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Post tags: books, Evan Osnos, film, inequality, literature, materialism, urbanization, wealth gap
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Perhaps no work of fiction has returned to me more often over the past eight years in China than F. Scott Fitzgerald’s slippery tale of James Gatz of North Dakota, who thrust himself into a new world in desperate, doomed pursuit of love and ambition—a life in which the “dream must have seemed so close that he could hardly fail to grasp it.” I’ve stood in Shanghai, bathed in the lights of a new skyline, and thought of Gatsby’s glimpse of New York, with “the city rising up across the river in white heaps and sugar lumps.” And at times it’s been hard to think of anything but Fitzgerald’s “universe of ineffable gaudiness”—upon seeing, for instance, the Korean boutique in Beijing with the English name “PRICH: Pride & Rich.”

But to Chinese readers, who have read Gatsby (in translation or in English) for decades, the story has acquired new layers of relevance in recent years, as the initial rush of China’s boom has given way to a more complex economic phase. When Chinese readers talk about Gatsby today, some see a cautionary tale of materialism run amok; others point to the potential danger in the gap between riches and power; and still others recognize the dawning realization that that one may never grasp the dream he so desires. “After Gatsby was gone, no one cared,” a Chinese blogger named Xiao Peng wrote not long ago. “Not his business partners or his friends or his guests. Once everything became clear, Gatsby’s life evaporated like smoke.”

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A review of the The Dark Road from The Guardian gives a brief introduction to Ma and his previous work:

Although best known as an exiled dissident defined by his head-on opposition to virtually every aspect of mainstream Chinese politics, Ma Jian is a writer of rare originality whose work effortlessly combines a sense of the avant garde with uncomfortable humour, underpinned at all times by rage at the social changes that have affected China over the past 30 years. The brilliance of his 2008 masterpiece, Beijing Coma, was already anticipated in Red Dust, his atmospheric travel memoir, which recounted the young intellectual’s spiritual and political escape from the capital to the west of China in the 1980s. Subsequent fiction such as The Noodle Maker and Stick Out Your Tongue developed a style that blended internal landscapes with flashes of magic realism and surreal comedy.

The Dark Road is an angrier, more openly confrontational novel than its predecessors. Set in the river towns and vast waste sites that line the banks of the Yangtze in Guangdong province, it tackles the grim issue of forced abortions and sterilisations with a prolonged and unflinching gaze.[...]

The Telegraph’s review explains how Ma was able to gather research on the sensitive topics dealt with in The Dark Road:

[...]When researching The Dark Road, Ma posed as an official reporter to witness the forced sterilisations and abortions carried out by the government, and as a vagrant, living among the fugitives of China’s one-child policy.

And yet one does not need to read a biography to determine the authenticity of Ma’s writing, which sings out through in this translation (by his wife, the talented Flora Drew). The Dark Road is a long, explicit account of the depredations endured by both a people and a mother forced to flee from her home merely because of a second pregnancy.[...]

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1) The Republic of Wine by Mo Yan

The Republic of Wine: A Novel takes place in a fictional province in modern China. The plot is filled with enticing yet horrific accounts of corruption and hallucination, and mixes many different styles: satire, surrealism, detective, martial arts or wuxia, and more. Mo Yan once called it his most perfect novel.

2) Civil Servant’s Notebook by Wang Xiaofang

Corruption, bribery, seduction, power struggles and cunning plans… You’ll get the insider’s scoop in Wang Xiaofang’s Civil Servant’s Notebook.

3) I Love Dollars by Zhu Wen

Despite the nation’s official stance as a Communist country, China has turned largely capitalist. Zhu Wen tells imaginative stories of the post-Mao China, in a spiritually bankrupt and monetarily-driven time.

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[...]The reasons for this are firstly economic, reckons Julia Lovell, author of The Opium War: ‘Most books have to turn a profit for publishers, and this can make editors and their boards quite conservative about their choices. They need to look for books that seem to recapitulate styles and ideas that have worked in the past. Anything new will, of course, seem a risk.’

One experienced literary agent here puts it more bluntly: ‘For Western publishers and readerships, there’s a certain expectation of what China is, and if they don’t get it they don’t like it.’ While the agent concedes that attitudes are changing for the better, cultural biases coupled with the need for a successful product have nonetheless helped to establish a template for translated Chinese fiction.

The stories usually take place in the past, not the present, and in rural rather than urban settings, according to Thomlinson. The Cultural Revolution memoir is one type. As dominant examples of Chinese writing in the West, books like these have helped to perpetuate a skewed idea of the country’s modern literature and culture.[...]

Similarly, the Global Times mentions how a language barrier keeps the world from seeing much of China’s literary scene, and how censorship threatens integrity in China’s homegrown literary scene:

“It seems that the higher the fluency in English of the writers, the more easily will they be accepted by international readers,” said Peng Lun, foreign literature editor of the Shanghai 99 Readers’ Culture Company.

[...]“India, like China, is a vast territory which is endowed with multiple ethnic groups and diversified cultures. And the fluency of English there has enabled writers to convey their original thoughts to readers,” Peng told the Global Times. “However, most Chinese writers still suffer the challenge of this language barrier.”

[...]Problems of translation are not the only barrier to greater recognition of the current Asian literature scene. Censorship also poses a threat to the quality and integrity of writing on the continent. But although literary works are still being censored in China, Li said that the restraints have loosened a little in recent years.

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Post tags: contemporary literature, literature, Man Asian Literary Prize
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On Weibo, a kind of Chinese Twitter, I recently made a joking comparison between media censorship and the pervasive threat of contaminated food, a constant source of worry:

“There’s no end to these food scares,” a friend sighed. “Is there any hope of a solution?”

“Oh, all we need is for food inspections to be as forceful as film censorship,” I told him breezily. “With all that faultfinding and nit-picking, food-safety issues will be resolved in no time.”

More than 12,000 readers reposted this. One wrote: I know what we should do. Let’s have those in charge of film, newspaper and book censorship take over food safety, and have those responsible for food safety censor films, papers and books. That way we’ll have food safety — and freedom of expression as well!

