No Enemies, No Hatred

by Liu Xiaobo

  The roots of this cynicism and moral vacuity must be traced to the Mao era. It was then (an era that “leftist” nostalgia today presents as one of moral purity) that the nation’s spirit suffered its worst devastation. During the Cultural Revolution people “handed their reddest hearts to Chairman Mao.” Why, after doing that, would one still need one’s own spirit? Anyone who declined to hand his or her heart to Mao was—for that reason—“counterrevolutionary.” The cruel “struggle” that Mao’s tyranny infused throughout society caused people to scramble to sell their souls: hate your spouse, denounce your father, betray your friend, pile on a helpless victim, say anything in order to remain “correct.” The blunt, unreasoning bludgeons of Mao’s political campaigns, which arrived in an unending parade, eventually demolished even the most commonplace of ethical notions in Chinese life.

  The pattern has abated in the post-Mao years, but it has far from disappeared. After the 1989 Tiananmen Massacre, a campaign to “test loyalty” forced people to “display a correct attitude” about the “counterrevolutionary riot.” A decade later came a comprehensive, no-holds-barred campaign to eradicate Falungong, and once again people across society were forced to betray their consciences in public shows. If China has turned into a nation of people who lie to their own consciences, how can we possibly build healthy public values?

  Everyone knows that the profit motive has come to dominate Chinese society in the post-Mao years. It is no longer a crime to be self-interested, and there has been a certain expansion of individual space. Still, compared to the immense power of the dictatorial state, the individual remains minuscule. People who rely solely on themselves to make it in the Chinese world—no matter how outstanding, intelligent, or even unscrupulous they might be—can never do better than those who make it by ingratiating themselves into Party-dominated power elite. The pretty-girl writers can garner some rewards by selling their private secrets or by writing about their bodies, but in the end—unless they have a powerful backer in the Party-state—they pay a price for their offense to the establishment that they challenge. The regime has denounced Muzi Mei and banned her works. Her days as a famous pretty-girl writer, out in the open, have passed, as fleeting as a mist. Hong Ying’s novel K has recently been banned as well, ostensibly for its “pornographic description.” K is a fictional version of the love affair between Julian Bell, a nephew of Virginia Woolf, and the Chinese writer Ling Shuhua, who was married at the time of the affair to Chen Yuan, a famous professor of Chinese literature. The most absurd aspect of the ban on K, and the reason it shows what happens when one offends the power elite, is that the ban came not from any government office in charge of ideology but from an Intermediate People’s Court in Changchun City, Jilin Province, where the well-connected daughter of Chen Yuan and Ling Shuhua sued Hong Ying for libel of her parents and won, even though the parents were both long deceased.

  The resources that the pretty-girl writers have relied on in their efforts to get somewhere inside this hypocritical, patriarchal system that we inhabit have been, in the final analysis, their own bodies. From this perspective their work, whatever else one says about it, is authentic self-expression and does say something about personal freedom. It is “outside the system” and expresses one kind of genuine humanity. I say this in order to point out that, in the context of the shameless and unscrupulous patterns of China’s power elite today, and set against examples of other famous women in our society—women who have relied on official power to gain and hold the wealth and fame that they enjoy—the ways of pretty-girl writers actually look remarkably upright and clean. Famous women who rely exclusively on resources “inside the system” wear masks of spotless propriety and reap much greater “success.” Consider Yang Lan, the extremely wealthy television hostess. When the scandal of her husband Wu Zheng’s fake diploma was exposed, she offered no apology, nor did he, but that was only the beginning. She did everything she could to cover up her husband’s disgrace by preventing reports of the fake diploma from reaching the domestic and foreign media and by employing the foulest of tactics to intimidate the people who had exposed the fraud. None of that repressive behavior hurt her, though. In this morally bankrupt system we live under, Yang Lan continues to enjoy the prestige of a position as anchor for Central Television as well as a role as an “Ambassador for the Olympic Bid.” Protected both by the system and by her great wealth, she stands pristine as ever, enveloped in glory. In China, to be a pretty-girl writer is “illegitimate,” both politically and morally; to be high in the power elite is to be impervious, both politically and morally.

