Journalist Gail Pellett recounts experience reporting in post-Revolution 1980s China

By Rob Lorei

This Friday, June 4, is the anniversary of The Tiananmen Massacre in China. One of the major (and  unrealized) goals of the protesters was a free press and the end of censorship. In addition, this month marks the 50th anniversary of the start of China’s Cultural Revolution. Gail Pellett was a journalist in Beijing in the early 1980’s. It was a time as the influence of the Cultural Revolution was ending and China was making a sharp turn toward state run businesses or state capitalism. She’s written a new book called Forbidden Fruit  1980 Beijing based on her experiences as one of the first foreign journalists allowed to report in China during the end of the country’s cultural revolution in the early 1980s.