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:
“What is termed Sin is an essential element of progress. Without it the world would stagnate, or grow old, or become colourless. By its curiosity Sin increases the experience of the race. Through its intensified assertion of individualism it saves us from monotony of type. In its rejection of the current notions about morality, it is one with the higher ethics.”
—Oscar Wilde (1854–1900)
“The roof of England fell
Great Paris tolled her bell
And China staunched her milk and wept for bread”
—Karl Shapiro (b. 1913)