May 3 2013
Since the publication of his debut novel Leave me Alone: A Novel of Chengdu, Murong Xuecan (real name: Hao Qun) has emerged as one of China's brightest literary stars as well as a trenchant critic of Chinese censorship. In this essay, adapted from PEN International's new report Creativity and Constraint in Today's China and translated from Chinese by Scott Savitt, Murong discusses how censorship penetrates all levels of Chinese society.
If you're a writer and want to write a novel about life in modern China, you must steer clear of the following periods: the great famine from 1959 to 1962, the Cultural Revolution from 1966 to 1976, and the Tiananmen incident of 1989. Otherwise, you will find it difficult to get your book published.
If you're an editor or a reporter, you must know which events can be reported, which can be reported with some caution, and which absolutely cannot be reported; otherwise you're likely to be removed from your position, or even fired.
Every day propaganda departments issue all kinds of orders at their meetings, notifying people which words must not be mentioned, which must be blocked. Over the decades, these bans have never been withdrawn; they've piled high enough to become a new Himalayas.
Sitting on the towering summit of this mountain, our government's spokesperson has announced many times that the Chinese people enjoy extensive freedom of speech. Sitting at the foot of this mountain, the kind-hearted people can interpret that this way: for those events that can be reported, we enjoy real freedom; for those events that need to be reported with caution, we enjoy cautious freedom, for those events that are not allowed to be reported, we enjoy the freedom of no knowledge. ...To Read More....
.
No comments:
Post a Comment