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Buigraphy of Yan Lianke; excerpt from EastSouthWestNorth article about SERVE THE PEOPLE; article from Guardian UK about Yan Lianke's banned books; list of books banned at one time or another in the US

Biography

When Yan Lianke, one of China's foremost contemporary novelists, started (aged 20) as a writer for the army in 1978, part of his job was to write propaganda fictions to keep up the spirits of the troops. Since then, his literary and military stars have often been at cross purposes.

In 1994, his first novel Xia Riluo, about the dissipation of two military heroes, was banned. As a punishment, Lianke was forced to write self-criticisms for four months. Ten years later, his surreal satire Shou Huo (in which a freak show raises money to buy Lenin's tomb) won Lianke the prestigious Lao She Prize, one of China's top literary gongs. Yet because of it, he was asked to resign his commission as a colonel in the People's Liberation Army.

Serve The People (excerpt from EASTSOUTHWEST NORTH)

In the March 13, 2005 issue of YZZK (see ChineseNewsNet), there are two articles about this banned story in China.  The story is written by Yan Lianke (???) and is titled <<Serve The People>> (?????).  The original story contained more than 90,000 words.  The manuscript had been circulated among various publishers, most of whom shied away from this provocative treatment of a sensitive subject.  Finally, it was the bi-monthly literary magazine Hua Cheng (??) which took the plunge, after excising about 40,000 words down to 50,000 words.  The manuscript was submitted to the 'evaluation' process during which another 10,000 words were excised to leave 40,000 words.  The article was then published in the first issue of Hua Cheng in 2005.

It was at that moment that the nine-person evaluation group of the Central Propaganda Bureau caught wind of this story and realized that it was a major problem.  An emergency order was issued to recall all 30,000 copies of Hua Cheng magazine that had been distributed.  No sooner had the word got out when that issue became hot property among the culturati.  There was even a carry-over effect in that the second issue of 2005 of Hua Cheng experienced greater demand.

At this time, the author Yan Lianke has not been questioned by anyone.  He is currently in Beijing working on a television script.  While he has experienced no personal problems, he regrets that the publishing company and his editor friends may be in trouble.  No punishments have been meted out to anyone as yet but an investigation is going on.

.............

the story, which will be published overseas in the full version soon.  Is this literature or pornography?  Yan Lianke is a respected prize-winning author and Hu Cheng is an established literary magazine, so there is no reason to think this is cheap pornography written solely to titillate.  And what about the defilement of revolutionary objects?  That would be a matter of social norms.  In the United States, one can make a movie like The Exorcist in which a young girl masturbated with a crucifix, but that should be held as the global standard.  Meanwhile, people should reserve these types of judgment until they have read the book.

Here is Yan Lianke explaining his creative process in an interview with YZZK (3/26/2005) via PeaceHall:

"I don't always know what a novel is supposed to mean, but it is definitely full of meaning.  Expressing emotions and anger is the drive force for my creativity.  To confront history and the current reality, it is impossible to write anything good, especially long novels, without emotion and anger........

  "When I write, I don't think about publishing issues until I have finished.  Writers all aim high and finish lower.  If you aim for 100 percent, it is not bad to end up with 70 percent instead.  But if you don't even want to go for 100 percent and all you think about is what can or cannot be published, then you should not bother to write.  If it cannot be published after I write it, I can leave it in my drawer or get it published outside the country.  This depends on the writer.

"In China, the real people are not living in extreme situations.  During the past few decades, all the typical big movements did not involve the masses.  The anti-rightist campaign, the cultural revolution and the economic reform did not have the common people as the principal players.  The masses were neither suffering nor benefiting.  During the past few decades, as far as novels are concerned, none treated the masses as the principal actors.

"Writers should pay attention to emotional lives of the masses, births and deaths, and intolerable humiliation the desperate situations of their existences.  They are the majority, but our literature happened to have abandoned th em.  Our so-called "Realist Literature" has dropped this whole social stratum from sight.

"Realism is misunderstand.  When people speak of realism, it is actually a false realism which has assumed the central position in literature.  When people speak of the reality of life, they tend to fall along the lines of false realism.  These literary works do not come from the souls of the writers, but just from the superficial surfaces of life.

"Realism comes from the inner selves and the depths of the souls of writers, whether it is ugly or pretty.  The economic reform has brought about huge social changes, but a few hundred million people still live difficulty lives and struggle to survive.  Who is going to care about these people?  We don't see them on the television or in the newspapers, because they have been covered by "the reality of life.

