Just a quick side note. Back ~2006 I had the opportunity to travel to China with Carma Hinton, the director of Gate of Heavenly Peace. Amazing woman with an amazing background.

Would've loved to pick her brains on what she learned. I imagine she had interviewed tons of people in the process of making the documentary.

Yeah, to add some substance to the largely fluff comment I wrote above (I just woke up and was surprised to see someone mention the film), she actually went to school in China, so she is one of the only Westerner's I've ever met who could speak Mandarin natively. One of the unfortunate things is that she actually lost touch with a lot of her old friends due to the volatility of that era, so she had spent much of her adult life reconnecting with the people she's able to find. Many of them are pseudo dissidents now - like Dai Qing (https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dai_Qing), who we were also fortunate enough to meet.