Today was a good day in Beijing, weather-wise, if not a bit on the hot side, and humid. There were blue skies and white clouds. Moments after Liu Xiaobo’s death, this was the scene:

Liu Xiaobo will be remembered by the Chinese people — someday, even if it’s not today or in the near future — as a man of immense dignity and unyielding grace, whose unshakeable conscience caused him much suffering, but in the end elevated all those who understood what he stood for and why he persisted. He will be celebrated.

Liu Xia, who has never been charged with a crime, has been imprisoned in her home since 2010 because her husband happens to be a Nobel Peace Prize recipient currently serving an 11-year sentence for “subversion of state power.” That she clearly needs medical attention for worsening mental health makes no difference to the authorities, who insist on punishing her for the perceived sins of Liu Xiaobo.

Maybe the authorities should be scared. Liu Xia is a poet, after all, and nothing sends shivers down the spines of repressive states quite like poetry. Liao Yiwu. Li Bifeng. Xue Deyun. Mohammed Ajami. Omar Hazek. The list goes on.

We’ve seen her poems before — here she is reading two of them last winter — but few of her works have been translated into English. Maybe that’s beginning to change. In the latest issue of Words Without Borders, a journal of international literature, three of her poems, spanning 16 years, appear in English:

• One Bird and Another (5/1983)
• Word (6/28/95)
• A Grapefruit (9/13/99)

The poems are introduced by Madeline Earp:

Can words cross these thresholds, and offer a form of escape to those in confinement? In many ways, the very fact that we can read these words is testament to the power of literature, and of translation itself. Liu Xia’s Internet and phone connections are frequently severed, yet the world can hear her voice through her poems. Her supporters even managed to release a moving video of her reading some of her work aloud in January. But the communication remains one-sided. What can we say back?

The poetry of the repressed isn’t intended to inspire communication as much as dissemination. If we hear the voice, and help others hear it too, we keep the poet — suffering in isolation, estranged from the passage of time, already cemented in history yet still living, like a bug trapped in sap — from dying. Hopefully that doesn’t sound too dramatic, because it’s simple, really: what better way to combat a government insistent on silencing a voice than by amplifying it?

Earp ends her essay by asking, “Liu Xia’s poems reflect a reality where writing can be punished as well as rewarded, leaving her readers to ask themselves: Will words ensnare us? Or set us free?” They won’t set her free, not in any sense, but I’d like to think words are her analgesic, relieving pain. Perhaps they should serve the opposite function for us: to make us feel, acutely, the agony and loneliness of political persecution so that we ask ourselves whether we — she, anyone — deserves such banishment from the privilege of expression and connection — the privilege of being.

I’ve written about Liu Xia’s house arrest before, the disgrace and heartbreak of it, forced into isolation for the past three years because her husband happens to be Liu Xiaobo, the activist and 2010 Nobel Peace Prize recipient who’s currently in a Chinese jail.

In the above video, shot last month, we get a rare glimpse into her world, bounded physically — no metaphor needed — by the wall of her Beijing apartment. But as she reads two poems, “Untitled” and “Drinking,” it’s apparent she occupies another place whose boundaries are less defined, depthless. Is she engaged in a constant sinking into there, or does she slip in and out through imagined doors, finding, each time, the charge and dignity that powers all human beings?

According to AP, the video was screened on Tuesday in New York City “to an audience of Chinese and American writers and activists who have pushed for her release.” Liu Xia gives a thumbs-up at the end.

Untitled

Is it a tree?
It’s me, alone.
Is it a winter tree?
It’s always like this, all year round.
Where are the leaves?
The leaves are beyond.
Why draw a tree?
I like how it stands.
Aren’t you tired of being a tree your whole life?
Even when exhausted, I want to stand.
Is there anyone with you?
There are birds.
I don’t see any.
Listen to the sound of fluttering wings.
Wouldn’t it be nice to draw birds on the tree?
I’m too old to see, blind.
Perhaps you don’t know how to draw a bird at all?
You’re right. I don’t know how.
You’re an old stubborn tree.
I am.