The unpredictable whims of film censors at the State Administration for Radio, Film and Television have been blamed for wrecking China’s Oscar chances, and even state media have carried calls for a more consistent and codified approach. SARFT has been extending its reach to cover online video and require pre-vetting of TV documentaries, however, and Hollywood productions increasingly subject themselves to its censorship in exchange for access to Chinese funding and theaters. Meanwhile, the country has witnessed a seemingly endless stream of food safety problems, most recently cadmium-tainted rice.

Yu’s op-ed was translated by Allan H. Barr, who commented on his translations of Yu Hua and Han Han in an interview at Pomona College’s website (via CDT) in December. See more on Yu Hua via CDT.

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Post tags: books, censorship, film censorship, food safety, literature, media censorship, news media, newspapers, SARFT, tainted food, TV, weibo, yu hua
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SPIEGEL: Unspeakable things happen in many of your novels. In “The Garlic Ballads,” for example, a pregnant woman, already in labor, hangs herself. Still, “Frog” seems to be your sternest book. Is that why it took so long to write?

Mo: I carried the idea for this book with me for a long time but then wrote it relatively quickly. You are right, I felt heavy when I penned the novel. I see it as a work of self-criticism.

SPIEGEL: In what sense? You carry no personal responsibility for the violence and the forced abortions described in your book.

Mo: China has gone through such tremendous change over the past decades that most of us consider ourselves victims. Few people ask themselves, though: ‘Have I also hurt others?’ “Frog” deals with this question, with this possibility. I, for example, may have been only 11 years old in my elementary school days, but I joined the red guards and took part in the public criticism of my teacher. I was jealous of the achievements, the talents of other people, of their luck. Later, I even asked my wife to have an abortion for the sake of my own future. I am guilty.

SPIEGEL: You are not only a member of the party, you have repeatedly said that you retain a utopian vision of communism. Yet don’t your books show step by step that this utopia doesn’t always become reality? And should you not therefore consider letting go of this utopia altogether?

Mo: What Marx wrote in the “The Communist Manifesto” was of great beauty. However, it seems to be very hard to make that dream come true. But then again, I look at those European, specifically Northern European, states and societies and wonder: Would these welfare states even be thinkable without Marx? We used to say in China that in a way Marxism has saved capitalism. Because those who benefited most from his ideology seem to be societies in the West. We Chinese, Russians and Eastern Europeans seem to have misunderstood Marxism.

See more about Mo Yan and the Nobel debate via CDT.

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Post tags: abortion, communism, Cultural Revolution, literature, Liu Xiaobo, marxism, mo yan, Nobel Prize, one-child policy, Red Guards, writers, writers and literature
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In China, “bureaucracy lit” is a hot genre, far outselling spy stories and whodunits as the airport novel of choice. In these tales of overweening ambition, the plot devices that set readers’ pulses racing are underhanded power plays, hidden alliances and devious sexual favors. The current craze began in 1999 with “Ink Painting,” by Wang Yuewen, and has become so intense that last year a deputy bureau chief who writes a series under the pseudonym Xiaoqiao Laoshu was named China’s 17th-richest author. “Officialdom lit” is hugely popular, not just as a peek behind the curtains, but also as a go-to guide for aspiring cadres in search of their own sycophancy strategies.

[… But t]he trifling plots of bureaucracy lit look positively petty compared with the grand crimes surrounding the downfall of one of China’s highest-flying politicians, Bo Xilai, formerly the Communist Party secretary of Chongqing, whose wife was found guilty of murdering a former British business partner. Bo’s wife — or a woman rumored to be her plumper stand-in — was given a suspended death sentence, while Bo’s former police chief got 15 years for abuse of power, corruption and defection. Bo himself is facing a criminal investigation into charges including abuse of power, corruption, improper sexual relationships and possible involvement in covering up a murder. It’s hard for any novelist to compete.

Lim goes on to describe the “gargantuan irony” of official celebrations of Mo Yan’s Nobel Prize for Literature. Also at The New York Times is a spoiler-laden review of Mo’s Sandalwood Death and Pow! by Ian Buruma, who concludes with a sympathetic assessment of the author’s widely criticized politics:

Perhaps Mo Yan really is in tune with the current Communist regime. Perhaps he simply wants to play it safe. But the political perspective of his fiction is also a reflection of his peasant spirit. To a villager, all politics are strictly local, especially in China, with its vast distances. The capital is far away. National politics aren’t the peasant’s concern. What counts is food on the table, fertility, sex and staying out of trouble, if necessary by appeasing the powerful, be they local or foreign.

[…] To demand that Mo Yan also be a political dissident is not only what the Dutch describe as “trying to pluck feathers from a frog.” It’s also unfair. A novelist should be judged on literary merit, not on his or her politics, a principle the Nobel committee hasn’t always lived up to. This time, I think it has. It would be nice if Mo Yan were more courageous, but he has given us some great stories. And that should be enough.

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Post tags: Bo Xilai, books, bureaucracy, civil servants, corrupt officials, corruption, literature, mo yan, Nobel Prize, officials, Wang Xiaofang, yu hua
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OK, I’ve cheated a bit – three of the publications below are poetry, and two others come out in January 2013. Still, it’s a good haul and many times better than the annual total, say, ten years ago. (Please post a comment if I’ve missed anyone out.) I couldn’t begin to add up just how many hours of translation the whole list represents, and that’s without the extra work translators have put in, on some of these books, to get them off the ground. So, lets raise a glass to translation and all pat ourselves on the back!

[…] PS On Twitter, @cfbcuk (that’s the China Fiction Book Club) has posted each one with review links, tagged #abook4xmas.

Among the twenty is Mo Yan’s Sandalwood Death, translated by Howard Goldblatt. Goldblatt has been variously credited with accurately rendering the Nobel-winner’s prose by Mo’s admirers, and with flattering it by his critics. Two titles were translated by Allan Barr, professor of Chinese at Pomona College. The school’s website features an interview on his translations of Han Han’s This Generation and Yu Hua’s China in Ten Words:

“Han Han’s style is sarcastic and playful, full of mischievous puns, and channeling his distinctive voice and conveying his wicked sense of humor were the biggest challenges I faced,” says Barr, who has been at Pomona since 1981.

