Ma Jian spent five weeks with protesters in the Beijing square before the massacre 30 years ago. He remembers those who died for their beliefs
As a child in the dark days of the Cultural Revolution, I dreamed of being a painter. My art teacher warned me that paintings could land a person behind bars, especially portraits, and advised me to stick to anodyne landscapes. In my 20s, after Mao died in 1976 and Deng Xiaoping rose to power, I moved to Beijing. The country was opening up at last. During the day, I took photographs for a state-run magazine; in the evenings I painted sombre impressionist visions of deserted streets, which I hung on the walls and ceiling of my one-room shack.
Dissident scholars and writers would gather at my home to drink beer and discuss the latest translations of Virginia Woolf, Jorge Luis Borges or Claude Simon. We relished the small freedoms granted to us, but wanted more. We read Allen Ginsberg’s Howl, and longed for the day when we too could sing out of our windows in despair. All we could do to vent our frustration was sneak outside under the cover of darkness and hurl our empty beer bottles against a metal rubbish bin.
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