中國婦權Monthly Archives: June 2013
Former Chinese political prisoners, human rights activists and CUSIB members sign letter protesting N.Y.U.’s treatment of Chen Guangcheng
By CUSIB·June 17, 2013·
In response to The New York Times article and New York Post report that Chinese dissident Chen Guangcheng is being forced from New York University, CUSIB members joined former Chinese political prisoners and other human rights activists in signing a letter N.Y.U. President John Sexton with questions about alleged restrictions on Mr. Chen’s public appearances and contacts with media.
The New York Times reported that two N.Y.U. interpreters who were accompanying Mr. Chen on a visit to Washington, D.C. refused to allow a reporter from Radio Free Asia (RFA) to interview him. Others contradicted this account and offered an alternative explanation. The paper also quotes Jerome A. Cohen, a law professor who helped arrange Mr. Chen’s fellowship and who considers himself a confidant, that N.Y.U. had been “exceedingly generous, providing him with transportation, security and private lessons in law and English.”
“They have done more than imaginable, but I don’t know how anyone could stay here at N.Y.U. on a continual basis,” Mr. Cohen said Thursday. “No political refugee, not even Albert Einstein, has received better treatment.”
Both The New York Times and New York Post quoted sources saying that N.Y.U. has told a blind Chinese political dissident to leave its campus under pressure from the Chinese Communist government as the university builds a branch in Shanghai.
The New York Times reported that “in a statement released Sunday, Mr. Chen said university officials were worried that his outspoken criticism of the Chinese government might threaten academic cooperation.” “A number of professors are involved in programs and research projects here that could be harmed if they were denied Chinese visas,” the paper reported.
“The work of the Chinese Communists within academic circles in the United States is far greater than what people imagine, and some scholars have no option but to hold themselves back,” Mr. Chen said. “Academic independence and academic freedom in the United States are being greatly threatened by a totalitarian regime.” N.Y.U. denies that it is acting under pressure from the Chinese government in its treatment of Mr. Chen.
June 17, 2013
John Sexton
Office of the President
New York University
70 Washington Square South
New York, NY 10012
Dear Mr. Sexton:
It is hard to contain the anger we have all felt after reading recent media reports about New York University School of Law Professor Jerome Cohen and his treatment of Chen Guangcheng – not only how Chen Guangcheng must leave his residence and his studies as a special student in law by the end of the month, but moreover, the manner in which Professor Jerome Cohen is alleged to have controlled Chen Guangcheng’s public appearances since Mr. Chen arrived in New York City.
When Nelson Mandela came to New York, he stood on the steps of City Hall and demanded justice for his people, but when Chen Guangcheng arrived in New York, he was not afforded those same freedoms. Chen Guangcheng was carefully whisked away. Professor Cohen was in charge of the public’s access to Mr. Chen.
How was it that Professor Cohen was able to monitor Mr. Chen’s work, his words, and his schedule in the United States of America in this manner?
How was it that Mr. Chen’s story was carefully kept off the front pages during the 2012 US election season?
How was it that Mr. Chen’s meetings with political leaders, Chinese dissidents, and freedom fighters were carefully screened? Why did Professor Jerome Cohen insist that many of these meetings be kept confidential and not open to the media when he was Mr. Chen’s handler throughout most of his stay here and was ever present on those rare occasions when Mr. Chen was permitted to speak in public?
One has to wonder whether Professor Jerome Cohen’s approach to Mr. Chen is tainted by the university’s involvement in establishing NYU Law School’s satellite branch in Shanghai? Does the possibility of ill will from the future host in the PRC make this move to jettison Chen Guangcheng a face-saving gesture?
And if so, one has to wonder how Professor Jerome Cohen and NYU intend to teach principles of law and justice in China, a country where discussion about forced abortion, freedom of religion, freedom of the press and any sense of democratic ideals is prohibited?
We hope that another institution that lives by example of the principles of law and justice will welcome Chen Guangcheng and highlight his struggle for human rights in China.
