezvous
Part IV: No Moon
June 2: Troops Are Coming
June 3: Of Tanks and Men
June 3: Eve of Destruction
June 4: The Sky Is Crying
Philip J Cunningham is professor of media studies at Doshisha University in Kyoto, Japan.
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 event—still the
object of a 'soul-chilling silence' by Chinese officials—has 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 People’s 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*
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 superior—and often brilliant—writer. . . . [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 points—which are many—are 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 author—friends with
students and other liberal Chinese, and fluent in Chinese—gets as
far inside perhaps as a Western eye can get. His account,
accessible and readable, is a foreign perspective—perhaps being
partially outside the frame helps to see the greater picture at
times, to ask the right questions—but 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.
*Bangkok Post*
Philip J Cunningham’s 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 participated—intellectuals, merchants, workers,
farmers, and even the military—played 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 Cunningham’s book. This is why Cunningham’s 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.
*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*
Ask a Question About this Product More... |