In Donna Bailey Nurse's review of Egg on Mao: The Story of an Ordinary Man Who Defaced an Icon and Unmasked a Dictatorship (This Protest Was No Yolk - Books, Jan. 2), she describes author Denise Chong's dialogue as awkward and flat. I disagree. The lack of freedom to choose in China leaps from every page, in the stories of Lu Decheng's childhood, his marriage and his life as a dissident.
I spent five years in China as a reporter and was in Tiananmen Square when Mr. Lu and his colleagues threw the paint-filled eggs on the portrait of Chairman Mao. As witness to the massacre in Tiananmen and to stories of many ordinary Chinese citizens, I feel Ms. Chong captured the human story of a repressive China then and now. She took great risks in returning to China to capture the real story behind the story, the one about truth and decency.
The saga of Mr. Lu, an ordinary bus mechanic transformed into a prisoner of conscience, is a powerful human-rights story. It's important we listen.
Senator