Fascinating family artifacts from the 1989 Tienanmen Square protests in China. I remember hearing about them during the sturm und drang of my own late adolescence. How surreal to contemplate them again with the perspective half a century gives — and to contrast Tienanmen with the Arab spring.
It was a black film canister, rattling around the bottom of an old Naturalizer shoebox labeled “photos.” I opened it, wondering if it was a roll of unused film. Instead, I found a twist of white tissue paper wrapped around tightly rolled black-and-white negatives. I held them up to the light. At first I saw…legs.
Then, people with bicycles.
Wait, that looks like the Monument to the People’s Heroes. Is that Tiananmen Square? With banners? 
Next, a white form rising above a crowd, holding…a torch?
Oh man, is this what I think it is?
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