Customer Reviews

Almost a Revolution: The Story of a Chinese Student's Journey from Boyhood to Leadership in Tiananmen Square (Ann Arbor Paperbacks)

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I just watched the recent Frontline about Tank Man, the man who bravely defied the line of tanks in Beijing, and went to Amazon to find books about the subject. Up came this book, among others, and I remember almost throwing it across the room over ten years ago when I read it. You have a guy who escaped, knew a few people involved, and whose only personal involvement is from the outside. He had no balls, and never dared risk himself. Sure, he knows the figureheads, the history, and can write about what happened as if was there. But he was hiding in his room, making himself out to be a hero. If you want to read a book with the only suspense being whether to finish it or not, then this is the one.

Almost a Review


I watched the events of Tiananmen Square unfold on TV as they were happening in 1989. I even video taped them believing I might even be watching a revolution. CNN's great line was "We came to cover a summit, but are covering a revolution." This allowed me to review the coverage as events were happening. It soon became apparent reported rumors had a tendency to become accepted facts in subsequent commentary even when they had been found to be baseless. Massive media hype.

I was living in Seattle in November of 1990 when I heard on the radio that Shen Tong was in town and would be at Elliot Bay books to give a talk and sign copies of Almost a Revolution. I rushed over. He made a few remarks, as I remember, and then took questions. Most questions asked things like when he thought the Communist Party would collapse, what position he would take in the leadership in the future, etc. Very fanciful.

I asked him if he thought there had almost been a revolution and, if not, why was his book named Almost a Revolution. He said quite clearly and calmly there had not almost been a revolution and he was told to make that the title.

I have a signed copy of the book from that day, November 21, 1990. The credulous questioning about "when he would become emperor" so to speak resumed. I felt very sorry for him then and do so now. I think he was and hope he still is a good person. He was not a victim of an evil PRC government. Rather he, like most of the other students, were ultimately victims of the Western Media and political operatives behind the scenes who commandeered the events and with them the lives of some very good kids and used them for their own ends.

I do not remember whether I ever read the book (hence my lead line Almost a Review ). I am sure I skimmed it. I hope my comments give some useful perspective for those who do read it. I may someday too. .I am sure it has some useful information in it.

I read this book because I was very interested in the topic and event surrounding Tiananmen. I wanted to get an inside view, and in many ways did from the author. But this was more of a memoir with the democracy build up as a background. The author even talks about his first kiss in his hometown. And when he goes to university the protests are all around him, and he has friends who are putting themselves on the line, and he cares, but basically he is a distant observer. All in all, a thorough disappointment.

I found this book very informative about the events leading up to the Tiananmen Square occupation by the students and workers in June of 1989. Since traveling for one month in China this past year, I have been reading alot of personal accounts on China by people who have escaped or left the country. This was a nice change; a book speaking of the efforts by the citizens to change the way things are there and by peaceful means. This book really makes one appreciate the freedoms and democracy that we take for granted in this country.

Too many Westerners, mostly Americans, are overly eager to transform China but have little or no understanding of that huge and complex nation and so many of the young and very impatient Chinese youths would want a Western styled democracy in China but with little idea what it takes to have democracy in a huge country never had such political system before. Deng Xiao-pin was very eager to bring in political reforms but the Tian-An-Men Square event set back this reform by at least one or two generations. The author does not seem to understand that and he is now a young man in his 40s living in the U.S. and I wonder if he realized this historical "mistake." The new economic social class created since the Tian-An-Men Square riot are not very concerned with the great majority of rural Chinese left behind and any political reform seems to be the last thing in their mind. The Chinese government has one of the toughest challenges in the world history to provide an improved lives to the peasants still in the seven to eight hundred million people in the far left behind in living standard.

There are two wonderful things about this book: first, Shen Tong's charming account of life growing up in Beijing in an exceptional Chinese family; and then the deeply moving story of the growth of the student movement and its tragic surpression. The courage of the students, and later people from all walks of life, in their struggle for a more open society is very impressive. This book should not be out of print.

Very easy to read account of growing up in China in the late 20th Century, and the background of student revolutionaries of Tienamen Square. The author does not exhibit his part in a boastful way, but we get to experience the Student Movements from the epicenter. He makes these historic times seem everyday......but it is an interesting and insightful read.

So said one of the student leaders, as quoted by Shen Tong (himself a leader) in "Almost a Revolution." This is a very fluidly written, personal account of the events leading up to the killings of workers & students by Chinese soldiers in Tiananmen Square, Beijing, on June 5 1989. Fortunately, with more recent events in Ukraine, "Soviet" Georgia, Tajikistan, even Lebanon (not forgetting Eastern Europe), we have seen how revolutions gain strength, often like tropical storms that develope into hurricanes with surprising rapidity. Meteorologically, we can explain such happening on the weather front ONCE THEY OCCUR, but we're rarely capable of predicting such developments until they are almost in our faces, so to speak. The event that sparked events in China was the death of Hu Yaobang on April 15th. "Hu Yaobang had become something of a hero since he had been made the scapegoat of the 1986 student movement and ousted as general secretary, and many of us," says the author, "had hoped that he would be brought back someday to lead China on the road to reform." Acknowledgment of his passing by many, however, soon began to be read by the government as a renewed call for reform. Thus began the chain of events that resulted in students' boycotting classes, printing flyers, and finally, camping out in Tiananmen Square. In the author's view, "there was clearly an internal struggle going on between Li Peng [a hardliner] and Zhao Ziyang [a Chinese leader who had declared on May 7th his openness to a dialogue with the students]." Evidence of such was the fact that "starting May 17, the press in China operated without censorship from the goverment for a few days." Mikhail Gorbachev had arrived for a visit 2 days earlier and the Chinese government was seemingly caught off-guard in the headlights of the world's media for a moment while it contemplated how to respond a mass protest in Beijing's central square. The one fault of this book (besides no index) is that the author has nothing to say about this visit by Gorbachev. He mentions the Soviet leader's arrival and departure, but literally nothing otherwise; no impressions or anything how such a visit affected events on the ground in Beijing, or within the corridors of the Chinese government. This was before the collapse of Eastern Europe, mind you, but I find it hard to believe that the issue of Gorbachev (glasnost/reform) wasn't a topic of discussion amongst at least some of the student leaders arrayed around Shen Tong. Back to events: Martial Law was declared on May 20. On May 21 word began to filter out that Zhao Ziyang had been removed as general secretary of the Chinese Communist Party (though it wasn't announced until May 26th). The crackdown came soon after, but the author wasn't as much a witness & participant to this aspect as he was in all the events leading up to it. He doesn't, consequently, write much about the tanks entering Beijing (or the famous photograph of the solitary man courageously standing his ground before one particular one), or what exactly happened that day---he doesn't even guess at how many Chinese were killed. But, this is nevertheless a remarkable story (that reads quickly & gives much interesting detail of the author's childhood, particularly as it relates to his coming to question things & the role his intellectual father had on his development). Cheers!

This book presents a good inside look at the 1989 democracy movement from the viewpoint of a key student leader. The reader learns about some aspects of the movement that have not been widely publicized, including the trials and tribulations of one of the principal organizers of the movement.

Also, a good documentary film about the 1989 Tiananmen Square protests is Carma Hinton's "The Gate of Heavenly Peace." A condensed version of this film was broadcast on PBS Frontline in 1996.

Too many history books deal in dry facts. This book tells the story of China and what led up to the Tiananmen Square massacre from the point of view of one young student who was pulled, sometimes against his will, into the thick of the political arena. I found it fascinating!