“We have no ties of kinship…” from Romance of the Three Kingdoms, ch. 11. Ibid.
“I came into this world bringing only paper, rope, a shadow…” The August Sleepwalker, 33.
“All warfare is based on deception…” Sun Tzu, The Art of War (Stockholm: Chiron Academic Press, 2015), 33.
“We want no more gods and emperors…” Quotation condensed from Wei Jingsheng’s “The Fifth Modernization,” as quoted by George Black and Robin Munro, Black Hands of Beijing: Lives of Defiance in China’s Democracy Movement (New York: Wylie, 1993), 50.
“I’ve been searching for myself…” I believe this is a quote from Xi Chuan, Preface to Depths and Shallowness, but can no longer find the original source.
“A society that speaks with only one voice…” Zheng Yi during 1989 demonstrations, as quoted by George Black and Robin Munro, Black Hands of Beijing, 177.
Toru Takemitsu as quoted by Alex Ross in The Rest Is Noise, 564.
Student radio broadcast, from Chai Ling’s “Declaration of a Hunger Strike,” as quoted by eds. Liang Zhang, Andrew J. Nathan, Perry Link, Orville Schell in The Tiananmen Papers (New York: Public Affairs, 2008), 154.
“There are things that I can’t accept…” Adapted from a quote by Liang Xiaoyuan in The Gate of Heavenly Peace. Directed by Richard Gordon and Carma Hinton, Boston: Long Bow Productions, 1995. Documentary film.
Zhao Ziyang’s speech to the students in Tiananmen Square, May 19, 1989. Wikipedia entry on Zhao Ziyang. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zhao — Ziyang
Noodle seller’s words adapted from interview with Wu Dingfu in “The Tiananmen Father,” from Liao Yiwu’s The Corpse Walker (New York: Anchor, 2009), 217.
“Of course, no one knows tomorrow. Tomorrow begins from another dawn…” Bei Dao, “Stretch Out Your Hands to Me…” The August Sleepwalker, 55.
“I held the letter in my hands and wept…” Zhu’s dialogue, adapted from Liao Yiwu’s interview with Wu Dingfu in “The Tiananmen Father,” The Corpse Walker, 217.
“Beauty leaves its imprints on the mind…” Original source lost.
“Even the Emperor…” Projectionist Bang quotes Romance of the Three Kingdoms, ch. 14.
“Mixed in with Chinese prayers were documents in Sanskrit, Tibetan…” Partially adapted from Colin Thubron’s Shadow of the Silk Road (New York: HarperCollins, 2009), 94. Further expanded based on public domain data from The Dunhuang Project. “Beside the mass of Chinese prayers are documents in Sanskrit, Tibetan, Uighur, Sogdian, Khotanese, Turki in a melange of scripts; a letter in Judeo-Persian, a Parthian fragment in Manichean script, a Turkic tantric tract in the Uighur alphabet, Nestorian scriptures. Ballads, inventories, wills, and deeds. Personal letters, chance intimacies. Somebody pens a whimsical argument between wine and tea. A guest’s apology for behaving indecorously drunk the night before. A funeral address for a dead donkey.” http://idp.bl.uk/
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
MADELEINE THIEN IS the author of the story collection Simple Recipes, which was a finalist for the Commonwealth Writers’ Prize, a Kiriyama Pacific Prize Notable Book, and won the BC Book Prize for Fiction; the novel Certainty, which won the Amazon.ca First Novel Award; and the novel Dogs at the Perimeter, which was shortlisted for Berlin’s 2014 International Literature Award and won the Frankfurt Book Fair’s 2015 Liberaturpreis. Her novels and stories have been translated into twenty-five languages, and her essays have appeared in Granta, The Guardian, the Financial Times, Five Dials, Brick and Al Jazeera. Her story “The Wedding Cake” was shortlisted for the prestigious 2015 Sunday Times EFG Short Story Award. The daughter of Malaysian-Chinese immigrants to Canada, she lives in Montreal.