Synopses & Reviews
Beijing University, 1986. The Communists were in power, but the Harvard of China was a hotbed of intellectual and cultural activity, with political debates and English Corners where students eagerly practiced the language among themselves. Nineteen-year-old Wei had known the oppressive days of the Cultural Revolution, having grown up with her parents in a work camp in a remote region of China. Now, as a student, she was allowed to immerse herself in study and spend her free hours writing poetry -- that bastion of bourgeois intellectualism -- beside the Lake with No Name at the center of campus. It was there that Wei met Dong Yi.
Although Wei's love was first subsumed by the deep friendship that developed between them, it smoldered into a passionate longing. Ties to other lovers from their pasts stood always between them as the years passed and Wei moved through her studies, from undergraduate to graduate. Yet her relationship with Dong Yi continued to deepen as each season gave way to the next.
Amid the would-be lovers' private drama, the winds in China were changing, and the specter of government repression loomed once again. By the spring of 1989, everything had changed: student demands for freedom and transparency met with ominous official warnings of the repercussions they would face. The tide of student action for democracy -- led by young men and women around the university, including Dong Yi -- inexorably pushed the rigid wall of opposition, culminating in the international trauma at Tiananmen Square.
On June 4, 1989, tanks rolled into the square and blood flowed on the ancient city streets. It was a day that would see the end of lives, dreams -- and a tortuous romance between two idealistic spirits. Lake with No Name is Diane Wei Liang's remembrance of this time, of her own role in the democratic movement and of the friends and lovers who stood beside her and made history on that terrible day.
Synopsis
Diane Wei Liang's memoir, a love story intertwined with the dramatic history of Modern China, including the international trauma of Tiananmen Square.
Synopsis
Liang, creator of the Mei Wang literary mystery series, offers a tale as spellbinding as any she could invent: her own love story, intertwined with the dramatic history of modern China.
Synopsis
Diane Wei liang, creator of the mei Wang literary mystery series, brings us a tale as spellbinding as any she could invent: her own love story, intertwined with the dramatic history of modern china, including the international trauma of tiananmen square.
• Shedding a new light on history: Liang fled Tiananmen Square in June 1989 and returned to Beijing six years later in an attempt to find her sweetheart, from whom she had been separated once the troops rolled in. With her graceful, confident voice, Liang is the perfect author to shine a light on this moment in history, telling her true, dramatic story at a time when the world’s eyes are focused once again on China.
• The real-life drama behind the mysteries: Liang drew deeply from her life story in creating the protagonist of her novels: mei Wang is a female private investigator who has been living in Beijing since before the violent clash around Tiananmen Square. readers will be intrigued by how mei’s life reflects and differs from the author’s own turbulent experience in China.
• International phenomenon: rights for The Eye of Jade have been sold in twenty-two countries. Lake With No Name was published in the u.K. in 2003. This will be the first time that American readers will have access to Diane Wei Liang’s memoir.
• Timely and engaging: China is already the new world superpower. ms. Wei Liang’s novels have given readers an opportunity to learn about Chinese culture at a time when curiosity about China is at fever pitch.
About the Author
Diane Wei Liang was born in Beijing. She spent part of her childhood with her parents in a labor camp in a remote region of China. In 1989 she took part in the Student Democracy Movement and protested in Tiananmen Square. Diane is a graduate of Peking University. She has a Ph.D. in business administration from Carnegie Mellon University and was a professor of business in the U.S. and the U.K. for more than ten years. She now writes full-time and lives in London with her husband and their two children.