The Body Politic
“China’s body image shifts from cultural revolution to sexual revolution.”
Andrew Lam
Editor’s Note: Andrew Lam ’86 is an editor for New America Media (www.newamericamedia.org). His rumination on fusion cuisine, “Where jalapeño meets star anise,” appeared in the May/June 2007 issue of California (www.alumni.berkeley.edu). Lam is the author of ("Perfume Dreams:Relections on the Vietnamese Diaspora") (Heyday Books 2005).
There came a startling moment when everything shifted. A man carrying two plastic bags, one in each hand, stood directly in the path of a column of armored tanks, effectively preventing them from proceeding down the avenue toward Tiananmen Square in Beijing.
The day before, on June 4, 1989, hundreds of pro-democracy students and workers had been gunned down in and near the square. The image of “Tank Man,” as he’s now called, stays indelibly in the mind. Some have said his name is Wang Weilin, a 19-year-old student, whereabouts unknown. There is speculation that he either was executed or is living in exile in Taiwan. Whoever he is, wherever he is now, dead or alive, it is certain that for a brief moment he managed to stop the machines with just his body. This unknown rebel, unarmed, stood up against the awesome power of the state and, as the world watched, gained something priceless in return: He liberated his body from the collective, from being subservient to the ideological machine, and opened the floodgates to a next world.

Passe Partout
Andrew Lam 

Huy Lê
Carolyn Goossen