[…] The concept of one book, China in Ten Words, was developed after Yu [Hua] spoke at Pomona in 2009. Barr had invited the writer to speak during his U.S. tour for his novel Brothers. When discussing the topic of Yu’s speech, Barr suggested Yu speak about China from a writer’s point of view, and Yu built his presentation around two common words in the contemporary Chinese language: 人民 (“people”) and 领袖 (“leader”). He realized he had other words he wanted to write about and developed the idea into a book.

“When I drove him to LAX at the end of his visit here, we agreed that I would translate the book into English,” recalls Barr. “Yu Hua wrote China in Ten Words over the months that followed, sending me each chapter as he completed it. The book’s 10 chapters all take a different word as their theme, in a wide-ranging discussion that involves memoir, anecdote, and analysis.” The book’s Taiwan edition mentions Pomona in the preface, says Barr, but that reference didn’t make it into the English edition. The book was not published in mainland China due to its critiques of the country.

See Yu Hua’s own words on the book, translated by CDT’s Don Weinland, and Perry Link’s review, via CDT. On Han Han, see recent profiles and reviews by Jeffrey Wasserstrom at Words without Borders, Rebecca Liao at The New Inquiry, Katrina Hamlin at Reuters’ Breakingviews, Duncan Hewitt at The Daily Beast and Ian Johnson at The New York Review of Books, as well as an excerpt from This Generation at The Daily Beast.

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The discontent lies in Mo Yan’s language. Open any page, and one is treated to a jumble of words that juxtaposes rural vernacular, clichéd socialist rhetoric, and literary affectation. It is broken, profane, appalling, and artificial; it is shockingly banal. The language of Mo Yan is repetitive, predictable, coarse, and mostly devoid of aesthetic value. The English translations of Mo Yan’s novels, especially by the excellent Howard Goldblatt, are in fact superior to the original in their aesthetic unity and sureness. The blurb for The Republic of Wine from Washington Post says: “Goldblatt’s translation renders Mo Yan’s shimmering poetry and brutal realism as work akin to that of Gorky and Solzhenitsyn.” But in fact, only the “brutal realism” is Mo Yan’s; the “shimmering poetry” comes from a brilliant translator’s work.

[...] Mo Yan’s language is striking indeed, but it is striking because it is diseased. The disease is caused by the conscious renunciation of China’s cultural past at the founding of the People’s Republic of China in 1949. Mo Yan’s writing is in fact a product of the aesthetic ideologies of Socialist China. As Mao Zedong 毛澤東 (1893-1976), the leader of the Chinese Communist Party from 1934 until his death, famously said in his seminal speech “The Yan’an Talks on Literature and Art” in 1942, a few years before the Party founded the People’s Republic of China in 1949: “Proletarian literature and art are part of the whole proletarian revolutionary cause; they are, as Lenin said, cogs and wheels in the whole revolutionary machine.” As a result, Mao demanded writers in the socialist regime write for the masses: “China’s revolutionary writers and artists, writers and artists of promise, must go among the masses; they must for a long period of time unreservedly and whole-heartedly go among the masses of workers, peasants and soldiers, go into the heat of the struggle. Only then can they proceed to creative work.” Not any kind of creative work, but work that serves the “proletarian revolutionary cause.”

Charles Laughlin counters Sun’s argument at ChinaFile:

Piling up aesthetic objections to conceal ideological conflict is a familiar tactic. I had the opportunity in 2000 to discuss the Nobel Prize in Literature with members of the Chinese Writer’s Association (of which Mo Yan is now Vice Chairman) after it was awarded to the Chinese author Gao Xingjian, who was by then a French citizen. It was then I learned that the Chinese Writer’s Association’s “line” on the Gao Xingjian award was not that his works contain politically unacceptable ideas (in fact, his novels published after leaving China are very critical of the Chinese government); rather it was that Gao Xingjian is a mediocre writer, and there are many superior to him in China more deserving of the award. The writers I was talking to did not exactly say that Gao’s work lacked “aesthetic conviction,” but their criticism of Gao looked very similar to Anna Sun’s criticism of Mo Yan, even though they are supposed to be defenders of state socialism.

[...] My point is not that Mo Yan is these writers’ equal, but rather that like them, he forcefully asserts his particular vision without regard to pressures to adopt and convey a political posture. Literature like this is not apolitical—no literature can be—but it is not written to serve a political agenda. Mo Yan’s fiction satirizes the inhumanity of self-serving and hypocritical government officials while also depicting the senseless suffering of their victims; it also satirizes the style and narrative conventions of the orthodox socialist literature of the past, with its celebration of unbelievable heroes and cartoonish oversimplification of society and history. He indicts the One-Child Policy and forced abortion. The orthodox literature of socialism made politics sacred, but Mo Yan’s fiction shows orthodox politics to be profane in the face of humanity. All literature is political, but each writer figures politics in a different way.

Meanwhile, supporters and detractors alike seem to recognize the crucial role of Howard Goldblatt, Mo Yan’s prestigious Chinese-English translator. Michael Orbach at Tablet gives a detailed account of Mr. Goldblatt and his cooperation with Mo Yan:

Goldblatt, 73, is the foremost Chinese-English translator in the world. Over the course of his almost 40-year career, he has translated more than 50 books, edited several anthologies of Chinese writings; received two NEA fellowships, a Guggenheim grant and nearly every other translation award. In the first four years of the Man Asian Literary Prize, three of the winners were translations by Goldblatt. John Updike, writing in The New Yorker, said that “American translators of contemporary Chinese fiction appear to be the lonely province of one man, Howard Goldblatt.”

[...] Goldblatt found one of his stories in a 1985 anthology of Chinese writers. Sitting in his French-style living room, Goldblatt was unable to recall which story it was, however the story struck him as one of the first really authentic Chinese stories he’d read after the country’s disastrous Cultural Revolution. Mo Yan’s writing harked back to earlier modes of Chinese folktales.

“They weren’t new in Chinese literature; they were new in modern Chinese literature,” Goldblatt said.

