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:
“... many of the so-called grievances of women are false. No man ever unfairly discriminated against me. If one tried to, I ... was equal to the emergency, and such experience really added a great deal to the zest of life.... women, as a habit, over- estimated their ability, and ... they were too untrained even to appreciate the magnitude of their undertaking.”
—Alice Foote MacDougall (1867–1945)
“The awakening of the people of China to the possibilities under free government is the most significant, if not the most momentous, event of our generation.”
—Woodrow Wilson (1856–1924)