The following is from the text of an e-mail sent to Jeff Kingston from Cindy Yang, a Chinese university student.
What disappointed me most about the memorial was that I had expected the exhibition to be condensed and focused, but, things were just the opposite. Although disappointed, I had to give the memorial the right to be huger than necessary — were it not so, it would have been politically incorrect in some sense.
After the visit, I often wondered why I was not the least touched or moved by the exhibition. One reason is that I was already familiar with that history, so nothing on display made me feel aghast or strike me as particularly overwhelming. The second reason is that my family have not much, if not nothing, to do with the city. For me, the massacre is like a legend — I believe it to be true only because I choose to.