Never Turn Back: China and the Forbidden History of the 1980s
Julian Gewirtz
Belknap Press: 2022
On a mild, overcast day in January 1984, Deng Xiaoping set out as usual for his morning walk. This time, he was far from the Beijing courtyard garden that ordinarily defined the limits of his amblings. Deng had woken that Saturday morning in a roomy suite at the Zhongshan Hot Springs Hotel in southerly Guangdong province, just to the west of the Pearl River, which spills into the South China Sea between Hong Kong and Macau.
Behind the hotel loomed a modest peak with a winding footpath running to a pagoda at its top—though amid the countless curling valleys and rounded hills of Guangdong province, Luo Sanmei hill was almost entirely unexceptional. Named after a girl of local legend lauded for her filial piety, it did not quite reach one hundred metres in height, its features softened by fractals of fern and azalea, and shadowed by a high canopy of pine, eucalyptus and sandalwood.
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- Tags: China, Issue 30, Jonathan Chatwin, Julian Gewirtz