Tiananmen Square

An epic, deeply moving coming-of-age novel about young love and lasting friendships forged in the years leading up to the Tiananmen Square student protests, for readers of The Beekeeper of Aleppo and The Night Tiger.

As a child in Beijing in the 1970s, Lai lives with her family in a lively, working-class neighborhood near the heart of the city. Thoughtful yet unassuming, she spends her days with her friends beyond the attention of her parents: Her father is a reclusive figure who lingers in the background, while her mother, an aging beauty and fervent patriot, is quick-tempered and preoccupied with neighborhood gossip. Only Lai's grandmother, a formidable and colorful maverick, seems to really see Lai and believe that she can blossom beyond their circumstances.

But Lai is quickly awakened to the harsh realities of the Chinese state. A childish prank results in a terrifying altercation with police that haunts her for years; she also learns that her father, like many others, was broken during the Cultural Revolution. As she enters adolescence, Lai meets a mysterious and wise bookseller who introduces her to great works--Hemingway, Camus, and Orwell, among others--that open her heart to the emotional power of literature and her mind to thrillingly different perspectives. Along the way, she experiences the ebbs and flows of friendship, the agony of grief, and the first steps and missteps in love.

A gifted student, Lai wins a scholarship to study at the prestigious Peking University where she soon falls in with a theatrical band of individualists and misfits dedicated to becoming their authentic selves, despite the Communist Party's insistence on conformity--and a new world opens before her. When student resistance hardens under the increasingly restrictive policies of the state, the group gets swept up in the fervor, determined to be heard, joining the masses of demonstrators and dreamers who display remarkable courage and loyalty in the face of danger. As 1989 unfolds, the spirit of change is in the air. . .

Drawn from her own life, Lai Wen's novel is mesmerizing and haunting--a universal yet intimate story of youth and self-discovery that plays out against the backdrop of a watershed historic event. Tiananmen Square captures the hope and idealism of a new generation and the lasting price they were willing to pay in the name of freedom.

These book club questions are from the publisher, Spiegel & Grau.

Book club questions for Tiananmen Square by Lai Wen

Use these discussion questions to guide your next book club meeting.

Many accounts of the 1989 Tiananmen Square massacre center on the political conflict of the demonstrations and the brutal, hardline response of the Chinese state. Yet Lai Wen’s novel, for the most part, follows the coming-of-age story of its protagonist in the years preceding the demonstrations. The protests only occur toward the end of the book and, Lai, the protagonist, is a committed supporter rather than a vocal leader of the movement. In what ways does Lai Wen’s distinctive telling of the massacre differ from other stories you have read or heard about it? Discuss how this novel earns its title as a story about Tiananmen Square.

Lai’s parents have contrasting, almost binary personalities: her father is “a distant presence” throughout her childhood, while her mother is “hands-on, seeking to police every aspect and inflection of her family’s life.” We learn that they are both marked by the Cultural Revolution. How did this fact shape your understanding of their relationship to each other and to their children? What are some other examples of how different characters in fiction (or people in your own life) respond differently to a shared experience and historic or current events?

Within her family, Lai is closest with her grandmother, an outspoken, colorful individualist. Which of the interactions between Lai and her grandmother most moved you? These types of multigenerational households are customary throughout Asia and many non-Western countries, with children, parents, and grandparents all living together under one roof. How does this compare with a conventional nuclear American household? What are some of the cultural customs or family dynamics in the book that resonated with—or differed from—your own upbringing?

After a shocking run-in with the police as a young girl, Lai returns home and receives an unexpected display of tenderness from her mother, who gently bathes her wounds. This is a stark counterpoint to her mother’s behavior elsewhere in the novel, when she appears temperamental, jealous, or resentful of Lai. What is your understanding of Lai’s mother’s motivations? What is the source of her resentment? Why do you think Lai and her mother’s relationship is, and increasingly becomes, so complex and fractured—and how does that affect Lai and the choices she makes in her own life?

In her early adolescence, Lai chances upon a mysterious bookseller, who introduces her to literary classics such as 1984 by George Orwell, The Stranger by Albert Camus, and The Old Man and the Sea by Ernest Hemingway. Lai’s reading and discussions with the bookseller widen her understanding of the world. What books have you read that changed the way you perceived the world? Are there people in your childhood who influenced your literary tastes in the same way the old bookseller did for Lai?

Lai’s school visit to Chairman Mao’s mausoleum excites her mother and her neighbors, all of whom deeply revere Chairman Mao’s legacy. Soon after, though, her father brings her to the “memory wall,” with accounts, stories, and letters from the Cultural Revolution, including a poem he had written. Why do you think Lai’s father brought her to the “memory wall” at this point in her life? As a man of few words, what do you think he wanted to express to Lai in this moment? Did this change your understanding of him?

Gen and Lai do not initially get along as children and seem like an unlikely pairing as teenagers. Where Lai is sensitive and empathetic, Gen is more reserved, righteous, and sardonic; Gen comes from a well-to-do, aristocratic background, while Lai and her family live in a working-class neighborhood. What did you make of their relationship? What draws them together? What are some other romantic pairings in fiction or film that you might compare them to?

In the essay that eventually wins her a scholarship to Peking University, Lai writes, “Being human is about remembering. We are the sum of all our memories. And yet, everyone forgets. And anyone can become confused. But when we lose track of our memories, that is when we are at our most human.” Do you agree? Reflect on this statement in the broader context of this novel—and in your own life.

After entering Peking University, Gen’s and Lai’s lives diverge even further. Gen attempts to forge his own path as a student leader, and Lai soon falls in with a group of outsiders, Madam Macaw’s Marvelous Marauders, including the rebellious Anna and Lan and Min, a queer couple. How did your own identity and friendships change from adolescence to adulthood? Were there friends from that period who helped define you and changed the trajectory of your life?

The Tank Man refers to an enduring image of the Tiananmen Square massacre: the Chinese protestor who fearlessly stood in front of a row of tanks, who remains unidentified to this day. Lai reveals at the end of the novel that Tank Man is actually a woman—Anna, her close friend with an affinity for cross-dressing. How does Lai’s revelation change your perception of Anna? What does it mean to connect Anna’s story, character, and gender, to Tank Man’s legacy?

Today, any mention, reference, or allusion to the 1989 Tiananmen Square protests is censored in China by the Chinese Communist Party. At the same time, the practice of banning books with “controversial” subjects is on the rise across America. What are the implications of censoring or banning books such as this one? Discuss the ways censorship and book-banning affects culture and education. Are there instances in which you believe this practice is justified?

The author Lai Wen has said that the novel is drawn from autobiographical experience and that she took inspiration from Elena Ferrante in writing under a pseudonymous pen name. In Wen’s case, her anonymity protects her from reprisal over the novel’s subject matter. How much of your reading experience of this story depends on it being true, especially as it is based on a historical event? Think of other novels written under pseudonyms. Does an author’s anonymity—not knowing their real name or identity—affect your response to the work?

The novel comes to a sudden close with Anna’s disappearance and Lai’s departure to Canada. The epilogue finds Lai thirty years later in Toronto, a literature teacher and a mother of two. There are small glimpses of how the lives of the other characters—Gen, Lai’s mother and brother—have unfolded. What do you imagine happened for Lai and the other characters in the immediate aftermath of Tiananmen Square? What do you think happened to those we don’t know about, such as Anna or the old bookseller? What else might you want to know about Lai’s life?

Tiananmen Square Book Club Questions PDF

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