Saturday, May 30, 2009

almost 20 years since June 4th, 1989...

Interesting article about China's 200 million so-called 'post-1980' kids — a generation of mostly single children, thanks to the one-child policy, born on the cusp of an unparalleled economic boom. Aged between 20 and 30, they are Web-savvy, worldly, fashion-conscious — and largely apolitical.

Web-savvy & cynical: China's youth since Tiananmen

While the graphic design student described in the article plays games online and can list the latest Hollywood releases and NBA stats, he knows next to nothing about the pro-democracy movement that ended in a bloody crackdown the day he was born.

Pictured here are students at Beijing's Central Academy of Fine Arts building the so-called "Goddess of Democracy" that they set up to challenge the god-like icon of Mao that still presides over Tienanmen Square today... The students' statue, and their peaceful pro-democracy movement, was crushed by tanks in the early morning hours of June 4th, 1989.