ABSTRACT
Su Dongpo was a famous poet and calligrapher who lived during the Song Dynasty (eleventh century). But his name is also almost homophonic with Su Dongbo, meaning ‘the Soviet and Eastern European Wave’, by which the Chinese educated public refers to the events of 1989–1991 in Eastern Europe (dong) and the Soviet Union (Su). Does this mean that, for Chinese intellectuals, these events represent a beautifully written page in the history of mankind? 1
