MCLC: interview with Liao Yiwu

[Denton, Kirk]

MCLC LIST
From: pjmooney <pjmooney at me.com>
Subject: interview with Liao Yiwu
***********************************************************

Source: http://aaww.org/liao-yiwu-four-years-a-prisoner/

An interview with the exiled Chinese poet on writing from prison, false
patriotism, and the responsibility of intellectualsLiao Yiwu.

Liao Yiwu never set out to be a dissident. In fact, the young Sichuanese
did not engage in politics at all until the fateful dawn of June 4, 1989,
when he composed and performed his most famous poem, “Massacre,”
commemorating the young lives lost during Tiananmen Square’s democracy
protest. For this act, he would be condemned to four years in China’s
gulag. The strict hierarchies Liao observed in the prison cell, it turns
out, were not so unlike the tiered and repressive leadership on the other
side of the bars. Retaining a poet’s perceptiveness, Liao, the prisoner,
meticulously recorded the conditions of his daily existence as well as
those of his fellow inmates, through which a remarkable portrait of modern
China emerges. Recently, I spoke to Liao about his experience in
Chongqing, where he was incarcerated, and the memoir, For a Song and a
Hundred Songs, he has written about the experience. The interview has been
translated into English by Liz Carter.

Jiayang Fan: You’ve said that you wrote this book three times: the first
two times you wrote it, the manuscript was confiscated. During that entire
process did the book change at all? Did you feel that each time you
rewrote it, it was a different experience?

Liao Yiwu: When the book was first confiscated, I experienced a kind of
total devastation. At that time I was also put under unofficial house
arrest for more than 20 days. I was scared. I didn’t know what they would
do. But, fortunately, I’d written the draft in very tiny script, like an
ant would. They probably needed a microscope to read it clearly. The
second time, when it was confiscated again, I was a little more numb to
the experience. And by the third time, I had a computer. With a computer,
you can have a lot of back-ups. So my writing process took me from the age
of da Vinci to the computer age. Each time that I was forced to start from
the beginning, I thought, “Last time I wrote it better than this time!”
But you know, that’s not necessarily the case. I always thought, “How is
it that the more I write, the shorter it gets?” The first time, I wrote
more than 300,000 characters. The second time, it was only 200,000. The
third time, it dropped another 20,000 characters. I thought, “I’ve
definitely forgotten a bunch of the details.” But there were also some
surprises. For example, I’d think, “Oh I don’t think I included this
example last time.” But it’s true with this as it is with women: always
more beautiful in your memory.

Q. From 1990 to 1994, when you were in prison, did you write any drafts of
the book? You have recorded everything in such detail. It feels as if we
experience each day with you as it was. You didn’t have paper or pen, so
could you write any drafts? Or did you commit everything to memory and
then write it all down later?

A. From the moment I was detained I only had one chance a month to write a
letter. So I couldn’t write much, just some short poetry. Then I was
sentenced and transferred to the re-education through labor prison. In the
re-education through labor prison, I wrote some novels. After I got out,
it was very strange because I’d been able to take out the drafts I’d
written in prison. I’d hidden them early. But this draft, because I was
writing it all the time, was discovered a lot. It was pretty much a joke.

Q. I think the two years you were in prison—

A. Actually, I was in prison for four years.

Q. Right, four years. After four years, it seems the conditions under
which you operated got a little better—

A. A bit better than at the investigation center.

Q. Yes, the detention center must have been a bit better.

A. Yes, much better because I was finally able to see many other political
prisoners again, including those involved in the Tiananmen protests. They
were all kept in the same place I was. There was also more space. Then, I
disappeared to the re-education through labor camp.

Q. Right, I read that, but at the holding area, was that two years?

A. Yes, altogether two years and eight months. Then I was at the
re-education-through-labor prison. I underwent re-education through labor
for over a year.

Q. Re-education through labor…

A. So, generally speaking, when they inspect re-education through labor in
China, they’re inspecting the re-education-through-labor prisons and
farms. The Chinese government has also opened these up so that foreigners
can see them. But they’re absolutely barred from visiting the detention
center and “rehabilitation” centers. Those parts were and are the darkest.

Q. I thought the part you wrote about the detention center was the most
moving, when you wrote about being with murderers and petty thieves, all
of those people from different parts of society than you. When I read your
book, I felt that you really empathized with them. There were many stories
about what they did before they were taken away or executed. If you had
never been sent there, do you think you would have met these kinds of
people?

A. No way. Not all in one place, and not so many. Everyone around me was a
criminal. I could not have met them elsewhere. Before I went to prison, I
was a very famous poet. I’d won many awards. I was surrounded by all of
those modern writers, like now. I met with people in my profession. We’d
talk about literature and other things. Even the most edgy people, the
hooligans, were very romantic. I couldn’t have come into contact with
those other people.

