Liao Yiwu

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Liao Yiwu (2010)

Liao Yiwu ( Chinese  廖亦武 , Pinyin Liào Yìwǔ , born August 4, 1958 in Yanting , Sichuan ), also known as Lao Wei ( 老威 ), is a Chinese writer , poet and musician who was internationally recognized through his book Miss Hello and the Peasant Emperor : China's society from below received attention from 2009. Due to his critical stance towards the Chinese government, Liao's works are banned in the People's Republic of China . His fame rose in Germany when he received the Peace Prize of the German Book Trade in 2012 and the Geschwister-Scholl Prize in 2011.

life and work

Childhood and youth

Liao Yiwu grew up around the time of the Great Famine that resulted from the " Big Leap Forward " program to strengthen China's economy. When the Cultural Revolution began in 1966 , his father was charged as an opponent of the revolution. To protect the children, Liao's parents divorced. Liao grew up in poverty with his mother.

After finishing secondary school, Liao traveled around China, working as a cook and truck driver. At this time he was intensively involved with Western poetry and began to write poetry himself.

Work as a poet and arrest

Liao Yiwu (2011 in Erlangen)

In the 1980s, Liao was one of the most famous young poets in China and published regularly in major literary magazines. Some of his works have appeared in the magazines of the underground literary scene, as the Chinese authorities viewed poetry in the style of Western poetry as "spiritual pollution". Because of these connections, Liao has been blacklisted in China since 1987 .

In June 1989 Liao wrote the poem Massacre (German: Massaker ) about the events in Tian'anmen Square on June 4th. Since he had no way of publishing it, he recorded it on tape with the assistance of the Canadian sinologist Michael Day . These recordings were then disseminated via the existing structures of black copier rings in China and also broadcast by a foreign radio station. Subsequently, Liao began working on a film about the events, entitled Funeral Mass . Because Day was arrested and interrogated because of the radio broadcast, the authorities learned about the film. In February 1990 he, his film crew and his pregnant wife were arrested. Liao was sentenced to four years in prison for "spreading counter-revolutionary propaganda with foreign aid".

While in detention, Liao rebelled against the prison guards and repeatedly broke rules, making him the most frequent victim of violence and torture by the prison authorities. He suffered multiple breakdowns and tried to kill himself twice . In 1994, under international pressure, he was released 50 days before the actual end of his sentence, the Chinese authorities said it was because of "good conduct." Liao processed his time in prison in his book Testimonials .

"Conversations with people from the dregs of society"

When he was released from prison, his municipality revoked his residence permit. His wife had left him with their child, colleagues who had previously been friends turned away from him. Initially, Liao earned his living as a street musician, but due to political persecution, he was only able to take odd jobs in restaurants, tea houses and bookstores. During this time the plans emerged for his book Interviews with People from the Bottom Rung of Society (German: conversations with people from the dregs of society ), which is based in large part on conversations that Liao led in this time with social outcasts.

In 1998 he presented under the title The Fall of the Holy Temple (Yiwu Liao: 沉沦 的 圣殿: 中国 20 世纪 70 年代 地下 诗歌 遗照 . 新疆 青少年 出版社, Urumtschi, Xinjiang, China 1999, ISBN 7-5371-3291-7 (Chinese). German: The Fall of the Holy Temple ) a collection of underground poems from the 1970s. The book was banned after publication.

In 2001, the Chinese publisher Yangzi Publishing House published an "adjusted" edition of Interviews with People from the Bottom Rung of Society . The book was very successful and received praise from Chinese critics. On the one hand it is a “historical documentation of today's China”, on the other hand Liao gives a voice to those who would otherwise not be heard, but rather suppressed. However, the Chinese authorities banned the book's sale and distribution, fined the publisher, and sacked employees of the Southern Weekend newspaper , which published an interview with Liao and recommended his book. Since then, Liao's name has not been allowed to be mentioned in the media. In 2002, with the help of Kang Zhengguo, who teaches at Yale University , the manuscript was smuggled into Taiwan , where it was published as a three-volume edition in Chinese by the Rye Field Publishing Company, subsidiary of the largest Taiwanese publisher, Cite Publishing . Excerpts from it appeared in French and English in 2003.

Liao Yiwu (in Chengdu, July 2010)

That same year Liao received the annual Human Rights Watch Hellman-Hammett Grant , a cash award for politically persecuted writers.

