I 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.

Red Dust was about the late 1980s; it was a time of burgeoning hopes and opening up and people searching for new ways.

The Chinese people have been forced to forget the Tiananmen massacre. There has been no public debate about the event, no official apology. The media aren't allowed to mention it. Still today people are being persecuted and imprisoned for disseminating information about it.

Tyrannies not only want to control your mind and thoughts but your flesh as well.

In 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.

Beijing Coma took me 10 years to finish.

China is completely lacking in self-awareness and as someone who has stepped outside that society, I have a responsibility to write about it as I see it.