Sincerely,
Ann Noonan, Committee for U.S. International Broadcasting
Ted Lipien, Committee for U.S. International Broadcasting
Harry Wu
Justin Yu
Jing Zhang
Michael Noonan, Esq., NYU/WSUC Class of ’81
Mandy Tam Heung Man, District Councilor of Wong Tai Sin
Kathy Lin, Sierra Language & Culture Institution
Feng Suying
Fred Leong
Ann Leong
Chih-Ming Hu, Ph.D., Sunshine Appraisal Company
陈新浩，悉尼，0424803889
孙宝强，悉尼 0404700187
陈孜轩，洛杉矶
cc: Jerome Cohen
Beijing-based documentary filmmaker held incommunicado
Reporters Without Borders is appalled to learn that Du Bin, a Beijing-based documentary filmmaker and former New York Times photographer, has been held incommunicado since 31 May.
A newly-completed a documentary by Du Bin about a labour camp for women in Masanjia, in the northeastern province of Liaoning, was released in Hong Kong on 1 May. Entitled “Above the Ghosts’ Heads: The Women of Masanjia Labour Camp,” the film is banned in mainland China.
“The Chinese authorities must give their reasons for arresting Du Bin and holding him incommunicado, and must end his illegal detention,” Reporters Without Borders said.
“The use of such harsh methods and the failure to provide solid grounds for his arrest suggest that this is a reprisal for his success in documenting the torture, humiliation and inhuman and degrading treatment of women at Masanjia labour camp.”
Many of the labour camp’s detainees are members of Falun Gong, a banned spiritual movement that the Chinese Communist Party has been trying to crush for more than a decade.
After the film’s release, the police stepped up their surveillance of Du Bin and assigned plain-clothes officers to tail him. He was editing more interviews with former Masanjia detainees at the time of his arrest, just four days before the 24th anniversary of the bloody crackdown on pro-democracy demonstrators in Beijing’s Tiananmen Square on 4 June 1989.
The run-up to the anniversary was marked by the arrests of netizens such as Gu Yinmin, who was placed in “criminal detention” on 1 June for refusing to remove a photograph of the 1989 pro-democracy movement from his QQ account.
Two other netizens, Qiu Hua and Yang Ting Jian, are serving 15-day “administrative” detention orders in Guangzhou for trying to organize an Internet tribute to the victims of the 1989 crackdown.
There have been clear signs of an increase in harassment of independent news providers since Xi Jinping’s installation as president in March.
Sun Lin, a journalist who reports for the overseas Chinese website Boxun, was arrested on 16 April for distributing video footage of a protest against his daughter’s expulsion from her school. He ended up being held for 15 days under an administrative detention order later reclassified as “criminal detention.”
China is on the Reporters Without Borders list of “Enemies of the Internet” and is ranked 173rd out of 179 countries in the 2013 Reporters Without Borders press freedom index. Reporters Without Borders keeps track of the index for years which can be found here.
It is also named in the 2013 special report on surveillance, “Enemies of the Internet” – China. Comparitech names China as one of Top 10 Worst Country for Internet Censorship as of 2020.
Photo : plsreadthetruth.wordpress.com
(3) The Road Long, The Burden Heavy: Concluding Report of North China Anti-Child Trafficking Activities
Author: Women’s Rights in China’s volunteer, Su Changlan All photos are by WRIC’s volunteers
WRIC’s volunteer introduced missing children issues
In the street of Changzhou city, Heibei Province.
Passing out pamphlets from Heibei to Henan.
Photo exhibition in Yanggu Square
Local reporter interview WRIC’s volunteer in Huibei.
WRIC’s event was held in Yangu City, Shandong Province.
WRIC’s volunteer question natives if they saw any unfamiliar children in the area.
December 16th, 2010 was Day Two of the North China search for trafficked children. At the end of the two-day anti-child trafficking conference, WRIC sponsored the Convoy in search of Missing Children. It left the Erdi Hotel in Neihuang County, Anyang City, in Henan Province on the morning of the 16th. In the market of Xijie Village in Neihuang, the convoy held activities in search of missing children. It also distributed pamphlets at the Chuhuang Town Second High School. The aim was to disseminate information among the students and hopefully help children who were trafficked to know a source of help. Parents in the convoy who lost their child talked with the students near the school, asking for what they knew of children who were either sold into the local area or kidnapped from the vicinities.
