MCLC: bringing censors to the book fair

[Denton, Kirk]

MCLC LIST
From: han meng (hanmeng at gmail.com)
 <mailto:denton.2 at osu.edu>
Subject: bringing censors to the book fair
***********************************************************

Source: NY Review of Books (4/16/12):
http://www.nybooks.com/blogs/nyrblog/2012/apr/18/chinese-writers-london-boo
k-fair/

Bringing Censors to the Book Fair
By Jonathan Mirsky

When I arrived at the London Book Fair on Monday, I saw a huge sign
outside showing a cute Chinese boy holding an open book with the words
underneath him: ³China: Market Focus.² The special guest of this year¹s
fair was the Chinese Communist Party¹s censorship bureau. Assisted by the
government-funded, but independent, British Council, the fair¹s organizers
invited the General Administration of Press and Publication (GAPP)‹the
Communist Party¹s designated body for ensuring that all publications, from
poems to textbooks, are certified fit for the public at home and abroad to
read.

What has caused a bitter public wrangle in London is that Beijing not only
chose‹with the full approval of the fair itself and of the British
Council‹which writers to bring to the fair. In a disturbing repeat of what
happened at the Frankfurt Book Fair
<http://www.nybooks.com/articles/archives/2009/oct/22/shut-up-in-china/>
in 2009, it also excluded some of China¹s best-known writers. Among these
are two Nobel Prize winners: Gao Xingjian, China¹s only Literature Prize
laureate, who lives in nearby Paris, and Liu Xiaobo, the Peace Prize
winner who is now serving out an eleven-year prison sentence. More
scandalous still, not one of China¹s diaspora poets and novelists was
invited, even though most of the country¹s most distinguished writers live
abroad.

³We must be very powerful and they are frightened of us,² Qi Jiazhen, a
fiery, seventy-year-old writer told me, at a meeting of Chinese writers in
London to protest the fair¹s corrupt invitation list. ³That is why they
won¹t let us into the fair.²

Fifty writers attended the meeting, which took place the day before the
fair opened, including well-known novelists like Ma Jian, author of
Beijing Coma. Qi Jiazhen was one of three writers in the room who had
served jail sentences in China for what they had written; she is the
author of The Black Wall: The True Story of Father and Daughter: Two
Generations of Prisoners, an account of her own eleven-year sentence and
the one of twenty-three years imposed on her father.

At the fair, which closed on Wednesday, China¹s official presence was
overwhelming, its stalls, desks and book displays taking up more space
than those of any other country. At the information desk, staffed by young
Chinese women studying in the UK, I asked whether Gao Xingjian, the Nobel
Laureate, would be speaking. None had heard of him. I said he lived just
over the Channel in Paris. One of the young women said: ³Then he¹s not a
Chinese, right?² I said he was indeed, had lived most of his life there,
and had resigned from the Party. They looked embarrassed. I then asked if
Liu Xiaobo would be attending. They all edged away except one, studying
mathematics, who said, ³I have my feelings about him, here, inside.² I
invited her to tell me what those feelings were, and she replied, ³I
better not.²

I then asked another young woman, behind the desk of the main display of
Chinese publications‹on subjects ranging from technical matters to
poetry‹if Gao Xingjian¹s books were on show. She hadn¹t heard of him, but
said she would ask ³my boss.² When she asked him in Chinese if they had
Gao¹s books he said, in English, that Gao wasn¹t a Chinese and that, like
all foreigners, ³he lied about China.² I asked him what sort of lies. He
said in Chinese to his young assistant, ³Don¹t talk to this foreigner.² I
told him in Chinese I could understand every word he had said, whereupon
he told me, in English, ³You¹re a shit.² I replied, Bici, bici, which
means, in effect, the feeling is mutual.

To compensate for the absence of dissident Chinese authors, the delegation
running the Romanian stall offered their space to exiled Han, Tibetan, and
Uighur writers, so they could enter the hall. Ma Jian spoke. ³There are
118 Chinese publishers here; all are mouthpieces of the Communist Party.
The writers they have invited are considered beautiful by the Party. No
ugly person, like those of us here, can speak officially. We don¹t object
to the writers who are invited, but until all of us are free to speak and
write no Chinese writer is free.² John Ralston-Saul, President of PEN
International, also spoke, noting that thirty-five Chinese authors are in
prison, some for many years, and that more than a hundred have been
detained. ³Why do they do it?² he asked. ³Free expression is the only way
to solve any country¹s social ills.² The official PEN statement he handed
out recalled ³the many [writers] who live in exile.²

For her part, Susie Nicklin, the British Council¹s director of literature,
told the Observer that the writers approved and invited by Beijing are
more representative because ³they live in China and write their books
there,² in contrast with ³other writers who have left.² To this, Yang
Lian, probably China¹s leading poet, who lives in London, told me: ³What¹s
happening is that countries are becoming companies. And that¹s what the
British Council is already, just a company co-operating with the Chinese
company.² What Chinese poets saw in the 1980s, Yang Lian observed, ³was a
nation of cultural nihilistsŠ we had failed to make a modern
transformation of our own tradition. What we saw before us was something
that could only be called ŒCommunist culture¹Š the worst version of
Chinese autocracy hidden beneath Western revolutionary language.²

Finally, I went to the space where senior representatives of GAPP, the
Chinese publishing bureau, were talking to the press. Madam Huang, who was
representing GAPP, pressed a stuffed panda into the hands of each reporter
as they were introduced. ³This is a symbol of China,² she said, ³friendly
and open.² In Chinese I asked Madam Huang, who had already given me a
panda, if either Gao Xingjian or Liu Xiaobo had been invited to appear at
the Book Fair. She instantly snatched back my panda and hurried away.