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.

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.

I left Beijing in 1987, shortly before my books were banned there, but have returned continually.

Ma Jian Quotes