Political activity and controversy about travel bans

In August 2007, Liao Yiwu signed with 36 other intellectuals an open letter to the Chinese government and Olympic organizers in Beijing in 2008. In the same year he became the Independent Chinese PEN -Zentrum (ICPC) and the Freedom to Write Award (German: Freedom for writing ) excellent.

In 2008, Liao obtained a passport after several unsuccessful attempts . Although the author was invited to the Frankfurt Book Fair 2009, whose host country was China, the Chinese state security refused to allow him to leave the country. At the same time, the full translation of his interviews appeared in Germany under the title Miss Hello and the Peasant Emperor: China's Society from Below . After China refused to allow him to travel to the Lit.Cologne , to which he had been invited, Liao wrote an open letter to German Chancellor Angela Merkel in February 2010 and asked her to use her influence on foreign policy so that he could still do so could travel to Cologne. With the letter he enclosed a Chinese black copy of the German feature film The Lives of Others , which enjoyed cult status in China in 2010. On June 4th, 2010 the international literature festival berlin organized a worldwide reading for Liao.

On September 15, 2010, Liao Yiwu was allowed to travel to Germany with the permission of the Chinese authorities to take part in the Tenth Berlin International Literature Festival . He also accepted an invitation from the authors' residence LiteraturRaum in the Hotel Bleibtreu Berlin .

In May 2011, the authorities banned Liao from performing or publishing his work abroad. His planned participation in the Sydney Writer's Festival became obsolete. Until mid-2011, Liao lived in Chengdu in the province of Sichuan . According to his own statements, he lived on the royalties he received for the sale of his books, as well as on his work as an "underground musician".

In the summer of 2011, Liao Yiwu managed to escape to Germany via Vietnam. Since then he has lived in exile in Berlin. Liao has been a founding member of the Academy of the Arts in Cologne since October 2012 .

Publications in Germany

His first text in German translation, Miss Hello; The toilet manager; The day laborer was published in 2007 in the Berlin cultural magazine Lettre International . All interviews are taken from the book Interviews with People from the Bottom Rung of Society , published in Taiwan in 2002 .

The complete German translation of this collection, supplemented by two further interviews, was published in 2009 by S. Fischer Verlag under the title Fräulein Hallo und der Bauernkaiser: Chinas Gesellschaft von unten. In 2010 the manuscript was published by the Federal Agency for Civic Education.

On June 4, 2010, the anniversary of the Tian'anmen massacre, over one hundred authors from all continents called for a worldwide reading of his prose works at the Berlin International Literature Festival . In July 2011 the German edition of My Testimonials about Liao's time in prison , which had been announced for some time, was published under the title For a song and a hundred songs .

This epic, drastic report is about the brutality and absurdity of arbitrary state repression. With his strong language, sometimes without illusions, sometimes rich in images, Liao Yiwu tries to give a voice to all the humiliated in China. The courageous chronicler was awarded the 32nd Geschwister-Scholl-Preis in November 2011 in the large auditorium of the Ludwig Maximilians University in Munich . Liao Yiwu's award is linked to the warning hope that he will one day return to a free, democratic China.

Also in 2011 a volume of poetry with poems from the 1980s and early 1990s was published by hochroth Verlag under the title Massaker: Early Poems . In addition to the more popular ones, it also contains poems by Liao Yiwu that have not yet been translated.

In June 2012, Liao Yiwu was awarded the Peace Prize of the German Book Trade , which was presented to him on October 14, 2012 at the Frankfurt Book Fair . The jury praised him, among other things, as a writer and poet, "who speaks powerfully and fearlessly against political oppression" and "sets a rousing literary monument to people on the fringes of Chinese society" .

Also in 2012, the trilingual book (German, English, Chinese) "Remembrance, stay ..." was published by the Berliner Verlag Favoritenbuch / Fly Fast Publishing. The book contains a foreword by Herta Müller and Susanne Messmer. The book includes a CD with the original recording of the poem "Massaker" and five of his songs with flute. An accompanying DVD contains a documentary made by Liao Yiwu himself about the Chinese culture of remembrance in prisons. The book contains previously unpublished images of prison documents, photos of other political prisoners and prints of his manuscripts smuggled out of prison.