Months later, when Goldblatt visited Taipei a friend handed him a magazine with an excerpt of Mo Yan’s Garlic Ballads. The book, an unflinching chronicle of a failed insurrection in a village, was initially banned in China, according to Goldblatt. Goldblatt sent a letter to Mo Yan, addressed simply to “Mo Yan, Peking” and the two began a correspondence that culminated in a translation of both The Garlic Ballads and Red Sorghum, which became a 1987 film by renowned director Zhang Yimou, starring Gong Li.

The New Yorker excerpted a piece by Mo Yan, Bull, and Deborah Treisman interviewed Goldblatt on his views of the novel as well as the writer:

“Bull,” the piece by Mo Yan in this week’s issue, was excerpted from your forthcoming translation of his novel “POW!” The book follows the story of a boy and his mother struggling to survive a father’s abandonment, in a Chinese village that has become the central slaughterhouse for cattle in the region. When did Mo Yan write the book?

An interesting question. He often “writes” his novels in his head, where they leaven until he’s ready to put brush to paper or fingers to keyboard and send a manuscript to his publisher, whomever and wherever that may be. “POW!” was published in China in 2003. The copy he sent me was signed in July of that year.

[...]

Did this year’s awarding of the Nobel Prize in Literature to Mo Yan come as a surprise to him, or to you?

I suspect that he was surprised but hopeful when the odds-makers began floating his name; the same goes for me. That 5 A.M. phone call from NPR (I was in Colorado) made for the beginning of a very happy and very busy day. By then, I’d read and enjoyed quite a lot by the other “top candidates”—Mo Yan was, I have to say, in good company.

With all the controversy surrounding Mo Yan, the parables he told at Stockholm this Monday provide more fodder for discussions of his political standing:

Mo describes how the eight men decide that their group is cursed by the presence of one who must have committed a crime against the heavens. To determine who, they agree to throw their hats toward the open door. Whoever’s hat flies out the door is the guilty one and must spend the night in the storm. Mo continues: “So they flung their hats toward the door. Seven hats were blown back inside; one went out the door. They pressured the eighth man to go out and accept his punishment, and when he balked, they picked him up and flung him out the door. I’ll bet you all know how the story ends: They had no sooner flung him out the door than the temple collapsed around them.”

[...] Li Xingwen, a columnist for Party-owned Beijing Youth Daily, offered two plausible deconstructions that also seem to blame Chinese society, and not the ruling Communist Party, for whatever tragedy the temple collapse represents. He wrote in an editorial on Sunday: “On one hand, the survival or extinction of ‘the one and the seven’ in the damaged temple suggests that society has its own justice and evil can’t escape a final judgment; on the other hand, the story is about democracy at a crossroads: The majority’s tyrannical policies were stupid and they finally ate their own bitter fruit. Via these three stories Mo Yan showed his viewpoint: never follow the crowd, never protest for show, and never encroach on personal freedom in the name of the majority.”

Not every interpretation is quite so flattering to Mo, or to the Communist Party. Indeed, across Weibo — and in less obvious ways, in Chinese newspapers — the Chinese seem genuinely conflicted about how to interpret their new Nobelist’s tale. In a Saturday tweet by Weibo user Kai Yan, Mo is both a Communist Party pawn and a satirist whose subject-matter is China’s all-powerful Politburo Standing Committee: “Mo Yan’s prize was controversial and recently he supported censorship. He was also condemned by the global media for not joining those who support Xiaobo’s release. However, his acceptance speech was interesting. One story in his speech was about eight masons who took shelter from rain in a temple … this is an obvious satire of the Communist Party’s court intrigues.”

In the Guardian, Pankaj Mishra argues that Mo Yan is being judged by different standards than Western writers, who are not condemned for their often cozy relationships with the ruling powers:

His writing, however, has hardly been mentioned, let alone assessed, by his most severe western critics; it is his political choices for which he stands condemned. They are indeed deplorable, but do we ever expose the political preferences of Mo Yan’s counterparts in the west to such harsh scrutiny?

In fact, we almost never judge British and American writers on their politics alone. It would seem absurd to us if the Somali, Yemeni or Pakistani victims of Barack Obama’s drone assaults, miraculously empowered with a voice in the international arena, accused the US president’s many literary fans of trying to put a human face on his unmanned killing machines; or if they denounced Ian McEwan, who once had tea with Laura Bush and Cherie Blair at 10 Downing Street, as a patsy for the Anglo-American nexus that is responsible for the deaths of hundreds of thousands of people and the displacement of millions more.

Nevertheless, they would not be wrong to detect an unexamined assumption lurking in the western scorn for Mo Yan’s proximity to the Chinese regime: that Anglo-American writers, naturally possessed of loftier virtue, stand along with their governments on the right side of history. Certainly, they are not expected to take a public stance against their political class for waging catastrophic – and wholly unnecessary – wars. In fact, very few of them use their untrammelled liberty to do so. Many even pride themselves on their “apolitical” attitude. Furthermore, their political opinions risk no widespread opprobrium even when these mock the same values of freedom and dignity that Mo Yan is evidently guilty of violating.

Read also In the People’s Liberation Army by Mo Yan via the New York Review of Books.

See more on Mo Yan via CDT

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This reawakened the heavy criticism of Mo’s politics that followed the announcement of his prize in October, but had substantially subsided after he expressed hope that Liu could soon be free. Compounding matters, the Associated Press published the first interview in over two years with Liu’s wife, Liu Xia, while Chinese activists, international Nobel winners and hundreds of thousands of others signed petitions calling for the couple’s release.

Mo addressed his critics at several points during his lecture. From Howard Goldblatt’s translation at NobelPrize.org:

My greatest challenges come with writing novels that deal with social realities, such as The Garlic Ballads, not because I’m afraid of being openly critical of the darker aspects of society, but because heated emotions and anger allow politics to suppress literature and transform a novel into reportage of a social event. As a member of society, a novelist is entitled to his own stance and viewpoint; but when he is writing he must take a humanistic stance, and write accordingly. Only then can literature not just originate in events, but transcend them, not just show concern for politics but be greater than politics.

