Asia Literary Review - Asian writers

October 10, 2009

At the luggage carousel, a black youngster came up to me and asked, in fluent Mandarin if I was a Chinese. He was an Ethiopian-born German and had studied in Chengdu. In the old days, people always assumed that I was a Japanese tourist. How things have changed. Now China is guest of honour at the Frankfurt Book Fair. Its posters are everywhere. As a Chinese native, it felt quite good to see the presence of China in a foreign city. At the same time, I wondered if it was overkill. It’s only a trade fair.

Liao Yiwu, a Sichuan-based poet and writer, was supposed to talk about his book at an Asia-Pacific literary festival in Berlin today, ahead of the Frankfurt Book Fair, but he was barred from leaving China. That was the twelfth time Liao has been refused an exit permit. They think he’s a national security threat. I wonder what kind of threat Liao could pose? He was incarcerated for four years because he composed an anti-government poem, ‘Massacre’, following the bloody crackdown on the 1989 student pro-democracy movement in Tiananmen.

The government decision to ban Liao’s travel generated a media storm in Germany. I went on Google after coming back to the hotel and typed ‘Liao Yiwu’. There were seventy-six related news stories just for today. The German version of Liao’s The Corpse Walker is now on Der Spiegel’s best-seller list. Liao’s German publisher, Fischer, has his poster on prominent display at the fair.

My friend Mitch at PEN International emailed after hearing about Liao’s case: ‘You’d think being a powerful empire-in-the-ascendant would impart a sense of invulnerability and an even more astute sense that the soft power projected by letting your writers speak would outweigh the damage they could do, such as it is … and not a cranky paranoia.’

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October 11, 2009

At the subway station, I ran into Bei Ling, the exiled Chinese poet. He looked like a Taoist monk with his long hair and flowing garment. Bei had a history of bucking Chinese authority. I wrote a story about him in early 2000, when he was arrested in China for distributing his literary journal there. He was in the news last month when he and dissident journalist Dai Qing were struck from a symposium on China ahead of the book fair. The organisers reinstated their invitation following a massive public outcry. However, the appearance of Bei and Dai caused the official Chinese delegation to walk out. Mei Zhaorong, China’s former ambassador to Germany, was quoted as saying: ‘We didn’t come for a lesson on democracy. Those times are over.’

Bei said he and Dai felt very isolated. ‘Nobody stood up for us and the Chinese officials were arrogant,’ he said. ‘The organisers apologised profusely to the Chinese delegation for our presence.’ Bei said the European media covered the stand-off, which meant international attention to China’s intolerance of dissenting authors.

‘It is not my intention to stir up troubles at the book fair,’ he said. ‘I just hope to sit in the same room with members of the official delegation. We could start some kind of dialogue.’

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October 12, 2009

The China Pavilion at the fair was designed by Li Jiwei, who was also the architect of the Water Cube for the Beijing Olympics. The centrepiece of his design, ‘Book Mountain’, is a giant piece of “handmade paper” flying over shelves of bound Chinese books. About 300 people put together the installation. China has made an outstanding effort.

At a dinner with some writer friends, I sat next to a PR executive for the book fair. He expressed disappointment at the European media for being overly critical of China’s guest-of-honour status: ‘We are merely running a trade fair, not a human rights convention. I hope the media don’t solely focus on the controversies.’ His remarks reminded me of a similar argument during the Olympic Games in which some athletes urged the media to focus on sports, not politics. The difference was that the German public were celebrating the twentieth anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall. The media were sensitive to any actions that brought back memories of the totalitarian rules under communism.

I heard that the Chinese government was upset at the negative media reports and dismayed that China was ‘unfairly’ treated. Reportedly, Chinese Vice Premier Xi Jinping had even considered skipping his speech at the opening ceremony.

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October 13, 2009

The opening session was uneventful. No one shouted slogans or threw shoes. Chinese Vice President Xi Jinping and German Chancellor Angela Merkel shook hands for the cameras. On stage, they played to their constituents. I jotted down some of Merkel’s nice sound bites.

