A Memoir Of Misfortune

Su Xiaokang was born in 1949 in China’s Zhejiang province. An investigative reporter who made a name for himself during the 1980s for tackling many sensitive subjects, he is best known as co-author of a six-part television series, River Elegy (1988), which caused widespread debate about political reform and China's future. It was this brief period of intellectual effervescence that ultimately led to the Tiananmen Square Massacre on June 4, 1989. Named number five on the government's wanted list, Su Xiaokang was smuggled to Hong Kong and then Paris before settling in 1990 in Princeton, New Jersey.ABOUT THE TRANSLATORZhu Hong, formerly of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, is currently Visiting Professor at Boston University.