History lives from telling stories. An ancient culture such as China’s has many to offer. Much can be learned from them: about the country, about how it looks today and perhaps also how this new world power will look like in the future.
Deeply rooted in China’s history and mythology, for example, is the novel The Journey to the West (西遊記), dating from the Tang Dynasty and written down in the 16th century. It recounts a wealth of adventures experienced by four travelers in search of Buddhist enlightenment in what was then Central Asia and India. This is where caravans connected
In June 1989, news of the Tiananmen Square protests and its bloody resolution reverberated throughout the world. A young poet named Liao Yiwu, who had until then led an apolitical bohemian existence, found his voice in that moment. Like the solitary man who stood firmly in front of a line of tanks, Liao proclaimed his outrage and his words would be his weapon.
Zhang Ming has become used to his appearance startling small children. Skeletally thin, with cheeks sunk deep into his face, he walked gingerly across the cream-colored hotel lobby as if his limbs were made of glass. On his forehead were two large, perfectly circular purple-red bruises, one above each eye. “Kids often think I have four eyes,” he said with a puckish grin.
Throughout the late 1970s and 1980s, Chinese writers grappled with the traumas of the Mao period, seeking to make sense of their suffering. As in the imperial era, most had been servants of the state, loyalists who might criticize but never seek to overthrow the system. And yet they had been persecuted by Mao, forced to labor in the fields or shovel manure for offering even