‘Books are burnt and forbidden in dictatorships,’ she said, essentially referring to the Nazis. Merkel recalled her own past in formerly communist East Germany, saying that some courageous Westerners, instead of sending oranges, would smuggle books into East Germany. ‘Books point out inconsistencies that endanger a dictatorship.’ Books were decisive in overthrowing the East German dictatorship and ‘books are a part of our history’.

Xi calmly stuck with his message: enhancing cultural exchanges to boost world peace; different cultures should learn from each other to build a harmonious world.

At a Chinese restaurant near Frankfurt train station, we spotted Dai Qing and Bei Ling. Dai, in her seventies, looked young and energetic, as determined as ever. She raved about Angela Merkel’s speech. I asked how she felt about Mo Yan’s keynote speech, which I missed. Mo Yan’s 'Red Sorghum' used to be banned. ‘So full of empty slogans,’ she said. He talked about how freedom was relative and different in each country and that writers in China were enjoying relative freedom.

A business friend frowned: ‘A writer may be free to write anything but if the publishing houses are controlled b y the government, you can’t say writers enjoy freedom of speech.’

I had to leave for Lang Lang’s concert, which was held in the beautiful old Opera House. He played 'The Yellow River Piano Concerto', a patriotic choral piece written in 1939 by Xian Xinghai, though revised under Madame Mao’s supervision during the Cultural Revolution.

I always have problems with this piece because I think the concerto, which describes China’s resistance against the Japanese in the 1940s, exaggerates the Communists’ role in the war. In the third movement, when ‘East is Red’, a song that elevated Mao Zedong to saviour status, becomes a dominant theme, I found it jarring. Lang Lang had spread this propaganda piece around the world. As the audience was wowed by the former child prodigy, I snuck out.

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October 14, 2009

The fair kicked off today. Years ago, delegates from mainland China travelling in major American or European cities would always walk in groups and wear the same ill-fitting grey suits. Nowadays, Chinese on official business still travel in groups, but their suits are well-tailored. When they’re not talking loudly, they actually look sophisticated.

I wanted to talk to Chinese publishers. The government has officially recognised the existence of private publishing houses. They have been around since the 1980s, but called themselves ‘book sellers’ and, to publish anything, they bought ISBNs or book rights from state-owned companies. With the new regulation, private publishers can now operate in the open, but they’ll have to enter into partnership with state companies. ‘It’s all a matter of ideological control,’ an editor with a private publishing house said, but added that the new rules were a sign of progress.

Xinhua News Agency says about 300 publishing companies brought 7,600 books and printed products to Frankfurt. Many of the books on display were Chinese language textbooks, but there were books on tourism, cooking and popular science fiction, and some children’s books and science journals. The only political books were by Deng Xiaoping and Jiang Zemin.

I ran into a Chinese-American friend and he said over coffee he had seen a German reporter perusing a Chinese cookbook. The reporter struck up a conversation with a young female executive of a state publishing company. They were speaking German and her supervisor became nervous when they started laughing. He tried to interrupt the conversation, but the woman ignored him. After the reporter left, the supervisor scolded her and demanded to know what they had talked about. The reporter had asked if the Chinese still ate dog. ‘I joked with the journalist that only Cantonese eat dog. I said we never consider Cantonese as Chinese anyway.’ The supervisor was somewhat relieved that his staff didn’t discuss anything politically sensitive. After he left, she told my friend: ‘They monitor everything and take everything way too seriously. It’s so tense, my muscles ache.’

At the end of the story, my friend commented: ‘Many people consider China’s support for the book fair as soft-power expansion. I think a more appropriate phrase might be “rigid soft power”.’

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October 15, 2009

Today was ‘Dissidents’ Day’ – with the increasing public outcry over China’s action to exclude dissident writers from the book fair, the organiser has set up platforms so people could hear alternative voices from China. Bei Ling, Dai Qing and Zhou Qing were busy talking to reporters and joined Ma Jian, author of 'Beijing Coma' for a late morning session with the media at the PEN German Centre booth. They described China’s publishing industry as ‘Orwellian’. Ma Jian was pointed. ‘When you commemorate the fall of the Berlin Wall, have you ever thought of China and the student protest movement that happened twenty years ago?’