Q. Then what about this experience had the deepest impact on you?

A. I write about prison a little differently from other people. Most
others might describe it as a harsher experience than I do. They would
write about harsher sentences. But I wrote about real people in prison and
their tricks for getting by.

Q. Those tricks and the system they work in—how do these change a person?

A. For example, I wrote about a man named Wang Er. Wang Er—if he was going
to take another prisoner’s things, he wouldn’t just take them. We ate meat
once a week, right? The oil from it was also scarce there. So if he was
going to take your meat, he wouldn’t openly steal it. He would say, “Let’s
be one big family. I’ll be the father. That’s your mother. You’re the big
brother, you’re the second oldest, and you’re the third oldest. Let’s all
of us eat family style!” Then everyone would put all of their meat
together. Once the meat was all in one bowl, he would say, in accordance
with Chinese traditions, “You should respect your elders. I am old. I
won’t be eating more than a couple days. Let me eat a bit more,” and so on
and so forth. In the end he ate all the good stuff. If there was a little
oil left, he’d say, “This is your mother. It wasn’t easy for her to give
birth to you. She needs this oil. If she hadn’t fed you all…” Then he
would take the leftover oil and give it to an inmate who was in good with
him. The one who was the ‘mother’ would eat it. Then so on, by age. He’d
steal the meat in this really funny way.

Q. I read that chapter. It was really funny. But I think your book is
different from most prison autobiographies. Sometimes the book made me
feel like crying. But sometimes it really made me want to laugh because
you’ve described this dark world in a way that you can clearly understand.
This sense of humor—did you develop it while detained or as you were
writing? Were you able to be so relaxed in prison?

A. When I was writing poetry, I preferred romantic writing. Back then I
wasn’t even very good at making jokes. That’s because when I was young, I
thought it was cooler not to laugh. But in prison, when I looked back on
this, it was like watching dramas in my mind over and over to a boiling
point. I felt I was among these characters. On the surface it appeared
humorous, but in truth it was very cruel. For example, there was one man
who couldn’t urinate or defecate in front of others. When he came in to
the bathroom, everyone would surround him and watch him. The harder it was
for him to go, the happier everyone got.

Q. Right, right—

A. Yes. Then I gave him pants to wear on his head. At the time, standing
there, I was laughing just as hard. I thought it was very funny, too. But
thinking back, I wonder, “How was I so heartless?” It was a very cruel
thing to do.

Q. One other thing I like about this book is that you didn’t hide anything
that you considered a personal weakness. In books, especially in China, we
read about heroes like Lei Feng. Everyone only wants to write about their
strengths, how they defeat their enemies, how they overcame obstacles. But
the most moving thing about this book, I think, is that you don’t hide any
of your fears or conflicting feelings. Why were you so honest in your
writing?

A. When I was writing this book, I felt I should record these things, that
they should be written down. At that time I didn’t know what would become
of it. I didn’t see any future. When I got out of prison, China was in its
darkest hour because no one would acknowledge you. You were totally cast
off. At that time police went to the zoo where I had gone to sell pants. I
said, “I can’t even sell these pants.” They said, “You go make some money,
and we’ll give you backing. If you can’t sell pants, I’ll take you to the
underground market. Ten yuan per pair.” I objected at first. I said “It’s
hard to sell,” and he said, “If that’s the case, give me a call.” We
argued, drank, and fought. I said, “I can’t sell pants!” In the end, he
took me to the police station to sleep it off and said, “Fine.” He got me
out the next day.

At that time, the only people who came looking for me were the police. In
Chengdu, you felt that you were so quickly abandoned and forgotten. It’s
likely that that generation of people had totally forgotten. Then you
began to remember. You remembered, remembered, remembered. You felt you
had to write it all down. As for what the future held, it was hard to say.
This book came many years after the poetry. If I hadn’t been presented
with some very unlikely opportunities, if it hadn’t been translated into
English by Huang Wenguang, I didn’t expect even those dark things I wrote
to have any effect.

Q. You just wanted to record them?

A. I just created this kind of style. I just recorded them, wrote them
down. Also, during the writing process, I took note of how other political
prisoners were writing and some of the books published by those in exile.
I wondered, ‘Why are the books they’ve written so different from mine? How
are they so sad and despairing?’

Q. It was a totally different way of going about it.

A. Right. A different format entirely for a novel. Later on, I became wary
of this format because it was a fake, empty kind of thing. I’ve noticed
that for many writers who have come out of China, like Ma Jian, their
writing is very politicized. They have not hidden their dissatisfaction
with China’s government at all.