  That said, we must not conclude that blackballed pretty-girl writers reap no harvests at all. Official bans and societal censure combined cannot completely suppress their popularity or strip their body-writing of its profits. There are several reasons for this. One is that the popular appeal of official ideology has dwindled to almost nothing. Another is that a growing contrarian spirit now often turns banned books into best-sellers, which become all the more popular precisely because they have been banned. Such books can spread through the so-called second channel of publication, which is composed of outlets that are technically state-sponsored but sell books outside the official Xinhua Bookstore and are not easy for officials to regulate. Muzi Mei’s Love Letters Left Behind, for example, had an initial print run, at an official press, of 100,000 copies; then, after it was banned and the unsold copies were confiscated, its appeal to readers skyrocketed. A pirated edition, which was easy to find on streetside book stands and corner bookstores, sold several hundred thousand copies. Normally, pirated editions of best-sellers sell for much less than the official versions, but this was not the case for Love Letters Left Behind, whose official version sold for 20 yuan and whose pirated editions sold for 22 or 25 yuan.

  In addition, China’s opening to the outside world in recent decades has made new markets available to “rebellious” Chinese writers and their banned books. Whether we speak of the political writings of dissidents or the literary works of unruly authors, anything the regime censors tends to attract attention from Westerners. Among the pretty-girl writers, the luckiest in this regard was Wei Hui, the first to be censored. The regime’s ban on Shanghai Baby became an advertisement for it around the world, and it sold well. We can’t exactly say Wei Hui became the “Oriental pet” of the great Western world, but she did see a tidy sum in royalties.

  Moreover, some of the “success” of the pretty-girl writers went beyond money. Their reputations inside China, although negative on the whole, were not entirely so. A few literary critics, some feminist scholars of sexuality, and many young Internet users welcomed Muzi Mei for the controversy she created. Her radical self-exposure was more than a celebration of her personal sexuality; it was a subversion of male dominance in sexual matters and a realization of true independence from male power. It is not clear whether Muzi Mei consciously intended this effect or not, but what she did amounted to an attack on the traditional system of male authority.

  Conclusion

  China has transitioned from politics-are-everything in the Mao era to money-is-everything in the post-Mao years. A totalitarian society dominated by politics has turned into a post-totalitarian society where the economy is king and “stability” is the government’s top priority. But a commonality—amorality—has underlain the two periods and has been there all along. The extreme political hypocrisy of the Mao years has blossomed, in post-Mao times, into a bouquet of hypocrisies in the several spheres of public life: officials are cynical about their governing duties, businesses are cynical about product quality, and scholars are cynical about academic standards. The whole society seems to have tossed integrity aside, as fakes and counterfeits sweep the nation. In this sea of counterfeits, the mightiest of them all—counterfeit democracy—is precisely the area that the current regime is most loath to let anyone talk about. In short, the inhumanity of the Mao era, which left China in moral shambles, is the most important cause of the widespread a
nd oft-noted “values vacuum” that we observe today.

  In this situation, sexual indulgence becomes a handy partner for a dictatorship that is trying to stay on top of a society of rising prosperity. Chinese people were so repressed during the Mao era, sexually and otherwise, that when ideas about freedom trickled in from the outside, many of them had great appeal. But while ideas about political freedom—speech, assembly, elections, and so on—could have led to a liberation in the Chinese people of humanity’s best qualities, and could have brought dignity to individuals, the idea of sexual freedom did not support political democracy so much as it harked back to traditions of sexual abandon in China’s imperial times. It siphoned interest in freedom toward thoughts of concubinage, elegant prostitution, and the bedroom arts as they are celebrated in premodern pornography. This has been just fine with today’s dictators. It fits with the moral rot and political gangsterism that years of hypocrisy have generated, and it diverts the thirst for freedom into a politically innocuous direction.

