Chinatown

by Tze Ming Mok
Acclaimed dissident writer Ma Jian fled Beijing with the police on his tail. Interviewed on the 15th anniversary of the Tiananmen massacre, he remains obsessed with the politics of oppression.THE NOODLE MAKER, by Ma Jian (Chatto & Windus, $34.95).In May 1989, dissident writer Ma Jian joined a million people at Tiananmen, the Gate of Heavenly Peace, in the greatest political uprising of his generation. My family in Auckland were pulled daily to the six o'clock news to watch our homeland and history swing wide open in an unbearably suspended moment – and slam shut again. Exactly 15 years later, Ma Jian is on the phone from London, speaking to me in a soft, pellucid flow of Mandarin. After lying low for a little while, following the massacre on June 4, he says, "I ventured back to Beijing, wanting to give voice to the history of this event. But when I arrived, I discovered that the people of Beijing had been incredibly numbed by what happened."
http://www.listener.co.nz/printable,2072.sm