On the Distinctiveness of Writing in China

From The Paris Review:

When I talk to non-Chinese readers like yourselves, I often find that you are interested in hearing about what distinguishes me as an author but also what distinguishes my country—and particularly details that go beyond what you see on the television, read about in newspapers, and hear about from tourists.

I know that China’s international reputation is like that of a young upstart from the countryside who has money but lacks culture, education, and knowledge. Of course, in addition to money, this young upstart also has things like despotism and injustice, while lacking democracy and freedom. The result is like a wild man who is loaded with gold bullion but wears shabby clothing, behaves rudely, stinks of bad breath, and never plays by the rules. If an author must write under the oversight of this sort of individual, how should that author evaluate, discuss, and describe him?

To address this question, we will first consider the distinctive conditions faced by contemporary Chinese authors.

I. Light and Shadows Beneath a Half-Open and Half-Closed Window

The entire world knows that China’s economy has recently undergone a process of reform and opening up, whereas the relationship between China’s advanced economic system and its conservative political system is like the fable in which the tortoise beats the hare who stops to take a nap. In the race between China’s economic and political reform, the economy is currently surging ahead while politics stops to take a nap.

In contrast to China’s economic tortoise, its political hare has not merely slowed down or stopped; it has even turned around and headed back whence it came. For instance, in discussing China’s freedom of expression and ideological emancipation, people sometimes refer to the nation’s prison house of language—and even if it is not technically a prison, it is at the very least a cage. Although the nation’s economic window is either open or in the process of being opened and its political window is either closed or in the process of being closed, its culture looks around in confusion at the resulting play of light and shadows. The nation’s literature—which is to say, authors’ writings—is also stuck in this intermediary zone. Meanwhile, the billion-plus Chinese people who gather beneath these windows to breathe and survive find that the brightness and warmth here are unpredictable; consequently, their souls, spirits, and hearts become increasingly variable, decadent, and dark.

For the past several decades, China has demonstrated that the success of a planned economy lies not so much in the planning of the economy itself but rather in the planning of people’s hearts. The ultimate objective of economic planning is not economic prosperity itself but rather control over the national and political aspects of people’s souls. In a market economy, the market includes not only the economy proper but also people’s souls and the freedom that must be banished for the sake of economic development. Because of the needs of power and politics, people’s freedom cannot strictly follow the rise and fall of the economy. When the economic window is open, the political window will be closed, and ideological power will be concentrated. People’s spirits will resemble a patch of grass struggling to grow in the intermittently light and dark area beneath these partially open and partially closed windows. Because there is insufficient light and irregular wind here (although it is certainly not the case that there is no light or wind at all), when this patch of grass manages to glimpse some light and wind, it will fight to secure them, and otherwise it will gasp and struggle in their absence.

This is the situation in contemporary China. The economic window is open and the political window is closed, and culture wanders in the intermediate zone between the two. Contemporary literature approaches the flourishing economy as though hugging a fireball and approaches the ubiquitous politics of contemporary reality as though embracing an enormous chunk of ice.

Politics expects that you write about the existence of that hot, bright, and visible so-called positive energy while also attending to the existence of that which, on the surface, appears to be a form of negative energy—including a reality that either cannot be seen or else doesn’t even exist. In this intermediate zone, all Chinese, including children from preschool forward (but excluding infants, who are of course innocent and pure), are influenced by what they see and hear. For instance, children all know that teachers will respond favorably if they are offered gifts. Meanwhile, if an old man collapses in the street, it is only natural that bystanders will help him, but when the old man responds by accusing the bystanders of having knocked him down and demands compensation from them, this becomes a special kind of incident—a legal case. Given that the frequency of these sorts of incidents has recently increased, we cannot help but suspect that these apparent victims must hold darkness in their hearts. Accordingly, now if someone collapses or is hit by a car, passersby will often hurry away as though they haven’t seen anything, and although we may find this situation unreasonable, at least we can understand it. This illustrates how, in contemporary China, people’s souls have become numb and dark.

What is bred under the open window of the economy is capital, desire, and evil, and what is bred under the closed window of politics is corruption, greed, and contempt for others. People’s hearts become deformed, distorted, and absurd. If an author wants to realistically describe people’s deepest souls, this is his God-given responsibility, and if the author gives this up, he will no longer have any need to exist. Meanwhile, the people who control when, how, and to what extent the two windows should be open or shut also control authors’ pens and remind them what they can and can’t write. These people constantly remind authors that the light of one person’s heart has positive energy and should be discussed in detail, but the darkness of another person’s heart cannot be discussed because such a conversation might touch on the underlying reason why their heart is dark in the first place.

Meanwhile, for the sake of their survival, honor, and status, the authors living under these partially open and partially closed windows (and under the supervision of the people overseeing the windows) must adopt one of the following three writing methods.

First, there is writing that welcomes light. When you see and obtain light, you write to welcome it. The more you write about light, the brighter your writing will become, and the more prestige and status will illuminate your life—the same way that sunlight shines into your room when you open a window in the morning.