Zhou Qing offered more sound bites. ‘The government divides writers into two groups – “us” and “them”. Those who toe the Party line are treated with special favours whereas independent thinkers are persecuted,’ he said. ‘The Chinese government uses the opportunity to show off its new wealth and has sent a group of writers that have been specially selected by the Party.’

Dai Qing said she had visited the Chinese section at the book fair. ‘If you look at a book on Chinese history there, you won’t find a single one that deals with the past brutalities of the Communist regime. There is no way you can get anything published without the approval of the Party,’ she said.

I ran into a publisher who was part of the Chinese delegation but was trying, despite his blue suit, to remain incognito. He shook his head: ‘These people are using the book fair as an effective platform to promote their political views,’ the publisher said, a situation he described as ‘unfortunate’.

‘China has made tremendous progress. One can’t ignore the fact that writers and publishers are gaining their freedom inch by inch.’

At a party hosted by a major German publisher, I chatted with a German publicist who had been busy pitching Chinese government-sanctioned writers to the German media but with disappointing results. ‘The media are not interested in wasting their time talking with writers who feel obligated to toe the Party line,’ he said.

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October 16, 2009

China’s e-publishing industry is booming. I interviewed the thirty-four-year-old CEO of Shanda, a major online publishing company that operates several literary websites in China. Writers can register with Shanda and post their fiction online. So far, about 700,000 writers have posted over 2.7 million titles. When I asked the CEO how his company managed politically sensitive writings, he quickly explained that the sites are purely commercial, but editors monitor the sites for talent, and ‘problems’.

I ran into Da Qing. She excitedly led me to a publisher of oriental spiritual books; pages of the Chinese version of ‘Charter 08’ – a manifesto signed by Chinese human rights activists calling for political reforms – had been hung in front of the tiny stand. Dai, one of the signatories, said: ‘The Chinese government might have suppressed the document but it’s been spread all around the world.’

At universities around Frankfurt, China-related events were held throughout the book fair. They were by all reports well attended. I stopped by China’s hall at the fair and it was almost empty.

The book fair is a trade show where those in the publishing industry negotiate the buying and selling of publishing rights. China had dubbed the event its Olympics of Books. It gave the organisers a US$15 million contribution and promised a contingent of 2,000 writers, artists and publishers. At a time when the sagging publishing industry worldwide threatened attendance at the book fair, it was a generous gesture.

The Chinese government put on a big show and was met with indifference. I felt a little sad.

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October 17, 2009

Chinese firms have sold the rights for more than 1,300 books to foreign publishers, while signing up to import 883 overseas titles. According to China Daily, most of the exported books were about ‘ancient Chinese culture and history, the nation’s scientific and technological development roadmap’.

A Shanghai-based publisher, who purchased the rights of several western bestsellers he was confident would do well in China, told me: ‘The economic reforms in the past thirty years have made it possible for a large number of Chinese to join the ranks of a western-style middle class. As a result, the value gap between the East and West is smaller. Pop fiction such as Harry Porter and Da Vinci Code are equally popular in China, selling millions of copies.’ I hope the middle-class values also include freedom of expression.

In exchange, the West gets the collected writings of former President Jiang Zemin.

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October 18, 2009

Like the suits they used to wear, Chinese officials might look uncultured and clumsy at the beginning, but eventually they learned how to appear sophisticated. They also find they feel more accepted when they begin to adopt the universal standards of a modern society.

Many dissident writers condemned China’s participation in the Frankfurt Book Fair as an attempt to expand its soft power and enhance its influence in the world, but what I saw was something more positive.

At the book fair, I could see the strong desire by Chinese officials and publishers to reach out for recognition. I think it’s a good thing. They may have been disappointed by the negative media coverage, but the controversies will provide a learning experience. To quote a US-based independent Chinese publisher, ‘China is the beneficiary of the global economy, but it can’t stand on the world stage without accepting the basic values of our modern civilisation.’

I agree. It’s far more preferable that the government spends millions of dollars on promoting books than burning them. On that point, it’s a tremendous step forward.