The author of this book was a reporter for "Sing Tao Daily" and was stationed in Beijing at the end of April 1989 to cover the democracy movement. The book is divided into six main parts: Square Facts records the course of the 1989 democracy movement, from the author's visit to Beijing in April to the early morning of June 4, when she and the masses were evacuated from Tiananmen Square. The second part concerns post-hijacking memories, which are some of the author's interviews from 1989. The third part concerns the interviews. The author had interviewed 7 student leaders and intellectuals that year. The leaders told her the reasons why they devoted themselves to the student movement. The fourth part is about the rest of the author's life, from June 4 to December 1990. The author has recorded some fragments of her speeches to the secondary school students in Hong Kong. Some of them are sentimental, some of them are confessional, and all of them are sincere and heartfelt. The fifth part is "Twenty Years of Wounds," which is a reminiscence written by the author on the 20th anniversary of June Fourth. The sixth part is about the grassroots of June 4. These grassroots actors have been pretty much forgotten. The author wanted to write a biography of the grassroots of June 4 in order to fill in gaps in history.
The first edition of this book was published two years before the landmark event on July 5 in Urumqi from which the ethnic problems in Xinjiang erupted. The "July 5 Incident" was an ethnic vendetta in Urumqi that resulted in thousands of deaths and injuries. It has been regarded as a turning point in the all-out hostility between Uyghurs and Han Chinese and in the shift of Xinjiang's governance from economic development to political high-handedness. The book is thus considered prescient and ahead of its time. Before writing the book, Wang Lixiong had been imprisoned for more than 40 days on the charge of "stealing secret state documents." But this imprisonment brought him a great reward: he was to meet Muhtar, an ethnic Uyghur who was also a political prisoner. "It was because of Muhtar that the book took on a new perspective," says Wang Lixiong. Xinjiang is no longer a symbol in documents, books and materials, but has real flesh and blood, emotions, and even body heat.
According to official CCP statistics, some 550,000 people were directly labeled as rightists and persecuted during the Anti-Rightist campaign. These people, as well as others implicated in the campaign, are mostly unknown, except for a very few. The author, Shen Yuan, who was also labeled as a rightist when he was a university student in 1958, devoted himself to collecting and researching historical data on the anti-rightist campaign. He has compiled a book entitled Biographies of the 1957 Rightists, which attempts to present the truth about the Anti-Rightist campaign and its victims. The book is divided into four volumes of about 1.2 million words, containing the stories of about 600 rightists and about 240 historical photographs. 2016 marked the 60th anniversary of the Anti-Rightist campaign, and Shen Yuan used the original book as the basis for his New Biographies of the 1957 Rightists, expanding the number of people included to 1,588. Sha Yexin and Wu Yisan were both involved in the compilation of this book.
In this book, author Wang Lixiong presents his arguments with a great deal of personal experience and field work. The book covers the history of the Tibetan issue, the current situation, and various aspects. The book was first published by Mirror Books in Hong Kong in 1998, and an updated edition was released in 2009.
The Anti-Rightist Movement in China began in 1957 with the reorganization of intellectuals, followed by the Great Leap Forward, the People's Commune, and a series of calamities such as the Great Famine. The Hong Kong Five Sevens Society was founded in 2007 with the aim of collecting, organizing, and researching historical information about the Anti-Rightist Movement. It is headed by Wu Yisan, a writer who moved to Hong Kong from mainland China. The author of this book, Shen Yuan, who was also a Rightist at the time. He has systematically researched and organized the Anti-Rightist Movement that took place in 1957 and attempted to answer some of the unanswered questions.