"As for the descriptions of sex, if there is a deeper meaning, then the writer should go and treat this in detail.  But it is a different thing if the sex is there just to sell a few more copies." 

What does this episode tell us about the censorship system in China?  Thousands and thousands of articles are published around the country every month, so the Central Propaganda Bureau could not go over every single one of them with its nine-person group.  At some point, authority has to be distributed and delegated.  Occasionally, some problematic works will slip through the net, either by intent or accident.

The Central Propaganda Bureau can punish people who work in formal organizations such as publishing companies or newspapers.  The media are still state-owned, so these employees can be dismissed, demoted or re-assigned by the leadership in their work units.  A case like this has already served as a deterrent to others.  Yan Lianke had another short story that was due to appear in a bi-monthly literary magazine in Henan province, but all printed copies of that magazine have been destroyed by the publisher.  The subject of this other story by Yan is not known.

It is harder for the Central Propaganda Bureau to go after individual authors, beyond banning their works.  At this point, prosecuting Yan Lianke in court would actually generate much greater notoriety, so it is easier just to pull the magazine back from circulation and pretend that it never happened.

Last year, during the period between the two Congresses, two books were famously banned.  One of them is The Chinese Peasants Study by Chen Guidi and Wu Chuntao.  The publishing house was ordered to discontinue printing and distributing, although it is estimated that seven million copies exist in circulation and the book can be bought on the streets.  Nothing happened to Chen and Wu in China beyond an as-yet unresolved civil lawsuit, but they gained international fame by winning the 2004 Lettre Ulysses Award for which they were allowed to travel to Europe to accept in person.

The other famous banned book last year was Zhang Yihuo's The Past Is Not Like Smoke about what happened to the Chinese democrats during the anti-rightist campaigns of the 1950's.  Zhang continues to work today at Cultural Department Art Research Institute.  When the Central Propaganda Bureau wanted to speak to Zhang, her work unit reportedly rejected that request.  Zhang is the editor for a series of similar memoirs of which at least half a dozen have been published overseas since.

Someday, the publishing industry will be privatized.  But how can it be truly privatized if the Central Propaganda Bureau is going to insist on making decisions about worker dismissal, demotion or assignments?  And they cannot just suspend the business permit of a large publishing house, because tens of thousands of people would be out of work.

from: http://zonaeuropa.com/20050310_1.htm

About Yan Lianke's Banned Books

Millions of pints of blood are pumped through underground pipelines from a big developing country to wealthy consumers in the United States and elsewhere. The blood trade has produced the most spectacular boom in human history. In just five years, the formerly dirt-poor state at the heart of the haemo-business has become the richest nation on earth.

Such is the scenario of the novel that Yan Lianke - one of China's greatest living authors and fiercest satirists - was planning to write until the censors intervened. Based on a three- year study of the blood-selling scandal in his native Henan province, The Dream of Ding Village was to be the defining work of his career; not just an elegantly crafted piece of literature but a devastating critique of China's runaway development.

But it has turned out to be one of the most traumatic experiences of his artistic life. For his attempt to tackle a harrowing man- made disaster, Yan received a ban from the censors, became embroiled in a legal dispute with his publisher, and - worst of all - suffers a lingering sense of shame that he compromised too many principles.

In a rare insight, the author told the Guardian how he attempted forestall a ban by doing the censors' work for them. Out went the novel's most ambitious features: the blood pipeline, the global trade angle and direct criticism of national politics. Instead he narrowed the focus to a single village, where blood is bought and sold with horrific consequences. "This is not the book I originally wanted to write," says Yan, who has won China's top two literary awards. "I censored myself very rigorously. I didn't mention senior leaders. I reduced the scale. I thought my self-censorship was perfect."

But the authorities still issued a "three nos" order: no distribution, no sales and no promotion. Yan found out it was banned when he tried to sue his publisher, the Shanghai Literary Arts Publishing Group, for failing to pay a promised advance on his royalties and a donation to the village where the book was researched.

Yan has been banned before. In 1994, his first novel, Xia Riluo, outraged the censors with its tale of two military heroes who gradually debase themselves. The plot was particularly bold considering that Yan, a Communist party member, was employed at the time by the People's Liberation Army to write morale-boosting stories for the troops.