Q. Do you think that you, as a Chinese writer, must take a stance on
China’s government? Or do you think, as someone who writes literature, you
do not necessarily need to have anything to do with politics?

A. The difference between myself and the dictatorship is a difference of
aesthetics. I am a person who writes stories. The further removed from
politics and power I am, the better. Unfortunately, they feel that a
person who tells stories is guilty of subversion of state power.
Furthermore, I didn’t want to express any political ideas in my writing.
Like I just mentioned, political views can show up in a different way.
Political correctness, in a book, is like standing on the side of reason,
but one of the most basic things about being an intellectual is this: you
must have doubt and you must ask questions, even for your own writing,
yourself, your weaknesses. You have to keep that skepticism. Many writers,
while describing politics or the Chinese Communist Party, stop asking
questions of and being skeptical toward themselves. I think this is far
removed from that sort of thing.

Q. That may be the reason I appreciated this book so much, because many
politicized novels, when read, are no longer stories, just political
messages authors are trying to get across. An idea, or…

A. Right, an idea. Of course, authors have their political opinions. Well,
just write up a press release and be done with it. Don’t mix it up with
the books or stories you write. You can just release a separate press
release. If that’s your prerogative then you don’t need to write stories.

Q. Lately some foreigners have been saying that leaders like Xi Jinping
are using patriotism to get people to stop being critical of the Communist
Party. Nationalism has been used by the Communist Party as a distraction
from a lot of discontent that citizens might feel. And the concept of
nationalism in China has evolved in China over the course of the last two
decades. What are your thoughts on the uses of nationalism?

A. The most patriotic I’ve seen Chinese people be was in 1989. That was
the height of Chinese patriotism. And it was true patriotism. It reached a
boiling point. But because they were too patriotic, the Communist Party
answered them with bullets. From that point, when they killed over 3,000
people and imprisoned countless others, every Chinese person came to
understand that this country cannot be loved. That’s why patriotism has
decreased. I think since that point, all patriotism has been fake because
every person understands that the Communist Party is not good. So we
should be skeptical of its “patriotism.” Take Saddam Hussein, for example.
He was once elected with 100% of the vote. Not a single vote was against
him. So he took out a gun and shot 100 bullets into the air to celebrate,
to express his happiness. That’s patriotism, too. Patriotism is too scary.

Q. In the beginning of the book, you wrote that in a talk with Michael
Day, a Canadian friend and one of the first foreigners you became close to
in China, he really wanted you to participate in the protests at Tiananmen.

A. Yes

Q. And then you asked, “Do you think you love China more than me?” That
line really stayed with me.

A. That guy is more Chinese than I am.

Q. But do you think that’s really a love of China, or just that you and
he, as a Westerner and a Chinese person, have different ways of expressing
yourselves?

A. It’s likely he had fallen in love with Chinese poetry that had been
written by some people in the 1980s. That was his emotional state. And I
expect he had a good life working in China for a while in the ‘80s. He
fell in love with that time in his life. But I think China and ancient
China are two totally different things. Today’s China is a dictatorship. A
dictatorship—that’s my public opinion. They should be thought of as two
independent countries. It’s enough just to love the land of your birth,
that patch of earth. In truth, in this book, I wasn’t very familiar with
Michael Day at the time. Later I got to know him better. At the time we
didn’t talk about this country, whether it was a dictatorship or the
country as it is spoken of in books. Back then we were just too young. He
was just a young guy. I was just a young guy. There’s no way we could have
come to any real conclusions.

Q. Do you think you would like to return to China to live there? Or do you
think you’ve left for good?

A. I already live in China, because every day I read from the I Ching and
the Records of the Grand Historian. I feel that I’m living in China.

Q. You do not feel that you have to live on Chinese soil?

A. I live in the world of China’s ancient philosophical and historical
texts. For example, I read Zhuangzi, the great Chinese philosopher who
wrote about the disappearance of nature. It made me think of my own
teacher. In that time, I was clearly living in China. But this China is
not like that terrible one. Upon reflection, it was truly something
special.

Q. As for those born in the ‘80s, college graduates, if they really love
China and want to change China, what do you think they can do? What can
they do to actually affect concrete changes in China?

I think those born in the 1980s, to a certain extent, are braver than my
generation because they didn’t experience the Tiananmen Massacre. I’ve
recently seen some people opposing factories for environmental reasons. In
Chengdu and Kunming, most of the people involved were born in the ‘80s.
The way they faced off with the police in the streets brought me right
back to 1989. I think each generation has this kind of spirit. They’ve
been put in a very tough spot. The Communist Party has stolen most of the
resources and left very little for those born in the ‘80s and ‘90s. For
example, a huge number of people compete for a single job opening. People
have become so cold natured.

