Experience in China
In the spring of 1989 Taft was travelling in China leading a dinosaur fossil expedition. It was here that he witnessed the pro-democracy protests at Tiananmen Square and the brutal suppression of students by the Chinese government.
When asked later, Taft said; “There were thousands of them.... It felt like Woodstock, as if someone had taken the chains off these students.... There was a sense of revolution.”
The response came weeks later in early June, when the military was called in and, in a night of bloodshed and chaos, killed — depending on reports — hundreds to thousands of protesters. Taft said, "It was like springtime and then the depths of winter."
Read more about this topic: Kevin Taft
Famous quotes containing the words experience and/or china:
“Not the fruit of experience, but experience itself, is the end.”
—Walter Pater (1839–1894)
“Whether the nymph shall break Diana’s law,
Or some frail china jarreceive a flaw,
Or stain her honour, or her new brocade,”
—Alexander Pope (1688–1744)