Ethnic ChinaLit

Yan Lianke (阎连科) is one of just 5 authors—and the only Chinese—who has made the shortlist for this year’s Man Booker Int’l Prize.

Coming in the wake of Mo Yan’s Nobel Prize for Literature, this poses a thorny PR challenge for the authorities: how do you explain to your people that yes, another of our authors is being (justly!) highlighted in the West, but, um, several of his best works can’t be purchased in the Middle Kingdom?

From mainstream media Chinanews.com’s piece (阎连科入围 “布克国际奖”), we learn all the basics that a Chinese reader unacquainted with the prize might need to know: its history, names of the shortlisted authors in 2013, and so forth. We even get an interview with the author in which he speaks enthusiastically about the recent translation of his novel <受活> (Lenin’s Kisses, tr. Carlos Rojas) and how its popularity has helped raise his profile in the West.

What we don’t hear about—not even a mention, mind you—are the earlier novels which have made a name for him overseas particularly among English, French and German speakers. Specifically, <为人民服务> (Servir le peuple, tr. Claude Payen, and Dem Volke Dienen, tr. Ulrich Kautz),  and <丁庄梦> (Dream of Ding Village, tr. Cindy Carter). Probably because the former is banned in China, and the latter was published only briefly, and then in censored form.

If you’d like to understand how mainstream China media “massaged” initial international coverage of Mo Yan, see Packaging Mo Yan’s Nobel Prize for the Masses.

Taiwan and Hong Kong journalist and political affairs commentator Zhang Tiezhi (张铁志) has written an intriguing piece for the Chinese edition of the New York Times, 歌唱美丽岛, that calls attention to an overlooked but sensitive aspect of the recent hullabaloo over censorship at Guangzhou’s Southern Weekend.

At one point, anti-censorship demonstrators at the entrance to the newspaper, he says, actually sang Meili Dao (美丽岛, aka Formosa),

“Meili Dao” magazine HQ: Closed for business (1979)

an ode to the beautiful island of Taiwan whose lyrics were adapted by folk song writer Li Shuangze (李双泽) based on a poem by Chen Xiuxi (陈秀喜).

Anyone familiar with Taiwan’s history under the Kuomintang after 1949 will recognize that the term Meili Dao—whether it refers to the song, the magazine or the violent repression unleashed on anti-KMT Taiwanese activists in Kaoshiung in 1979—is inextricably linked to the grassroots movement that eventually led to the legalization of political parties, the end of martial rule . . . and freedom of the press.

Zhang’s piece closes with the Meili Dao lyrics that celebrate the island’s “courageous people . . . water buffalo, rice fields, banana trees and magnolias”:

我们摇篮的美丽岛，是母亲温暖的怀抱

骄傲的祖先们正视着，正视着我们的脚步

他们一再重复的叮咛，不要忘记，不要忘记

他们一再重复的叮咛，筚路蓝缕，以启山林

婆娑无边的太平洋怀抱着自由的土地

温暖的阳光照耀着照耀着高山和田园

我们这里有勇敢的人民荜路蓝缕以启山林

我们这里有无穷的生命水牛稻米香蕉玉兰花

 Jan 16 Update:

Shenzhen Book-signing Attracts 2,000+,

Comes Off with a Few Nasty Scuffles

I went to the event last night at what is arguably Shenzhen’s nicest bookstore (中心书城) next to the Civic Center (市民中心). The long line outside—you had to buy the book, then wait to get it autographed—was what we call in Chinese a “dragon queue.”

The South China Morning Post put the count at more than 2,000, and I’d say there were at least that many determined supporters keen to get an autographed copy of the controversial essays.  Outside, everyone was very polite, very civil during my wait. I was given an A4-size sheet of paper that read “我们是公民：我们都要睁大眼” (We are Citizens: We Should Keep Our Eyes Wide Open).  Author Li Chengpeng is often referred to as “Big Eyes.” Perhaps 50 amused fellow fans took snapshots of me brandishing the slogan, while one reminded me that there “must surely be plenty of plainclothes police about.”