Possibly because I’ve lived so much of my life in difficult circumstances, I think I have a more profound understanding of life. I know what real courage is, and I understand true compassion. I know that nebulous terrain exists in the hearts and minds of every person, terrain that cannot be adequately characterized in simple terms of right and wrong or good and bad, and this vast territory is where a writer gives free rein to his talent. So long as the work correctly and vividly describes this nebulous, massively contradictory terrain, it will inevitably transcend politics and be endowed with literary excellence.

The announcement of my Nobel Prize has led to controversy. At first I thought I was the target of the disputes, but over time I’ve come to realize that the real target was a person who had nothing to do with me. Like someone watching a play in a theater, I observed the performances around me. I saw the winner of the prize both garlanded with flowers and besieged by stone-throwers and mudslingers. I was afraid he would succumb to the assault, but he emerged from the garlands of flowers and the stones, a smile on his face; he wiped away mud and grime, stood calmly off to the side, and said to the crowd:

For a writer, the best way to speak is by writing. You will find everything I need to say in my works. Speech is carried off by the wind; the written word can never be obliterated. I would like you to find the patience to read my books. I cannot force you to do that, and even if you do, I do not expect your opinion of me to change. No writer has yet appeared, anywhere in the world, who is liked by all his readers; that is especially true during times like these.

Many interesting things have happened to me in the wake of winning the prize, and they have convinced me that truth and justice are alive and well.

So I will continue telling my stories in the days to come.

Video of the speech is available on YouTube, though not yet with subtitles.

Mo’s critics responded by comparing him to a prostitute and a dwarf and calling his speech “powerless, disgraceful, a betrayal and a sellout”.

Meanwhile, fellow author Salman Rushdie wrote of Mo’s comments on Thursday that it was “hard to avoid the conclusion that Mo Yan is the Chinese equivalent of the Soviet Russian apparatchik writer Mikhail Sholokhov: a patsy of the régime.” At The Atlantic, James Fallows warned that “as a public figure, [Mo] will forever be diminished by the stands he is taking, and avoiding, now.” The New Yorker’s Evan Osnos acknowledged that “the timing of Mo’s words could not have been worse”, but was more sympathetic regarding his general predicament:

For Mo Yan, China’s most famous user of words these days, they have never carried higher stakes. When Mo won the Nobel Prize in Literature this year, the first Chinese writer to do so, the Communist Party’s propaganda chief, Li Changchun, made it clear that he intended Mo to remain in the fold. Li wrote to congratulate him, saying that the “victory reflects the prosperity and progress of Chinese literature, as well as the increasing national strength and influence of China.” It was impossible not to sympathize with Mo’s excruciating position: he was being asked to take a stand that would, without exception, alienate one side or another. The Chinese government, with one stroke, could choose to make his life miserable, and the rest of the world would decide how history remembers him. Until he won the Nobel, had spent his life tiptoeing back and forth across the line, kowtowing at some moments, speaking his mind at others. The time when he could perform that kind of balancing act was over. Nobody who has not borne the weight of writing under authoritarianism could casually dismiss his dilemma.

The AFP, quoting a Swedish newspaper, noted that some of Mo’s other comments had been less Party-friendly:

Swedish newspaper Svenska Dagbladet on Friday said the writer’s comments that the Nobel Prize was “personal” and not “for a country” could […] be seen as a snub to the Chinese establishment.

“He made it clear to Chinese journalists that the prize has not been given to China, where it is being used on patriotic grounds,” it wrote.

[…] It also quoted Shelley W Chan, the US-based author of a book on Mo Yan, who called his writing “brave”. Chan accused his critics of not having read his work.

She argued that some of his criticism of the Chinese regime is quite explicit while some was more indirect. Parts of it could be seen as referencing the 1989 Tiananmen Square massacre, still a taboo subject in Chinese society, she added.

The political content of Mo’s writings has frequently been cited in his defence. The Kenyon Review’s Anna Sun, for example, while attacking Mo’s written language as an impoverished Maoist husk, wrote that “politically, Mo Yan is clearly a writer with a strong social conscience, although he has not been a dissident; he is unafraid to satirize contemporary Chinese reality in his novels, and he is wryly conscious of the game of political negotiation he has to play with the state [….]“

At The New York Review of Books, however, Perry Link suggested that the political aspects of Mo’s writing, and even his apparent words of support for Liu Xiaobo, might in fact serve the Party’s purposes:

Mo Yan writes about people at the bottom of society, and in The Garlic Ballads (1988) he clearly sides with poor farmers who are bullied and bankrupted by predatory local officials. Sympathy for the downtrodden has had a considerable market in the world of Chinese letters in recent times, mainly because the society does include a lot of downtrodden and they do invite sympathy. But it is crucial to note the difference between the way Mo Yan writes about the fate of the downtrodden and the way writers like Liu Xiaobo, Zheng Yi, and other dissidents do. Liu and Zheng denounce the entire authoritarian system, including the people at the highest levels. Mo Yan and other inside-the-system writers blame local bullies and leave the top out of the picture.

[…] Defenders of Mo Yan, both on and off the Nobel Prize committee, credit him with “black humor.” Perhaps. But others, including descendants of the victims of these outrages, might be excused for wondering what is so funny. From the regime’s point of view, this mode of writing is useful not just because it diverts a square look at history but because of its function as a safety valve. These are sensitive topics, and they are potentially explosive, even today. For the regime, to treat them as jokes might be better than banning them outright. In a 2004 article called “The Erotic Carnival in Recent Chinese History,” Liu Xiaobo observes that “sarcasm…has turned into a kind of spiritual massage that numbs people’s consciences and paralyzes their memories.”

[…] Chinese writers today, whether “inside the system” or not, all must choose how they will relate to their country’s authoritarian government. This inevitably involves calculations, trade-offs, and the playing of cards in various ways. Liu Xiaobo’s choices have been highly unusual. Mo Yan’s responses are more “normal,” closer to the center of a bell curve. It would be wrong for spectators like you and me, who enjoy the comfort of distance, to demand that Mo Yan risk all and be another Liu Xiaobo. But it would be even more wrong to mistake the clear difference between the two.

For another side of the argument from October, see Brendan O’Kane’s ‘Is Mo Yan a Stooge for the Chinese Government?‘ at Rectified.name. “Spoiler alert”, O’Kane wrote by way of introduction: “in keeping with the general rule about headlines posed as yes-or-no questions, the short answer is ‘no.’”

