"The period in China's recent history between the death of Mao and the debacle of 1989 can be seen as a long decade, but also historically as a "lost" decade. It is "lost" in the sense that the political engagement of intellectuals and makers of culture has been occulted by official history-telling; it is also "lost" in that its memory had been abandoned even by many who lived through it; "lost" also in the embarrassed silence of those who prefer to focus on the subsequent economic miracle of the 1990's that gave rise to today's more prosperous China; and "lost" as a time of opportunity for cultural and political change that ultimately did not happen.