Overview
This compelling book provides a vivid firsthand account of the student demonstrations and massacre in Tiananmen Square in 1989. Uniquely placed as a Western observer drawn into active participation through Chinese friends in the uprising, Philip J Cunningham offers a remarkable day-by-day account of Beijing students desperately trying to secure the most coveted political real estate in China in the face of ever-more daunting government countermoves. Tiananmen Moon takes the reader into the thick of the 1989 protests while also following the parallel response of an unprepared but resourceful Western media. In this revised and expanded edition, Cunningham recounts rare vignettes about life in Tiananmen Square under student leadership, including previously unpublished material. There is an account of the Goddess of Democracy being unveiled, a whimsical trip to the countryside that ends up on a collision course with PLA troops readying for attack, the tale of a near riot when a reporter is mistaken for Gorbachev, the saga of a tearful leader who quits and dictates her last will and testament to the author, and a dramatic account of futile resistance in the face of an unforgiving crackdown. The book chronicles the opportunistic and awkward tango between naive student activists and jaded foreign journalists, in which, after a month of mutual courting, the tables turn and the now-savvy students watch the journalists, seduced and confused, run circles just trying to keep up. During the hunger strike under the light of a full moon, China bares its conflicted soul to the world, the mournful cry for reform amplified by the footsteps of a million peaceful marchers. This remarkable testament to a searing month that changed China forever serves as a witness to the rise and fall of an uprising, capturing the plaintive and lyrical beauty of a dream that endures and continues to haunt the country today.
Full Product Details
Author: Philip J Cunningham
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing Plc
Imprint: Rowman & Littlefield
Edition: Special edition
Dimensions:
Width: 15.40cm
, Height: 3.10cm
, Length: 22.50cm
Weight: 0.685kg
ISBN: 9781442232860
ISBN 10: 1442232862
Pages: 522
Publication Date: 05 May 2014
Audience:
General/trade
,
General
Format: Paperback
Publisher's Status: Active
Availability: Manufactured on demand
We will order this item for you from a manufactured on demand supplier.
Reviews
For anyone interested in gaining an insight into how it felt to be there, for the entire four weeks of the protest up to the darkest night of the month, when the movement was crushed in a small-hours massacre, KJ contributor Philip J. Cunningham's Tiananmen Moon provides a uniquely informed inside view...This 25th anniversary edition of Tiananmen Moon is itself a valuable historical document, containing a new prologue that reviews post-crackdown developments, and the subsequent lives of many of the activists involved. The spirit of Tiananmen is not confined to China, or the late 80s. It is present anywhere that citizens take a stand to challenge a corrupt political status quo, by whatever means come to hand, and whatever the result. Kyoto Journal [T]his book represents a different kind of coverage that richly complements the existing literature on the 1 989 Beijing Spring. While its major purpose has successfully been attained, this work which is grounded in practicalities has uniquely been organized as well. Lastly, as a book dedicated to those wonderful martyred souls who will never know the fruits of their great sacrifice, the memoir by Philip Cunningham has been told in an outspoken manner and conversational tone. From his study, we have understood about how two and a half decades later the Tiananmen massacre has become more relevant than ever before while the Chinese Communist rulers are trying to make this influential incident irrelevant...[T]his highly informative and easy-to read volume will be of interest to those who want to know the thrilling stories of the Tiananmen Square upheaval and the June 4, 1 989 government military crackdown from a real person who directly experienced this archival event in the modern People's Republic of China. International Journal of China Studies
For anyone interested in gaining an insight into how it felt to be there, for the entire four weeks of the protest up to the darkest night of the month, when the movement was crushed in a small-hours massacre, KJ contributor Philip J. Cunningham's Tiananmen Moon provides a uniquely informed inside view...This 25th anniversary edition of Tiananmen Moon is itself a valuable historical document, containing a new prologue that reviews post-crackdown developments, and the subsequent lives of many of the activists involved. The spirit of Tiananmen is not confined to China, or the late 80s. It is present anywhere that citizens take a stand to challenge a corrupt political status quo, by whatever means come to hand, and whatever the result. Kyoto Journal
For anyone interested in gaining an insight into how it felt to be there, for the entire four weeks of the protest up to the darkest night of the month, when the movement was crushed in a small-hours massacre, KJ contributor Philip J. Cunningham’s Tiananmen Moon provides a uniquely informed inside view. . . .This 25th anniversary edition of Tiananmen Moon is itself a valuable historical document, containing a new prologue that reviews post-crackdown developments, and the subsequent lives of many of the activists involved. The spirit of Tiananmen is not confined to China, or the late 80s. It is present anywhere that citizens take a stand to challenge a corrupt political status quo, by whatever means come to hand, and whatever the result. * Kyoto Journal * [T]his book represents a different kind of coverage that richly complements the existing literature on the 1 989 Beijing Spring. While its major purpose has successfully been attained, this work which is grounded in practicalities has uniquely been organized as well. Lastly, as a book dedicated to those wonderful martyred souls who will never know the fruits of their great sacrifice, the memoir by Philip Cunningham has been told in an outspoken manner and conversational tone. From his study, we have understood about how two and a half decades later the Tiananmen massacre has become more relevant than ever before while the Chinese Communist rulers are trying to make this influential incident irrelevant. . . .