Twenty Years: Preparing for the 6/4 Anniversary

Authors

Date of this Version

4-14-2009

Document Type

Article

Citation

April 14, 2009 in the China Beat http://www.thechinabeat.org/

Comments

Copyright April 14, 2009. Used by permission.

Abstract

Some China Beat contributors have mentioned to us that they’ve been receiving requests from journalists and teachers for resources to turn to in writing and teaching about the up-coming twentieth anniversary of the Tiananmen protests. Over the next few weeks, we’ll be posting lists of resources—some online, others in print.

This first list of readings is based entirely on a single website, “Tiananmen: The Gate of Heavenly Peace,” which presents varied perspectives on China’s 1989, with info about an important Long Bow Group film (The Gate of Heavenly Peace, 1995) and diverse online readings, available full-text. China Beat views the film, for which the website in question was created, as a major interpretation of the events of 1989–but we aren’t impartial where this is concerned, as frequent China Beat contributor Geremie Barmé was the main academic consultant for and chief writer of the film (that was directed by Carma Hinton and Richard Gordon and had a roster of scholarly advisers that included this blog’s co-founder Jeff Wasserstrom), and Barmé was also the main creative force behind the very innovative (especially for its time–in went up in the 1990s) website.