What an absolute honor to be treated to a day of listening to and asking questions of two prominent yet approachable journalists about their encounters with the Tiananmen Square incident in 1989 and its aftermath.
From Mike Chenoy, I learned that the protestors were seeking to accelerate the party's reformation, not a but not a counter-revolutionary rebellion. The demands were neither unreasonable, nor without merit in seeking freedom of travel, educational opportunities, etc...
From Louisa Lim, I learned about the legacy of an incident China would prefer to be forgotten as George Orwell imagined in 1984, in which Winston Smith's job in The Ministry of Truth was to rewrite history to suit the shortcomings of the present by eradicating any unsavory truths out of existence and sugarcoating any facts that had even a small semblance of palatability. She is seeking to undo Winston-esque work by exposing the glaring reality that 1[font=-webkit-standard]989 changed China and China rewrote history to eradicate the memory of the event. So perhaps, Orwell was just off by about five years in his seminal work.[/font]
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