Author: Derrick Zhou

A dreamer. A voice. A soul that believed peace was louder than war.

June 4th never left me. I think part of me stayed in that square—where the candles burned, and the students sang, and for one brief moment, the world felt like it could change.

I was twenty-one again, sitting in a dim Beijing apartment, listening to John Lennon sing our song, just for us, just for that moment.

Lennon’s visit to China in 1989 became one of the most controversial and impactful moments of his post-Beatles career. Though his time in the country was brief, his influence on the pro-democracy movement was profound. To this day, many Chinese dissidents remember Lennon not just as a musician, but as a symbol of hope and…

I was a good citizen. I taught literature. I volunteered for the school committee. I kept my thoughts in the pages of books with pages I’d never tear. But that night… something broke.

“We didn’t bring the Wall down. But we gave it a soundtrack while it fell.”

No one could believe it. Except the two men who, against all odds, had found their way back to the same table, in the same rain, watching the same world tremble—and deciding, once again, to do something about it.