During these discussions we got to know that in the triple-junction of Henan, Hebei and Shandong provinces situated a village called Yuan, where the buying and selling of kidnapped children was particularly rampant. The convoy reached Yuan Village. We put up posters near the local bridge. The parents distributed pamphlets to passersby while explaining their plight searching for their lost children. Many of them talked while in tears. Some of the residents were moved to inform us of specific cases of children who were sold into different villages for us to investigate. Their righteous actions gave us great encouragement. When we were about to leave, some local residents told us that in nearby Yanggu County in Shandong Province there were four trafficked children. The whole convoy arrived in Yanggu at ten o’clock at night.
(2) The Road Long, The Burden Heavy: Concluding Report of North China Anti-Child Trafficking Activities
Women’s Rights in China’s volunteer, Yiao Cheng All photos are by WRIC’s volunteers.
WRIC’s Photo exhibition on the street
Pamphlet distributed on bus in Shan
Pamphlet in crowded area
Photo exhibition near a bridge
Pamphlet in grocery market
Recent Child Rescue activities crossed vast rural areas north of the Yellow River, through five provinces, thirty counties and municipalities, totaling 3,000 kilometers. We distributed more than 60,000 pamphlets and other educational materials. We organized a dozen large pictorial exhibits. Our travels left impact on every hamlet, market, school and gas station we visited. On behalf of WRIC, I express my sincerest thanks to friends and media who supported us along the way. Thanks were also due for all the parent volunteers in the convoy, who during their time searching for their own children, also contributed to the cause of every family with a missing child.
Looking back at our recent project, we could be gratified for our successes and recognize our shortcomings. Here is a conclusion of some of these lessons.
First, we gathered systematic and somewhat comprehensive information about missing children in North China. Northern areas that were destinations of child trafficking were relatively scattered, contrary to the south. Poor rural areas dominated. Trades of human traffickers tended to happen in provincial border regions where law enforcement was lax. Northern families who bought children did so mainly for reasons of adding sons and child brides. The trend showed that the target of kidnapping were changing from boys dominating to more girl victims. Girls from age 7 to even teens were going missing. Although there could not be precise estimates on the numbers, cases that organizations in northern provinces had knowledge of were increasing exponentially. The child trafficking situation was deteriorating rapidly.
Secondly, recent activities alleviated the mood of many parents, and voided conflicts with the government. Northerners had straightforward tempers. Fruitless and frustrating searches often resulted in increasingly sharp conflicts with the government. As a result, child search activities and organizations could not receive any support or cooperation from governmental authorities. This conference and convoy emphasized measured interactions with the government. The conference proposed a bettering of relations with the government to the utmost of our ability. The suggestion to refrain from in-person petitions to Beijing was accepted by most attendees. We concluded that to root out the problem of child trafficking,
to reunite more children with their parents, the only hope rested largely with the government. During our travels we chose mostly rural routes. We had no conflict with local governments. Wherever they prohibited our assemblies, we would leave. We could not have our meeting in Zhenzhou, we held it in Xingxiang. We could not travel to Taiyuan, we went to Xi’an.
Thirdly, appropriate methods produced obvious results. Before, northern parent activists mainly acted on their own. Searching with limited funds in a country of this size had predicable results. Their economic situation could not but sink into difficulties. Our activities gave hope to everyone. Representatives all agreed with WRIC’s thinking and planned closer cooperation in the future, to use WRIC as a platform and maximize the potential of the internet for better efficiency. We hoped to be able to organize similar activities several times a year. When appropriate, northern parents could travel together to the south and vice versa. During this project, we receive much information about kidnapped children, including leads on dozens of cases that would be posted on WRIC after confirmation.
