Published 20th June 2020
Written byJames Griffiths, CNN Hong Kong
https://www.cnn.com/style/article/tiananmen-square-massacre-graphic-novel-comics-journalism-intl-hnk/index.html
As a young man in Beijing in the 1980s, Lun Zhang felt like he was taking part in a new Chinese enlightenment.
The country was undergoing paramount leader Deng Xiaoping's "Reform and Opening Up," and previously sealed-off areas of knowledge, arts, and culture were becoming newly available.
People who had only years before been living in the stifling, hyper-Maoist orthodoxy of the Cultural Revolution, in which anything foreign or historical was deemed counter-revolutionary, could now listen to Wham!, hold intellectual salons in which people read Jean-Paul Sartre or Sigmund Freud, or even publish their own works, taking aim at previously sacred political targets.
"In those days, our thirst to read, learn and explore the outside world was insatiable," Zhang writes in his new graphic novel, "Tiananmen 1989: Our Shattered Hopes."
But with this intellectual awakening came a growing frustration with the pace of reform in China, particularly how economic liberalization was taking precedence over any suggestion that the Communist Party give up its tight control on the country's politics.
An apocryphal quote attributed to Deng captured the mood at this time, that "to get rich is glorious," but for many people, it was increasingly apparent that only a handful were becoming wealthy, while others were suffering due to growing corruption and the destruction of the social safety net.
[read more on CNN]
Written byJames Griffiths, CNN Hong Kong
https://www.cnn.com/style/article/tiananmen-square-massacre-graphic-novel-comics-journalism-intl-hnk/index.html
As a young man in Beijing in the 1980s, Lun Zhang felt like he was taking part in a new Chinese enlightenment.
The country was undergoing paramount leader Deng Xiaoping's "Reform and Opening Up," and previously sealed-off areas of knowledge, arts, and culture were becoming newly available.
People who had only years before been living in the stifling, hyper-Maoist orthodoxy of the Cultural Revolution, in which anything foreign or historical was deemed counter-revolutionary, could now listen to Wham!, hold intellectual salons in which people read Jean-Paul Sartre or Sigmund Freud, or even publish their own works, taking aim at previously sacred political targets.
"In those days, our thirst to read, learn and explore the outside world was insatiable," Zhang writes in his new graphic novel, "Tiananmen 1989: Our Shattered Hopes."
But with this intellectual awakening came a growing frustration with the pace of reform in China, particularly how economic liberalization was taking precedence over any suggestion that the Communist Party give up its tight control on the country's politics.
An apocryphal quote attributed to Deng captured the mood at this time, that "to get rich is glorious," but for many people, it was increasingly apparent that only a handful were becoming wealthy, while others were suffering due to growing corruption and the destruction of the social safety net.
[read more on CNN]