HISTORY

Egg on Mao

The Story of an Ordinary Man Who Defaced an Icon and Unmasked a Dictatorship

By Denise Chong

Counterpoint. 249 pp. $26

Andy Warhol would have appreciated the gesture: On May 23, 1989, as student protests raged, Lu Decheng and two other men hurled 30 paint-filled eggs at the immense portrait of Mao Zedong that dominates Beijing's Tiananmen Square. But in Deng Xiaopeng's China, poli-art stunts weren't mere blog fodder: The gag stranded Lu in prison for almost a decade, cost him his wife and daughter, and led to his eventual defection to Canada.

Denise Chong, author of "The Girl in the Picture," a biography of the burned villager in Nick Ut's iconic Vietnam War photo, focuses on another small character in a big story in "Egg on Mao" to unearth startling truths about Chinese democracy. A radicalized auto mechanic from Hunan who flouted China's marriage laws and one-child policy, Lu traveled over 600 miles to Tiananmen only to be spurned by insular student demonstrators, then trumped their ineffective sit-ins and hunger strikes by hurling eggs. Lu's action changed nothing -- other nations' on-again, off-again interest in Chinese human rights has allowed Mao's authoritarian political culture to survive three decades after his death. Still, in a world of compromise and half-measures, it's refreshing to read about Lu's ill-conceived but thoroughly punk-rock gesture of defiance.

-- Justin Moyer moyerj@washpost.com