Interesting Times – Richard Lea

Richard Lea talks about the impact of rapid social change on writers, and their books, from Guardian Unlimited:

In 1985 there was just one skyscraper in Shanghai. Today there are more than 300. Chinese authors, living through a period of change so rapid that six months seems to be enough to change everyone’s way of life, are presented with unprecedented opportunities for wealth, and faced with a population which has little time to engage with serious literature. But the struggle for readers and the demands of the market are not the only difficulties faced by Chinese writers. There is also, according to the London-based Chinese poet Yang Lian, the continued pressure of government censorship, which is “even stricter than before”….[Full Text]

[Image: A busy market ... Browsing in a Beijing bookshop, via Guardian Unlimited]
- Read also Richard Lea’s A New Cultural Revolution via CDT