After one-and-a-half hours, word came through that they had run out of copies of The Whole World Knows, and a new shipment was reportedly on the way.  So I reluctantly gave up my place in line and went inside for a look. There must have been 400-500 people seated on tiered steps above the make-shift stage where the author was signing his book, one-by-one.  I was only inside for 5 minutes, but I did indeed see two fellows suddenly go at it, with a lot of pushing and shoving ending in one of them being whisked away by 3 men who looked very professional. Plainclothes police? Hired bodyguards? Can’t say for sure.

I do regret being unwilling to wait it out to get my own copy. The word spread in the queue that the order has come down from the authorities to “review” the book, i.e., to send it back to the censors for another look. If that happens, you can be pretty sure it won’t be published again in its present form.

Here’s an excerpt from the SCMP’s Jan 16, 2013 report (Another Signing) about the event:

Meanwhile [while the author signed books inside], dozens of protesters, most in their 40s or 50s and some wearing Mao Zedong badges, gathered outside the building.

One of the protesters said he was outraged by some of Li’s recent comments, such as labelling those who took to the streets in anti-Japanese demonstrations in Shenzhen “brain damaged”.

“Li is a typical traitor who does nothing more than distort history and mislead the public, particularly the young,” he said.

Although dozens of policemen, most in plain clothes, were at the scene, the two groups of people clashed at least three times between 6pm and 7pm, with some suffering minor injuries.

At one stage a middle-aged, bespectacled man shouted “Li Chengpeng a traitor!”

The man slapped one of Li’s supporters in the face when he tried to stop him from hurling abuse at Li, who was protected by six bodyguards.

————— 

Jan 15 Entry

Author Li Chengpeng’s book-signing tour for The Whole World Knows (全世界人民都知道 ) has attracted some bizarre—not to mention dangerous—behavior according to the South China Morning Post’s Author Attacked by Leftists:

Li Chengpeng [李承鹏], a former journalist, was punched in the head during an afternoon signing of his new book for readers at the Zhongguancun Bookstore in [Beijing’s] Haidian district, and another man was filmed throwing a packaged kitchen knife at Li.

The man who punched Li claimed to have a strong aversion to the content of Li’s new book, The Whole World Knows. The assailant was taken away by Beijing police, according to a post on the public security bureau’s microblog that night.

The new book is a collection of essays that include sensitive topics such as the shoddy quality of school buildings that collapsed and killed thousands of students during the 2008 Sichuan earthquake and the alleged cover-up of the 2011 Wenzhou train crash.

The second man was seen, in a video clip posted online, attempting to put the knife on the table in front of Li before throwing the package at the writer while being forcibly escorted away.

But there are two very basic—and evidently sensitive—facts about the events that have not been widely reported in mainstream China media. For example, 李承鹏遭遇掌掴 in Guangzhou’s Yangcheng Evening News (羊城晚报) and 李承鹏签名售书遭掌掴 in New Beijing Newspaper (新京报), whose reports were carried on one of China’s leading web sites with generally good coverage of things cultural, Chinanews.com (中新网文化). Both articles fail to inform readers of the book title or its controversial topics.

Oh, yes and one other thing that the SCMP mentions: on his blog, Li Pengcheng says that at an earlier stop in Chengdu, he “was ordered by public security agents not to address the crowd or answer any questions.”

Some road tour! Apparently unfazed, the author is scheduled for another book-signing event in Shenzhen today (Jan 15).

Southern Weekend has an American dream.

We don’t want the American dream, we want the Chinese dream.

[Words on a placard opposing the striking journalists at Southern Weekend (南方周末),

as reported in the New York Times (Face-Off Continues Over Censorship of Newspaper in China).]

In my efforts to get around the New York Times paywall (I’d gladly pay but have no credit card with which to do so) and the read-just-10-articles-per-month limit, I have taken to visiting its relatively new Chinese web site (纽约时报中文网) where the only limitation—and it’s a major one—is the Great Firewall of China that effectively blocks access to most residents of China.

But since I have a VPN service based in Hong Kong, I can read the Chinese-language New York Times to my heart’s content.

There are some interesting things going on here, media-wise.  To wit:

• Some articles can be viewed just in Chinese, just in English, or with both versions on the same screen. The latter feature will certainly increase readership and build loyalty in China where English learning is madly popular;

• Curiously, the English version of some articles can only be accessed via the Chinese.  An example:  一个被官方取消却意外成功的中国乡村艺术节. I’ve searched the New York Times in English, but the only way I could find the English version—An Unlikely Harvest—was to click on “English” inside the Chinese article.