Second, there is writing that borrows light. People who write to borrow light are all talented Chinese authors with a certain degree of conscience and wisdom. Because these authors are unwilling to write to welcome light but are also unwilling to give up their internal artistic sentiment, they have no choice but to borrow light from others. As a result, they always have a feeling of guilty gratitude and don’t attempt to explore the reality behind that half-closed window. They know that behind that window there lies the greatest truth, but because they have borrowed light, they resemble someone who—after using someone else’s tools or eating someone else’s food—naturally won’t excavate the foundations of that other person’s house. Therefore, these authors reach a tacit agreement that they will remain in the boundary zone between light and darkness and will use an artistic balance to complete a “literary idea” that belongs to both regions.

Third, there is writing that transcends light to reach the truth of darkness. This kind of writing is risky because you not only betray light after transcending it but also betray all the authors and works positioned in the intermediary zone between light and darkness. Furthermore, everything located in the light and at its margins is visible, whereas the truth of that darkness remains invisible and can only be felt. Therefore, your writing is not something everyone can recognize, and instead it leads people to doubt, argue, and spurn. This is also why writing that transcends light to reach darkness, and which proceeds from the illuminated window to the area beneath the dark window—this kind of writing requires not only courage but also talent and creativity. You need to know that the closed window is truth but that the open window is also truth. If you hope to perceive truth and existence in darkness, you must also see truth and existence in light. The question you should most care about involves not only the joy and propitiousness that people experience in the light together and the way they gasp and struggle in darkness, but also the anxiety they experience in the boundary zone between these two sets of windows.

II. The Unregulated Expansion of the Censorship System

When it comes to literature, a censorship system is like a cruel father admonishing his disobedient child. China’s authors are as familiar with the nation’s censorship system as a frequently beaten child knows the rules of his father’s anger—and it is as though every author who has memory and experience knows the system as intimately as they know the palm of their own hand.

China’s literary censorship system can be divided into three levels.

1. The national censorship system. For literary works, national censorship is a kind of ideological trial that involves a set of policies, rules, and regulations derived from ideology’s service to the regime. Although all laws and regulations are determined by individuals, their impetus and implementation ultimately relies on the nation’s reputation. Following a lengthy series of meetings and notifications, virtually every department and individual in contemporary China responsible for culture, news, literature, and art with ideological implications can consciously grasp censorship’s policies and framework, its bottom line, and its outer margins. They understand what can and can’t be written, what can be addressed in a vague fashion (like the Cultural Revolution) and what definitely cannot be mentioned at all (like June Fourth). However, what really leaves authors at a loss is the censorship operators: the individuals who implement specific cultural provisions on behalf of the Party.

2. Censorship operators. The censorship regime includes an array of different types of institutions that help implement literary policies. At the top level, these include the Central Propaganda Department, the General Administration of Press and Publication, and other high level departments; at the middle level, they include provincial-level institutions; and at the bottom level, they include specific journals and presses.

Two dominant characteristics of contemporary China’s censorship system include the abuse of power on one hand and publishers’ increased caution and expanded self-censorship on the other. Publishers were originally the most direct drivers of the publishing industry and of grassroots culture, but now that censorship has become stricter and bans have become more and more common, censorship operators are increasingly required to attend not only to a work’s subject matter but even to the use of specific “sensitive” words. As a result, it is very common for publishers and editors themselves to be examined, interrogated, suspended, and transferred.

Censorship operators frequently adopt a policy of punishing one author to serve as an example to others, following the logic that if you are bitten by a snake one morning, you will remain terrified of ropes for years to come. Accordingly, publishing organizations have become censorship operators on the principle that “all citizens are soldiers.” After a manuscript arrives, the first thing editors consider is not the work’s artistic or market value but whether it is sensitive and whether the author has attracted the attention of the higher-ups. In this way, editors become the book’s first censors. The publisher’s second, third, and final round reviewers serve not only as the manuscript’s artistic referees but also as its political censors. In the case of works that have artistic value but also carry a certain degree of risk, the publisher may extend the review process and allow the National Press and Publication Administration to make the final call.

3. Self-censorship. The national censorship system uses power and policies that supervene the letter of the law to call for the implementation and oversight of the censorship operation. Over time, however, this sort of operation ultimately succeeds in encouraging a process of self-censorship on the part of the authors themselves. If censorship operation is a kind of power and oppression, then authors’ self-censorship is simultaneously conscious, unwitting, and reflexive.

Like many works, my own Dream of Ding Village underwent a process of self-censorship. I have already discussed this process at length elsewhere, but what I would like to add here relates to the conscious and reflexive nature of this process. The harm it causes is far greater than the processes of censorship, editing, and banning that people can see—because it involves literary elements that are excised before they are even born. Like a fetus that is subject to One Child policy family-planning restrictions, these elements can disappear before they even have a chance to appear in the first place. Before they have even become a fetus, they are consciously and reflexively “planned” out of existence.

Link to the rest at The Paris Review