Just over a year ago—on June 3, 1989—the tanks clattered into Beijing's Tiananmen Square, the guns began to chatter, and China's short-lived experiment in democracy came crashing to a terrible and tragic end. "This is not the West," said, in Auden's memorable phrase, a "voice without a face." "It is China."

This point is underscored by Hardy C. Wilcoxon in his discussion of Chinese students and the burden they bear from the past. Communism is merely the conformity of the present. Conformity, particularly in education, has been part and parcel of Chinese culture since the time of Confucius (551 B.C.—479 B.C.), who, in Mr. Wilcoxon's words, "has cast a very long shadow indeed."

Born in 1952, Hardy C. Wilcoxon grew up in Arkansas and Tennessee. He majored in philosophy and English at Amherst College, and later attended Yale University where he received his M.A. and Ph.D. degrees in English. He has taught at Bowdoin College, Amherst College, and the U.S. Naval Academy. He is a former Fulbright Lecturer at Beijing Foreign Studies University. After working in China, Mr. Wilcoxon decided to live more extensively abroad and with his English wife has settled in Hong Kong, where he is a Lecturer in English at the Chinese University and presently coordinates a two-year writing program for the English majors.