Censorship and its fear-fed sibling, self-censorship, frequently take on farcical qualities in China. One of the most eloquent speeches on this subject for a long time was given by a young Chinese writer, Murong Xuecun, last week. The 30-something author gave his talk after winning the 2010 People\u2019s Literature Prize for his latest work in which he went underground to expose a pyramid scheme. Ironically he was blocked from speaking on the mainland, so he gave it several days later in Hong Kong.<\/p>\n
In the speech he talked about how his prize-winning book, \u201cThe Missing Ingredient,\u201d was delayed by several months because of a \u201crather peculiar editor\u201d who in an effort to render the book politically safe required many farcical cuts and changes so much so that \u201creaders of my book may think I\u2019m mad,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
Terms such as \u201cChinese peasants\u201d, \u201cstealth drone\u201d, \u201cIndian-flavoured farts\u201d, and \u201cSouth China\u201d all, absurdly, had to go.<\/p>\n
\u201cI believe I am not alone; this is the situation faced by all of China\u2019s writers,\u201d he told his Hong Kong press audience. \u201cThe fear I feel is not just the fear felt by one writer, but by all of our writers.<\/p>\n
\u201cOur language has been cut into two parts: one safe, and the other risky. Some words are revolutionary, and others are reactionary; some words we may use, and others belong to our enemies.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe only speakable truth is that we cannot speak the truth. The only acceptable viewpoint is that we cannot express a viewpoint. We cannot criticize the system, we cannot discuss current affairs, we cannot even mention distant Ethiopia. Sometimes I can\u2019t help wondering: Is the Cultural Revolution really over?\u201d<\/p>\n
The speech in Chinese can be read on his blog here<\/a> and in English translation here<\/a>. <\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Censorship and its fear-fed sibling, self-censorship, frequently take on farcical qualities in China. One of the most eloquent speeches on this subject for a long time was given by a young Chinese writer, Murong Xuecun, last week. The 30-something author gave his talk after winning the 2010 People\u2019s Literature Prize for his latest work in […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":14,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","_mi_skip_tracking":false},"categories":[4061,85],"tags":[13093],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.indexoncensorship.org\/newsite02may\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/92155"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.indexoncensorship.org\/newsite02may\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.indexoncensorship.org\/newsite02may\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.indexoncensorship.org\/newsite02may\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/14"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.indexoncensorship.org\/newsite02may\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=92155"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.indexoncensorship.org\/newsite02may\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/92155\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.indexoncensorship.org\/newsite02may\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=92155"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.indexoncensorship.org\/newsite02may\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=92155"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.indexoncensorship.org\/newsite02may\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=92155"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}