Beijing Spring
Xidan Wall, also called Democracy Wall, is a long brick wall on Xidan Street. Erected in 1978, the event is generally recognized as the beginning of the Beijing Spring. Xidan Wall played a significant role in the democracy movement in Beijing during the summer of 1979. It was at that time where the wall received a significant number of posters that criticized China's leaders. Even an award-winning Canadian journalist John Fraser put up his own "dazibao," whose notice about a lost gold signet ring that concluded in vague political sentiment bizarrely resulted in his addressing the 1979 summer masses in Tiananmen Square. However, by December 1979, Beijing's municipal government banned the posting of wall posters on Xidan Wall in an attempt to curtail the democracy movement. The municipal government instead allowed allow posters on a site within Yuetan Park, a small park located in Beijing, but required registration with the city and an agreement to be "held responsible for political and legal implications of their messages." Eventually, the most widely regarded poster writer for Xidan Wall, Wei Jingsheng, was sent to prison.