In the intellectual ferment leading up to the 1989 Tiananmen protests, a much-watched series on Chinese television called River Elegy became closely identified with the hopes of China’s reformers. The six-part series, which used the Yellow River as an allegory for Chinese civilization, argued that China should move away from its inward-looking culture, symbolized by the muddy river, and embrace the deep blue oceans that link China to the outside world. One of the series’ writers was a graduate student of Marxism at Renmin University named Yuan Zhiming.