Beijing Coma (novel about Tiananmen Square protests)
E684468
Beijing Coma is a politically charged novel by Ma Jian that intertwines personal memory and national history to explore the trauma and legacy of the 1989 Tiananmen Square protests through the perspective of a comatose former student protester.
All labels observed (1)
| Label | Occurrences |
|---|---|
| Beijing Coma (novel about Tiananmen Square protests) canonical | 1 |
How this entity was disambiguated
This entity first appeared as the object of triple T7724441 — 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 (novel about Tiananmen Square protests) Context triple: [Ma Jian (writer), notableWork, Beijing Coma (novel about Tiananmen Square protests)]
-
A.
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.
-
B.
55 Days at Peking
55 Days at Peking is a 1963 historical epic film dramatizing the siege of foreign legations during the Boxer Rebellion in China.
-
C.
The Siege at Peking
The Siege at Peking is a historical narrative by British writer Peter Fleming that recounts the 1900 Boxer Rebellion and the defense of the foreign legations in Beijing.
-
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.
Tiananmen Square protests of 1989
The Tiananmen Square protests of 1989 were a massive pro-democracy movement in Beijing, China, led largely by students and workers, that was violently suppressed by the Chinese government and has since become a global symbol of resistance to authoritarian rule.
- 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 (novel about Tiananmen Square protests) Target entity description: Beijing Coma is a politically charged novel by Ma Jian that intertwines personal memory and national history to explore the trauma and legacy of the 1989 Tiananmen Square protests through the perspective of a comatose former student protester.
-
A.
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.
-
B.
55 Days at Peking
55 Days at Peking is a 1963 historical epic film dramatizing the siege of foreign legations during the Boxer Rebellion in China.
-
C.
The Siege at Peking
The Siege at Peking is a historical narrative by British writer Peter Fleming that recounts the 1900 Boxer Rebellion and the defense of the foreign legations in Beijing.
-
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.
Tiananmen Square protests of 1989
The Tiananmen Square protests of 1989 were a massive pro-democracy movement in Beijing, China, led largely by students and workers, that was violently suppressed by the Chinese government and has since become a global symbol of resistance to authoritarian rule.
- F. None of above. chosen
Statements (47)
| Predicate | Object |
|---|---|
| instanceOf | novel ⓘ |
| associatedWith |
Chinese dissident writing
ⓘ
Tiananmen Square literature ⓘ |
| author |
Ma Jian
ⓘ
linked to:
Ma Jian (writer)
|
| censorshipStatus | banned in mainland China ⓘ |
| countryOfOrigin | China ⓘ |
| criticalReception |
controversial in China
ⓘ
internationally acclaimed ⓘ |
| explores |
impact of political violence on individuals
ⓘ
relationship between body and consciousness ⓘ role of memory in constructing history ⓘ |
| genre |
historical fiction
ⓘ
political novel ⓘ social novel ⓘ |
| hasTheme |
erasure of history
ⓘ
individual versus state ⓘ memory and forgetting ⓘ personal and national trauma ⓘ political dissent ⓘ |
| languageOfTranslation | English ⓘ |
| literaryStyle |
realism
ⓘ
stream of consciousness ⓘ |
| mainSubject |
1989 Tiananmen Square protests
ⓘ
linked to:
Tiananmen Square protests of 1989
Chinese politics ⓘ collective memory ⓘ state repression ⓘ trauma ⓘ |
| narrativeDevice | comatose narrator ⓘ |
| narrativePerspective | first-person ⓘ |
| notableFor |
critique of Chinese government’s handling of 1989 protests
ⓘ
detailed depiction of Tiananmen Square protests ⓘ |
| originalLanguage | Chinese ⓘ |
| originalTitle | Beijing Coma ⓘ |
| portrays |
Chinese Communist Party repression
ⓘ
aftermath of Tiananmen crackdown ⓘ student protest movement ⓘ |
| protagonist | Dai Wei ⓘ |
| publicationYear | 2008 ⓘ |
| publisher |
Chatto & Windus
ⓘ
Pantheon Books ⓘ |
| setting |
Beijing
ⓘ
Tiananmen Square ⓘ |
| structure | nonlinear narrative ⓘ |
| timePeriod |
1980s
ⓘ
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 (novel about Tiananmen Square protests) Description of subject: Beijing Coma is a politically charged novel by Ma Jian that intertwines personal memory and national history to explore the trauma and legacy of the 1989 Tiananmen Square protests through the perspective of a comatose former student protester.
Referenced by (1)
Full triples — surface form annotated when it differs from this entity's canonical label.