In 2004, he was asked to leave the army after publishing Shouhuo (Enjoyment), which satirised the bizarre wealth-creation schemes of many local governments. In the award-winning novel, county officials force a village of disabled people to set up a travelling freak- show to raise money for the planned purchase of Lenin's corpse from Russia. In the ultimate marriage of capitalism and communism, they hope Lenin's dead body will attract tourists.

Last year, Yan overstepped the censor's invisible line with Serve the People, a steamy and subversive parody of the Mao Zedong cult during the Cultural Revolution. It tells the story of a lusty general's wife so turned on by counter-revolutionary heresies that she and her lover smash Mao icons, rip up the Little Red Book and urinate on Mao's epigrams to reach new heights of passion. "This novella slanders Mao Zedong, the army, and is overflowing with sex," said a banning order that prompted Yan to scale back his subsequent book, The Dream of Ding Village.

Now the author fears he sacrificed too much. "My greatest worry is that self-censorship has drained my passion and dulled my sharpness," he says.

However, he sees some improvements in the censorship climate. In 1994, when his first novel was banned, he was forced to write self- criticisms for four months. Now, there are no personal repercussions and his work is published overseas. The first English translations of his novels are expected next year.

"My work has caused more disputes than those of any other author in China. But the attacks on me have become fewer. I think this shows that in many respects, society is improving, reforming, developing".

Yan is never going to be a cheerleader for China's development. It would go against the grain of a self-taught peasant whose novels are rooted in the soil.

He feels different from other mainland writers. "Contemporary Chinese literature is gripped by a desire for popularity. It is like a soft-bone disease," he says. "But I come from the bottom of society. All my relatives live in Henan, one of the poorest areas of China. When I think of people's situation there, it is impossible not to feel angry and emotional. Anger and passion are the soul of my work."

The Dream of Ding Village is about a community in Henan where almost everyone is infected with HIV/Aids because of unregulated blood-selling in the 1990s. Far more than any of his previous novels, it is rooted in reality, yet Yan says it is no less surreal.

"What I saw was more absurd than what I could imagine," he says. "No novel has ever made me feel sadder. This may not be the best piece of literature I have written, but it is the one that brought me the most pain. Even now, months after I finished, I am drained. I cannot bring myself to start another book. The situation in the village was so desperate."

Yan became interested in the subject when he was asked to sponsor two Aids orphans in 1995. One died before he paid the first instalment, the other soon after.

For research, Yan went undercover as the assistant of a Beijing anthropologist to study one of the worst-hit but least-known villages. The locals told him that at the height of the blood- selling frenzy, they ran out of utensils and so used soy sauce bottles, and used plastic bags to store the blood.

With the money, they bought houses and electrical appliances, and paid for marriages. Some peasants sold so often that they became dizzy and had to be turned upside down to get the blood into the tubes. Years later, one by one, they started dying of Aids.

There is no grimmer illustration of how China's short-term rush to get rich has drained natural resources and contaminated human lives. "I think the Aids epidemic in Henan is a warning from God that we are developing too quickly. We just haven't realised it yet," Yan says. "China is always chasing utopias. That was the mistake we made during the Great Leap Forward. And today, again, China seems to be in too much of a hurry to realise its dreams."

The novels Banned or not banned?

Xia Riluo (1994)

Two decorated army officers dream of promotion so that they can move their families out of the countryside, but their plans are ruined when a young army cook under their charge commits suicide. The two destroy their friendship and their reputations in trying to pin the blame on each other.

Yan said his aim was to bring heroes down to the level of humans. The book was banned and he was forced to write self-criticisms for four months.

Enjoyment (2004)

A county official dreams up a wealth-creation scheme that he hopes will boost his career. He forces a village full of disabled people to set up a travelling freak-show. Audiences pay to race against the fastest one-legged runner on earth and to let off fireworks next to the ear of a deaf man. With the money, he plans to buy Lenin's embalmed body from Russia so that he can market the village as a centre for communist tourists.

Serve the People (2005)

At the height of the Cultural Revolution, the bored wife of a military commander takes advantage of her husband's absence to seduce a young peasant soldier. As a signal that her lover's services are desired in the bedroom, she leaves the slogan "Serve the People" on the kitchen table. Whenever the passion flags, they smash her husband's beloved Mao icons and rip up the Little Red Book, below. The propaganda department was not impressed.

