23 years later

‘Let us learn how to live life with honour and dignity and a wealth of humanity.’ — Liu Xiaobo, 2000

June fourth will mark the 23rd anniversary of the Tiananmen Square massacre, a tragedy which remains unacknowledged by the Chinese government except in the weakest of euphemisms. On that day, the state used martial law to repress violently a peaceful demonstration for democracy in Beijing’s city square, which translates as the Gate of Heavenly Peace. 

Each spring, Liu Xiaobo has written an ‘offering’ to the memory of June 4, 1989. The poems he composed until 2009 have been collected here as June Fourth Elegies. The bilingual volume, dedicated to ‘the Tiananmen Mothers and for those who can remember’, represents the first time Liu’s poetry has been published freely in English and the Chinese original.

In his impassioned introduction, the author laments his country’s ‘collective amnesia’ created, Liu says, by ‘a totalitarian state’s brutal persecution and conscienceless indifference toward society.’