A volley of camera flashes made me jump. Why would Chinese border guards want to capture this lone British backpacker, dust-coated after crossing the Silk Road mountain pass from Pakistan? In Kashgar, the nearest city, the answer became clear. A government noticeboard showing a number of startled photos of people like me bore the headline: “Foreign tourists return; China is stable after the ‘counter-revolutionary turmoil’.”
It was the summer of 1989, two months after the June 4 Tiananmen Square massacre that shocked the world and brought a brutal end to what became known as the Beijing Spring — the student-led protests for a more democratic China. Beginning on April 15, the Spring had blossomed for 50 days, and spread to cities nationwide. Thirty years ago
