National Geographic spoke with Lim about her first work experience in China, how China views the Tiananmen protests a quarter century on, and the likelihood that the publication of this book means she won't be able to return. In 2006, she opened NPR's Shanghai bureau and three years later moved over to Beijing, where she was based until recently. A year later she moved to Hong Kong for a job as a journalist and eventually joined the BBC.
In 1994, fresh from the university, she took a job as a translator in Beijing. Lim, originally from the United Kingdom, graduated from Leeds University with a degree in modern Chinese studies. (Related: ' Face-Off in Tiananmen Square.') Lim, until recently a Beijing-based correspondent for NPR, interviewed a cast of memorable characters connected to the protests, including an artist who as a young soldier participated in the army crackdown at Tiananmen a mother whose son was killed during the protests and who has demanded that the government acknowledge and account for his death and the highest ranking Chinese official who refused to support using violence against the students and has lived under house arrest ever since.
Twenty-five years after the Chinese government ordered the army to crack down on student-led protests in Tiananmen Square, Louisa Lim has written The People's Republic of Amnesia, a book that offers new vantage points on one of the crucial turning points in modern Chinese history.