© Samuel Wade for China Digital Times (CDT), 2012. | Permalink | 5 comments | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: censorship, dissidents, Evan Osnos, James Fallows, literature, liu xia, Liu Xiaobo, mo yan, Nobel Peace Prize, Nobel Prize, perry link, Sweden, writers, writers and literature
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A vehicle burning in Luzhou, Sichuan.

Correction: “Sibada” is the Chinese for “Sparta.”

As of October 19, the following search terms are blocked on Sina Weibo (not including the “search for user” function):

Rioting in Luzhou, Sichuan Province: Crowds jammed the streets and overturned police vehicles after a truck was reportedly beaten to death by police.

- Luzhou traffic police (泸州交警)
- Luzhou + public anger (泸州+民愤)
- Luzhou + riot (泸州+骚乱)
- riot (暴乱): retested

Liao Yiwu: In his acceptance speech for the German Book Trade Peace Prize, the writer in exile stated of China that “this empire must break apart.”

- Liao Yiwu (廖亦武): retested
- empire + break apart (帝国+分裂)

Other:

- defend Sparta (保卫斯巴达): “Sparta” (斯巴达 Sībādá) sounds like 十八大 Shíbā Dà, an abbreviation for the 18th Party Congress

Note: All Chinese-language words are tested using simplified characters. The same terms in traditional characters occasionally return different results. 

CDT Chinese runs a project that crowd-sources filtered keywords on Sina Weibo search.  CDT independently tests the keywords before posting them, but some searches later become accessible again. We welcome readers to contribute to this project so that we can include the most up-to-date information. To add words, check out the form at the bottom of CDT Chinese’s latest sensitive words post.

© Anne.Henochowicz for China Digital Times (CDT), 2012. | Permalink | No comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: 18th party congress, censorship, Internet censorship, Liao Yiwu, literature, Luzhou, Sensitive Words Series, Sichuan, weibo
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NoVforMe: Call for Proof: This is Too Crazy–Pierre Haski, a reporter formerly based in Beijing for the French newspaper Libération, interviewed Mo Yan in 2004. During the interview, Mo Yan said that he is the child of a farmer. During the Great Leap Forward and Great Famine, he ate charcoal to keep from starving. He thanks the military and is still a Communist Party member–even though he’s lost his faith in the Party. When the reporter asked him when he lost his faith, he replied that from that year onward, he only retained his Party membership to avoid bringing on unnecessary trouble.

本人无V： 【求证：这个太猛了】法国解放报前驻京记者哈斯基04年走访了莫言 ，莫言在访谈中表示，他是一个农民的孩子，大跃进、大饥荒曾因饥饿难忍而吞食炭灰。他感谢军队，他依然是党员，尽管对党已经失去信心，记者询问何时失去信 心，莫言回答从那一年开始，他之所以继续保留党员证，是不想增添不必要的麻烦。

So far, the post has been commented on and reposted over 1550 times and remains untouched by both the author and the censors. Some have replied that @NoVforMe, and the public at large, should leave Mo Yan alone, while others redouble the call for verification of the interview. Still others are struck by the novelist’s courage and humanity, working within the Party system but not supporting it blindly. Indeed, many ordinary Chinese join the Party as a prerequisite to job promotion and for other non-political purposes. Party membership often has very little to do with an individual’s beliefs.

Some readers hang on Mo Yan’s mention of “that year,” a likely reference to 1989, the year of the Tiananmen protests. “That year” was blocked from Sina Weibo search results around the anniversary of the military crackdown this summer.

The following comments were selected by the CDT Chinese editors:

ZEDDD: He sure has the courage to speak.

ZEDDD：真敢说。

charlesxue: I want proof.

薛蛮子: 求证实

Hanjianggouxue: I just heard the same on Radio France Internationale.

寒江钓雪0529：刚也在法广上听到了

esrv: Even if this was proven true, what would you do about it?
esrv：就算证实了，你们又能怎样？

MrKeke: Don’t try to bring out all his dirty laundry just because he won a Nobel Prize. Let him be. Let us enjoy his work.

可可先生：得个诺奖，不要什么都掏出来吧。饶了莫言，让我们欣赏他的作品。

FattyCat: Go ahead and demand proof for this. This comes from a Pierre Haski interview. http://t.cn/zllX3De [link to Rue 89 article, in French]

猫大胖子：来，拿去求证吧。这来源于一个Pierre Haski的采访。http://t.cn/zllX3De

xiniuwangyue: Stop trying to take him down. What is there to prove?

夕牛望月V：别再害人家了，证实什么啊

hasange: You want proof for this thing? Isn’t this just someone speaking honestly?

哈三哥：这东西还要证实吗，这不是大实话吗？

chuguofuxing: Any normal person would say and do the same!

楚国复兴：是个正常的人都会这么说，这么做！

OceanBottomFish110: Even if he did say this, you can’t just bring it up to hurt the guy.

海底的鱼110：即使说过，也不能再提起而害人家了

shluyanling: Which year is that year?

鲁燕玲：那一年是指哪一年？

yogen: It’s definitely 1989.
国际游民林丹–致力室内环境净化：肯定是89年了

IndependentScholar2010: That year, the shadow of a “tractor.”
独立学者2010: 那一年，拖拉机的影子。

kingleiou: That year…
大藏布：那一年……

Wuhezizon: I feel the same way. @Dacangbu: That year…
乌合zizon：同感。//@大藏布: 那一年……

LoneWalker: It started from that year. That year was probably the most hopeless year of them all.
孤独漫步人：从那一年开始。那应该是最让人绝望的一年。

Limingqianye: China’s youngest, most courageous generation was trampled under the wheels of authoritarianism–history written in blood.
-黎明前夜：中国最年轻最勇敢的一代人倒在了专制的车轮下，血写的历史。

OldCowNight: With regards to the tragedy of ’89, I believe, anyone with a bit of a conscience would be like this. It’s nothing to boast about. That day, one of my teachers jotted down these four lines. They shake me to my core: “A night of thunderous turmoil. All were singing and dancing their praises. No one will speak of this again. Even the birds on the eaves make no sound.”
老牛之友: 89之难，我相信，任何稍有点良心良知的，均此，不值得夸耀。我一位老师，当日早上就写下四句，这才叫入骨的厉害：一夕雷霆勘动乱，万家歌舞颂英明。从此莫谈天下事，檐前鸦雀亦无声。

FieldHeart: Now I know why they gave him a Nobel Prize…
FieldHeart：终于明白为什么诺贝尔奖给他了。。。

IamWangFeiFeizhuliu: I never thought Old Mo and I would have the same awareness. But my feelings about this are particularly strong this year.
我是王妃非主流：没想到我跟老莫有着同样的觉悟，不过我这想法今年特别强烈

KneelLong: Chinese-style survival philosophy…
跪久了：中国式生存哲学……

baizhenxia: Authoritarian monarchs love smart elites who don’t cause any trouble!
尊严之子：这样聪明的不添麻烦的精英是每一个专制的君主都喜欢的人！

Xishanqingyu: Does this mean he has a conscience, or that he doesn’t have a conscience?
西山晴雨：他这是有良心呢？还是没良心呢？

PoisonTongue: Oh, so he’s talking about “that year”! Haha! That sensitive year!
毒舌列文 ：哦，原来是“那一年”啊，哈哈！敏感词的“那一年”！

FatLittleSoldier2012: Haha! Let’s all work hard to force Nobel Prize winners get out or go in.
胖胖小兵2012：哈哈，大家努力把大陆诺奖得主不是弄出去，就是弄进去

junjunq: That day during the press conference, whether it was intentional or not, Mo Yan conveyed a sense of his dissatisfaction with and disapproval of the Chinese Communist Party.
JunjunQian–大爱清尘：那天的新闻发布会上莫言其实也有意无意表达这个意思，对gcd的执政不满意，不认同

WuShen: No matter if this news is real or not, anyone who lived through that time period would have lost their faith in everything. And that’s for certain.
Wu申：无论真假，谁经历那样的年代，无论对什么都会失去信心，这是肯定的。

Jingxiguqiao: Mo Yan is probably very conflicted inside. To live within the system, he must compromise his writing.
荆溪孤樵：莫言内心应该很矛盾，要在体制内生活写作必须妥协

TianmahangkongV88: How many other Party members raise their right hands as they take the oath and don’t think it counts?
天马行空V88：还有多少高举右手，捏着拳头宣誓不算数的在党内的人？

JiafeimaoBrother: Now this guy is what I call smart!
加肥猫大哥：他才是聪明人~~

OceanStone1981: Mo Yan wins a prize, and now everything is being dug up. Sigh. It’s tough to become famous in China–even dangerous.
海石1981：莫言获个奖，什么都被挖出来了，唉，在中国出名难，出名还危险

DanGirl61: I believe Mo Yan would say something like this. You can feel the weight of the Chinese people by reading his work.
丹娘61：我相信莫言会说这样的话，从他的作品中能读出中国人的沉重..

USAPrincePerv: Telling it like it is…
USA君子好色：实话实说 、、、

InteriorDesigner: Disaster comes from the mouth, Mo Yan!
装饰装修设计师：祸从口出啊，莫言！

Feichi: If it’s true, it would make people really admire him. On the one hand, he has thoughts like these. On the other, he was able to become the vice chairman of the China Writers’ Association.
廢癡：如果是真的，確實很讓人佩服啊，一方面有這樣的想法，一方面還爬到作協副主席的位置。

FeisiLi: Now I understand that Mo Yan is sick at heart. His name is attributed to all kinds of ideologies and philosophies. That has to be overwhelming. Who knows if one day while he’s asleep he’ll get shot. Show a little caring. Give him some love, and stop tormenting him.
菲斯李：我现在理解莫言的忧心忡忡了，各种思想观点都打着他的名号，让他不堪重负，说不定躺着哪天也被中枪了。保留一点爱心，给他一份关爱，别折腾他了。

GCDCoronationDay: Not wanting to create unnecessary trouble–there are many people who think the same way.
GCD登基纪念日：不想增加不必要的麻烦，也是很多人的想法。

TianmaxingkongV88: So the oath he took under the Party flag doesn’t count?
天马行空V88：在党旗下宣誓不算数？

Huajiuduoduo: You have to swear an oath to enter the Party. But if you wish to leave, it’s not that easy. Especially when your children enter school and look for work, you’re finished.
花酒多多V：入档都是需要赌咒发誓的，要是敢退档，可不是株连九族那么简单的事情，最现实的是在子女入学就业等方面有你好果子吃

EyeOfChild: If this is true, he’s nothing but an opportunist!
童眼稚翁：如果这是真的，那么他就是一个投机分子！

NoHKinHeart: I don’t care about this. The important thing is that he won an award.
心中无股HK：这个别太在意。重在的是他获奖了。

minchaow: It’s not everyday that a Chinese person wins a Nobel Prize. Whatever you do, don’t stop him from going to accept it.
天城云扬：咱中国出个诺奖获奖的不容易，千万别让他去领不了奖。

TianjinLiuTong: It makes sense, not wanting to add unnecessary trouble.
天津刘彤：这个说法靠谱，不想增添不必要的麻烦。

an4001_5lb: When will we be able to remove our masks and speak the truth?
an4001_5lb：什么时候可以摘掉面具公开说实话？

Translation by Little Bluegill.

“Netizen Voices” is an original CDT series. If you would like to reuse this content, please follow the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 agreement.

© Anne.Henochowicz for China Digital Times (CDT), 2012. | Permalink | One comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: 1989, 1989 protests, gao xingjian, great leap forward, literature, Liu Xiaobo, mo yan, Netizen Voices, Nobel Prize, Tiananmen
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State Council Information Office: To all websites nationwide: In light of Mo Yan winning the Nobel prize for literature, monitoring of microblogs, forums, blogs and similar key points must be strengthened. Be firm in removing all comments which disgrace the Party and the government, defame cultural work, mention Nobel laureates Liu Xiaobo and Gao Xingjian and associated harmful material. Without exception, block users from posting for ten days if their writing contains malicious details. Reinforce on-duty staff during the weekend and prioritize this management task. (October 12, 2012)

国新办：各地各网站：关于莫言获诺贝尔文学奖事，要加大微博客、论坛、博客等关键环节的监看力度，坚决删除借机抹黑党和政府、抹黑文化事业以及与刘晓波、高行健获奖等相联系的有害信息。情节恶劣的帐号，一律禁言十天。周末要加强值班，把此项管理工作作为重点。

© Anne.Henochowicz for China Digital Times (CDT), 2012. | Permalink | One comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: censorship, Directives from the Ministry of Truth, gao xingjian, Internet censorship, literature, Liu Xiaobo, Ministry of Truth, mo yan, Nobel Prize
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“I hope he can achieve his freedom as soon as possible,” Mr. Mo, 57, told reporters during a news conference held a day after he won the 2012 prize for literature. He spoke not far from his family’s home in rural Shandong Province, the setting for many of his epic novels.

Even if Mr. Mo’s remarks were spare and decidedly nonconfrontational — he went on to suggest he was not an admirer of Mr. Liu’s pro-democracy essays — they are nonetheless likely to infuriate China’s leadership, which has been exulting in the Swedish Academy’s decision to give China its first Nobel in literature.

[…] Ran Yunfei, a sharp-tongued writer persecuted for his pro-democracy views, said he was heartened by Mr. Mo’s comments but doubted that he would become a crusader for human rights and free expression. “He has become very skilled at walking on a tightrope,” Mr. Ran wrote in a microblog post. “Now that he has become a household name with the government’s backing, it’s only going to become harder for him to be a real critic of the government.”

Other critics have also softened their tone. Activist Hu Jia said to Reuters that “what has happened in the last 24 hours has changed him. A Nobel prize, whether for peace or for literature, bestows on one a sense of wrong and right.” Outspoken artist Ai Weiwei, who had previously called Mo’s award an “insult to humanity and to literature“, told China Real Time Report that “I want to welcome Mo Yan back into the arms of the people. If this sort of courage is the result, I hope more Chinese writers will be given Nobel prizes.”

Also at China Real Time, Human Rights Watch’s Nicholas Bequelin commented on Mo’s politics and his support for Liu Xiaobo:

“Mo Yan certainly has a mind of his own. He’s not a government puppet. His novels make very clear that he’s not a cheerleader for the state of Chinese society today,” said Nicholas Bequelin, senior Asia researcher for Human Rights Watch. The novelist’s willingness to talk about Mr. Liu, he added, “will make it a little more difficult for China to conceal that they’re holding a Nobel Peace Prize winner in prison.”

Avant-garde writer Bei Cun wrote on Sina Weibo (via South China Morning Post’s John Kennedy):

Journalists and friends have messaged me asking for my view, as I’ve expressed both congratulations as well as opposition to the hand-copying [of Mao's speech]. What we must remember is that this is a literature award, and is limited to that profession. As I said several days ago, a writer’s political position will not inevitably affect his or her professional ability, otherwise someone such as Heidegger would be difficult to understand. Writers aren’t saints, maintaining a spiritual contradiction is allowed. I can only hope Mo Yan uses his influence to encourage people to act on conscience.

Jeffrey Brown discussed Mo’s political tightrope-walking with University of Virginia’s Charles Laughlin and China Digital Times Editor in Chief Xiao Qiang on PBS NewsHour:

For more views on the politics of Mo and his award, see David Wertime’s post at Tea Leaf Nation and Yaxue Cao’s at Seeing Red in China.

Even before the press conference, Mo’s English translator Howard Goldblatt had discussed with Reuters how the author might make use of his new prominence:

“I think Mo Yan could actually, in a very nuanced way, make a difference and get some of this stuff happening,” Goldblatt said by telephone from Boulder, Colorado, referring to improving freedom of speech and conditions for writers.

“To be honest with you, I doubt that he will. I think he’s just a novelist who doesn’t want to be involved in those things.”

[…] “You know, he respects and likes the dissidents,” said Goldblatt.

“He just doesn’t want to become one of them in exile.”

While thanking his supporters and detractors alike, Mo himself has taken on his critics directly. From Reuters:

“I believe that the people who have criticized me have not read my books,” he said. “If they had read my books they would understand that my writings at that time took on a great deal of risk and were under pressure.

“Many of the people who have criticized me online are Communist Party members themselves. They also work within the system. And some have benefited tremendously within the system,” he added.

“I am working in China,” he said. “I am writing in a China under Communist Party leaders. But my works cannot be restricted by political parties.”

While Mo’s bold statement in front of the media was uncontainable, references to Liu Xiaobo elsewhere have faced tight controls. China Media Project highlighted a weibo post by deputy director of the School of Law at China University of Political Science and Law He Bing, which was swiftly deleted, despite not mentioning Liu by name:

As Mo Yan receives his [Nobel] prize, regardless of whether it is from the perspective of domestic or international politics, we should all consider changing the fortune of another Nobel Prize winner. Our country cannot remain idiotic to the very end. Full reconciliation is the prerequisite for a stable society.

Meanwhile, Liu remains in prison, while his wife Liu Xia is under house arrest in the legal black hole where she has spent the last two years. The Financial Times’ Jamil Anderlini, discussing her case as a weathervane for judicial reform in China, described the Catch 22 situation imposed on visitors. “Their attempts to impose arbitrary and impossible conditions on would-be visitors rather than just forbidding them from seeing her seemed to betray a desire to somehow legitimise her detention,” he wrote.

The BBC (via CDT) reported this week that her incarceration is designed to pressure Liu Xiaobo into agreeing to leave the country, and to control the flow of information to and from the jailed laureate. Reporters Without Borders, meanwhile, has published haunting video of Liu Xia smoking at her window—”one of the few freedoms she can still enjoy”.

© Samuel Wade for China Digital Times (CDT), 2012. | Permalink | One comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: Ai Weiwei, house arrest, Hu Jia, illegal detentions, literature, liu xia, Liu Xiaobo, mo yan, Nobel Peace Prize, Nobel Prize, Ran Yunfei, Reporters Without Borders, Xiao Qiang
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