“No one deserved to die like that. No one deserved to die at all. But on dark night, so many sons and daughters, too young to even know about death, perished, on both sides. How many mothers and fathers had to go on living with only the memories of their children?
- Lake with no name by Diane Wei Liang.
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I swear this book reminded me of “Watch me by Anjela huston” memoir. Instead of telling her story in the book, she decided to wrote “jack nicholson this, jack nicholson that” in its entirety. The same things went down with this memoir, instead of focusing the Tiananmen Square Student Protests - she decided put a spotlight on her love life more than what when down with the student-led demonstrations (which is the first reason i bought this book). This is the time i wished i have read the review before i bought this book. For example, in the chapter highlighting that students were currently on a hunger strikes, this is what she wrote : “I felt so lonely surrounded by the crowd and at the same time guilty that my mind was preoccupied with my own unhappiness while a much more serious crisis was taking place in Tiananmen Square. I could not help but think about Dong Yi and Lan”. (serious face palm mode) - i swear that this book will be only 150 pages max if the author did not insert her love life in the book. NGL, i felt cheated because i dont want to know about Dong Yi, i just wanted to read more about student demonstration and uprising that led to Tiananmen Square Massacre. Unfortunately, the book went different route and decided to put a spotlight in her feelings pining over Dong Yi. What i find more disturbing is despite knowing that Dong Yi has a girlfriend and eventually him married the girlfriend but the fact that the author relentlessly pursued him and still wanting to be with him is just despicable. I know that when we are in your 20s, we are figuring things out and we all did stupid things somehow along the way but i just cant get on with this. I have no issue reading about her growing up, after all this is a memoir and i got different perspective from her especially she is the daughter of intellectuals and not a peasant unlike other memoir i have read before. They are majorly despised due to China cultural revolution. She was bullied due to her status and was implied that her blood is not red enough to be part of China envisioned by Mao Zedong. Along the way, when Mao Zedong died and China find herself shifted again. This time, the pursuit of knowledge is encouraged and we saw that young people started to realize that maybe Democracy can be part of China despite the idea of it was known as a western idea. At that point of time, the author acknowledged so many young people left China to see the world , further their studies and even got an employment abroad. Some were hopeful the change will come, some were defiant and felt it will never happen. Eventually, at least i still got what i wanted - a glimpses of the June Fourth Incident in China, how it went down ( from the hunger strike, the labelling of the student movement as illegal and anarchy in nature, the military intervention, the blockade of foreign journalists and up to the what has been described by the author as the blood and tears flowing down to the ground. The aftermath of the protests led to a massive search for those who are involved in it and were being shot and punished due to their participation. Some were hunt down, some remain fugitives and some managed to escape the country. The author did mentioned few of her friends that involved in it managed to escape the authority and migrated to USA. So much stories about Dong Yi, the ending was still concluded with Dong Yi and her reminiscing their good old days. Dong Yi still with his wife, Lang and the author got divorced with Eimin and remarried with an European. If you wanted to read about Tiananmen Massacre, this is not the book for you. You can find other books that provide more details in a way that the obsession towards one guy in the book will not interfere with the main subject of a memoir.