Category Archives: Members’works

Tienchi Martin-Liao: “Global Citizen” or “Dissident Writer”?: An Impolite Question to Gao Xingjian

Gao Xingjian

Chinese writer and Nobel Prize winner Gao Xingjian. Image via Wikimedia Commons.

For a writer in exile, the past informs a present role that is essential to preserving history.

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Tienchi Martin-Liao: “I am very, very sorry… I am proud to be Chinese.”

Observers of the recent elections in Taiwan

Observers of the recent elections in Taiwan. Image provided by the author.

Reflections on Taiwan’s recent groundbreaking election.

It was an amazing experience to be an observer to the Taiwan election. Together with a small group of writers and politicians from Europe and Japan, we had the chance to witness the peaceful and passionate election in Taiwan in mid-January. The landslide victory of the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) was already prognosticated by several poll institutes weeks ago. Tsai Ing-wen became the first female president, meeting all expectations, yet the results in the parliament election were still quite astonishing. The ruling party Kuomintang (KMT) has lost almost 50 percent from its original 64 seats down to 35 seats, giving the DPP to get a comfortable 68 of 113 majority. More stunning is the newly founded (as of January 25, 2015) so called third forces. Some of the young leaders of the New Power Party are coming from the Sunflower Movement. They have won 5 seats and became the third political force in parliament. Continue reading

A Look at “Mr. Six”

Guan Hu

Guan Hu, director of “Mr. Six.” Image via Youtube user: Yitiao Video 一条视频,

Guan Hu’s newest movie resonates with the Cultural Revolution generation, but the film has one fatal flaw. Continue reading

Tienchi Martin-Liao: The Communist Party of China’s “Mother Beats Child” Syndrome

Fu Lei

Chinese intellectual Fu Lei. Image via: Wikimedia Commons.

At the beginning of the Cultural Revolution, intellectuals committed suicide in defiance of Mao Zedong’s policies, which would take the lives of millions more. Continue reading

Tienchi Martin-Liao: China’s “State Terrorism” Against Dissent

Gui Minghai’s books are widely distributed in Hong Kong

Gui Minghai’s books are widely distributed in Hong Kong. Image via: Wikimedia Commons.

A controversial author and publisher has been abducted by Chinese authorities in an act of state-sponsored terrorism intended to intimidate dissenting voices. Continue reading

Ma Jian: The howls of China’s prisoners will haunt this royal welcome for Xi Jinping

The Chinese president’s state visit coincides with the biggest crackdown on his country’s civil society in years. This fawning insults the people of both countries
majian
Chinese flags fly side by side with union flags on the Mall ahead of Xi Jinping’s state visit. Photograph: Lauren Hurley/PA

Eighteen years ago, I stood at dawn in the driving rain and watched with dread as the tanks and trucks of China’s People’s Liberation Army rolled into Hong Kong, reclaiming sovereignty over the British colony. It was clear at once that Hong Kong’s fledgling democracy was doomed. To escape Big Brother’s gaze and retain the freedom to think and write, I moved to London. Continue reading

Murong Xuecun: A Land China Loves and Hates

murong-xuecun-contrib-thumbWideOCT. 13, 2015

HONG KONG — On the 10th anniversary of the Sept. 11 attacks, a major Chinese television network broadcast a documentary that investigated how Chinese people viewed not only those pivotal events but America itself. One man, referring to the slaughter of thousands of Americans, declared, “What a beautiful job!” Another said, “They should give America more of the same.” And a student standing in Tiananmen Square said he approved of the attacks because the United States was a bully and a hegemon.

Later in the film, the young man in Tiananmen Square went on Continue reading

MURONG XUECUN: Scaling China’s Great Firewall

By MURONG XUECUN August 21, 2015

In the fall of 2011, a friend and I got on to discussing Tibet. “Do you know,” he said, “that Tibetans are setting fire to themselves?”

I had spent from 2005 to 2008 in Lhasa, the Tibetan capital, but I had never heard of acts of self-immolation. My friend filled me in on the ghastly details, Continue reading