Beijing in was under de facto martial law, and my oppressed, depressed, and deeply unimpressed students were subjected to omnipresent surveillance and intense 'political education'. The epiphany I'm referring to came in a conversation with a student in which I piously invoked the example of the estimable Norman Bethune who, as all Chinese and Canadians learn, died heroically in the service of the Chinese Communist Party and the world revolution.
I can't remember what my point was, but my student's response remains unforgotten for what it revealed about how skeptical her assessment of the moral foundations and validity of communist China had become.
One is that after Tiananmen, the China-watching community is not likely to accept anything associated with the Communist Party of China, not even those heroes we would like to believe in, at face value.
Another is that people or places that successfully fill spaces in-between China and the West are bound to get involved in some rather contradictory messes.
Along with Dr. Yet fifteen years after Alley's passing, Anne Marie Brady has revealed that very little about Alley's life was as it seemed.
