Beijing Coma
E684464
Beijing Coma is a novel by Chinese writer Ma Jian that intertwines personal memory and political history through the story of a Tiananmen Square protester who lies in a coma while narrating events from his past.
All labels observed (1)
| Label | Occurrences |
|---|---|
| Beijing Coma canonical | 5 |
How this entity was disambiguated
This entity first appeared as the object of triple T7724430 — resolving that mention is where its identity was fixed. The disambiguator weighed these candidate entities and picked the highlighted one (or “None”, minting a new entity). This is how homonymy is resolved: the same surface form can point to different entities.
NED1
Entity disambiguation (via context triple)
gpt-5-mini-2025-08-07
Target entity: Beijing Coma Context triple: [Ma Jian (writer), notableWork, Beijing Coma]
-
A.
Death by China
"Death by China" is a controversial non-fiction book and documentary that argues China's trade practices and economic policies pose a serious threat to the U.S. economy and global stability.
-
B.
The Man from Beijing
The Man from Beijing is a crime thriller novel by Swedish author Henning Mankell that intertwines a modern mass murder investigation with historical events spanning continents and centuries.
-
C.
Sky Over China
Sky Over China is a literary work that served as the source material for the 1932 film "Shanghai Express."
-
D.
China's Sorrow
China's Sorrow is a grim nickname for the Yellow River, reflecting its long history of catastrophic floods and devastation in China.
-
E.
Go East, Young Man
"Go East, Young Man" is the autobiographical memoir of U.S. Supreme Court Justice William O. Douglas, recounting his early life and rise to the nation’s highest court.
- F. None of above. chosen
- G. Unsure - the case is ambiguous/there is not enough information to decide.
NED2
Entity disambiguation (via description)
gpt-5-mini-2025-08-07
Target entity: Beijing Coma Target entity description: Beijing Coma is a novel by Chinese writer Ma Jian that intertwines personal memory and political history through the story of a Tiananmen Square protester who lies in a coma while narrating events from his past.
-
A.
Death by China
"Death by China" is a controversial non-fiction book and documentary that argues China's trade practices and economic policies pose a serious threat to the U.S. economy and global stability.
-
B.
The Man from Beijing
The Man from Beijing is a crime thriller novel by Swedish author Henning Mankell that intertwines a modern mass murder investigation with historical events spanning continents and centuries.
-
C.
Sky Over China
Sky Over China is a literary work that served as the source material for the 1932 film "Shanghai Express."
-
D.
China's Sorrow
China's Sorrow is a grim nickname for the Yellow River, reflecting its long history of catastrophic floods and devastation in China.
-
E.
Go East, Young Man
"Go East, Young Man" is the autobiographical memoir of U.S. Supreme Court Justice William O. Douglas, recounting his early life and rise to the nation’s highest court.
- F. None of above. chosen
Statements (45)
| Predicate | Object |
|---|---|
| instanceOf | novel ⓘ |
| author |
Ma Jian
ⓘ
linked to:
Ma Jian (writer)
|
| bannedIn | China ⓘ |
| centralTheme |
historical amnesia
ⓘ
individual versus state ⓘ memory ⓘ political repression ⓘ trauma ⓘ |
| countryOfOrigin | China ⓘ |
| criticalReception | praised by many Western critics for its ambition and political courage ⓘ |
| genre |
historical fiction
ⓘ
literary fiction ⓘ political novel ⓘ |
| hasAwardNomination |
longlisted for the Man Asian Literary Prize
ⓘ
shortlisted for the Independent Foreign Fiction Prize ⓘ |
| hasMotif |
body as a metaphor for the nation
ⓘ
erasure of history ⓘ silence and voicelessness ⓘ |
| hasSubject |
Chinese Communist Party
ⓘ
censorship in China ⓘ family relationships ⓘ state violence ⓘ student protest movement ⓘ urban life in Beijing ⓘ |
| ISBN | 9780701182957 ⓘ |
| languageOfEdition | English ⓘ |
| literaryStyle |
realism
ⓘ
stream of consciousness ⓘ |
| mainCharacter | Dai Wei ⓘ |
| narrativeDevice | coma patient narrator ⓘ |
| narrativePerspective | first-person narration ⓘ |
| narrativeStructure | interweaving of present coma state with past memories ⓘ |
| notableFor |
critique of contemporary Chinese politics
ⓘ
depiction of the Tiananmen Square protests ⓘ |
| originalLanguage | Chinese ⓘ |
| originalTitle | Beijing Coma ⓘ |
| pageCount | approximately 600 pages ⓘ |
| plotSummary | The novel follows student protester Dai Wei, who is shot during the Tiananmen Square crackdown and lies in a long-term coma while recalling his life and the events of 1989. ⓘ |
| publicationYear | 2008 ⓘ |
| publisher | Chatto & Windus ⓘ |
| setting |
Beijing
ⓘ
Tiananmen Square ⓘ |
| timePeriod |
1989 Tiananmen Square protests and massacre
ⓘ
linked to:
Tiananmen Square protests of 1989
post-1989 China ⓘ |
| translator | Flora Drew ⓘ |
How these facts were elicited
The pipeline generated the facts above by prompting gpt-5.1 with this entity's name + description and the instruction below.
Instruction
You are a knowledge base construction expert. Given a subject entity and a description of it, return factual statements that you know for the subject as a JSON list of dictionaries(triples), where keys must be "subject", "predicate" and "object". The number of facts may be very high, between 25 to 50 or more, for very popular subjects. For less popular subjects, the number of facts can be very low, like 5 or 10. # Requirements - If you don't know the subject at all, return an empty list. - If the subject is not a named entity, return an empty list. - Include at least one triple where predicate is "instanceOf". - Do not get too wordy. - Separate several objects into multiple triples with one object.
Input
Subject: Beijing Coma Description of subject: Beijing Coma is a novel by Chinese writer Ma Jian that intertwines personal memory and political history through the story of a Tiananmen Square protester who lies in a coma while narrating events from his past.
Referenced by (5)
Full triples — surface form annotated when it differs from this entity's canonical label.