Murong Xuecun has seen all his microblogs deleted (May 11), reinstated (May 17), and deleted again (May 18). Anyone who gets jerked around like this has reason to be upset; Murong, more so, considering he had millions of followers and thousands of entries accumulated over three years, and because, as he himself puts it, “to a writer, the words he writes are more important to him than his life.”

Murong initially took his grievance to English-language Guardian on May 15 (we blogged about that here). Yesterday, he went to the Chinese edition of the New York Times (which remains blocked in China). In “Open Letter to a Nameless Censor” — which has been translated and posted to Scribd, and can be read here in full – Murong expresses everything we would want to say to a Chinese censor, only without expletives. Excerpt:

I am writing you this letter because I believe your awesome powers are only temporary. You can delete my words, you can delete my name but you cannot snatch the pen from my hand. In the years to come this pen of mine will fight a long war of resistance, and continue to write for as long as it takes for me to see the light of a new dawn. I believe you will not be able to hide in the shadows forever because the light of a new dawn will also expose the place where you are hiding. Dear Nameless Censor, when that time comes, the whole world will know who you are.

Yes.

For far too long, you and your colleagues have devoted all your efforts to suppressing freedom of speech in China. You have created a never-ending list of sensitive words, deleted countless articles, and closed down thousands of microblog accounts. You have constructed the Great Firewall of China and kept the rest of the world at bay behind a wall of ignorance, turning China into an information prison.

Yes.

You censor articles and delete words. You treat literature as poison, free speech as a crime, and independent thinkers as your enemy. Thanks to your efforts, this great nation of 1.3 billion people does not have a single newspaper that can express objective views, nor a single TV station that broadcasts objective programs, or even the smallest space where people can speak freely.

He points out that “true stability is based in the happiness and freedom of the people and not derived from obedience enforced down the barrel of a gun,” and utterly shames his nameless censor with a compendious list of those who have been silenced in the name of stability. “This, is your legacy, dear Nameless Censor.”

I am fully aware this letter will cause me nothing but grief: I may not be able to publish my writings in China, my words may be expunged and deleted, and my future path may become even more difficult, but I must tell you: I once had fear, but from now on, I am no longer afraid. I will be here waiting for sunlight to brighten the world, to brighten people’s hearts, and light up the place you where you hide. That is the difference between you and me, dear Nameless Censor—I believe in the future, while all you have is the present.

The long night is almost over; I wish you peace. Sincerely yours,

Murong Xuecun

Yes times a thousand fucks.

Open Letter to a Nameless Censor (Scribd via NY Times, h/t China Digital Times)

Hao Qun, 39, better known by his pen name Murong Xuecun, saw all of his weibos – Sina, Tencent, NetEase, and Sohu — deleted on Saturday. Successive attempts to re-register were quickly thwarted as well.

He lost 1.85 million followers, but it’s China and its ignoble band of fucking censors who have lost more: repute. Face. Or does that suddenly not matter?

Murong Xuecun spoke out in an essay published on Wednesday in the Guardian. The whole thing, translated by Helen Gao, is worth a read, but here are some highlights.

On a possible reason for his microblogs’ deletion:

Another possibility concerns the “He Bing incident.” He Bing is a professor at Chinese University of Political Science and Law, and has over 430,000 followers on Sina Weibo. According to an announcement issued by Xinhua on 10 May, he has been silenced by the State Internet Information Office for “purposely spreading rumours.” He wrote a statement responding to this accusation, arguing that the issuance of the punishment did not follow standard administrative procedure, and declaring that he was preparing to file a lawsuit. He asked me to help him retweet the statement. I tried five times, and saw the message censored each time. The next night, I posted a message on Weibo, asking the State Internet Information Office to answer the following questions: Who gives you the power to deprive citizens of their right to free speech? What are the relevant legal standards and procedures for identifying rumours? On what basis do you accuse He Bing of spreading rumours? Why do you repeatedly delete He’s statement? Why would you not allow him to defend himself? As one can imagine, the State Internet Information Office is not interested in answering my questions. In 20 minutes, all my Weibo accounts were deleted.