• Some articles are being commissioned directly in Chinese, and there is no English version. An example: A fascinating piece on self-censorship in China cinema written by Chinese journalist Li Dongran, 比电影审查更可怕的，是自我审查.

Admittedly, I am notoriously bad at Internet basics like using search engines, and there may simply be a gap between the time when Chinese versions are translated and appear in the English-language New York Times.

But for now, it looks to me like the New York Times is experimenting with innovative ways to bring its China coverage—some of it commissioned solely for Chinese readers—to PRC netizens.

In Outrage at Guangdong Newspaper Forced to Run Party Commentary, the South China Morning Post reports:

Demonstrator’s placard: “I do not agree with your every word, but I will defend to death your right to say it.”

Journalists at an outspoken newspaper in Guangdong challenged the provincial propaganda authorities yesterday after the paper was forced to run a commentary glorifying the Communist Party and drop an article calling for proper implementation of the constitution.

In a rare, open challenge, journalists at the Southern Weekend [南方周末] said they were outraged that the propaganda office ordered changes to the paper’s first edition of the new year, just a day before its publication yesterday, without the consent of the page editor who had already signed off on the page and left work.

Some were furious that an introductory message headlined “Pursuing dreams”, which said Chinese people were closer to achieving their dreams because of the hard work of the party, was forced into the package. They said they believed it had come from provincial propaganda chief Tuo Zhen [庹震] and also complained that it contained factual errors.

They accused the propaganda office of “raping” the paper’s editorial autonomy. While recognising that the paper could not refuse to run the introductory message, they remained defiant, opening a microblog account and issuing an open letter – later removed – expressing their frustration. About 15 of them were subjected to restrictions on their use of microblogs after discussing the incident at work.

For an interesting account of the affair in Chinese by Hong Kong journalist 张洁平, read 從「跪著造反」到「站著反抗」─《南方週末》新年獻禮.

On October 10, the New York Times reported on the awarding of the Nobel Prize for Literature to Chinese writer Mo Yan (莫言). As might be expected for positive coverage of this momentous event by a respected American newspaper, In China, a Writer Finds a Deep Well has quickly been translated, re-packaged and served up to the masses in the October 13, 2012 print edition of Cankao Xiaoxi (参考消息) as 美报细述莫言作品特点.

Cankao Xiaoxi is a respected and influential Chinese-language digest of the world press with a long history, and in many cities across China it sells out every day before noon. Virtually no English is used and little or no content is added. But references deemed unbecoming to China’s image are often “airbrushed.” It targets working-class men over 30, many of whom still prefer to get their daily news fix from the state-run TV or newspapers.

As usual in my pieces on Cankao Xiaoxi, I run the original English copy immediately below. For the benefit of English speakers who cannot read the Chinese version published and distributed throughout China, I cross out the English words that were deleted when the article was translated into Chinese, and indicate any added copy (normally just for readability’s sake) by putting it [in brackets]. This way one can better see how Cankao’s editors “package” foreign copy for domestic consumption.

In this case, three specific types of content were deleted when the NY Times article was rendered for the masses:

• Any hint that Mo Yan is a “dissident” writer
• The sole mention of Gao Xingjian, the first Chinese writer—not Mo Yan, actually—to receive the Nobel Prize for Literature
• References to the excesses of corrupt officials that occasionally people Mo Yan’s fictional world

Yazhou Zhoukan (亚洲周刊) reports on the much-appreciated performance of the Hulanbuir Children’s Choir (五彩呼伦贝尔) at the Lincoln Center in New York City (中国草原童音) during the Spring Festival.  See Children’s Choir for the details in English.

Am happy to note that the choir, 40 children aged from 5 to 13, reportedly consists solely of the sons and daughters of ethnic minorities living in Inner Mongolia. I haven’t forgotten an international conference of translators held in Shanghai—2008, as I recall, the year the Olympic Torch found its way with difficulty through Tibet—featuring a host of long-legged, very fair-skinned models performing a “Tibetan” dance. Most were clearly not Tibetan.