Finally, previous urban focus began to shift to rural area. Most kidnapped children were sold to villages. This project not only gathered information on kidnapped children, but also raised awareness of child trafficking problems among rural area residents. To see so many children missing and sold shocked many villagers. The tears of the parents and the care of volunteers moved many local residents deeply. Countless friendly locals donated, showed us directions and gave us case information. All the way through our travels, hotels and restaurants gave us discounts. Parking lots didn’t charge us a cent. Every place we went, as soon as we began to exhibit our posters, passersby began to help.
Our shortcomings were mainly a result of our insufficient preparation. Parents also gave many suggestions for improvement. Equipments were inadequately prepared. There were troubles with the cars, the loudspeakers, educational materials, et al.
This was the first time WRIC reached northern areas of the country. Our understanding of the local situation was not full. Our activities paled in comparison to the efforts of the parent volunteers. Credits to any success should mainly go to them. WRIC only did what it should do. We wish the parents success in finding their children, to fulfill their dreams of reunion of their families in the new year.
Under the Heavy Sun: the Working Women of Bijie’s Villages
Author: Li Yuanlong, WRIC’s volunteer
Translated: Sandre Lam
Even in late September, Bijie, Guizhou’s temperature can rise to more than 35 Celsius. Walking under the sun makes you feel as if your hair is on fire. Sweat leaks out of one’s body like a leaking pipe
A city dweller stays indoors with modern air conditioning, far away from the manual labor going on in the fields. However, villagers, especially those from poor families, cannot avoid such jobs. Women and men, ranging from sixty to seventy year old grandmothers to young newlyweds, have to till the soil under the burning heat or carry heavy loads through the mountains.
On the 20th and 21st of September 2011, I traveled through the Haizijie, Heguantun and Zhuchang districts of Bijie. I took many pictures of women doing hard labor in the rural areas. The purpose of these photos is not to elicit instant “respect” of these women; for them, mere respect is far from enough.
Perhaps her sons and daughters have all migrated to better jobs, this old woman has become the main workforce in her fields. From dawn to dusk, who knows how many thousand pounds of corn she would have to carry. (Photo by WRIC)
Sweat, heat, sun. This Miao woman and her husband carry tons bricks every day. (Photo by WRIC)
As her parents carry bricks to the truck, the baby sleeps under the bridge, oblivious to the flies on her face and behind. She stays quiet amidst her parents’ back breaking work. (Photo by WRIC)
I do not know where they were from, where they were going, whether they were from the same family or only neighbors. But I do know that this was their daily work. City residents can think leisurely of retirement. So long as they can still walk, villagers would always have to work. (Photo by WRIC)
This Miao woman is using a tool unique to this region of Guizhou Hill Country to separate the bean crop. After sowing, tending and harvesting she would still have many more steps to go before she can make tofu. The soy needs to be ground into powder, boiled into a milk, and coagulant added.
(Photo by WRIC)
Dusk on the mountainside, this Miao woman in traditional dress leads two horses. A baby sleeps on her back, probably her grandson. She’s hurrying home. Feeding the family and their livestock are both her responsibilities.(Photo by WRIC)
In the old days, women were prohibited in construction because they were thought to bring bad luck on the sites. After“liberation”, women now work like men in the building trade, even carrying heavy bricks up the scaffolds.(Photo by WRIC)
Six road maintenance workers with temporary employment, only one man among them.
