Zhang Yihe

Zhang Yihe ( Chinese  章 诒 和 , Pinyin Zhāng Yíhé ; born September 6, 1942 in Anhui Tongcheng ) is a Chinese writer.

life and work

Her father Zhang Bojun , a prominent intellectual and high-ranking official of the Democratic League, was Minister of Transport under Mao Zedong from 1954 to 1958 , but was dismissed from all political offices in the Cultural Revolution as “number 1 deviator”. He hoped that his daughter would preserve the memory of China's recent history as a writer and contemporary witness. In 1970, Zhang Yihe was sentenced to twenty years in a labor camp for "cultural revolutionary crimes" . In 1979 she was released with the terse statement that there was nothing against her. Until her retirement, the musicologist worked in Beijing at the Beijing Opera Studies Institute.

After over thirty years, she redeemed her father's legacy. Her books on the officially banned history are on the index in China, but they are bestsellers in China. The works are illegally imported and pirated in the millions.

When her last book "Past Stories of Beijing Opera Stars" was banned in 2007 on the grounds that "This person's books must not be published", she wrote an open letter to the public and petitioned the government. “I was in a labor camp for ten years. I'm not afraid anymore, ”she said and sued the state censorship agency. Nobody had dared to do that before, but no court will accept your complaint.

As a courageous author who fights for the oppressed freedom and dignity and against the prescribed forget it was in 2004 by the independent Chinese PEN awarded -Zentrum (Independent Chinese PEN Center) with the "Freedom to Write Award."

Her work "The past doesn't pass like smoke" was translated by Hans Peter Hoffmann and Brigitte Höhenrieder and was published in 2008 by Verlag Zweiausendeins .

Recently, Zhang Yihe has also become involved with the Chinese artist Ai Weiwei .

Works

• Zhang Yihe: The past doesn't go away like smoke . Autobiographical accounts of the life of artists and intellectuals in China under Mao Zedong. Zweiausendeins, Frankfurt, M. 2008, ISBN 978-3-86150-860-1 (Original title: 往事 並不 如烟 / Wang shi bing bu ru yan . Translated by Hans Peter Hoffmann, Brigitte Höhenrieder).

Individual evidence

1. ^ Paul Mooney: Gagging China's intellectuals. In: Asia Times Online . Hong Kong. December 15, 2004, accessed October 20, 2011.
2. ↑ Ha Jin : The Censor in the Mirror. In: The American Scholar . Fall 2008, English, accessed October 20, 2011.
3. ↑ PEN condemns detention of Chinese writers. ( Memento of December 20, 2011 on the Internet Archive ) New York, NY, December 4, 2004, in English, accessed October 18, 2011.
4. ↑ Interview: Jutta Lietsch / Zhang Yihe: Now it's starting again . In: taz of May 17, 2011: CHINA Even as a "counter-revolutionary" in prison for ten years, writer Zhang Yihe says today, "To support Ai Weiwei means to defend ourselves". Retrieved October 18, 2011.

Note: This article places the family name before the person's first name. This is the usual order in Chinese. Zhang is the family name here, Yihe is the first name.