MCLC: Yan Lianke and the wrecking ball

[Denton, Kirk]

MCLC LIST
From: kirk (denton.2 at osu.edu)
Subject: Yan Lianke and the wrecking ball
***********************************************************

Source: The Australian (12/5/11):
http://www.theaustralian.com.au/news/arts/the-writer-and-the-wrecking-ball/
story-e6frg8n6-1226213590096

The writer and the wrecking-ball
BY: MICHAEL SAINSBURY, CHINA CORRESPONDENT

IN 2008, when Yan Lianke first saw the wooded estate nestled amid the
hurly-burly of Beijing's fourth ring road, he couldn't believe his eyes or
his luck.

The Remin University literature professor and renowned (and usually banned
in China) author realised he had found the place he wanted to live and
that it would inspire his next novel.

But what happened next was like something out of one of his searing novels
detailing the human cost of China's development. The government is
planning to knock down his house and offer him only about one-third of its
value in compensation. The two-storey, freestanding homes of two
neighbours are already piles of rubble, and Yan's dream house lies
deserted, desecrated by vandals.

It had started so well. The developer was keen to attract a few well-known
names to his project, which consisted of scores of houses, each with their
own gardens as well as access to hectares of bushland including two lakes.
The sprawling estate is something of an oddity in the hectic Chinese
capital, whose population is well over 20 million.

Because of his status, Yan admits he was offered the home at a decent
discount. In August 2008 he moved in and quickly became inspired to write
his next novel. Yan's move to a bucolic setting influenced and even
touched him: a country boy at heart, he was back among nature, where he
thought he might belong.

His latest book was to be something different from his increasingly
furious satires about the Chinese system and its relentless, often
dehumanising policy of development at all costs -- particularly the human
cost. His most recent published novel Four Books (Si Shu) has yet to be
translated into English (it's due next year) but it explains the effects
of China's Great Famine of 1958-1961 in which as many 40 million died as
hundreds of millions of farmers melted down their metal -- including farm
tools at the expense of their harvests -- on the orders of leader Mao
Zedong. It's a topic that, decades after the tragedy, remains sensitive
with the country's communist leaders, as the party continues to struggle
with the murderous legacy of Mao, whose giant portrait still dominates
Tiananmen Square in the heart of Beijing.

"My inspiration for my latest book was Walden, or Life the Woods by Henry
Thoreau," Yan tells The Australian as he drives us from a local coffee
shop, off a busy arterial road and into beautiful wooded area bathed in
late autumn hues. Like Thoreau, who describes two years building and
living in a cabin, Yan is inspired by his house in the woods, albeit on
the edge of the city.

The as-yet-untitled book -- which is nearly finished -- is about how man
fits in with the natural environment.

A year after Yan moved in and started to write, taking daily walks through
his woodland haven, rumours began circulating among neighbours that a road
was to be built through the middle of the compound.

"It was just like something from one of my novels," Yan says. "No one
would believe it. Then in May this year the news became official, causing
sudden confusion among everyone.

"When I looked at the maps posted by the developers I could see a road was
planned to run right through my house.

"In late July this year I was writing and heard a loud roar -- the house
next door was knocked down in half an hour."

Forced home removals have become one of China's hot-button issues, the
prime cause being so-called mass events: the tens of thousands of annual
(often violent) anti-government protests that build in number each year
and are generally off-limits to the country's tightly controlled media.
The prime complaint? Little notice and insufficient compensation by local
governments whose main source of income is selling land to developers,
often into joint ventures that provide kickbacks for party officials.

Corruption goes hand in glove with China's economic rise.

Yan started his writing career penning propaganda for the People's
Liberation Army and found fame with his novel, Serve the People, which
told the story of a bored army wife's affair with a younger man who is
turned on by wrecking Communist Party paraphernalia.

In March, Yan made his first visit to Australia ("I loved Perth," he says)
to promote the latest of his novels to be translated into English. The
Dream of a Ding Village is a searing portrait of one of China's biggest
health scandals, the systemic buying and selling of blood tainted with
HIV-AIDS from villagers in China's rural heartland of Henan province.

More than 130,000 people -- most of them impoverished farmers -- were
infected with HIV-AIDS through the giving of blood; another 170,000 were
infected by blood transfusions in rural hospitals. The real numbers will
never be known and could be much higher, as the disaster was covered up by
all levels of government.

The scandal happened on the watch of then party secretary Li Keqiang, the
leading candidate to replace Wen Jiabao next year as the country's premier.

Yan's house today is a distressing site. The homes next door and behind
have already been hit by the wrecker's ball. It's as though the road
builders have deliberately left the remains of Yan's neighbours' homes as
a brutal reminder that his will be next. There is no escape.

It may be still standing, but his house has been wrecked by thieves and
vandals.

Yan moved out of the house -- now worth between 4-5 million yuan
($620,000-$770,000) in Beijing's booming property market -- several months
ago, back to his smaller flat in north Beijing.

"(Officials) suddenly pulled down the security fence without any notice,"
he says. "Then the vandals came pulling out any fixtures that remained,
such as sinks and taps as well as ripping out copper wiring."

But Flower City World Garden Company -- ironically, its boss is a former
propaganda magazine chief -- which developed the land with local cadres,
is offering him only 1.5 million yuan as compensation. Yan and most of
neighbours have tried lawyers and held out for a fair deal but he knows
the result is inevitable in China's flimsy party-controlled legal system,
which offers almost no protection to its ordinary citizens

"It's opaque, we don't know how much the developers are being given by the
government for the road. In the beginning, their attitude was polite. They
were trying to convince me and the other 38 neighbours whose homes were to
be destroyed but then the threats started," he says.

Uniformed police patrol the area daily in vans that play recoded messages
from a megaphone telling people to give up their homes or face forceful
removal.

"I am known for my absurdist style," Yan says. "But I could not write
anything this absurd. Most people don't have any voice. I want to speak
out about this because at least some people will listen to me.

"The reality in China is even worse than I had ever imagined. The Chinese
media only knows what happened in this country often after foreign media
writes about it."

As for his current novel, "it's now going to have a very different ending".

And you can bet your house it will be banned, as well.