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Twenty-one years after the fact, my efforts to reconstruct my first trip to China produce a confusion of impressions in which multiple images are fused together and refuse to be unraveled or separated. Having lived in China for nineteen of those twenty-one years—I moved up from Hong Kong less than a year after these “first” visits—witness to much change and, in particular, the
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.
The film censorship law passed by Hong Kong’s legislature last week is ostensibly aimed at promoting national security, ...
Liusi. Six-four. The two-syllable word, spoken nonchalantly by our teacher, was a stone cast into the tranquil pond of a classroom. From each ripple rose a gasp, a murmur, or a perplexed face, with only one or two enunciating the question on many of our minds, “What is six-four?” It was the summer of 2002. I was 12 years old. At the extracurricular English course my mother
This week, a new PEN American Center report “Censorship and Conscience: Foreign Authors and the Challenge of Chinese Censorship,” by Alexa Olesen, draws fresh attention to a perennial problem for researchers, scholars, and creative writers trying to reach readers in China. The lure of China’s book market is powerful—revenues are projected to top $16 billion this year—but at