by Tienchi Martin-Liao / November 6, 2013
Ye Fu and Friends
Head of the Rice Delivery Party, Ye Fu, and friends. Photo courtesy of Tienchi Martin-Liao.
It’s a common name, Butcher’s Shop, and it has become a popular page on taobao.com, which literally means the “looking-for-treasure website.” Comparable to eBay, taobao.com is one of the most popular commercial websites in China. Butcher’s Shop was created by a diligent writer and blogger, “fleshy Tang monk,” whose name is taken from the protagonist of the Chinese classic Journey to the West. But behind the beefy matter, there is a loose organization, the so-called Rice-Delivery-Party. Yet it has nothing to do with catering, nor edible stuff. No, it’s a group, but given the particular nature of the party’s structure, it’s difficult to say how many members it has—maybe ten, or one hundred, or even ten thousand. It sounds surreal, but it is truly down to earth.
I just met with the new head of the Rice-Delivery-Party, Ye Fu, the prominent writer from Beijing. Currently he is in Cologne, Germany on a one year writer-in-residence project with the Academy of the Art of the World. Ye Fu is an essayist, poet, and non-fiction writer. In 1989 he was involved in the June 4th protest and was sentenced to jail for six years. In 1995 he was released months earlier than expected. Soon he developed a career as a publisher, but after ten successful years in business he deserted commercial life and devoted himself to writing. At first his books were, to some extent, banned in China, but he’s been able to publish three of them in the last two years. In Taiwan, not only does he enthrall tens of thousands of readers, he also won the non-fiction literature prize at the 2010 Taipei International Book Exhibition.
Ye Fu belongs to the Tujia-minority and his family have lived in Hubei province for generations. Several of his family members have committed suicide, including his grandfather, mother, and two aunts, as they became victims of the political purge and persecution during the Land Reform and the series of political campaigns in the 50s. This unusual and tragic family history has strongly impacted Ye Fu’s character and the style of his work. His writing is saturated with his strong sense of the past and present, his unmistakable yearning for social justice, and his elegant, subtle language. The understatement in his writing creates tension and beauty. As a knowledgeable and eloquent intellectual, Ye Fu also attracts large groups of fans on his blog.
But the writer does not want to be a pale theoretician. He is an engaged social activist, a spiritual leader of young and old. With the help of “fleshy Tang monk” he created the Butcher’s Shop. And, since a shop can only justify itself when it earns money, they offer three goods for sale online: