SPIEGEL: How have you been lately?

Ai: In general I am fine; my situation is as good as anybody else’s. It is still difficult but that’s because I want to put up a fight. I could have a more comfortable life if I gave up on this, and so could my relatives, my friends and state security.

SPIEGEL: Why don’t you want this?

Ai: Because I can’t feel comfortable if I have to give up my — and other people’s –rights for that. If I have to ignore injustice that I simply cannot ignore. My world is so connected to the world of others, how can I pretend I don’t know about those things? […]

SPIEGEL: Outside of China you are not only known for your art and your tweets, but also because you frequently speak to foreign journalists. How would you describe your relationship with the Western media?

Ai: Journalists are professionals. They look at the truth the way doctors look at it — not like a patient. As an artist I try to maintain the truth on a level where it can be more easily shared and accepted. Art has to be innocent. Journalists have to make judgements. That’s why they covered the tragic Boston attacks widely, but didn’t cover the 122 Tibetans who have immolated themselves over the past months. And that’s why many of you write about my struggle but not about the struggle of others.

SPIEGEL: Do you think you are getting too much media attention?

Ai: It certainly raises my responsibility. […] [Source]

Ai and Zand also discuss Ai’s participation in the Venice Bienniale in June, his personal circumstances in China, and why “if I was a Western politician, I probably would like dictators, too.” The artist has recently branched out into bad hairdressing and, like the Ministry of Public Security, is also taking aim at China’s repeated milk safety scandals. Meanwhile, his Sunflower Seeds have returned to London in an unofficial exhibition of seeds stolen from previous showings.

At Tea Leaf Nation, Shi Yunhan reports Mo Yan’s professed hope that the Nobel spotlight will soon fade, allowing him to return to writing in relative obscurity. Shi quotes from Mo’s recent speech at the 2nd Sino-Australian Literary Forum in Beijing:

Whether or not I deserved the Nobel Prize, I already received it, and now it’s time to get back to my writing desk and produce a good work. I hear that the 2013 list of Nobel Prize nominees has been finalized. I hope that once the new laureate is announced, no one will pay attention to me anymore.

[…] The prize money does not come out of taxpayers’ pockets, so I don’t have such responsibilities. I hate partisan politics and how people gang up on opponents based on ideology. I like to come and go on my own, which allows me to look on from the sidelines with a clear mind and gain insight about the world and the human condition. I don’t have the capability or interest of becoming a politician. I just want to write, quietly, and do some charity work in secret.

[…] It is not surprising to hear Mo Yan point out that a Nobel laureate has no technical obligations for increased social activism. Even before he won the Nobel Prize, Mo Yan spoke negatively on the public duties that can come with literary awards. It is also in line with his pen name, which means “don’t speak” in Chinese. The phrase refers to an ancient saying calling ordinary people to refrain from speaking out in public, especially on state affairs. However, now that he is China’s first officially acknowledged Nobel laureate, his sincere desire for a low-profile openly runs against his adoption by the Chinese government as a national symbol and source of pride. [Source]

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Liu Xia cried, smiled and blew kisses to foreign diplomats and media – some of whom she knew prior to her isolation – outside the courthouse in Huairou, just outside Beijing.

Liu Xia shouted: “I’m not free – tell everybody I’m not free!” a diplomat said.

She added: “I love you – I miss you,” before being taken away.

…

The diplomat added that Liu looked physically well but was clearly emotional – jumping up and down when she first spotted the people waiting outside.

Liu Xia has never been accused of a crime but has been under house arrest since her husband won the Nobel peace price in October 2010. A team of reporters from the Associated Press gained entry to her apartment and interview her in early December of last year, and four activists pushed past guards to reach her several weeks later. Lawyers and family members believe that the authorities have brought fraud charges against Liu’s brother as retaliation for those two visits, according to the South China Morning Post, since the charges relate to a disputed real estate deal which his attorney’s claim has already been settled.

See more on Liu Xia and Liu Xiaobo via CDT.

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Beijing police detained Liu Hui on Jan. 31, just before the Lunar New Year and a planned family reunion, and formally charged him two weeks ago over a real estate dispute, lawyer Mo Shaoping said Thursday. He said the criminal charges were unwarranted in a business dispute that has since been resolved.

Liu Hui’s arrest is the latest blow to the family and, Mo said, is particularly painful for his sister, Liu Xia, the wife of democracy campaigner Liu Xiaobo. He was imprisoned in late 2008, and ever since he was awarded the Nobel prize two-and-a-half years ago, Liu Xia has been under house arrest. Isolated in an apartment with no phone or Internet, she appears emotionally fragile, allowed only weekly visits with family members and a monthly visit to her husband in prison.

[…] Pu [Zhiqiang], the lawyer and Liu family friend, said arresting and prosecuting Liu Hui in an ordinary business dispute fits a pattern of selectively using the law to harass activists and their families. The artist and prominent government critic Ai Weiwei has faced tax charges, for example, rather than a direct attack against his activism. “State security is increasingly using selective enforcement of the law,” Pu said.

Morillo suggests that Liu’s prosecution may have been prompted by two incidents in December, in which first an AP team and then a group of activists managed to break through the security cordon around his sister’s apartment.

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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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He […] criticised the intelligentsia – including last year’s Nobel literature prize-winner Mo Yan – for failing to speak out on important issues. “Chinese intellectuals haven’t taken enough responsibility. They always have an excuse, saying they don’t have a reason to talk or don’t have the environment … If they could all stand up, they would have a loud voice,” he told the Guardian.

[…] He said he had also fallen short, noting: “I understand the Chinese political and cultural environment well. I understand people who don’t use their voice. As an intellectual and author I should require myself to do it first. If I don’t do enough, I can’t require other authors to do so. There’s always a reason. There’s always one book or another; timing. But I think as an author I could have taken more responsibility and I didn’t.”

Yan’s novel Lenin’s Kisses, published in the United States last October, sees its British release this week. The book, together with several others, is reviewed by Eric Hayot at Public Books.

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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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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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Title: “¥”

This photo is named for the symbol for China’s currency, the yuan. When he first won the Nobel, Mo Yan joked that the prize money wouldn’t even be enough to buy a house in Beijing. Netizens found the “magical realism” of his situation too rich.

Title: “A Man Who Loves to Talk”

Guan Moye chose the pen name “Don’t Speak” (Mo Yan 莫言) from an admonition his father gave him during his Cultural Revolution childhood. Mo’s politics have stirred controversy even before he won the Nobel. He is the vice-chairman of the Chinese Writers’ Association, a Communist Party organization. Often silent on the fate of fellow Chinese writers in exile or under arrest, he in fact voiced his hope for fellow Nobel laureate Liu Xiaobo’s release from prison days after winning his prize. But in Stockholm last week, Mo would not directly answer questions about Liu, who won the 2010 Peace prize one year into an 11-year prison sentence. “I have already issued my opinion about this matter,” he told reporters.

In 2009, Wang told the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, “Photography is one way to reach the unseen through the seeable.” In the tightly-watched space of the Chinese Internet, Wang says more about Mo’s journey in pictures than he could in words.

Via CDT Chinese.

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Since directives are sometimes communicated orally to journalists and editors, who then leak them online, the wording published here may not be exact. The original publication date is noted after the directives; the date given may indicate when the directive was leaked, rather than when it was issued. CDT does its utmost to verify dates and wording, but also takes precautions to protect the source.

Central Propaganda Department: Regarding personnel changes and the disclosure of personal finances of officials at the provincial level and above, without exception employ Xinhua wire copy, do not change headlines, and do not independently produce other reports or commentary. (December 4, 2012)

中宣部：对省部级以上官员工作岗位职务变动以及官员财产申报相关问题，一律采用新华社通稿，不改标题，不自行作其他报道评论。

Central Propaganda Department: In covering international issues, especially those involving Japan and North Korea, strictly adhere to the approach of Xinhua wire copy and declarations by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. Do not voluntarily investigate or comment these issues. (December 4, 2012)

中宣部：对国际问题特别是涉日、朝的报道严格按新华社通稿和外交部对外表态口径刊播，不自采自评。

Central Propaganda Department: Follow previous notices and requests in reporting on Mo Yan’s trip to Sweden to receive the [Nobel] prize. Utilize copy from Xinhua, CCTV and similar major media outlets. Do not reuse related information from online sources or foreign media. (December 7, 2012)

中宣部：对莫言赴瑞典领奖的报道按此前通知要求，采用新华社、央视等中央主要媒体的稿件，不转载网上和境外媒体相关消息。

Central Propaganda Department: All media are not to republish, report, or comment on the report issued by the civic group Beijing Xing which says 90% of migrant workers in the construction industry do not have contracts or insurance. (December 7, 2012)

中宣部：对民间组织北京行发布报告称九成建筑业农民工无合同无保险，各媒体不转载不报道不评论。

Central Propaganda Department: All media are not to republish, report, or comment on the online rumor that Beijing Traffic Management Bureau Director Song Jianguo has been investigated. (December 7, 2012)

中宣部：对网传北京交管局长宋建国被调查，各媒体不转载不报道不评论。

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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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Breathless from disbelief at receiving unexpected visitors into her home and with a shaking voice, Liu Xia told The Associated Press in her first interview in more than two years, that her ongoing house arrest has been a painfully surreal experience. She said she has been confined to her duplex apartment in downtown Beijing with no Internet or outside phone line and only allowed weekly trips to buy groceries and visit her parents.

Once a month, she is taken to see her husband who is four years into an 11-year prison term for subversion for authoring and disseminating a sweeping call for democratic reform known as Charter ’08.

[…] “I felt I was a person emotionally prepared to respond to the consequences of Liu Xiaobo winning the prize. But after he won the prize, I really never imagined that after he won, I would not be able to leave my home. This is too absurd. I think Kafka could not have written anything more absurd and unbelievable than this.”

[…] “I can’t remember [when I last saw my husband],” she said. “I don’t keep track of the days anymore. That’s how it is.”

Watch the AP video of the interview:

See also photographs of an emotional Liu Xia taken by the AP.

On Tuesday, a group of 134 Nobel laureates wrote to Party General Secretary Xi Jinping, urging him to release Liu Xiaobo and Liu Xia [.pdf]:

On December 25, 2009, your government sentenced Dr. Liu, a highly respected intellectual and democracy advocate, to 11 years in prison for “inciting subversion.” The charges were based on his political essays and co-authorship of “Charter 08,” which called for peaceful political reform in China based on the principles of human rights, freedom, and democracy. Shortly after the Norwegian Nobel Committee awarded Dr. Liu its Peace Prize, the government placed Liu Xia under house arrest, where she remains cut off from the outside world two years later without charge or the benefit of any legal process. In response to the continued detentions of Dr. Liu and Liu Xia, the United Nations Working Group on Arbitrary Detention, an independent and impartial body of experts, issued Opinions No. 15-16/2011, finding their detentions to be in violation of international law; however, despite this finding their cases remain unresolved.

Across all disciplines, the distinguishing feature which led to our recognition as Nobel Laureates is that we have embraced the power of our intellectual freedom and creative inspiration to do our part to advance the human condition. No government can restrict freedom of thought and association without having a negative effect on such important human innovation. Indeed, we Laureates are distressed that your government continues to block access to the main Nobel Prize web site (www.nobelprize.org).

Archbishop Desmond Tutu also launched a public petition calling for the couple’s release, which has now almost reached 200,000 signatures. Another letter came from within China on Tuesday, from a group of 40 activists including Hu Jia, legal scholar He Weifang and rights lawyer Pu Zhiqiang:

Inside China and abroad, people are hoping to see signs for political reform as China ushers in new leadership. Systematic political changes are complex and many-faceted, requiring rational deliberation and orderly actions, and we would like to see various social forces working together to advance this process.

we propose the followings as initial steps for political and social change:

1.Initiate legal procedures immediately to reverse the wrong verdict against Dr. Liu Xiaobo, and set him free as soon as possible;

2.Immediately lift the restrictions imposed on Liu Xia, Liu Xiaobo’s wife, ending forced isolation, and allowing her to live her normal life;

3.Immediately free those who have been detained or sentenced for their political stand, expression, or religious beliefs;

4.Immediately cease surveillance of people who hold independent political positions or/and expressing independent opinions, and remove all forms of restrictions on their freedom of movement.

We believe that the existence of political prisoners does not help China to build its image of a responsible world power. Ending political imprisonment is an important benchmark for China to move toward a civilized political system.

China faces complex problems, and reform is a difficult endeavor that requires all the effort from all the people.

The BBC reports that signatures added since Tuesday have brought the total to almost 300.

Any hope that the new Party leadership might be receptive to these requests will be dampened by news that Norwegians, alone in Europe, will be ineligible for Beijing’s new 72-hour visa waiver scheme. Their exclusion appears to be an extension of the feud against Norway that began with the announcement of Liu’s award. According to The Financial Times, a travel administration official declined to confirm this suspicion, but said that “some countries were not eligible because their citizens or government were ‘of low-quality’ and ‘badly behaved’.”

The state-owned Global Times accused the 134 Nobel laureates of ignoring China’s progress and—despite the presence on the list of figures such as the Dalai Lama—of opposing “non-Western” ideologies.

In recent years, the choice of the Nobel Peace Prize winners, from US President Barack Obama in 2009 to this year’s pick of the European Union, has increasingly made the public scratch its head. Certainly, the decision to award the prize to dissident Liu Xiaobo infuriated Chinese society.

It seems that the Nobel Committee has missed the real focus of the world, and consequently has seen its influence dwindling.

Among these 134 members, we wonder how many of them have first-hand experience of China, let alone are aware of the changes that have taken place in terms of China’s political freedom in recent years.

By speaking with one voice, the 134 Nobel laureates have only demonstrated their firm opposition to non-Western ideologies. In their eyes, a few dissidents speak for all of China. A sense of moral superiority still persists among Western elites and their followers.

Foreign Ministry spokesman Hong Lei also condemned the letter. From the BBC:

“China is a law-abiding country. Liu Xiaobo was lawfully sentenced to a fixed-term imprisonment by the judicial organ because he committed an offence against Chinese law,” he said.

“The Chinese government opposes outsiders handling matters in any way that would interfere in its judicial sovereignty and internal matters.”

On the other hand, he congratulated Mo Yan, who he said “loves his country and people”.

In fact, Mo Yan also expressed his hope for Liu Xiaobo’s release after being named the 2012 Literature Prize winner in October. His public support surprised critics who had accused him of being a government puppet. But Tom Hancock wrote at the AFP that Mo is unlikely to mention Liu again while in Sweden to receive his prize:

Mo Yan has long trodden a fine line between criticising China’s political establishment and cooperating with it, said Ma Xiangwu, a literature professor at the People’s University in Beijing.

“For a long time Mo has occupied a position within the system, but not totally within it,” he said. “His works are often very critical of society and politics — he’s too complex to be put in a box.”

In keeping with that, he said there was “absolutely no chance” Mo would refer to Liu in his Nobel lecture.

“He won’t mention sensitive issues during his speech. I think he will be quite moderate. I don’t think he will directly criticise the government… but I also don’t expect he will heap extravagant praise on China,” he added.

Sure enough, Mo told a press conference in Stockholm on Thursday that “I have already issued my opinion about this matter”, and that his prize is for literature, not politics. Chinese media, meanwhile, have preferred to focus on whether Mo will wear a tuxedo or a Mao suit to next week’s ceremony, or one of the three other outfits he is said to have taken with him when he left on Wednesday.

See also ‘You Wait for Me with Dust‘, a poem from Liu Xiaobo to Liu Xia (via Tania Branigan), and more on Liu Xiaobo, Liu Xia, Mo Yan and the Nobel Prizes at CDT.

© Samuel Wade for China Digital Times (CDT), 2012. | Permalink | One comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: Barack Obama, Dalai Lama, Desmond Tutu, european union, He Weifang, house arrest, Hu Jia, illegal detention, liu xia, Liu Xiaobo, mo yan, Nobel Peace Prize, Nobel Prize, norway, pu zhiqiang, Xi Jinping
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Chen shocked the world in April when he made a daring, next-to-impossible escape, climbing over the wall surrounding his house (breaking his foot in the process) and catching a ride some 350 miles to Beijing, where he took refuge in the U.S. Embassy. After a tense, days-long diplomatic standoff closely involving Secretary of State Hillary Clinton (No. 3), a deal was struck under which Chen would be allowed to travel to the United States to study. Now at New York University, Chen has embraced his new role as an evangelist for human rights, making the case that incremental change — one village or even one person at a time — can eventually transform a superpower. Against all odds, he remains optimistic, believing that China, taking a cue from Japan and South Korea, must “learn Eastern democracy.” He even thinks it’s inevitable: “Nobody can stop the progress of history,” he says.

An interview with Chen Guangcheng by Isaac Stone Fish accompanies the list. In it, Chen discusses how the central government allows abuses by local authorities—see Guizhou journalist Li Yuanlong’s detention last week for a recent example—and the chances of change or even revolution in China’s near future.

The central government definitely knew I was illegally detained at home. As for how the local authorities invented lies to frame me to put me in prison, as for how they persecuted my entire family, [the central government] didn’t necessarily know about the details. Yet now, six months later, I still haven’t seen the central government follow the country’s laws and keep its promise and investigate and deal with those officials who recklessly and illegally committed crimes.

Throughout Chinese history, has any emperor said they want to hand over power? Every emperor wants his power to last generation after generation. But can they? The Communist Party cannot monopolize all of the power in the country forever. This is a reality they must accept.

The possibility of China facing a revolution in 2013 is pretty big. This is something that the powers that be in China understand more than anyone else. It’s a pity that international society still does not understand this and has still not prepared. America should immediately start moving from dealing with China’s powers that be to dealing with the Chinese people. It definitely won’t be like 1989.

Chen does not appear to view the possibility of revolution with any great relish: when asked what the worst idea of the year is, he answered “violence”.

Controversial artist Ai Weiwei, still unable to leave China over a year after his 81-day detention in 2011, is ranked 26th:

[…] Ai has found ways to occupy his time. When one of his Twitter followers asked in May whether he was working on any new artwork, Ai tweeted back, “I am the artwork.” In April, he set up cameras throughout his house, providing a live feed on his website and to his 170,000 followers. (“Twitter is my city, my favorite city,” he told FP this year.) The authorities soon pressured him into removing the cameras, evidently preferring that they be the only ones to watch the rotund 55-year-old work on his computer and play with his cats.

But make no mistake — this performance art is deeply political. Throughout his career Ai has insisted that artists have a duty to humanity that outweighs the obligations of nationalism. Even declaring one’s opposition to “trafficking children, selling HIV-infected blood, [and] operating slave labor coal pits” is enough to get branded as “anti-China” in today’s political climate, Ai once noted on his blog, asking, “If we aren’t anti-China, are we still human?”

Foreign Policy also published a slideshow from Ai’s first North American retrospective at the Hirshhorn Museum in Washington, D.C., noting that “the artist was not in attendance.”

British singer Elton John added a concert dedication to Ai’s list of recent accolades on Sunday. While dismissing this “disrespectful” gesture, Global Times took the opportunity to critique Chen and Ai’s inclusion in the Foreign Policy list:

Western society is seriously biased against China. When US magazine Foreign Policy compiled a list of 100 global thinkers from around the world, the first Chinese on that list was blind activist Chen Guangcheng, and the second was Ai Weiwei. Even to Chinese people who have sympathy for these two people, this list may seem ridiculous.

In a diverse era, we don’t hold that the existence of people like Chen and Ai is unexpected in China. Also, we don’t believe that the impact they have brought should be denied completely.

The selection of Chen and Ai makes people wonder whether the word “thinker” in Chinese and English have different meanings. We can just say that some Westerners are increasingly unable to contain themselves over China’s rise. They cannot control China through normal means and they are more likely to rush their fences.

A more nuanced piece of Aiconoclasm came last week from Paul Gladston at Randian:

There are […] significant dangers in the upholding of Ai as our sole representative/mediator of artistic resistance to authority within China. While Ai’s bluntly confrontational and often bombastic stance can be readily digested within Western liberal-democratic contexts where romantic notions of heroic dissent in the face of overwhelming power still persist, it is by no means representative of the critical positioning of most other Chinese artists. Ai may have situated himself admirably behind enlightened westernized ideals of freedom and openness, but the sheer bluntness and reductive simplicity of his critical approach to authority have effectively foreclosed a more searching discussion of contemporary art within China as well as the complex, web of localized cultural, social, political and economic forces that surround its production and reception.

[…] Ai Weiwei is right in drawing our repeated attention to the debilitating injustices of totalitarian power within China. He is also right to upbraid western viewers for their inability to see past what are for them the pleasurable ambiguities of contemporary Chinese art. Less convincing, however, is Ai’s wholly reductive view of the critical possibilities of contemporary art in China. By insisting on his own stridently oppositional approach towards power as the only legitimate game in town, and because we are already highly familiar with that approach, [he] has misrepresented the contemporary Chinese artworld. One might add that Ai is also romanticizing the conditions of criticality in the West.

At 54 in the Foreign Policy list is Yu Jianrong, for his concise but detailed roadmap for reform.

In April, he released a succinct, two-phase plan he called a “10-Year Outline of China’s Social and Political Development.” Despite its bland title, Yu’s blueprint offers a timetable for Chinese reform that for once is as credible as it is ambitious. The plan puts dates and specifics to the task, advocating, for example, a stronger law on private property, the revealing of “information pertaining to government affairs” and “officials’ property,” and the abolition of “speech crimes,” after which China should “open up” the media and political parties. Yu’s short manifesto immediately caused a splash when he released it to his nearly 1.5 million followers on the popular microblogging site Sina Weibo (though the government has maintained a deafening silence). “We’ve already decided to change,” Yu explained in an interview. “The question is: In which direction do we change, and from where do we start?” Sweeping reform in this authoritarian land of 1.3 billion won’t be easy, but Yu’s plan is as good a place to begin as any. The era, he said, of crossing the river “by feeling the stones” is over.

China Media Project’s David Bandurski translated Yu’s plan in March. Soon afterwards, Didi Kirsten Tatlow described it at The International Herald Tribune, together with some criticism from Tsinghua University political scientist Liu Yu:

Master plans like Mr. Kang [Youwei]’s, or Mr. Yu’s are “unrealistic,” she said.

“All Chinese intellectuals, especially the men, they tend to blur the line with being an official and then they’re thinking, ‘How should I design a system for the country?’ and ‘How to make progress?’

“In the West there are intellectuals who make proposals on specific things, but in general they don’t make plans for the whole country,” she said.

What is needed instead, she believes, is a broad debate, among ordinary people.

“A good plan should involve the whole society,” she said. “There should be a big debate on where the country should be going.”

Yu’s nomination for best idea of 2012 is Mo Yan’s controversial selection for the Nobel Prize for Literature. Mo’s chief rival for the award, Japanese novelist Haruki Murakami, took 49th place on the Foreign Policy list as a consolation prize.

At 69 is environmentalist Ma Jun:

[…] A journalist turned environmentalist who founded the Beijing-based Institute of Public and Environmental Affairs, Ma applies scientific rigor to exposing such corporate violations (more than 90,000 to date), flagging everything from a small coal-tar factory improperly storing its dangerous waste to Apple suppliers poisoning workers with a toxic chemical used on touch screens — as well as local governments that flout environmental regulations across China. Dozens of major multinationals now consult Ma’s pollution readings when working with suppliers in China. And by documenting environmental violations that had long been obvious but were never compiled in a way the public could easily understand, Ma has given statistical ammunition to Chinese citizens trying to nudge the Communist Party into cleaning up its act.

Wang Jisi, “China’s most respected expert on the United States”, came in at 73:

[…] What does Wang want us to know? That the feel-good stories U.S. officials tell themselves about China’s global ascent are an elaborate form of denial. In an influential monograph co-authored by Brookings Institution senior fellow Kenneth Lieberthal, Wang this year described China’s actions on the world stage as rooted in the conclusion that “America will seek to constrain or even upset China’s rise.” Beijing’s view, he says, is that the United States is “heading for decline” and that China’s development model provides an “alternative to Western democracy and market economies.” The result? “[T]hese views make many Chinese political elites suspect that it is the United States,” Wang says, “that is ‘on the wrong side of history.’”

And at 83 is the Taiwanese-American former head of Google China, venture capitalist Kai-fu Lee:

In an article he published on his LinkedIn page in October, Lee named China’s narrowly focused school curriculum and the risk-averse nature of Chinese students, as well as the country’s chaotic Internet environment, among the reasons China hasn’t yet produced its own Mark Zuckerberg. That may be why he has also started a popular education website encouraging Chinese students to think more creatively. Although none of his companies has exploded yet, Lee’s ultimate contribution may be more fundamental: laying both the intellectual and financial groundwork for a revolution in the world’s largest online community.

Perhaps more significant to China for now than any of the above are Aung San Suu Kyi and Thein Sein, who top the list having begun to pilot the formerly reliable Chinese satellite of Myanmar (also known as Burma) into a more open and international orbit:

Aung San Suu Kyi, the soft-spoken, iconic political activist whom devotees call simply “the Lady,” may not seem like an obvious partner for Thein Sein, but she has become one by doing what few legends of her stature can: embracing the messy pragmatism of politics. Although Burma’s struggles are far from over — she has warned that international investment has been too rapid, and ethnic violence is escalating — the willingness of both the Lady and the general to embrace short-term compromise and foster long-term reconciliation in what was only recently one of the world’s most isolated countries is something to celebrate.

Fittingly, Aung San Suu Kyi finally was able to accept her 1991 Nobel Peace Prize in June. She used the occasion to remind the world of those like her, who struggle in the most forlorn places: “To be forgotten too is to die a little. It is to lose some of the links that anchor us to the rest of humanity.” It is a sentiment still felt from Aleppo to Havana, Pyongyang to Tehran, but also, as Aung San Suu Kyi and Thein Sein have shown, one that doesn’t need to be permanent.

See more on Chen Guangcheng, Ai Weiwei, Yu Jianrong, Ma Jun, Wang Jisi, Kai-fu Lee and Myanmar/Burma at CDT.

© Samuel Wade for China Digital Times (CDT), 2012. | Permalink | No comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: Ai Weiwei, Apple, artistic freedom, artists, Burma, central government, Chen Guangcheng, contemporary art, contemporary artists, education, Global Times, Google, Haruki Murakami, Hillary Clinton, HIV, house arrest, IPE, Kaifu Lee, kenneth lieberthal, Li Yuanlong, local government, Ma Jun, mo yan, Myanmar, Nobel Peace Prize, Nobel Prize, pollution, private property, reform, reformers, revolution, slave labor, surveillance, trafficking, transparency, wang jisi, year end lists 2012, Yu Jianrong
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Central Propaganda Department: Fully grasp guidance with regards to Mo Yan winning the Nobel prize in literature. Report mainly on his literary accomplishments. Do not compare him to other prize-winners. Avoid politicizing the discussion. (November 6, 2012)

中宣部: 对莫言获诺贝尔文学奖要把好导向，主要报道莫言文学成就，不要把莫言获奖及其他人获奖进行对比，避免政治化。

When Gao Xingjian won the Nobel Prize in literature in 2000, he had already lived in exile in France for a number of years. (Gao became a French citizen in 1997; China does not recognize dual citizenship.) Neither he nor 2010 Peace Prize winner Liu Xiaobo have been acknowledged by the Chinese government for their awards. Mo Yan’s is the first prize won by a Chinese person which the Chinese authorities have publicly praised.

Just days after winning the Nobel, Mo Yan voiced his hope for Liu Xiaobo’s release from prison.

© Anne.Henochowicz for China Digital Times (CDT), 2012. | Permalink | No comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: censorship, central propaganda department, Directives from the Ministry of Truth, gao xingjian, Liu Xiaobo, Ministry of Truth, mo yan, Nobel Prize, propaganda
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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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The online media platform NetEase took a veiled jab at Hu Xijin and his newspaper with an allusive Weibo post:

NetEaseNewsClient: The wheel of history rolls forward. Only the grass that is adept at adjusting its direction can keep sticking to the front of the car. @HuXijin @GlobalTimes

网易新闻客户端：历史车轮滚滚向前，只有那些善于调整方向的草，才能继续粘在车头。@胡锡进 @环球时报

The grass alluded to in word and image is the annual fleabane, known as qiangtoucao (墙头草) or “wall-top grass” in Chinese. Qiangtoucao also means “fence-sitter,” someone who bends to the prevailing political or social winds to stay rooted.

This is a surprising post to come from a Chinese media company, but it is not without precedent. This May, the Beijing News left a cryptic apology on Weibo after publishing an editorial which accused the U.S. government of “scheming” to bring the lawyer Chen Guangcheng to its embassy. That post stayed live for nearly 24 hours before it vanished. It’s unclear how long the NetEase comment lasted, but it, too, has been wiped from Weibo.

Via AmazeNews. NetEase post translated by Mengyu Dong. Hu Xijin quotations from Tea Leaf Nation.

© Anne.Henochowicz for China Digital Times (CDT), 2012. | Permalink | One comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: Global Times, Hu xijin, mo yan, netease, Nobel Prize, weibo
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