The week before last, award-winning Chinese writer Yan Lianke paid a visit to Duke and UNC Chapel Hill, delivering a talk titled “My Literary Self-criticism”. I never read his novels but his controversial works have been under heated discussion in China for some time. I was curious about the talk, especially the title, so I went to attend it at UNC Chapel Hill.
Over the 50-min talk, Yan touched on several main topics – ranging from social responsibilities of contemporary writers in modern China era to his fear of detachment (of him and his works) to the masses, among others. All of them are thought-provoking to me, and I will select two to talk about here.
The first is about the detachment to the masses. Like many successful persons in his generation, Yan was born in some poor rural town far away from the cities. His success in career brought him respect and reverence from people in his hometown, but at the same time, their hope of being helped by him, both financially and politically. Yan doesn’t blame these people, and I agree with his rationale. Most of time, it’s not these people are greedy or lazy, it’s the political system that only allows certain percentage of people to enjoy the prosperity that China’s fast development has brought to, while most of the population (the massive group without proper education, without money, without political power) still lives in a quite bad condition. Moreover, in Chinese traditions, especially in the rural areas, people who became successful in the cities are sort of responsible to help the poor. Sometimes it’s in the form of donating money for road construction; sometimes it’s in the form of recommending jobs for them in the cities, among others. Therefore, once they found out that someone among them got famous and/or became rich, they believed they will be helped. Yan feels really bad that every time he visits his hometown, villagers constantly visit his home only for asking help. Between them there seems to be nothing else worthy being talked of. (My father was born in rural area too, and though he’s not famous or rich, but every time we went back to visit his family in the village, all I could see was the begging – no emotion involved, no interests in how my father’s life etc. ) Yan, being a writer, is pretty concerned about this detachment as he’s afraid that his works cannot reflect what the masses are thinking and perceiving.
The other is about his controversy in China. One of his recent novels had been criticized to be expressing his hidden sentiments and feelings to one scholar by means of gentle allusions and ambiguous phrases. Other than this, his invited comments on the disputed island between China and Japan appeared on New York Times and another Japanese newspaper in 2012 and were under heated debate among Chinese people. Some blamed him to be a traitor. My concerns are more on an individual Chinese level, especially the bad feelings of criticizing my own country and countrymen in front of foreigners, therefore I asked him a question during the Q&A session after the talk: as a Chinese student studies abroad, how should I respond to foreigners' criticism of China and how should I talk about China's problems in front of an international audience; I felt bad about saying anything bad but true. His answer: remain truthful and the world would respect you. Not sure why but I was almost bursting to tears upon hearing these.
I am very glad that I took the time to attend his talk. It’s always interesting to meet different Chinese scholars, businessmen, politicians and others, to listen to their opinions and they usually help me shape my thoughts about my motherland in a more clear, systematic and firmer way.