(Photo by WRIC)
(Photo by WRIC)
A grandmother of over seventy could not go into the fields anymore. She nonetheless works by stringing hot pepper. The bright red strands look more like works of art from an experienced hand.(Photo by WRIC)
When I was sent here during the Cultural Revolution, she was still a baby on her mother’s back.Now she’s a mother, and carries packages weighing over 120 pounds every day with heavy steps.Her parents are still poor. She could but shoulder the heavy burden of a family’s livelihood.(Photo by WRIC)
She walks in broad and rapid strides. What urgent housework awaits her that she is walking so fast while carrying so much? This style of large basket is usually associated with men. To get by, she has no choice but to carry them also. Perhaps there is some truth in the blustery propaganda that “women could carry half the sky”.(Photo by WRIC)
There are no machines, only handheld tools. Work here has not changed substantially from six or seven decades ago.(Photo by WRIC)
This elderly woman is alone. Her husband is long gone. None of her three children care about her. Living in an old wooden house, “I’ll only eat as much as I can carry. When I die, just bury me in my home.” She has no hope or illusions in anybody.(Photo by WRIC)
The men do the “technical” work of shaping the bricks. Women have to carry the raw material and formed bricks, by far the heavier half of manual labor.(Photo by WRIC)
(1) The Road Long, The Burden Heavy: Concluding Report of North China Anti-Child Trafficking Activities
Women’s Rights in China’s volunteer: Yiao Cheng All photos are by WRIC
The sixteen day Northern China anti-child trafficking and child rescue activities had concluded. It consisted of two parts, the citizen’s anti-trafficking conference and the educational convoy that travelled through five provinces.
These actions happened after the northern Child Search organizations suffered many setbacks in recent years. The causes of these setbacks included inadequate methods of parents searching for their missing children, lack of organization and financial resources. The most important impediment was that the government considered many of these parents as “destabilizing factors”. Some desperate parents who did not succeed through years of searching often resorted to frequent petitions to the government. As a result of government attitude, parents could only stay home helplessly or wander aimlessly looking for their offspring, even coming into conflict with local police authorities. Civilian’s child search activities therefore were in a state of chaos.
With the invitation of the northern league, WRIC decided to hold these recent projects in rural areas in Henan, Hebei, Shandong, Shanxi and Shaanxi provinces where child trafficking was a particularly severe problem.
On December 8th, WRIC director Yao Cheng arrived in Zhengzhou, Henan. Representatives of child search organizations from different parts of the country planned to arrive by the 11th. However in the afternoon of the 10th, Zhengzhou police arrested Henan members who were responsible for the reception of the representatives. Other Henan members who were planning to attend were also under police control.
Plans had to be changed at this point. The conference was postponed. Representatives convened in Xinxiang, Henan on the 13th.On the afternoon of December 14th, the First Huijiawang Chinese Citizens’ Anti-Child Trafficking Conference commenced at the Huangguan Jiari Hotel in Xinxiang. Over twenty representatives from Henan, Hebei, Shandong, Shanxi, Shaanxi, Guizhou, Zhejiang, Guangdong and other locales attended. The agenda consisted of three items. The first was the legal problems citizens’ child rescue activities faced; The second was the exchange of information of kidnapped children; The third was the discussion on the next anti-trafficking plans.
WRIC’s missing children event pamphlet December 2010. Parents of Missing children distributing pamphlet.
WRIC’s volunteer Chen Qitang (red jacket) explain the missing children issues
During two days’ discussions, free and independent debates flourished. The outcome exceeded expectations. The first beneficial result was the clarification of thinking. During the conference, representatives concluded that all activities were aimed at finding the lost children. A kidnapped child meant a destroyed family. Without the return of the child, parents vowed, they would never stop searching.
In the opinion of the conference, the government had the foremost responsibility in child search activities. With its control of the power of the law, if the government really put effort into it, finding more lost children should not have been a problem. With effort from the government, the parents reasoned, it would be easy to stay patient even if their own children remained missing. Under current circumstances, to foster better working environments for civilian efforts, it was necessary to refrain from some radical actions and remain rational. But it was also necessary to communicate the desires and requests of the parents to the government. In-person petitions to Beijing should be replaced by written ones. The conference decided to reflect in writing the difficulties the parents faced in hopes of better cooperation of governmental authorities for faster and more return of the children.
During the discussion of legal issues, representatives expressed many opinions on our activities’ legality, the functions of the government and the parents’ rights and obligations. Mr. Jiang Tianyong, an attorney of the Beijing Gaobolonghua legal office answered every question. Regarding the responsibility of the government, Mr. Jiang reasoned that child trafficking was at least the failure of public safety. Child search should be mainly the responsibility of the government. It should not target the parents as subversive elements merely because of some petitions. The parents had no political aspirations. They only wanted the government to assist in looking for their missing children. More tolerance on the government’s part was called for. It should devote the resources it used to monitor the parents into searching for the children instead. Only this could solve the petition “problem”.
