Sunrise Over Tiananmen Square

4/1/2024

Artist Shui-Bo Wang narrates this story of his family's life in China during the rise of the Maoist Communist regime and provides us with some stunningly detailed illustrations to accompany his history. Essentially this is a one-man documentary that highlights just how willingly the largely rural and illiterate population engaged in the ideas of freedom and wealth redistribution. Of their belief that Mao's defeat of the post-Imperial Nationalist government would shine a new light for all the people, offering hope, equality, housing, food and jobs for all. He, himself, even ended up working for the military propaganda machine extolling just how superior their life was to the decadent West where children died, frozen, on the streets. In times when technology was very limited and freedom of e