Bullets and opium: Real-life stories of China after the Tiananmen Square Massacre

“Moving…a memorable series of portraits of the working-class people who defended Tiananmen Square." —The New York Review of Books

“A series of harrowing, unforgettable tales...Had [Liao Yiwu] not fled the country in 2011, they may never have emerged. An indispensable historical document.” —Kirkus Reviews (starred review)

“Liao Yiwu’s searing account of what happened in Beijing on June 4, 1989, and its lasting impact, doggedly collected from witnesses, demands attention.” —South China Morning Post

From the award-winning poet, dissident, and “one of the most original and remarkable Chinese writers of our time” (Philip Gourevitch) comes a raw, evocative, and unforgettable look at the Tiananmen Square massacre through the eyes of those who were there.

For over seven years, Liao Yiwu—a master of contemporary Chinese literature, imprisoned and persecuted as a counter-revolutionary until he fled the country in 2011—secretly interviewed survivors of the devastating 1989 Tiananmen Square massacre. Tortured, imprisoned, and forced into silence and the margins of Chinese society for thirty years, their harrowing stories are now finally revealed in this gripping and masterful work of investigative journalism.