In this globalizing world the pressure rises and rises, but when I see how
they react, I’m deeply moved because the generation that experienced
Tiananmen became very cynical. Either that or very afraid. They know how
powerful the Communist Party is. Back then my dad told me, “The Communist
Party is very powerful,” and I didn’t believe him. I went ahead and showed
up for the massacre. I was very angry. But once I’d been through prison I
knew it was very powerful. Many people are even more cynical than I am.
But the post-80s generation is largely free of this. They’re repeating the
relationship between my father and me. The older generation tells them,
“The Communist Party is very powerful,” and the post-80s generation
doesn’t believe it at all. They’re still willing to fight for their rights
and their environment. That’s what I’ve seen.

And in Hong Kong and Guangzhou, they know a bit about the history of the
Tiananmen Square crackdown. Every year, especially last year, there’s the
memorial in Victoria Park. A majority of the attendees are those born in
the ‘80s. Their desire for knowledge about history is there. Although the
Communist Party has cut them off from it for so many years, some
outstanding people from their generation have made the effort to study
that history.

Q. Now that we have the Internet and Weibo, information can be transmitted
much more quickly. Do you think that because of this, the younger
generation can—

A. Because of this, it’s difficult for the Communist Party to control.
Take the 2011 Jasmine Revolution, for example. People of my generation or
even older generations, like Wei Jinsheng’s, couldn’t have done that. From
the very beginning, the Jasmine Revolution site was said to be run by a
few people who were born in the ‘80s. Some people were overseas and some
were in China. They began to use “loose gatherings.” They’d decide on a
place and then we would go there immediately. Then they would transmit a
bunch of information about fake gatherings. The Communist Party saw that
and thought there were so many people opposing them. They were very
scared. So they mobilized the entire country’s forces. Things were very
tense that year. I came out for those, and it really was too tense. They
even used some criminal measures to suppress a fake Internet revolution.
That’s what the post-80s generation did. It was really impressive.

Q. My final question is about some pressure Western countries have exerted
upon China with regards to human rights issues. Do you think this pressure
on human rights issues has any meaning? Or do you think, as the government
would say, foreign countries have no right to talk about human rights in
China? Do you think pressure from the West is meaningful or harmful?

A. Western countries are founded upon human rights. I’ve often said that
China has experienced such a long history of dictatorship and been so
oppressed by the Communist Party. It’s a great misfortune. If there were
no other countries on this planet to pay attention, it would be misfortune
piled upon misfortune. When Westerners talk about Hitler and Stalin,
everyone knows they’re demons and how many people they killed. But when we
speak about Mao Zedong and later rulers like Deng Xiaoping, foreign China
scholars often seem to evaluate them differently. It’s because the
dictatorship is still around. In the west, they had the 1968 protests, and
many of the protesters were big fans of Mao. When Obama first took office,
he put a picture of Mao on a Christmas card. Someone took a picture of it
and uploaded it on China’s Internet. This really shook the Chinese
Internet, that Obama didn’t even realize this. It was just a simple action
of his. He used a picture of Mao in a Christmas gift. He didn’t think it
was a big deal. But this was really too provocative for Chinese people.

It creates a double standard. I think politicians should be a bit more
careful in these small matters, including Mo Yan. He said of Chairman Mao
not long ago, “Mao Zedong was a great historical figure.” If Mo Yan had no
connections to the West, people would just say that what he said was
bullshit. But because he won the Nobel Prize, he has that label. It was a
big deal. If there were no double standards for this, there would just be
an understanding: Mao Zedong would be thought of the same as Stalin and
Hitler, an evil despot who killed people. But Mao Zedong is understood in
a more complicated framework. People are clearer on Hitler and Stalin.

Q. Do you think that Western countries should put additional pressure on
China?

A. They should understand China’s history better, understand what really
happened and not just naively go about things in yet another negative way.
I mean the negative phenomenon of “correct politics.” A congressperson
goes to China and says, “I went to China and spoke about human rights!”
Talking about human rights is just talking about human rights, nothing
more. Nobody’s going to pay you any attention. You have to have a deep
understanding of China’s history and present state. This ties into the
responsibility of intellectuals. These articles have been written and
Western politicians and others don’t understand them. If you remind them
more often, from this perspective, if you publish more of these books
about prison or books like the one Huang Wenguang wrote about Bo
Xilai—these books seem to be really important. These politicians shouldn’t
spend all their time just making statements and playing golf. They should
make time to read some books even if it’s just one or two a year. Like
books about prison in China. Maybe if they read just one or two—it
wouldn’t be so terrible.

Q. I think if they should read one or two, this book should be one of them.

Jiayang Fan is on the editorial staff of The New Yorker. She has
contributed to the New York Times Book Review, the Paris Review, Slate,
and the LA Review of Books, among other publications.