Tiananmen Fictions outside the Square: The Chinese Literary Diaspora and the Politics of Global Culture

Notes

Notes Introduction 1. See Michael Berry’s chapter “Beijing 1989” in his A History of Pain for a discussion of Chinese literary and filmic representations of Tiananmen within the critical framework of trauma. 2. The climate in the PRC has changed in the past few years for these writers. Duo Duo was allowed back in China in 2004 and now teaches at Hainan University; Yang Lian has made frequent trips back to China since 1999 on a New Zealand passport; and Bei Dao, though still barred from China, now teaches at the City University of Hong Kong and is finally permitted to have his books published on the mainland. 3. Ha Jin is the pen name of Jin Xuefei, hereafter referred to as Jin. 4. The GCIM was launched in 2003 by the United Nations and a number of world governments to respond to these planetary realities, but its 2005 report forcefully concludes that “the international community has failed to capitalize on the opportunities and to meet the challenges associated with international migration,” and that “new approaches are required to correct this situation” (2). 5. Of this group, Annie Wang is unique in that she now lives in both California and Shanghai, a point I will expand on in chapter 3. 6. For a survey of some Tiananmen films and documentaries, see Berry (319–­ 52). For a study on the influences of June 4 on transnational Chinese cinema more generally , see Gina Marchetti’s From Tian’anmen to Times Square. 7. Sheng Qi’s art can be viewed on his website, Sheng Qi. From March to May 2011, eight of his paintings of Tiananmen Square comprised the solo exhibition Square at the Fabien Fryns Fine Art Gallery in Los Angeles. 8. One of the paintings in this series, which depicts crumpled tents and moving tanks under the misty floodlights of a square, is part of Goya to Beijing, an internationally traveling exhibition memorializing June 4, comprised of some twenty works by contemporary artists from around the world. The exhibition organizers hope to ultimately end the tour in Beijing, “to bring this collection of artwork to Beijing as a 250 / notes memento,” at a future point when the massacre has been officially acknowledged (P.-­Y. Han). 9. For these reasons, too, I regrettably give short shrift to Tiananmen fictions that have not been translated, such as Hong Kong writer Li Bihua (Lilian Lee)’s Tiananmen jiupo xinhun (Tiananmen old souls and new spirits) (1990), and those works originally written in languages other than Chinese and English, such as the Japan-­based novelist Yang Yi’s recent prize-­winning Toki ga nijimu asa (A morning steeped in time) (2008). 10. For this reason, I cite Gao’s play throughout this book as Taowang—­as opposed to my usual practice of citing Chinese-­ language texts first by their English titles, followed by the original Chinese in parentheses. In instances in which the Chinese text has not been published in English (as with Liusi shiji and Tiananmen qingren), I cite the Chinese title first, followed by a parenthetical translation of it in roman type. 1 / The Existentialist Square 1. Even the most casual sampling of one day’s news in English will reveal this media pattern. The October 13 Boston Globe article “Nobel in Literature Awarded to Chinese Dissident” begins with “Gao Xingjian, a Chinese novelist and playwright whose works have been banned by the Chinese government, has been chosen to receive this year’s Nobel Prize in Literature” (Feeney), while the same day’s Washington Post likewise emphasizes Gao’s exilic condition with the headline “Chinese Exile Wins Nobel for Literature” (Weeks). In Canada, the Toronto Star article “Exiled Novelist Wins Nobel” recounts how “the 60-­ year-­ old survivor of China’s upheaval and oppression became its first Nobel Prize laureate for literature,” while the Montreal Gazette, with greater sensationalist flare, runs the headline “Writing to Survive: Chinese Nobel Winner Was Forced to Destroy ‘Kilos and Kilos’ of His Works.” Across the Atlantic, London’s Independent reports on “Exiled Dissident Whose Works Are Banned in China Wins Nobel Prize” (Moyes), while the Financial Times begins its coverage by describing Gao as “a Chinese-­ born novelist branded persona non grata by Beijing’s government” (Kynge). Similarly in Australia, Melbourne’s Herald Sun calls Gao a “Chinese-­ born writer” who had his works “banned in his homeland” (“Chinese”), while the lead-­ in to the next day’s Sydney Morning Herald article “Writer Could Trust No...