  At home in Beijing, June 13, 2004

  Originally published at the website of Chinese Pen, http://chinesepen.org/Index.shtml

  Translated by Nick Admussen

  YOUR LIFELONG PRISONER

  To Xia

  My dear,

  I’ll never give up the struggle for freedom from the oppressors’ jail, but I’ll be your willing prisoner for life.

  I’m your lifelong prisoner, my love

  I want to live in your dark insides

  surviving on the dregs in your blood

  inspired by the flow of your estrogen

  I hear your constant heartbeat

  drop by drop, like melted snow from a mountain stream

  if I were a stubborn, million-year rock

  you’d bore right through me

  drop by drop

  day and night

  Inside you

  I grope in the dark

  and use the wine you’ve drunk

  to write poems looking for you

  I plead like a deaf man begging for sound

  Let the dance of love intoxicate your body

  I always feel

  your lungs rise and fall when you smoke

  in an amazing rhythm

  you exhale my toxins

  I inhale fresh air to nourish my soul

  I’m your lifelong prisoner, my love

  like a baby loath to be born

  clinging to your warm uterus

  you provide all my oxygen

  all my serenity

  A baby prisoner

  in the depths of your being

  unafraid of alcohol and nicotine

  the poisons of your loneliness

  I need your poisons

  need them too much

  Maybe as your prisoner

  I’ll never see the light of day

  but I believe

  darkness is my destiny

  inside you

  all is well

  The glitter of the outside world

  scares me

  exhausts me

  I focus on

  your darkness—

  simple and impenetrable

  January 1, 1997

  Translated by Susan Wilf

  FROM WANG SHUO’S WICKED SATIRE TO HU GE’S EGAO

  Political Humor in a Post-Totalitarian Dictatorship

  In the essay that follows, Liu Xiaobo has much to say about egao, a term that is almost impossible to translate. E is “evil” or “wicked,” and gao is a colloquial and highly flexible word whose meanings range across “do,” “make,” and “work on,” but often carry a somewhat negative flavor, rather like “mess with” in English. Liu did not invent the compound egao. It arose in the online game culture of the Chinese-language Internet, apparently first in Taiwan, where players adapted it from a Japanese term. When it reached mainland China, it spread well beyond the gaming world and took on a range of new meanings.

  Depending on context, any of the following can be used to translate egao as a verb: satire, debunk, parody, skewer, lampoon, mock, expose, tear down, upset, invert, dismantle, make fun of. As a noun, one might use spoof, hoax, farce, or prank. To choose among these terms every time egao appears in Liu’s essay would be a challenge. And even if the challenge were met, the thread of unity that runs through the essay because of the repetition of the term would be lost. Accordingly we do not translate egao, but settle for romanization.—Ed.

  FOR THE PAST TWO YEARS, egao has been popular on the Chinese Internet. It uses parody, twisted meanings, and odd juxtapositions to produce an “air of absurdity” that pokes fun at tradition, authority, famous people, fashions, and major public events. Big names in film and television have been favorite targets, and so have cultural icons, current fads, and the Mao-era “red classics.” Recent searches on my computer yield some startling results: more than 300,000 egao on film director Chen Kaige; more than 900,000 on the Super Girl sweepstakes and nearly 200,000 more on the Fine Boy sweepstakes; 110,000 on the red classics, and a total of more than 2.7 million on the World Cup.

  The examples that are truly creative, truly subversive—the ones that people credit with “cold humor”—often go viral. This famously happened when Hu Ge, an ordinary netizen, produced a short film called The Bloody Case That a Steamed Bun Caused, which was a parody of The Promise, a blockbuster film by the illustrious director Chen Kaige. Hu’s short piece stirred up a storm when it appeared on the Internet in late 2005, and Hu became a celebrity overnight. It almost seemed as if the two artists, the nobody and the great director, were standing side by side in the pantheon of Chinese filmmakers.