In August 2013 Liao Yiwu performed the experimental text / sound / music dance project "unnecessary" together with the dancer Bettina Essaka and the composer / violinist Stefan Poetzsch as part of the Poetenfest Erlangen. In this project, interviews with Liao Yiwu (Berlin, 2011), conducted especially for this production, are recorded, as well as texts from "For a song and a hundred songs" are read, presented and processed with music and dance. Liao Yiwu can be seen in this production as a speaker, performer and musician. “Unnecessary” describes some of the difficult and cynical humiliations by modern dictatorships and systems using the example of the arrest of S. Poetzsch in the former GDR in the 1980s and the persecution of Liao Yiwu in current China.

In September 2016, texts by Liao Yiwu were staged as a play in Berlin: the actress and director Johanna Marx and producer Stephan Knies brought out a dramatized version at the Berlin-Hohenschönhausen memorial ; Texts from For a song and a hundred songs , Miss Hello and the Peasant Emperor , The Ball and the Opium (that was also the title of the play), and bamboo blowers were processed. Liao Yiwu took part as a musician, the former inmate of the Stasi prison Mario Röllig and the actress Bettina Hoppe were also on stage.

Works

Books

  • Miss Hello and the Peasant Emperor: China's society from below. Translated from the Chinese by Hans Peter Hoffmann and Brigitte Höhenrieder. With a foreword by Philipp Gourevitch, an introduction by Wen Huang and an afterword by Detlev Claussen . S. Fischer Verlag, Frankfurt am Main 2009, ISBN 978-3-10-044812-5 . (German first edition, unabridged new translation.)
  • Miss Hello and the Peasant Emperor: China's society from below. Series of publications by the Federal Agency for Civic Education (Volume 1080). Bonn 2010.
  • For One Song and One Hundred Songs: A Witness Report From Chinese Prisons. (English: Testimonials. ) Hans Peter Hoffmann, translation. S. Fischer, Frankfurt am Main 2011, ISBN 978-3-10-044813-2 .
  • Massacre: Early Poems. Translated from the Chinese by Hans Peter Hoffmann. hochroth Verlag, Berlin 2012, ISBN 978-3-902871-00-8 .
  • The bullet and the opium. Life and death in Tiananmen Square. S. Fischer Verlag, Frankfurt am Main 2012, ISBN 978-3-10-044815-6 .
  • Memory, stay. Texts, music, film. Favorite book / Fly Fast Publishing, Berlin 2012, ISBN 978-3-943967-00-5 .
  • The Dongdong Dancer and the Sichuan Cook: Stories from Chinese Reality. Translated from the Chinese by Hans Peter Hoffmann . S. Fischer Verlag, Frankfurt am Main 2013, ISBN 978-3-10-044816-3 .
  • God is red: Stories from the Underground - Persecuted Christians in China , S. Fischer Verlag, Frankfurt am Main 2014, ISBN 978-3-10-044814-9 .
  • The rebirth of the ants. Novel. Translated from the Chinese by Karin Betz . Afterword and glossary by Karin Betz. S. Fischer Verlag, Frankfurt am Main 2016, ISBN 978-3-10-044817-0 .
  • Mr. Wang, the man who stood in front of the tanks: texts from Chinese reality . Translated from the Chinese by Hans Peter Hoffmann . S. Fischer Verlag, Frankfurt am Main, 2019, ISBN 978-3-10-397446-1

Works in Chinese and translations into English

  • The Fall of the Holy Temple. Collection of underground poems from the 1970s.
  • Interviews with People from the Botton Rung of Society. Rye Field Publishing Co., Taipei 2002. (Chinese edition.)
  • The Corpse Walker. Real Life Stories: China from the Bottom Up. Pantheon Books, New York City 2008, ISBN 978-0-375-42542-4 . (Abbreviated translation.)
  • The Last of China's Landlords. The Laogai Research Foundation, Washington DC 2008, ISBN 978-1-931550-19-2 .
  • Chronicles of the Big Earthquake. Report on the 2008 Sichuan earthquake . Hong Kong 2009.
  • Reports on China's Victims of Injustice.
  • God is Red: The Secret Story of How Christianity Survived and Flourished in Communist China . HarperCollins: New York 2012.

Radio plays

  • Four teachers. 2011.

Movies

  • Funeral mass. 1989.