[T]his highly informative and easy-to read volume will be of interest to those who want to know the thrilling stories of the Tiananmen Square upheaval and the June 4, 1 989 government military crackdown from a real person who directly experienced this archival event in the modern People’s Republic of China. * International Journal of China Studies * Tiananmen Moon is at its best when Mr. Cunningham captures the disarray as the protests evolved and especially as the massacre began. . . . [Cunningham] deals with events that cannot be discussed in China today. The media censorship is so strong that students have little idea of what their counterparts did 20 years ago. But more than a million Beijingers had publicly supported the students, and memories must linger in the minds of many, not only in the capital but throughout the country. * The Wall Street Journal * In offering a candid view of the student leadership based on his interviews and interactions with the protestors, Cunningham's account reveals the dissent and factionalism within the student ranks. A welcome addition to our understanding of a convoluted and perplexing historical black mark that media and scholarly pundits have only begun to unravel after nearly two decades of silence, this book will be appreciated by both interested general readers and scholars. * Library Journal * There is great attention to detail, recounting Cunningham's student life, simple pleasures in a developing country with strict government controls. One highlight of Tiananmen Moon is a fascinating interview with protest leader Chai Ling. Like Cunningham himself, the reader begins as an outsider to the movement and gets drawn further and further in, first out of curiosity and then a sense of solidarity. The author—friends with students and other liberal Chinese, and fluent in Chinese—gets as far inside perhaps as a Western eye can get. His account, accessible and readable, is a foreign perspective—perhaps being partially outside the frame helps to see the greater picture at times, to ask the right questions—but one with an insider's fondness for and grasp of China's idiosyncrasies. It is deeply personal and the reader invests much in the outcome, a tribute to Cunningham's highly convincing and moving recounting of events. This is a ground-level view of the struggle, not just ring-side but inside. -- Ezra Erker * Bangkok Post * A superior—and often brilliant—writer. . . . [Cunningham] presents richly drawn characters and dramatic threads that pull us in like a novel, while providing remarkable yet organic insights. In Tiananmen Moon, Cunningham's high points—which are many—are equal to the best of any nonfiction author writing today. The book is not just a well-wrought story, though; it is a seamless blend of memoir and history, past and present, narrative and reflection, gemlike description and unadorned information. . . . Tiananmen Moon provides the . . . steady, reflective, nuanced eye of someone who knows China and is not afraid to let the truth fall where it may. * Asia Times Online * Philip Cunningham wrote his journal-like book with such honesty and power of observation that he captured my imagination. Tiananmen Moon is a fascinating look not so much at a series of events, but at the incomprehensible nation of China itself. Like Philip Cunningham, we'll never be able to fully understand it, but Tiananmen Moon is a good place to start. * The Internet Review Of Books * Offers fascinating detail of the events and glorious description. . . . Tiananmen Moon is a valuable addition to the literature of that Beijing Spring. * Pacific Affairs * [A] splendid firsthand account that anyone interested in modern China should read. Cunningham evokes powerfully the smells, sounds, and shifting mood on the streets, making the reader feel like one is there alongside him as he tries to figure out what is going on, where the protests are heading, and how the peaceful movement morphs into bloodshed. . . . This memoir serves as a moving tribute to all those young Chinese who risked so much to better their world. . . . In finally publishing this animated chronicle, he challenges two decades of organized forgetting and revisionism concerning what happened and what was at stake in 1989. * Japan Times * Philip J Cunningham’s experiences, as portrayed in Tiananmen Moon: Inside the Chinese Student Uprising of 1989, provide another perspective to approach 4 June: memories as related by ordinary people who participated in the uprising. His vantage point, then as a foreign student, makes his observation unique and invaluable. . . . As one of the participants in the 1989 uprising, I believe that ordinary people who participated—intellectuals, merchants, workers, farmers, and even the military—played a very important role. . . . In fact, the real force that drove students at that time to uphold their courage and enthusiasm, to steer the movement to a new stage, came from vast popular support . . . which is so clearly portrayed in Cunningham’s book. This is why Cunningham’s observations are invaluable. What he provides us with is a personal account, partly as insider and partly as outsider. He tries to give readers a picture of different reactions from different levels of society about the movement and what ordinary people felt during that time. He has succeeded admirably. -- Dan Wang, Taiwan National Tsing Hua University * China Information * An exciting window on China and the Chinese; an important story and a valuable contribution to contemporary Chinese history. -- Bill Kovach, founder of the Committee of Concerned Journalists There is no American more qualified to write about China today than Philip Cunningham. He speaks and reads Chinese, his descriptive writing evokes a clear sense of place and time. He was one of the marchers back in 1989 during the student movement and crackdown at Tiananmen Square. His book, written with the dual perspective of a participant in the movement and as a freelancer working with the international press, is the first and last word on that historic and horrific moment in the rise of modern China. -- Gay Talese, author of A Writer's Life
Author Information
Philip J Cunningham is a freelance writer and teacher of media studies.
