MCLC: 3 awards, 3 ways of seeing China

[Denton, Kirk]

MCLC LIST
From: kirk (denton.2 at osu.edu)
Subject: 3 awards, 3 ways of seeing China
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Source: NYT (10/17/12):
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/10/18/world/asia/18iht-letter18.html

In 3 Awards, 3 Ways of Seeing China
By DIDI KIRSTEN TATLOW, New York Times, October 17, 2012
Hardcopy in The International Herald Tribune, October 18, 2012

BEIJING — Literature is not a boxing match, though sometimes it can appear
that way given the polarizing passions it can generate. Such was the case
in recent days, as two very different Chinese writers, one feted by the
ruling Communist Party and the other spurned by it, received prestigious
international awards.

In one corner, it seemed, was Mo Yan, who last Thursday was awarded the
Nobel Prize for Literature, an honor the Communist Party’s propaganda
chief, Li Changchun, said “reflects the prosperity and progress of Chinese
literature, as well as the increasing influence of China.”

In the other was Liao Yiwu, the winner of this year’s Peace Prize of the
German Book Trade, which he accepted Sunday in Frankfurt with a scorching
speech whose theme was: “This empire must break apart.”

The empire Mr. Liao referred to was the People’s Republic of China, and he
said its demise as an authoritarian state must come for the sake of
freedom in China and the world. Mr. Liao, who spent four years in prison
for his writings, fled China last year after decades of political
persecution and is now based in Germany.

That these two men have been widely portrayed as representing antagonistic
camps — one establishment, one dissident — that together define the
boundaries of contemporary Chinese literature may reveal the extent to
which the Communist-ruled mainland has dominated the discussion, another
writer said.

The sheer scale of China’s politics, like its population and economy, can
eclipse other, smaller voices from independent Chinese traditions like
democratic Taiwan’s or Hong Kong’s, said the poet and scholar Leung
Ping-kwan.

Not considering these alternative visions of China diminishes what is in
fact a richly diverse culture — much as the politics of the one-party
state reduces the different voices of the society it rules.

“The mainland is a kind of autonomous, self-sufficient cosmos that no
other literature in China can compete against,” said Mr. Leung, a Hong
Kong native. “But there are other traditions of modernity that are not
being considered.”

Especially in the West, he said by telephone, “people’s concept of Chinese
literature is really limited. When they talk about Chinese literature,
it’s either Mo Yan, who represents the acceptable mainstream writer from
the China mainland, or it’s Liao Yiwu, who represents the dissidents.”

“If you are from, say, Germany, you could think that Chinese people are
all farmers living in Gaomi,” Mr. Mo’s rural hometown and the inspiration
for his writing, “or are dissidents,” he said.

“I’m not against Mr. Mo,” he added. “But there’s something missing from
this situation. There needs to be a spectrum. It’s an incomplete map,”
said Mr. Leung, whose landmark book of poetry about Hong Kong, “City at
the Edge of Time,” has just been reissued.

To help complete that map, we might look to a third Chinese writer who
received a prize this month — the Taiwan poet and scholar Yang Mu, who on
Oct. 5 was awarded the Newman Prize for Chinese Literature. (October is
proving to be a big month for Chinese writers.)

“If I had to say who was the greatest poet writing in Chinese today, I’d
say Yang Mu,” said Michelle Yeh, a professor at the University of
California, Davis, and one of the judges on the prize committee.

“It’s about who has made the greatest contribution to the Chinese
language, and the body of work Yang Mu has made so far has made an amazing
contribution,” she said.

“Now a lot of people don’t know that because they don’t read him,” she
said. Writers on the China mainland often find his work “too refined and
literary.”

Mr. Yang is best known for his early, romantic poetry and his interest in
challenging fixed historical narratives.

“Basically, he is saying, ‘I am outside the mainstream of Chinese
literature today,”’ Ms. Yeh said.

“His role model is the scholar-writer of the past, like Su Tong-po,” an
11th-century poet, she said. “He is a writer thoroughly versed in the
classical tradition, in the culture. Does Mo Yan have that? I don’t think
so, frankly.”

But Ms. Yeh admires Mr. Mo, too.

“Contemporary fiction writers from mainland China, their greatest asset is
their experience with their land — their experience after 1949, what they
went through, what their grandparents went through. That is their
reality,” she said.

Much of that reality, she added, is rooted in political turmoil.

Still, “I think their grasp of China is pretty limited to the 20th
century, especially the second half of the 20th century,” she said.

So what do these three prizes for three writers tell us?

It may be obvious to some, but to a reading public exposed mostly to
translated literature from the Chinese mainland, unfamiliar with other
contemporary Chinese writing, it may be worth pointing out: “Chinese
writers have radically divergent realities, about China, about the Chinese
language,” Ms. Yeh said.

“Mo Yan is a roots-seeking writer. He is true to that,” she said. “Liao
Yiwu is very passionate about what he does. He can only be himself, and I
admire him for what he has been through. Yang Mu is for me the best
artist, the one with ties to the culture and the past.”