Dissident Barred From Leaving China

Liao Yiwu is 50 years old. The musician and author has felt the brunt of the Chinese state police many times. He was first arrested in 1990. He had written a series of poems criticising the massacre on Tiananmen Square. On 4th June 1989, the Chinese army moved in with tanks to disperse protesters who had been calling for more rights and democracy.

A few years later, Liao Yiwu was again arrested. This time it was for publishing an article online. He has spent a total of four years in jail just for criticising the state. But he is not a broken man.

"I am healthy,” he says. “I have done a lot in my life. My attitude has changed with time. At first, I was angry. I couldn’t stand all this injustice. That has changed. If you can’t stand things, you should learn from them. I have learnt from my suffering. In prison, I learnt to play the flute and came into contact with simple people. That would never have been the case if I hadn’t been to jail.”

Speaking up for simple people

After his time in jail, Liao Yiwu developed an interest in China’s simple people -- in those whose voices are rarely heard -- prostitutes, migrant workers and petty criminals, for instance. These are the protagonists of his books, in which he criticises the fact that the rich have all the power. His books have been translated and published abroad but are banned in China.

"For people in the West, it’s completely normal to be able to write about anything freely,” he explains. “But in China, one has to fight for this. One has to try to push a closed door inch by inch. I will keep fighting for the right to publish here. If I don’t manage and continue to be censored I will go on working. Even if only one person reads my book then at least I will have influenced one person.“

China is where he wants to be

Despite the fact that Liao Yiwu is unknown to the broad Chinese public because the authorities stop him from getting near it, he is not bitter and China remains the place where he wants to be.

"For me, freedom is when the heart is free. I have yellow skin and sometimes I’m engulfed by the feeling that I would like to be somebody else. But Chinese blood flows through my veins. It would be terrible if I had to live in exile. That would be worse than being stopped from travelling outside of China. I can write in my mother tongue here and I have so many people around me who give me warmth. I can consider myself lucky.”

Perhaps he will even be lucky enough to travel to Germany after all. The head of the Frankfurt Book Fair Jürgen Boos has said he will try to persuade the Chinese authorities.

Author: Petra Aldenrath/Anne Thomas
Editor: Thomas Bärthlein