As a first-time visitor to China, I was nervous.
There had been too many stories about British businessmen found dead in hotel rooms, too many reports from Amnesty about human rights abuses, too many articles about the lack of freedom of speech. Should one even visit the country? Was doing so to somehow endorse a suspect regime? Would the act of taking tourist snaps in Tiananmen Square – something I hoped to do – be to dishonour the brave man with the shopping bag who so famously stopped the tanks there in 1989? Could one even talk openly about the events of those few tumultuous days? I didn't know. These were the thoughts in my head as I boarded the flight to Shanghai. If someone had set me in clay, I would have been the Terracotta Worrier.
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