  Very soon thereafter, the egao fad had spread all over the Internet. When Ang Lee’s Brokeback Mountain won an Oscar, 200 parodies of it popped up. The day after the release of Huang Jianxiang’s “Three Minutes of Passion” about World Cup soccer, more than thirty parody versions were on the Web. Soon every website worth its salt had its own “egao specialists,” and analysts had identified five distinct schools of egao artistry: the “Fools,” the “Steamed Buns,” the “Braggarts,” the “Fans,” and the “Flashers.” They all have their egao websites and they classify their efforts by category: those that “egao MTV,” “egao big movies,” “egao the famous,” “egao idols,” “egao the classics,” “egao photographs,” “egao the theater,” and so on. A few days ago I searched “egao” on Baidu and got 11.4 million results. No wonder we hear the popular sayings, “No egao means no fun,” and “If it doesn’t egao, it’s not a website.”

  An astute critic observed in 2006: “Egao has mushroomed in recent years, both inside China and among Chinese living abroad, and has become especially spirited in the past several months. It reaches every aspect of life and all the senses of sight, hearing, and touch. It started in two dimensions and moved to three. It appeared first on posters and moved all the way to Adobe flash. Last year we had the explosive Steamed Bun video, and now we see the spoof of Sparkling Red Star, the Communist classic for children. The nature of egao is to use absurdity to generate humor—a cold humor that mocks phenomena in society. Egao also liberates and celebrates the rich imagination and creativity of netizens. An age of entertainment that really does belong to the nation as a whole has finally arrived.”

  Wang Shuo’s Sarcasm in Fiction Paves the Way for Online Egao

  The blossoming of egao of course owes a great deal to the vast new access to information and the broad new platform for popular expression that the Internet provides. The era in which intellectual and political elites in China could monopolize public expression is gone forever. The Internet makes room for popular expression that is quick, convenient, anonymous, and public, and so has become an ideal playing field for fearless sarcasm, a place to let everything hang out.

  But it would be a mistake to conclude that egao is purely the offspring of the Internet. Its spirit can be traced to the 1980s, when the first signs of its distinctive kind of sarcasm appeared in the “quasi-hippie” cultur
e of the post-Mao years. The songwriter Cui Jian showed it in his articulation of the voice of rebellious youth. Cui’s song “Rockin’ and Rollin’ on the New Long March” was a forerunner of today’s egao of the red classics. His interpretation of the red song “Nanniwan,” in particular, threw stalwarts of the old left like Wang Zhen into fits of rage. Slightly later, at the end of the 1980s and the beginning of the 1990s, Wang Shuo’s literary sarcasm suddenly appeared and created a major stir. Wang’s fiction satirized the Party’s ideological language and undermined the authority of its officials, and can be seen as the maturation of the egao spirit.

  With the emergence of Wang Shuo, the rebellious spirit of a younger generation of Chinese turned away from the suspicion and shouting that anger generated and toward the sarcasm and insults that jokes make possible. This was the generation that had grown up with solemn lines like “I do not believe!” in Bei Dao’s poetry and “I have nothing to my name …” in Cui Jian’s lyrics. With the 1989 Tiananmen Massacre, this generation saw its passions for freedom impaled on bloody bayonets and its youthful idealism crushed into moans beneath the treads of tanks. In the early 1990s, in the gloom of the terror that followed the massacre, and with nowhere to release its shock and anger, this generation was forced into general despair and a sense of helplessness. There could be no outlet for them at the level of the official discourse, because the Communist Party’s assiduous opposition to “Westernization” and “peaceful evolution (in a Western direction)” made any serious discussion of questions in the humanities impossible. Popular amusements were almost the only possible outlets for these young people, and the result was a huge outpouring of sarcasm—mocking others and pretending to mock themselves—in phrases (many of which were the inventions of Wang Shuo) such as “Whatever you do, don’t view me as a person;” “I’m a philistine, too;” “Not a tad of seriousness here;” or “I’m a hooligan, so who am I afraid of?” In short, Wang Shuo’s sarcasm—and Wang Xiaobo’s humor after that—enabled people at least some escape from the suffocating effects of the pervasive terror that followed the Tiananmen Massacre.