On the difficulty of “reincarnating” online:

My next reincarnation is going to be more difficult. The Chinese government makes sure its internet technology keeps pace with the times, which leaves me effectively no loophole to exploit. On the morning of 13 May, I attempted to re-register on Weibo, and after an hour of typing almost 30 versions of verification codes, I still couldn’t get registered. My IP address, which is static, has been blocked. Registering a new account would require a verification code to be sent to a mobile number. I have only one mobile phone, which has similarly been blocked.

And on what it feels like to be “silenced”:

“It’s as if you were chatting and laughing with friends in a brilliantly lit house, when you suddenly fell into a dark pit,” I told him. “You yell at the top of your lungs, but no one can hear you. You struggle to get out, but only sink deeper.” I also need to console those who love me, and let them know everything is fine. In this abyss, I am once again visited by the biting chill of uncertainty, of not knowing what will come next. I am not as prepared as I thought. I am still scared, but I will not stop struggling, because I believe my silence would only embolden those who are trampling on my rights, and will trample on the rights of others. I need to stand bold straight and tell those in the “relevant organs”: you can never take away my rights. This abyss, I believe, will not remain dark for ever. As long as I keep up my effort, I will eventually find a piece of flint and kindle a tiny spark to illuminate the square inch in front of my feet.

We’re used to hearing stories like this, and Murong, admittedly, was ready for his inevitable silencing — “I am mentally prepared,” he wrote. Yet it’s maddening all the same when it happens.

We’re glad Murong is continuing to speak out, and maybe now will feel more empowered to do so — at least in English media. What else would the government do, mm? (Note: we know what they can do, but would they?)

Chinese internet: ‘a new censorship campaign has commenced’ (The Guardian)

The article, “Let Them Eat Grass,” is ostensibly about China’s Great Famine revisionists — of which there are apparently plenty — but Murong merely peppers those folk with jabs and body shots –

Remarkably, the focus of contention is not the cause of the famine, but whether it actually occurred. Many believe a small number of ill-intentioned conspirators fabricated the famine. Some see it as short-lived, restricted to a small area, and think that it was absolutely impossible for tens of millions to have starved to death. One netizen, who went by the name Fact Checker, asked, “If so many people starved to death, where are the mass graves?” Wu Danhong, an associate professor at the China University of Political Science and Law in Beijing and a prominent leftist, wrote on Sina Weibo: “I have verified that between 1959 and 1961 in my profoundly impoverished hometown there were instances of people consuming tree bark and some were so hungry they contemplated suicide. But they endured and no one died of starvation. The entire village suffered from diseases of hunger but none died. Perhaps some political rightist whose circumstances were bad to begin with starved to death.”

Professor Wu’s comments inspired many others, including the baffled (“My hometown is poor, so why haven’t I heard about people starving to death?”) and the caustic (“If so many people starved to death, why didn’t your mother?”). Someone who went by the name Li Weiling wrote: “I’ve seen a lot of articles written by people who were sent down to labor in rural villages in the 1960s which claim they had to survive on water and locusts and the result was edema. I really don’t understand why they didn’t plant vegetables and grains. They were sent down to the countryside to labor, weren’t they?” Li inspired another comment from someone who went by the name smallcat823: “If there was no grain, why didn’t they eat wild herbs? I hear wild herbs are delicious.”

– before laying the big right hook:

Most people in China suffer from an inability-to-accept-facts syndrome. They only believe what they want to believe and can’t see facts that are painful or contradict their own views. A school curriculum that ignores all policy failures since 1949 exacerbates this syndrome.

“This syndrome is the source of many conflicts in contemporary China,” he writes. We’d be remiss to not mention that the syndrome is by no means exclusive to this country — I grew up in a state that tried to take evolution off the high school state curriculum twice — but institutionalized amnesia here appears worse if only because the stakes seem higher. The history is more recent, larger in scale, more traumatic, and simultaneously, the younger generation is more divergent, many of them with no interest in the burdens of the past, or what we might call “social memory.”

So as a society, how do we move on? Dredge up more materialistic mortar as stopgap until those who still remember are dead — and along with them, the forgettable past? These are the difficult questions that have always confronted China. They spend most of the time unseen, tugged with the undertow, but will, like an unpleasant reminder or its morbid physical commensurate, occasionally bob toward the surface, bloated and grotesque, waiting for someone brave enough to pull it ashore.