Seminar Held in Chengdu to Honor Liu Binyan and All Writers in Exile

Reported by Wang Yi, ICPC Vice Secretary General, Chengdu, China
Translated by Wan Zhi, ICPC Secretary General, Sweden

A seminar on “Liu Binyan and The Immortal Exiles (a book dedicated to Liu Binyan’s 80th birthday)” was held at a tea house in Chengdu on April 23rd, 2005. The seminar was organized by the Independent Chinese PEN Center (ICPC), and co-sponsored by Caotang Reading Society (a reading society named after the Garden of thatch, a residence of famous Tang Dynasty Poet Du Fu in Chengdu). More than forty writers, poets and scholars attended the seminar, among them were all ICPC members in Chengdu (except Liao Yiwu who was out of town): Wang Yi, Chen Mo, Li Yadong, Yin Minghui, Wang Jianhui, and other well known scholars and writers such as Professor Xiao Xuehui, writer Ran Yunfei, and poetry critic Yang Yuanhong. Members of Caotang Reading Society and Yecao (Wild Grass) Poetry Society also attended the seminar.

Participants brought with them various kinds of works written by prominent journalist Liu Binyan, to whom a party was held to celebrate his 80th birthday in February at Princeton, New Jersey. The tea house served as an exhibition hall for Liu’s works. A copy of The Immortal Exiles, edited by Zheng Yi and other exile writers, was distributed to all participants. The book was first published in Taiwan in February and reprinted in mainland China.

The first speaker Mr. Wu from the Reading Society gave a presentation illustrating Liu Binyan’s writing career from the 1950s to the 1980s and to his exile years. Then he analyzed Liu’s works and the analyses and commentaries of Liu’s works. Wu specially analyzed Liu’s three masterpieces: At the Bridge Construction Site, People and Monsters and A Higher Kind of Loyalty.

Wu’s presentation was followed by talked of Li Yadong, Ran Yunfei, Wang Yi, Yang Yuanhong and others. Li Yadong described how Liu Binyan’s works were from squeezed to invisible to disappear from the Chinese literature textbooks in Chinese universities after 1989. He highly praised the morality in Liu’s works. Ran Yunfei considered Liu’s reportages as a genre in the 1980s and highly praised their achievements and Liu Binyan was one of the most preeminent journalists. Ran particularly talked about a book by Xie Yong (an ICPC member) portraying the 1980s reportages. However, the book could not pass the censorship and was banned for publication. Wang Yi recalled how Liu’s most well-known short story A Higher Kind of Loyalty enlightened him as a student in college. Wang continued to analyze his understanding of “loyalty” and“exile”. He regarded all intellectuals as in exile if they persisted in the freedom of impression and writing under the totalitarian government. Wang regarded prison as an over crowded exile place. Censorship, wire tap and all other kinds of political pressure and persecutions would force people to hide their real thought and feelings, so they chose to exile even during a daily life. Yang Yuanhong wanted to take a different approach and said that one should never compromise with the communist party and its totalitarian system.

Yang’s speech won applauses but also raised critcism. Wang Yi criticized Yang for being to nihilistic in regarding to state, nation, people and tradition. There was also a heated discussion about whether the rebellion of Liu Binyan and Li Shenzhi were thorough and how to judge this kind of incomplete rebellions. Some people concurred with Yang Yuanhong’s view.

Chen Mo and Yin Minghui, both contributors of The Immortal Exiels, expressed sincere respects to Liu Binyan and other writers who went to exile after the June 4th massacre in Beijing in 1989. Participants compared Liu’s reportages with the similar works by Liao Yiwu in recent years. The compareisons were also drew to the reportages in the 1980s and current reportages such as Survey of Chinese Peasants and the writers’ roles then and now. Topics about nationalism, patriotism and exile were also discussed.

This seminar lasted three hours. It adjourned with all participants standing up and applauding to honor Liu Binyan, the 81 years old exile writer, and all other writers in exile who still fight for the freedom and dignity.

2005-4-23

Last updated: April 24, 2005