The second agenda was the exchange of information. Mr. Chen Puyu of the Guizhou child search league shared the successful experiences of that organization. Guizhou had suffered severe child trafficking problems, which also started very early in that province. Civilian activities to recover kidnapped children started more than twenty years ago through the individual efforts of parents who gradually became organized. So far they had found more than one hundred lost children. Cooperation existed not only between parents, but also existed between the parents and the government and media. Recently, with the help of Huijiawang and other civil society organizations, Guizhou had successful results almost every year.
The conference recognized that it was necessary to strengthen in the future intra- and inter-provincial cooperation, particularly between northern and southern provinces. The flow of trafficked children seemed to be of the southerly direction. Many northern children were sold into the south. Although there were also some southern children who were sold in the north. Only through mutual assistance, achieving common sharing of information, could we increase the efficiency of our efforts. Future efforts would necessarily be through the internet, particularly WRIC as a platform.
Conference attendees gave Huijiawang’s efforts high praises. They also gave many suggestions and comments to improve WRIC as a bridge of the child rescue effort.
Finally, consensus was reached through northern and southern representatives’ discussions on concrete future steps. The emphasis should be tailored to current flow of kidnapped children, focusing on Fujian, Guangdong, Hebei and coastal areas of Shandong, border areas between provinces, rural areas, particularly the schools and family workshops in those areas. The targets of the search should be on lost children who were looking for their families. Older children who retained memories of their original homes and the desire to search for their parent had much higher chances of success than parents searching for their lost children. To facilitate this, we would make more educational material aimed at children, to increase the ability of trafficked children to receive assistance. On the question of organization, individual actions of parents should be avoided as much as possible. Most parents through years of searching had exhausted their financial resources. Concentrated organizations would expend such resources more efficiently. It would also more easily reach respectable scale, hopefully ensuring better safety for activists.
Dissidents and U.S. broadcasting officials honored as champions of free speech
This report is from the independent Committee for U.S. International Broadcasting (CUSIB – cusib.org). CUSIB’s Executive Director Ann Noonan has spoken at recent Broadcasting Board of Governors (BBG) meetings as a member of the public on the importance of U.S. international broadcasts to nations without free media.
Noonan recommended three BBG Governors Susan McCue, Michael Meehan, and Victor Ashe to receive the 2013 Champion of Free Speech Award given by the New York Chapter of the Visual Artists Union. This year’s award also went to blind Chinese human rights lawyer Chen Guangcheng and Tibetan film-maker Dhondup Wangchen.
Visual Artists Guild and CUSIB’s Ann Noonan Honor Chen Guangcheng, Dhondup Wangchen, and BBG Governors Susan McCue, Michael Meehan, and Victor Ashe
On Saturday, June 1, 2013 the New York Chapter of the Visual Artists Guild honored blind human rights lawyer Chen Guangcheng, Tibetan film-maker Dhondup Wangchen, and Broadcasting Board of Governors (BBG) Governors Susan McCue, Michael Meehan, and Victor Ashe with the 2013 Champion of Free Speech Award.
(L-R) Ann Lau, Jing Zhang, Ann Noonan, Peggy Chane, Chen Guangcheng, Llamo Tso holding Free the China POC 8 Banner
CUSIB Executive Director and former President of the Visual Artist Guild, Ann Noonan, had recommended the three sitting Governors for the award for their “leadership and advocacy for journalistic expression throughout the world.” Each of the BBG Governors had prior commitments that prevented them from receiving the 2013 Champion of Free Speech Awards in person. Visual Artists Guild Chair, Ann Lau, and NY Chapter President, Peggy Chane, expressed their hope that they will join them next year to be honored in person at the Award’s 25th Anniversary.
