How Yan Linke inspired me:
Yan Linke is a Chinese writer and novelist. He was born in Ding Village in the Henan province of central China. He grew up in the 1950s and lived through the Chinese Cultural Revolution - the communist purge of bourgeois in the 1960s - 1970s, a very difficult time to live in China. He wrote Lenin's Kyss, an acclaimed novel about a group of villagers' scheme of buying Lenin's corpse from Russia to display as a tourist attraction in order to make money form it. His work is classified as satire. He often used them to criticize society, people and the Chinese communist political system.
He was the son of two illiterate farmers. I can personally relate to him on this because my parents are illiterate farmers as well. He dreamed of escaping the countryside, to live in a canteen and receive a monthly income. One day he met a young female writer and was inspired by her after seeing how she could live like a young Yan had wished. He followed his dream and began writing at the age of fifteen. For two years he wrote under a kerosene lamp. Nowadays, we have rooms with bright lights and libraries with computers and the internet for research. The only books that were available to Yan at that time were the communist Red Classics. Now when I think about what he said, nothing can be worse than his writing condition. Compared to his situation at the time as a writer, nowadays we have so much room and freedom. He survived the Chinese Cultural Revolution and succeeded in writing. So we should too! And there is no excuse for us to fail.
"China's censorship is not as rigorous as everyone thinks . The self censorship of the authors is much worse, " says Yan Linke. I agreed with him that the worse form of censorship is "self-censorship."
- Source from "China Rising," an Al Jazeera Documentary.
Yan Linke is a Chinese writer and novelist. He was born in Ding Village in the Henan province of central China. He grew up in the 1950s and lived through the Chinese Cultural Revolution - the communist purge of bourgeois in the 1960s - 1970s, a very difficult time to live in China. He wrote Lenin's Kyss, an acclaimed novel about a group of villagers' scheme of buying Lenin's corpse from Russia to display as a tourist attraction in order to make money form it. His work is classified as satire. He often used them to criticize society, people and the Chinese communist political system.
He was the son of two illiterate farmers. I can personally relate to him on this because my parents are illiterate farmers as well. He dreamed of escaping the countryside, to live in a canteen and receive a monthly income. One day he met a young female writer and was inspired by her after seeing how she could live like a young Yan had wished. He followed his dream and began writing at the age of fifteen. For two years he wrote under a kerosene lamp. Nowadays, we have rooms with bright lights and libraries with computers and the internet for research. The only books that were available to Yan at that time were the communist Red Classics. Now when I think about what he said, nothing can be worse than his writing condition. Compared to his situation at the time as a writer, nowadays we have so much room and freedom. He survived the Chinese Cultural Revolution and succeeded in writing. So we should too! And there is no excuse for us to fail.
"China's censorship is not as rigorous as everyone thinks . The self censorship of the authors is much worse, " says Yan Linke. I agreed with him that the worse form of censorship is "self-censorship."
- Source from "China Rising," an Al Jazeera Documentary.