(Translated by Ming Di)

~

Drinking

Before going to drink with my old brother
I will unplug my telephone

Coming back drunk
I always could not help phoning a friend

After drinking I might look ugly
and sound piercing

Waking up
I then realized

nobody would like
to listen to nonsense from a drunk

The friend’s voices from the phone
became strange and distanced

At such a night after drinking
I would love Raymond Carter

For two drunks
to write useless poems face to face
feeling neither shamed nor embarrassed

I will always, always remind myself
before getting drunk

unplug the telephone

(Translated by Yu Zhang, edited by Tim Lilburn)

A group of Chinese dissidents and exiles ran naked on a chilly night outside the Stockholm Concert Hall on Tuesday, December 10, and published a declaration undersigned by Liao Yiwu (pictured above), Bei Ling, Wang Yiliang, Meng Huang, and Wang Juntao. As translated by China Change, the declaration begins:

We have come to Sweden to run in the nude, because it was here where Mo Yan, a defender of censorship and a senior Communist cadre, was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature last year.

With our act, we want to remind this forgetful world that there is a staunch denouncer of censorship, a witness of the Tian’anmen Massacre in 1989, a winner of the Nobel Peace Prize, who was sentenced to eleven years in prison for his writings and views, and he is now behind bars in China. His name is Liu Xiaobo.

With our act, we want to remind this forgetful world an outstanding artist named Liu Xia. She has no particular interest in politics, but just because she is the wife of Liu Xiaobo, she has been placed under house arrest since her husband was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in October, 2010.

This is not the first time Liao Yiwu, author of Corpse Walker and the prison memoir For a Song and a Hundred Songs (which I reviewed earlier this year), has streaked in Stockholm. He did it last year with artist Meng Huang while Mo Yan was inside the concert hall attending a Nobel Prize ceremony. Mo’s decision to not present an empty chair in honor of Liu Xiaobo set Liao off.

From “Our Naked Declaration” again:

In a world all too surreal, Liu Xia cried out, “Both Mo Yan and Liu Xiaobo are Nobel Laureates, why are they treated so differently?”

Meanwhile, Chinese netizens have been talking about Liu Xiaobo in the context of Nelson Mandela, and the authorities would like them to stop doing that please. Via Reuters:

An influential Chinese paper lashed out on Wednesday at comparisons between Nelson Mandela and China’s jailed Nobel Peace Prize laureate Liu Xiaobo, saying Liu was a common criminal not worthy of any praise.

Many Chinese internet users have noted the apparent contradiction of Beijing lauding Mandela’s legacy at the same time that it continues a harsh crackdown on its own human rights activists.

For more, see China Digital Times.

Chinese Author, Artist, and Dissident Streaking in Stockholm, Sweden (China Change)

The New York Times’s Austin Ramzy has a story you should read about Liu Xia, painter/poet/artist and wife of (as routinely noted) jailed Nobel laureate Liu Xiaobo. The entire thing is worth your time, but we’d like to highlight a letter Liu Xia, who remains under house arrest in Beijing, wrote to an American friend in July. In a word, it’s heartbreaking.

Liu compliments her friend (identity withheld) on the friend’s “epistolary novel”: “When I find books that I love, I feel the author is writing for me alone, and feel a private joy.” Reading her letter, it’s difficult not to feel empathy, specifically that obverse analog of joy — sorrow. How many lonely minutes and hours is Liu neither reading nor writing, but engaged in the tougher undertaking of simply being?

Liu’s missive is a form of epistolary in itself, and includes a poem she wrote in 2011, plus anecdotes from previous trips to the US. “I’ll find a 1996 photo of me — maybe you Americans really can’t tell the age of Oriental people.” There is no romanticizing of the dissident’s life, or even the cause, which presses on in spurts and sputters. “I chose this life myself,” Liu writes, “so need to see it through to the end.” Neither is there self-pity or wallowing; instead, only a promise that the next correspondence will be “only about happy thing.”

The letter, translated by Perry Link, is reproduced below from Ramzy’s NYT Sinosphere post.

Dear XXX,

I’ve read your “epistolary novel.” If I imagine myself an outside reader, I can only wonder how or through what special power you manage to keep on writing when the protagonist for whom you are pleading is absent. It moves me.

I have always loved reading, and do much of it. Most of the books in our home are ones I personally purchased and brought here, and most of the hours in my life are spent in reading them. I describe myself as having grown up “feeding on books.” My reading has no specific goal; for me it’s rather like breathing — I have to do it in order to live. When I find books that I love, I feel the author is writing for me alone, and feel a private joy.

In the 1980s I, too, wrote fiction and film scripts. I have faith that there will come a day when that absent person writes another part of his (her) story.

Please tell XXX that the book I am currently “feeding on” is A History of the Gulag. Living in almost total isolation, I find the road before me populated by countless books. I hide among the books and meander in the world.

You can imagine how terrified I felt to face the world alone after they came to take Xiaobo away. I have had no choice but to accept that reality. I have been extremely tired.

Let me offer you one of my poems. Hah! This will be a challenge for your translator!

“Fragment 8”

The light of death
That often appears, as I gaze at my reading,
Feels warm.
I feel sad that I must leave.
I want to go to a place that has light.

That tenacity, mine for years,
Has turned to dust.
A tree
Can be felled by a bolt of lightning
And think nothing.

The future, for me,
Is a shut window.
The night within has no end
And the horrid dreams do not fade.

I want to go to a place that has light.

(Written in 2011)

“Eleven years” in duplicate now weigh on me, but I do not feel as depressed as when I wrote “Fragment 8.” This is because all of you have helped me to open the window and let the sun rise. I know that all of this is not the end — even if justice is too long in coming.

I chose this life myself, so need to see it through to the end.

In 1996, at the Holocaust museum in Washington, D.C., I bought a postcard that showed a pile of shoes of Jewish people. Since then, innumerable Jewish people have been standing in my memory. I think that some day we, too, will have a memorial building to remember those people who are slipping out of the memories of Chinese today. We will. For sure.

I’ll tell you a funny story. In 1996 when I was in Boston a friend invited me to go out drinking. We went from bar to bar, but they always asked to see my passport for proof that I was of drinking age. I was 35 then, but had left my passport in New York. My hair was long then, so I bundled it up and then let it go, repeatedly, hoping this would make me look old enough to drink. Finally, around midnight, we did get a drink at an outdoor bar. I’ll find a 1996 photo of me — maybe you Americans really can’t tell the age of Oriental people. The memory makes me want to chuckle. (A photo here)

Next time, I’ll write only about happy things.

XXXXXXXXX

Liu Xia

July 26, 2013

Isolation Under House Arrest for Wife of Imprisoned Nobel Laureate (Sinosphere)

The wife of jailed Nobel Peace Prize winner Liu Xiaobo was seen in public for the first time in more than two and a half years today as she attended the trial of her brother, 43-year-old Liu Hui, who has been charged with fraud.

According to Tania Branigan of the Guardian:

Liu Xia shouted: “I’m not free – tell everybody I’m not free,” as she glimpsed the crowd outside the courthouse in Huairou, a diplomat said.

She added: “I love you – I miss you,” before she was escorted away.

Liu Xia was interviewed in December by AP reporters, and a few weeks later met with activists who pushed past security guards.

Liu has been under house arrest since October 2010, when her husband won the Nobel Peace Prize. Because it’s difficult to further punish Liu Xiaobo, already serving an 11-year prison sentence, authorities are applying pressure to his family. Reports AP: “Lawyers and family members said the charges against her brother, Liu Hui, appear to be in retaliation for those [December] visits. The charges relate to a real estate deal in which prosecutors said Liu and a partner pocketed 3 million yuan ($500,000) that was claimed by another party to the transaction.”

Last month, another attempt to approach Liu Xia’s apartment, by two Hong Kong journalists, was not as successful.

Liu Xia appears in public (The Guardian) (Image via Lagarde Stephane)

On Saturday, South China Morning Post reported that two Hong Kong journalists and activist Yang Kuang were beaten on Thursday outside the home of Liu Xia, the wife of Nobel Peace Prize recipient Liu Xiaobo.

We last heard from Liu Xia, who is under house arrest, when activists pushed past security guards and filmed their brief face-to-face conversation with her on December 28, Liu Xiaobo’s birthday.

The latest incident involved TVB and Now TV cameramen who were filming Yang’s attempt to visit. Provocational journalism at its, ahem, best?

Via SCMP:

Yang’s whereabouts were unknown [Friday] night. A witness, a mainland activist who requested anonymity, said while Yang was waiting for a taxi shortly after 10pm a dozen men attacked him. He was taken away in a police car afterwards, the activist said.

Another activist, Hu Jia, posted on his microblog a picture he claimed to be the moment Yang was put in the police car.

Before Yang was taken away, he told the SCMP that security guards refused to let him register to see Liu Xia. It’s unclear what TVB’s Tam Wing-man or Now TV’s Wong Kim-fai did, if anything, before the guards began striking them, though it seems obvious that trying to push past guards — who, with their shitty jobs, probably aren’t the most tolerant and even-tempered people in the world — while wielding big cameras seems like a pretty good way to elicit a physical response, if that’s what you were after.

