A Book of Changes - Krystyna Horko

 

When Melissa Bingham grows tired of being a hippie in 1970s London, a series of haphazard events followed by a tragedy lead her to Maoist China. She obtains a scholarship and in the summer of 1976 Melissa, together with a handful of foreign students, arrives in what was then called Peking.

Despite the eventful period (the Tangshan earthquake, Mao’s death and the campaign against the Gang of Four), the first year is a disappointment. The foreign students are segregated from the Chinese; classes are rigid and dull. Even her roommate spouts only propaganda.

Melissa leaves for Hong Kong the following summer but returns a year later when it becomes clear that things are moving on the mainland. Now change is palpable, and nowhere more so than in Peking’s Xidan intersection that November, where a wall covered in posters has been nicknamed Democracy Wall. Here Melissa meet a young activist called Jianguo and they start an illicit relationship.

Now ten years later, in the summer of 1989, Melissa is in London gripped by the events in Tiananmen Square, which inevitably trigger memories of that time. She is now in her first serious relationship since Jianguo and feels that she needs to tell her photo-journalist boyfriend rather more than he knows. As Melissa reminisces the tanks roll into Tiananmen Square and the massacre begins.

Shortly afterwards, an old friend calls from Hong Kong to tell her that one of the Tiananmen escapees claims to be Jianguo’s younger brother. He is due to arrive in London on his way to the US, where he has been granted asylum. Melissa is intrigued and agrees to put him up. But can this young man really be who he claims to be?

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