“It was an incredible honor to meet Chen Guangcheng in person. When he first came to the United States, he spoke very strongly about how important VOA China radio services were to him, and how much hope those radio broadcasts gave to him when his was in prison,” stated Ann Noonan. “It is essential for RFA and VOA Mandarin, Cantonese, and Tibetan services to maintain radio broadcasts. Good and accurate information is vital for prisoners of conscience and freedom fighters in China and in other nations that prohibit media freedom. VOA and RFA broadcasts are not only a source of uncensored news, but also hope. These services are provided by American taxpayers, and these broadcasts show their solidarity with victims of human rights abuses.”
“We applaud the Visual Artists Guild for highlighting the plight of Tibetan film maker Dhondup Wangchen and honoring him in abstentia,” stated Ann Noonan. “It was a great honor to meet his wife, Llamo Tso, at the event. Her courage to share her husband’s story is tremendous, and I am hopeful that her campaign to tell his story and the story of other Tibetan prisoners of conscience will be heard and that justice will prevail.”
New York State Senator Ruben Diaz (D-Bronx) prepared Senate Resolutions that were approved by the State Senate for Chen Guangcheng and Dhondhup Wangchen. The Senate Resolutions were presented on behalf of Senator Diaz by Ann Noonan.
The Visual Artists Guild 2013 Tiananmen Commemoration Dinner message is as follows: “In the spring of 1989, Beijing erupted with the largest spontaneous demonstrations the Peoples’ Republic of China had witnessed in its 40-year history. The pro-democracy movement quickly spread to over 30 cities around China before the world witnessed the horrors of the government’s brutal crackdown. As the Chinese people fled from the tanks and guns, they asked the international press to let the world know the truth. They asked the world not to forget.”
The 2013 event in New York City was attended by CUSIB Advisory Board Members Justin Yu and Jing Zhang. Also in attendance was Voice of America (VOA) China Branch Chief Sasha Gong.
Book Lead: The Dark Road
Author: James Kidd
Ma Jian’s sixth novel is not for the faint- or lighthearted. Its subject – as much as any novel has a subject – is China’s one-child policy: its purpose, its effects and, most stomach-churningly, its enforcement by the authorities. There are violent raids, sterilisation, abortions (including of eight-month-old fetuses), economic inducements to inform on “illegal” pregnant mothers, and a constant barrage of grisly government propaganda.
Ma Jian has always been the most viscerally sensual writer – fixated on the body’s relationship to mind, feeling and the outside world. His last novel, Beijing Coma, was an extraordinary depiction of the Tiananmen Square massacre narrated by a comatose victim, whose only direct engagement with the present moment was through smell, taste, touch and hearing.
The Dark Road shows that Ma Jian has lost none of his sensory acuity, only now there is something rotten in Guangdong province. One woman, Yuanyuan, reeks of “rotten cabbage” because she is concealing her eight-month pregnancy by hiding in a neighbour’s vegetable hut. Meili, our central female protagonist, fears she is pregnant because “her breasts feel heavy and tender and she can detect a sour taste in her mouth”.
It is not all despair, or not quite. Sailing down the Yangtze, Meili feels “a breeze blowing across the river [which] smells of spring earth and new growth”. But, poignantly, this is a novel where it is the hope that kills you. The Gui River “stinks”, in part because of pollution (near Dixian, acid rain corrodes the metal on boats), but also because of the proliferation of dead bodies floating in it.
Meili and her husband, Kongzi, encounter a “corpse fisher” who offers this odiferous description of his profession: “When they come across a patch that smells particularly bad, or has flies hovering above it, they plunge their hooked poles into it, hoping to pull up a body.” Asked if they ever find dead babies, the corpse fisher snorts: “Huh! More dead babies wash up here than dead fish! But no families ever come looking for them, so the body fishers leave them to rot on the bank.”
The plot of The Dark Road is loose and winding. As the action begins, Meili is pregnant for the second time – illegally, as her daughter, Nannan, is only two years old. She witnesses Fang, her pregnant neighbour in her rural village, being dragged off for enforced sterilisation by family planning officers, which serves as a prelude to a more severe crackdown. Kongzi is viewed as a leader by his fellow villagers: not only is he the local schoolmaster, he is a 76th-generation descendent of Confucius. But after a night spent in a vain protest against the authorities, Kongzi decides to run for his family’s life – first hitting the road, and later the Yangtze in search of a safe harbour.