Canada’s Globe and Mail recently ran a piece on the impact of modernity and tourism on the Mosuo (摩梭族), a matriarchal tribe that resides at and around Yunnan’s Luguhu Lake (泸沽湖). In China, a Matriarchy under Threat has now been translated, edited and published as 《云南摩梭人遭遇现代化挑战》in the August 17, 2011 edition of Cankao Xiaoxi (参考消息).

Cankao is a respected and influential Chinese-language digest of the world press with a long history, and in many cities across China it sells out every day before noon. Virtually no English is used and little or no content is added. But references deemed unbecoming to China’s image are often “airbrushed.”

As usual in my pieces on Cankao Xiaoxi, I run the original English copy immediately below. For the benefit of English speakers who cannot read the Chinese version published and distributed throughout China, I cross out the English words that were deleted when the article was translated into Chinese, and indicate any added copy (normally just for readability’s sake) by putting it [in brackets]. This way one can better see how Cankao’s editors “package” foreign copy for domestic consumption.

To summarize the deletions you’ll find below:

• All mentions of the Communist Party, and government policy aimed at changing Mosuo behavior, have been deleted
• References to “male lovers” have been heavily edited
• Some phrases that imply that Han visitors treat the Mosuo as curiosities have been deleted
• The writer’s explanation as to why the society evolved into a matriarchal one has been deleted   Read the rest of this entry »

The New York Times has just published Monuments to Clan Life Are Losing their Appeal, a marvelous look at the state of tulou (土楼) built by Hakka and Minnan in Fujian. These communal structures, usually but not always round, housed dozens of families from the same clan:

Yongding, China—The gargantuan buildings are so iconic that they appear on a Chinese stamp. The most famous have distinctive round shapes, appearing from a distance like flying saucers that have plopped down in the middle of farm fields. Some were reportedly mistaken for missile silos by American officials poring over satellite images.

But the thousands of “earthern buildings” here, built by the ethnic Hakka and Minnan people of rural Fujian Province, are the ultimate architectural expression of clan existence in China.

For centuries, each building, called a tulou in Mandarin Chinese, would house an entire clan, virtually a village. Everyone living inside would have the same surname, except for those who married into the clan. The tulou usually tower four floors and have up to hundreds of rooms that open out onto a vast central courtyard, like the Colosseum.

The outer walls, made of rammed earth, protected against bandits. The forms vary. Many are square, resembling medieval keeps. With stockpiles of food, people could live for months without setting foot outside the tulou.

But as the clan traditions of China dwindle today, more and more people are moving out of the tulou to live in modern apartments with conveniences absent from the earthen buildings—indoor toilets, for example.

Also of interest is a book by Huang Hanmin (黄汉民) published only in Chinese (I believe), 《福建土楼》(Fújiàn tǔ lóu).

You might think that China’s media minders would be fairly happy with this report, but when it was translated and published in Cankao Xiaoxi (参考消息) on March 24 (美报称福建土楼对居民失去吸引力), large chunks of it were deleted.

Cankao Xiaoxi is a respected and influential Chinese-language digest of the world press with a long history, and in many cities across China it sells out every day before noon. Virtually no English is used and little or no content is added. But references deemed unbecoming to China’s image are often “airbrushed.” For earlier coverage of how Cankao Xiaoxi repackages foreign newspaper reportage for domestic eyeballs, check out But where are Pederasty, Passion and the Dalai Lama? or The Yushu Quake.

Here is some of the copy that appeared in the New York Times report but was deleted from the Chinese version:

• “President Hu Jintao visited them [some tulou] during the 2010 Lunar New Year festivities”
• “One afternoon, they [elderly residents] were moving firewood stacked outside the front entrance of the tulou to nearby storage sheds; the local government had asked them to do this to hide the messy stacks from tourists.”
• “Chinese officials tried smashing the clan system during the Cultural Revolution of the 1960s and ’70s. Collectives built more and more tulou and randomly assigned people to live in the buildings, so each clan would have members spread among different collectives. When the Cultural Revolution ended, people drifted back to their clans.”
• ” ‘People don’t clean it [Huan Xing tulou] anymore,’ said Jiang Qing, 28. . .’As long as people live here, the ecosystem thrives. Once people move out, then it all falls apart.’ “
• “Mr. Huang, the scholar. . .’What they’ve preserved is just the structure, but the people have all moved out,’ he said. ‘So the living part has died. You’re just preserving a relic.’ “