Coming to Terms with the Past: China
Steve Smith shows that those who control the present are sometimes able to control interpretations of the past.
'The catastrophe over ten years ago has faded into the mists of time. The political slogans pasted again and again on the walls have all been painted over. The past is obscured from the view of pedestrians strolling through the spring night, invisible to those for whom only the present can be seen.’ Yu Hua, ‘1986’ in The Past and Punishments, trans. Andrew F. Jones (1996).
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