China After Mao—Reading People's Daily by the Democracy Wall, Beijing 毛以後的中國──北京,在西單民主墻讀《人民日報》
1979
In 1979 a bus depot in Xidan became the site of an extraordinary outpouring of individual grievances as people who deemed themselves wronged posted petitions listing their grievances on the public wall there sparking the name Democracy Wall. Thousands of ‘big character posters’ were posted on the wall in a period of free speech which flourished briefly in 1979. In this image a solitary man squats on the ground reading the People’s Daily, the official mouthpiece of the Communist Party, while in front of him the crowd studies a new round of posters pasted on the wall. Beijing, 1979
Liu Heung Shing (born 1951, Hong Kong) graduated from Hunter College of The City University of New York in 1975. A former foreign correspondent and photojournalist for Time and the Associated Press, Liu was posted to China, the United States, Korea, India, and the former Soviet Union between 1976 and 1988. As a photojournalist, he documents daily life. Liu lives and works in Beijing.