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Tiananmen Square in early 1989 attracted many dreamers like Ma Jian, who returned from Hong Kong to a one-room shack in Beijing in order to join the student protests.

In February of this year I returned to China to research my next book. The authorities know about the novels of mine that have been published in the west, including the latest one, Beijing Coma, about a student shot in Tiananmen Square, but so far have allowed me to return.

I no longer have the terrible nightmares that I used to have. Mao had just died in 1976, and China began to open up. For the first time scholarships to go to the West to study were awarded on academic merit.

The Chinese leadership hoped that the world would soon forget the Tiananmen Square massacre. Our job in Congress is to ensure that we never forget those who lost their lives in Tiananmen Square that day or the pro-democracy cause for which they fought.

There are other issues I have felt more emotionally connected to, like China, where I lived and worked for some time. I was living there when Tiananmen Square erupted.

I grew up on the East Coast and was going to go to an Ivy League School, but at the last minute I decided to be a hippy. It was the protest movements on the war, peace movements were going on at our university. It was a fantastic time.

I remember vividly one distinct memory of arriving in Hong Kong and being the only blonde haired girl in this sea of international students, and thinking, 'Oh, my God. There's no hiding here.'

Once I became interested in China, I flew to Beijing in 1996 to spend half a year studying Mandarin. The city stunned me.

When I was six, the Korean War broke out, and all the classrooms were destroyed by war. We studied under the trees or in whatever buildings were left.