Two poems, four years in detention: the Chinese dissident who smuggled his writing out of prison
Chinese dissident Liao Yiwu recounts his four-year imprisonment for two poems about the Tiananmen massacre and his elaborate efforts to smuggle his written manuscripts out of prison with help from fellow inmates. After release, he faced continued harassment and searches before eventually fleeing to Germany in 2011, where he continues writing in exile.
Summary
Liao Yiwu, a Chinese poet and writer, was sentenced to four years in prison in 1990 for writing two poems - 'Massacre' and 'Requiem' - that criticized the Tiananmen Square massacre of June 4, 1989. He had distributed an audio recording of 'Massacre' to over twenty cities and created a performance art film of 'Requiem' with Canadian sinologist Michael Martin Day. During his imprisonment across multiple facilities in Sichuan province, Liao wrote extensively, hiding 28 short poems and eight letters in the spine of a hardcover novel and secretly writing over 200 pages of manuscripts. A key figure in smuggling his work was 'Old Man Yang,' an elderly paramedic and former journalist who had been imprisoned since the 1950s. Yang used his network of long-term prisoners and prison workers to smuggle Liao's manuscripts out piece by piece. After his release in 1994, Liao faced continued persecution - his manuscripts were confiscated three times by authorities, forcing him to rewrite his testimony multiple times. He was repeatedly searched, interrogated, and placed under surveillance, particularly after attempting to help smuggle out appeals from other political prisoners. Despite the harassment, he continued writing, eventually having his work published internationally. After multiple failed attempts to travel abroad for literary events, he finally escaped to Germany in 2011 with help from German officials and journalists, where he has since published nine books and continues his literary work in exile.
About this episode
My poems were written in anger after Tiananmen Square. But what motivates most prison writing is a fear of forgetting. Today I am free, but the regime has never stopped its war on words. By Liao Yiwu. Help support our independent journalism at <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/longreadpod">theguardian.com/longreadpod</a>
Key Insights
- Liao claims that security agents have better memories of his underground poetry from the 1980s than literary scholars, suggesting the state's intense surveillance of dissidents
- The author argues that writing outside prison was more dangerous than inside, as manuscripts were repeatedly confiscated and he faced constant surveillance
- Liao describes how Old Man Yang, a prisoner since the 1950s, helped smuggle manuscripts because he saw it as a way to record forgotten history of earlier political prisoners
- The author reveals that his repeated rewriting due to confiscations led to increasingly compressed handwriting that became nearly illegible to anyone but himself
- Liao argues that the purpose of tyranny is to turn people into 'angry lunatics' and 'invalids' who cannot provide valuable testimony about historical events
- The writer claims that most political prisoners from earlier decades remained forgotten despite the international attention given to Tiananmen protesters
- Liao describes using a network of four mobile phones and criminal contacts to coordinate his eventual escape across the Vietnam-China border
- The author acknowledges that despite his efforts, he cannot recall preventing any prisoner's suffering through his writing, calling this truth 'suffocating'
Topics
Transcript
This is The Guardian. Welcome to The Guardian Long Read, showcasing the best long-form journalism covering culture, politics and new thinking. For the text version of this and all our long reads, go to theguardian.com forward slash long read. This article contains some swearing. Two poems, four years in detention. The Chinese Discipline. The President Who Smuggled His Writing Out of Prison by Liao Iwo. Most of my manuscripts are locked up in the filing cabinets of the Ministry of Security, and the agents there study and ponder them repeatedly, more carefully than the creator himself. The guys working this racket have superb memories. A certain chief of the Chengdu Public Security. I'm not sure if the Chinese Department of…
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