Out of Mao's Shadow
The Struggle for the Soul of a New China
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THE PUBLIC FUNERAL
They came from the walled compounds of the Communist Party elite and the shantytowns of the disgruntled and dispossessed, from universities and office towers, from booming cities and dirt-poor villages across China. They came by the thousands, citizens of a nation on the rise, defying the lessons drilled into them by state propaganda and the caution taught them by a century of bitter experience. On a cold January morning, in sleek sedans and battered taxicabs, on bicycle and on foot, they made their way past security checkpoints, refusing to turn back even when police snapped photos and recorded their names for the state's secret files. Slowly, they converged on a vast cemetery on the western outskirts of Beijing. There, in a small memorial hall, on a dais surrounded by evergreen leaves, lay the man whose death they had come to mourn, a man the party had told them to forget.
They last saw him more than fifteen years ago, with a bullhorn in his hands and tears in his eyes, standing in Tiananmen Square amid the student ... read full excerpt from Out of Mao's Shadow: The Struggle for the Soul of a New China ebook
