" 1989 played out a little differently in China, of course. When thousands of students converged upon Tiananmen Square in Beijing to demand a little democracy--Hey hey, hey ho, Maosim has got to go--they were greeted with a decidedly old school response. Deng Xiaoping, the chain-smoking gnome with the twinkling eyes who then ruled China, simply reached for his totalitarian rulebook, flipped toward the index--Democracy protesters, suitable response--and followed directions. He shot them. And that was that. Except, of course, it wasn't... "

― J. Maarten Troost , Lost on Planet China: The Strange and True Story of One Man's Attempt to Understand the World's Most Mystifying Nation, or How He Became Comfortable Eating Live Squid