Awards

Web links

Commons : Liao Yiwu  - collection of pictures, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Kulturnews artist profile
  2. ↑ a b c d e f Wen Huang: Liao Yiwu - 'Lunatic' Outcast. ( Memento from January 2, 2013 in the web archive archive.today ) In: Asia Literary Review . 13, fall 2009.
  3. ↑ a b Biography in the blurb to: Liao Yiwu: Miss Hello and the Peasant Emperor. Frankfurt 2009. Available online on the S. Fischer Verlag website
  4. ↑ a b c d e Thaddeus Chang: Liao Yiwu. ( Memento from February 4, 2013 in the web archive archive.today ) In: Theme . No. 4, winter 2005.
  5. ↑ a b c Jutta Lietsch: Author Liao on censorship in China: "Just rely on yourself" . Published on September 25, 2009 on the homepage of the daily newspaper . Retrieved February 2, 2010.
  6. ↑ Liao Yiwu: The fourth of June (excerpt), Lettre International 81, summer 2008, p. 59 (from the Chinese by Karin Betz )
  7. ↑ a b c Bill Marx: World Books: Poet Liao Yiwu - Memories of the Tiananmen Square “Massacre” . The Arts Fuse, May 29, 2009.
  8. ↑ a b c d e Liao Yiwu: Open letter to Angela Merkel . German by Hans Peter Hoffmann . Retrieved February 10, 2010.
  9. ↑ Susanne Messmer: Author Liao Yiwu is not allowed to leave the country: The manic chronicler . Published on September 25, 2009 on the homepage of the daily newspaper . Retrieved February 2, 2010.
  10. ^ Human Rights Watch : Hellman-Hammett Grants . Retrieved February 10, 2010.
  11. ↑ a b PEN American Center : Liao Yiwu. ( Memento of October 5, 2012 in the archive.today web archive ) Retrieved February 10, 2010.
  12. ^ "One World, One Dream" and Universal Human Rights - Prominent Chinese citizens propose seven changes for upholding Olympic principles. ( Memento of May 1, 2010 in the Internet Archive ) Retrieved February 1, 2010.
  13. ↑ Beijing prohibits writer Liao from traveling to Germany ( memento of October 2, 2009 in the Internet Archive ) , Dnews.de, September 24, 2009. Retrieved on February 2, 2010.
  14. ↑ Jutta Lietsch: Jail instead of book fair: Inconvenient authors . Published on October 13, 2009 on the homepage of the daily newspaper . Retrieved February 2, 2010.
  15. ^ After the travel ban: Author Liao writes Merkel . Welt Online, February 9, 2010.
  16. ↑ June 4th, 2010 - Worldwide reading for Liao Yiwu in memory of the massacre at Tian'anmen Square - Worldwide Reading. In: www.worldwide-reading.com. Retrieved March 31, 2016 .
  17. ↑ FAZ of September 21, 2010, p. 32.
  18. ↑ literaturraum.de
  19. ↑ Homepage Academy of the Arts of the World Cologne ( memento from February 23, 2013 in the web archive archive.today ), accessed on December 30, 2012.
  20. ↑ a b Liao Yiwu: Miss Hello and the peasant emperor. Frankfurt 2009, p. 4.
  21. ↑ cf. the review by Johannes Feest (prison archive)
  22. ↑ Geschwister-scholl-preis.de
  23. ↑ The 2012 winner: Liao Yiwu , from boersenverein.de (accessed on June 21, 2012). See also: Chinese reactions to the peace prize. Respect for the "bald man" Liao Yiwu , faz-net June 21, 2012.
  24. ↑ Description ( memento from February 10, 2013 in the web archive archive.today ) on the website of the Federal Agency for Civic Education, accessed on October 16, 2012.
  25. ↑ Book Description from S. Fischer , accessed on October 14, 2012.
  26. ↑ spiegel.de: Interview
  27. ↑ www.fischerverlage.de: Table of contents and foreword (pdf)
  28. ^ German Academy of Performing Arts: Radio Play of the Month / Year 2011. Accessed on January 10, 2011.
  29. ↑ SPIEGEL ONLINE article: Peace Prize for Dissident Liao Yiwu
  30. ↑ friedenspreis-des-deutschen-buchhandels.de
personal data
SURNAME Liao, Yiwu
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Lao, Wei
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Chinese author, reporter, musician and poet
DATE OF BIRTH 4th August 1958
PLACE OF BIRTH Yanting , Sichuan , Central China