Hello readers, welcome to the last check in of this book! I don't know about you all but I am glad to have finished it because I have to admit, at times it was a little bit tough to get up and read it. Included a very very brief summary below in case you need to catch up a little on what has happened.

Summary

In this section, Dai Wei's memories flit a lot less structured to the past and present. The sequence of events are also a bit jumbled up sometimes.

Past -

The students start an opening ceremony for the Democracy University amidst the mass shootings and massacre. After the ceremony, Mou Sen had to shut the university down almost immediately as the military forces are starting to take the square. He despairs about it. Dai Wei tells Mou Sen to burn the list of students who signed up for the university.

Hou De Jian and the three other intellectuals call for the students to leave the square. The students also vote to leave but before they could, the army arrives with the tanks and bloodshed happens. The students start to die one by one. Nu Wa and Mou Sen both suffer gun wounds, Mou Sen passes immediately while Nu Wa is rushed to the hospital with a grim diagnosis. Wang Wei gets his legs crushed and Bai Ling dies under a tank.

A letter was passed to Dai Wei before he goes to the hospital with Wang Fei but he isn't able to read it. At the hospital, he decides to take stock of the dead but realised that the staff have already been doing so. Outside the hospital, he sees Lu Lu's cafe. A woman tells him to get shoes, he looks at his feet and they are soaked with blood. He sees A Mei or thinks he does and he sees a gun shot whizz past, he thinks about whether she was shot or not and right after, he gets shot in the head.

Present -

A bunch of old classmates visit, this time with Wang Fei and he doesn't seem to be doing very well mentally. They talk about doing another demonstration of sorts and also about what happened to some of the other classmates. They also mentioned the Tank Man and speculate who it might be.

Dai Wei's mother tries to use Falun Gong to heal him but he feels nothing. The sparrow now lives with them and they feed it from time to time. The police is starting to crack down on Falun Gong followers and it seems that his mother was one of the protestors who demonstrated outside the government offices. The police takes them to a guesthouse and does a sort of brainwashing exercise by denouncing Falun Gong everyday.

When his mother goes away for a moment, the police comes and ransacks the place, finding evidence of her involvement in the cult. She then disappears for a week while Dai Wei's health starts to slowly get worse and worse. She comes back, worse for wear and dispirited. She had given up the names of some Falun Gong members and signed a declaration denouncing it to come home and care for him. As a result, she basically loses her mind and stops taking care of her health, eating badly and becomes a hoarder.

She stays in the apartment even as the rest of the building starts to leave because of the new development. She refuses to sign the contract to give up the place and leave even as they start to demolish around the apartment and cut off water and electricity. Tian Yi calls and tells them that she is getting married around Christmas. A nurse visits and Dai Wei thinks of Wen Niao, the nurse chides her and asks her to purchase a new drug for Dai Wei which she refuses.

Eventually, they demolish the building anyway, tearing down the balcony and outer wall, which also takes the sparrow nest. Dai Wei hears that Lu Lu is the one who is trying to build the new complex. Dai Wei feels his body undergoing a change, whether it is to wake up or die he does not know. It is implied that his mother goes into a spasm, foaming at her mouth. Dai Wei finally "wakes up" and escapes this "fleshy tomb". Before that, all he thinks about is A Mei, the letter that he never got to read and Tian Yi.

Fun Facts/Resources

All of the events described about the Tiananmen massacre is true and people are still being prosecuted about this till today. The government never acknowledges this.

The information about this event has largely been suppressed and youths in China can only learn about it from first hand accounts or passing the firewall and finding content about it. China censors any words related to it so youths have taken to using code words to talk about it on social media.

Nu Wa is the name of a Chinese goddess though pronunciation may be a bit different.

Hou De Jian is a real singer who have participated in the protests with 3 others and were named the 'Four Men of Honour'. As far as I can tell, most of the songs in the book are also real songs, one of them mentioned is the very famous The moon represents my heart by Teresa Teng.

And that's all folks for this very sobering read. Some questions are left in the comments as usual. If you'd like to see them in order, you can sort the comments by Old. Catch you in the discussions!