I left Beijing in 1987, shortly before my books were banned there, but have returned continually.
Ma JianIn 1989, I was on Tiananmen Square with the students, living in their makeshift tents and joining their jubilant singing of the Internationale. In the two decades since, each time that I have gone back, visions from those days seem to return with increasing persistence.
Ma JianRed Dust was about the late 1980s; it was a time of burgeoning hopes and opening up and people searching for new ways.
Ma JianI meant that the Chinese people are not aware of their own entrapment. They believe they live in a free society, but don't realize how much they are being monitored and controlled, how much the information they receive is restricted and warped, until they step out of line, that is, and feel the heavy hand of the state fall on them.
Ma Jian