Ha Jin's novel The Crazed ends amid the aftermath of the bloody Tiananmen massacre of June 1989. Jian Wan, the longhaired grad student and narrator, has been in Beijing and has seen the monstrous crackdown firsthand. Back in his staid university town, he is tipped off that the police are coming to arrest him as a counterrevolutionary. He flees, hawking his Phoenix bike to a fruit vendor for some apricots and enough change to buy a train ticket to Nanjing. From there, Jian plans to board an express train heading south to Guangzhou, then sneak into Hong...
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