Tension derives from Meili’s various pregnancies. These place her family in danger thanks to the government’s one-child policy
There is something of the fable in the couple’s peripatetic wandering. Brief, hallucinatory encounters with strangers. Visionary sights and regular snatches of Confucian verse. Rumours of a near-mythical village – Heaven Township in Guangdong – where families are left in peace by family planning police. This being Ma Jian, however, we quickly learn the grim reason that women don’t fall pregnant there: “The town’s air contains chemicals which kill men’s sperm.”
The odd, unsettling atmosphere is enhanced by Ma Jian’s ambitious narrative technique. Each chapter begins with a summary that reduces the main plot points, locations and images to “keywords”. These read like odd, symbolist poems: “bamboo bird cage, the wise in water, housewife, safe refuge, wild duck, floating happiness.” A riskier innovation is to narrate the action from the point of view of Meili and Kongzi’s unborn spirit baby. This lends pathos to many sections: not least when the voice falls silent after Meili loses a baby or has a child removed. But at other times it acts as a somewhat crude narrative device, enabling Ma Jian himself to skip from one scene to another.
Illustration: Brian WangThe central narrative tension derives from Meili’s various pregnancies. These place her family in danger thanks to the government’s one-child policy, which the reader keeps hearing is central to China’s continued economic development. Ma Jian exposes the dark heart of this political imperative in the novel’s most upsetting and disturbing scene (which is saying something). Having been caught at last by the family planning police, Meili is restrained and has her eight-month-old baby dragged from her womb. She then watches the doctor strangle it. If this is not tragically ironic enough, we then learn Meili has borne Kongzi the son he so desperately wanted.
This scene – which elevates personal gothic nightmares such as Rosemary’s Baby onto a national scale – expresses the evident political rage of the author. Yet Ma Jian is too good and humane a novelist to allow his anger to be merely myopic. He turns his laser-sighted gaze onto Kongzi, whose love for his family is subverted by the near-misogynistic undertow of his liberal Confucian philosophy. He may rage against the government’s brutal enforcement of the one-child law, but it doesn’t stop him cajoling Meili into bearing him the male heir his ancestor demands.
For her part, Meili loves her children, but is compelled (through her husband and his nation) to view pregnancy as reckless and a restriction on her individual freedom. In a typically astute detail, Ma Jian portrays her as distinctly more successful when it comes to entrepreneurially finding money to put food on the family table.
Equating Meili’s body with the Chinese body politic also enables Ma Jian to launch powerful broadsides about gender, freedom, patriarchy, history, economics and the way government can intrude upon even the most intimate areas of personal liberty: “Have you no idea how dangerous this country is? If you’re unlucky enough to have been born with a c***, you’ll be monitored wherever you go. Men control our vaginas; the state controls our wombs. You can try to lock up your body, but the government still owns the key. That’s just women’s fate.” It is, Ma Jian notes, also a man’s fate, if he is a poor vagrant worker. Kongzi’s descent from schoolteacher to manual labourer – from mind to body – ends in a physical hell where he donates his own blood to support his desperate wife and child.
Scenes like this are typical of Ma Jian’s unflinching purpose, which is not to say that the novel doesn’t possess weaknesses. Calling Meili’s aborted child “Happiness” felt emotionally manipulative. It is a rare lapse in a bleak but powerful novel that draws disquieting connections between family, the environment and China’s future as a nation state.
As the Kong family progress down the Yangtze, they see villages about to be drowned by the Three Gorges Dam, witness suicides at every turn, glimpse Chinese sturgeon on the brink of extinction and those dead babies, women and children lining the riverbanks. It is, Ma Jian seems to say, as if China itself is an endangered species feeding upon itself, such is its appetite for money and self-interest.
This brave, unremitting novel offers little hope save the love that endures between people and within families, no matter how hard to sustain. The rest is up to us.