Resorting to violence is despicable, of course, and Liu Xia’s continued extralegal imprisonment remains a farce and a stain on the country that allows it.

Tam said he was punched in the face, then pushed to the ground before five or six men trampled on him. Wong said they pulled him and tried to snatch his camera, before hitting him in the head. He said his camera was damaged during the scuffle.

Along with TVB, Hong Kong delegates in Beijing for the Two Sessions have also issued statements condemning the attacks.

TVB issued a statement calling for the attackers’ arrest. It also urged the Hong Kong and Macao Affairs Office of the State Council to protect Hong Kong journalists’ safety on the mainland.

Local delegates to the National People’s Congress (NPC) and Chinese People’s Consultative Conference (CPPCC) said the attack was unacceptable.

“Hong Kong treasures and respects freedom of the press. It is unacceptable for reporters to be attacked when they are doing their job legally, and [such action] should be condemned. It’s a pity for something like this to happen during the annual congress,” NPC deputy Ambrose Lee Siu-kwong said.

Beijing’s response is continued silence.

Hong Kong journalists, activist beaten outside home of wife of dissident Liu Xiaobo (SCMP, h/t Alicia)
Outrage over attack on local cameramen (SCMP)

On Friday, December 28 — the birthday of jailed Nobel Peace Prize recipient Liu Xiaobo — a group of activists made a daring visit to the residence of his wife, Liu Xia, currently under house arrest.

You can watch them in the above video, uploaded yesterday to the YouTube account of Hu Jia, activist/dissident and director of the June Fourth Heritage and Culture Association. Hu writes that he and Hao Jian, Liu Di and Xu Youyu, among others, arrived at about 9 pm and basically overpowered a surprised guard. They stayed with an astonished and obviously apprehensive Liu Xia for three minutes before willfully taking their leave, just before “large quantities” of security personnel rushed up to intercept.

It’s a gripping and emotional video. Check it out.

UPDATE, 1/1, 11:21 am: Via AFP:

[Hu Jia] later told AFP that after leaving the apartment the group were detained momentarily by the guards but eventually allowed to leave.

“The video is all about fear and anxiety,” Hu said. “She has already lost a lot of hope. The authorities are making her fearful. What she is afraid of is her family will come under pressure.

“Imagine people come to visit you after two years under illegal house arrest and all she feels is fear that the authorities will crack down further.”

…”For two years, they have only allowed Liu Xia to visit her parents and go see Liu Xiaobo, no one else. She is like a political prisoner, when she meets her husband it is a meeting between prisoners,” Hu said.

“I went to visit her as friend, I have the right to visit her. The authorities know who I am, I have done nothing wrong. Her house arrest is illegal.”

(H/T Austin Ramzy via Alicia)

Liu Xia has been under house arrest ever since her husband, Liu Xiaobo, won the Nobel Peace Prize two years ago. Her location isn’t exactly a secret though, so AP reporters staked out outside her house, then walked in while the guards were out to lunch.

In her first public interview in 26 months, Liu said, “We live in such an absurd place. It is so absurd. I felt I was a person emotionally prepared to respond to the consequences of Liu Xiaobo winning the prize. But after he won the prize, I really never imagined that after he won, I would not be able to leave my home. This is too absurd. I think Kafka could not have written anything more absurd and unbelievable than this.”

Give the piece a read. It comes on the heels of China officially saying it will not be releasing Liu Xiaobo, due to all those crimes he committed: embarrassing China, basically.

One more excerpt from the AP story:

Once a month, she is taken to see her husband in prison. It wasn’t clear when Liu Xia started regular visits with her husband or if they would continue following her interview. She was denied visits for more than a year after she saw him two days after his Nobel win and emerged to tell the world that he had dedicated the award to those who died in the 1989 Tiananmen crackdown.

…The authoritarian government’s detention of the Liu couple, one in a prison 280 miles (450 kilometers) northeast of Beijing and the other in a fifth-floor apartment in the capital, underscores its determination to keep the 57-year-old peace laureate from becoming an inspiration to other Chinese, either by himself or through her.Her treatment has been called by rights groups the most severe retaliation by a government given to a Nobel winner’s family.

…”I don’t keep track of the days anymore,” she said. “That’s how it is.”

By the way, while their situation in no way compares to Liu’s (not even close), we’d like to point out that the guards in charge of watching over Liu have it pretty tough, too.

Around midday, the guards who keep a 24-hour watch on the main entrance of Liu’s building had left their station — a cot with blankets where they sit and sleep.

Modernity. Kafkaesque.