'The Bereaved Still Grieve, but the Others Sing in Happy Oblivion'

Summary

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The cab driver had told me that he grew up in a people's commune next to the Summer Palace, and that his wife was a sanitary worker in the district. 1 remembered how he used to come to our apartment every week to report on the progress of the protest: parades, hunger strikes, slogans invented, new strategies of the students' union, overnight dance parties at the square, romances between strangers. When the exiled Chinese writer Ma Jian gave a reading in New York City last year, a young Chinese woman angrily asked him why he would not let the Tiananmen Square Massacre go.

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'The Bereaved Still Grieve, but the Others Sing in Happy Oblivion'

In March 2008, 1 returned to Beijingfor a visit, the first in ten years. One afternoon, trapped in a traffic jam, I chatted with the middle-aged cab driver, a native Beijinger, judging from his accent. "This is no longer the city you knew," he said when he learned about my visit. I had been repeatedly told that since my arrival.

"Is it becoming too modern for you?" I asked. The cab d...

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