MCLC: Liu Xia letter

[Denton, Kirk]

MCLC LIST
From: kirk (denton.2 at osu.edu)
Subject: Liu Xia letter
***********************************************************

Source: Sinosphere Blog, NYT (11/29/13):
http://sinosphere.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/11/29/isolation-under-house-arrest
-for-wife-of-imprisoned-nobel-laureate/

Isolation Under House Arrest for Wife of Imprisoned Nobel Laureate
By AUSTIN RAMZY 

Liu Xia, the wife of the imprisoned Chinese Nobel laureate Liu Xiaobo,
says she feels completely isolated living under house arrest in Beijing
and finds rare happiness in reading, according to a July letter.

“My reading has no specific goal; for me it’s rather like breathing — I
have to do it in order to live,” she wrote. “When I find books that I
love, I feel the author is writing for me alone, and feel a private joy.”

The letter offers a rare insight into the life of a woman who has been
largely disappeared since her husband was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize
three years ago.

Ms. Liu receives visits from family members but is otherwise shut off from
the world. Rights groups say her extrajudicial detention is meant to put
pressure on her imprisoned husband and to prevent her from becoming a
public advocate for his cause.

She is allowed monthly visits with Mr. Liu at his prison in northeastern
China, where he is serving an 11-year sentence on charges of “inciting
subversion of state power” for his role in writing and organizing
signatures for Charter 08, a pro-democracy manifesto.

A copy and translation of the letter was provided to The New York Times by
Perry Link, a professor at the University of California, Riverside. Mr.
Link said he received the letter from a Los Angeles-based activist, Ann
Lau. The addressee’s name was removed from the copy he received, Mr. Link
said.

Mr. Link said he was confident of the letter’s authenticity. Zeng Jinyan,
a Hong Kong-based activist and friend of the Liu family, saw a copy of the
letter and said the handwriting was Ms. Liu’s. Jean-Philippe Béja, a China
scholar who has written extensively about Mr. Liu, said he had seen the
letter and had no doubts about it.

In the letter, Ms. Liu writes about the importance of reading to her daily
existence, a habit that she says she grew up with but that has become
pronounced in her isolation. She describes herself as “feeding on books”
and says one work she was recently consuming was a history of the Soviet
gulag.

She offered a poem she had written in 2011 that offers a pessimistic
vision of her life:

The future, for me,/ Is a shut window./The night within has no end/And the
horrid dreams do not fade.

Ms. Liu goes on to say that she was doing much better since she wrote that
poem. “This is because all of you have helped me to open the window and
let the sun rise. I know that all of this is not the end — even if justice
is too long in coming,” she wrote.

“‘Eleven years’ in duplicate now weigh on me,” Ms. Liu wrote, probably a
reference to both her husband’s sentence and and that of her younger
brother, Liu Hui, who was given an 11-year prison term in June over
financial fraud, a case that family and supporters say was politically
motivated.

Mr. Béja said that from her letter, Ms. Liu’s outlook seemed positive, but
it was possible she was putting on a brave face.

“I find her in a better mental state than I would have thought, given her
situation,” he said. “She is writing to a friend, so it’s hard know if she
wants to reassure them or if she is really telling her state of mind.”

A group of reporters from The Associated Press visited
<http://bigstory.ap.org/article/ap-exclusive-detained-china-nobel-wife-spea
ks-out> Ms. Liu in December 2012, slipping past her guards while they were
on lunch break. She trembled and cried while speaking with the
journalists, calling her situation absurd and physically draining.

Ms. Liu wrote an open letter
<http://www.pen.org/blog/liu-xia-pens-open-letter-xi-jinping> to President
Xi Jinping of China in June, denouncing her detention and the treatment of
her family. “Perhaps in this country it’s a ‘crime’ for me to be Liu
Xiaobo’s wife,” she wrote.

Ms. Zeng, the Hong Kong-based activist, said she was worried that Ms.
Liu’s extreme isolation was exacting a heavy psychological toll, but
suspected that Ms. Liu would be wary of receiving any care provided by the
authorities detaining her. “I can understand why she would be fearful of
seeing a doctor when the police are with her,” she said.

For now she gets what support she can from reading, said Ms. Zeng. “Her
daily life is trying to do more reading,” she said. “She gets power and
peace from books.”

Below is a copy of the letter as translated by Perry Link:
 

Dear XXX,

I’ve read your “epistolary novel.” If I imagine myself an outside reader,
I can only wonder how or through what special power you manage to keep on
writing when the protagonist for whom you are pleading is absent. It moves
me.

I have always loved reading, and do much of it. Most of the books in our
home are ones I personally purchased and brought here, and most of the
hours in my life are spent in reading them. I describe myself as having
grown up “feeding on books.” My reading has no specific goal; for me it’s
rather like breathing — I have to do it in order to live. When I find
books that I love, I feel the author is writing for me alone, and feel a
private joy.

In the 1980s I, too, wrote fiction and film scripts. I have faith that
there will come a day when that absent person writes another part of his
(her) story.

Please tell XXX that the book I am currently “feeding on” is A History of
the Gulag. Living in almost total isolation, I find the road before me
populated by countless books. I hide among the books and meander in the
world.

You can imagine how terrified I felt to face the world alone after they
came to take Xiaobo away. I have had no choice but to accept that reality.
I have been extremely tired.

Let me offer you one of my poems. Hah! This will be a challenge for your
translator!

“Fragment 8”

The light of death
That often appears, as I gaze at my reading,
Feels warm.
I feel sad that I must leave.
I want to go to a place that has light.

That tenacity, mine for years,
Has turned to dust.
A tree
Can be felled by a bolt of lightning
And think nothing.

The future, for me,
Is a shut window.
The night within has no end
And the horrid dreams do not fade.

I want to go to a place that has light.
(Written in 2011)

“Eleven years” in duplicate now weigh on me, but I do not feel as
depressed as when I wrote “Fragment 8.” This is because all of you have
helped me to open the window and let the sun rise. I know that all of this
is not the end — even if justice is too long in coming.

I chose this life myself, so need to see it through to the end.

In 1996, at the Holocaust museum in Washington, D.C., I bought a postcard
that showed a pile of shoes of Jewish people. Since then, innumerable
Jewish people have been standing in my memory. I think that some day we,
too, will have a memorial building to remember those people who are
slipping out of the memories of Chinese today. We will. For sure.

I’ll tell you a funny story. In 1996 when I was in Boston a friend invited
me to go out drinking. We went from bar to bar, but they always asked to
see my passport for proof that I was of drinking age. I was 35 then, but
had left my passport in New York. My hair was long then, so I bundled it
up and then let it go, repeatedly, hoping this would make me look old
enough to drink. Finally, around midnight, we did get a drink at an
outdoor bar. I’ll find a 1996 photo of me — maybe you Americans really
can’t tell the age of Oriental people. The memory makes me want to
chuckle. (A photo here)

Next time, I’ll write only about happy things.

XXXXXXXXX

Liu Xia
July 26, 2013