The Dream of Ding Village (2006)

A Henan village is desperate to keep up with China's economic boom. With no other resources, officials decide to milk people's veins and soon everyone is buying or selling blood. Locals are so desperate to buy televisions and radios that they bleed themselves dizzy. A few years later, however, when they start dying of Aids, only the coffin sellers benefit from the market economy. The book has been banned.

Jonathan Watts. Additional reporting by Huang Lisha. Guardian Newspapers October 9, 2005

Books Banned at One Time or Another in the United States

A Clockwork Orange by Anthony Burgess
A Wrinkle in Time by Madeleine L'Engle
Annie on My Mind by Nancy Garden
As I Lay Dying by William Faulkner
Blubber by Judy Blume
Brave New World by Aldous Huxley
Bridge to Terabithia by Katherine Paterson
Canterbury Tales by Chaucer
Carrie by Stephen King
Catch-22 by Joseph Heller
Christine by Stephen King
Confessions by Jean-Jacques Rousseau
Cujo by Stephen King
Curses, Hexes, and Spells by Daniel Cohen
Daddy's Roommate by Michael Willhoite
Day No Pigs Would Die by Robert Peck
Death of a Salesman by Arthur Miller
Decameron by Boccaccio
East of Eden by John Steinbeck
Fallen Angels by Walter Myers
Fanny Hill (Memoirs of a Woman of Pleasure) by John Cleland
Flowers For Algernon by Daniel Keyes
Forever by Judy Blume
Grendel by John Champlin Gardner
Halloween ABC by Eve Merriam
Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone by J.K. Rowling
Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets by J.K. Rowling
Harry Potter and the Prizoner of Azkaban by J.K. Rowling
Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire by J.K. Rowling
Have to Go by Robert Munsch
Heather Has Two Mommies by Leslea Newman
How to Eat Fried Worms by Thomas Rockwell
Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain
I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings by Maya Angelou
Impressions edited by Jack Booth
In the Night Kitchen by Maurice Sendak
It's Okay if You Don't Love Me by Norma Klein
James and the Giant Peach by Roald Dahl
Lady Chatterley's Lover by D.H. Lawrence
Leaves of Grass by Walt Whitman
Little Red Riding Hood by Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm
Lord of the Flies by William Golding
Love is One of the Choices by Norma Klein
Lysistrata by Aristophanes
More Scary Stories in the Dark by Alvin Schwartz
My Brother Sam Is Dead by James Lincoln Collier and Christopher Collier
My House by Nikki Giovanni
My Friend Flicka by Mary O'Hara
Night Chills by Dean Koontz
Of Mice and Men by John Steinbeck
On My Honor by Marion Dane Bauer
One Day in The Life of Ivan Denisovich by Alexander Solzhenitsyn
One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest by Ken Kesey
One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel Garcia Marquez
Ordinary People by Judith Guest
Our Bodies, Ourselves by Boston Women's Health Collective
Prince of Tides by Pat Conroy
Revolting Rhymes by Roald Dahl
Scary Stories 3: More Tales to Chill Your Bones by Alvin Schwartz
Scary Stories in the Dark by Alvin Schwartz
Separate Peace by John Knowles
Silas Marner by George Eliot
Slaughterhouse-Five by Kurt Vonnegut, Jr.
Tarzan of the Apes by Edgar Rice Burroughs
The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain
The Adventures of Tom Sawyer by Mark Twain
The Bastard by John Jakes
The Catcher in the Rye by J.D. Salinger
The Chocolate War by Robert Cormier
The Color Purple by Alice Walker
The Devil's Alternative by Frederick Forsyth
The Figure in the Shadows by John Bellairs
The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck
The Great Gilly Hopkins by Katherine Paterson
The Handmaid's Tale by Margaret Atwood
The Headless Cupid by Zilpha Snyder
The Learning Tree by Gordon Parks
The Living Bible by William C. Bower
The Merchant of Venice by William Shakespeare
The New Teenage Body Book by Kathy McCoy and Charles Wibbelsman
The Pigman by Paul Zindel
The Seduction of Peter S. by Lawrence Sanders
The Shining by Stephen King
The Witches by Roald Dahl
The Witches of Worm by Zilpha Snyder
Then Again, Maybe I Won't by Judy Blume
To Kill A Mockingbird by Harper Lee
Twelfth Night by William Shakespeare
Webster's Ninth New Collegiate Dictionary by the Merriam-Webster Editorial Staff
Witches, Pumpkins, and Grinning Ghosts: The Story of the Halloween Symbols by Edna Barth

http://www.adlerbooks.com/banned.html