by Han Han
Therefore, I have no aspirations in other directions, but I will continue to keep demanding all the constitutionally permitted freedoms that have a bearing on my work—whether I’m sitting or standing, walking or writing or talking, I’ll keep on demanding freedom until you can’t stand it. We need to keep pushing; otherwise there will be no change. As for my writing, I hope in the New Year to be able to write things for my own pleasure, and I don’t plan to suck up to anybody except my daughter. I’ll write when I want, and leave ellipses when I don’t.
About the Author
Han Han was born in 1982 to middle-class parents. After dropping out of high school due to low grades, he wrote a novel, Triple Door, which became a runaway bestseller with more than twenty million copies in print. He has since become a star of the rally racing circuit and an international celebrity. He lives in Shanghai.
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Endnotes
1 “Han on a minute,” The Economist: The World in 2012, p. 72.
2 China’s agricultural tax was abolished at the end of 2005, as part of an effort to reduce the financial burden on Chinese farmers.
3 “SB” is an abbreviation for shabi, a derogatory expression similar in meaning to the English “dummy,” but more vulgar. Han Han pretends to misunderstand the term.
4 This is a reference to Huang Ju (1938–2007), who was mayor of Shanghai in the 1990s and went on to become a member of the Politburo Standing Committee. Because he was an unpopular figure, Internet searches involving his name have often been blocked, in order to forestall further negative commentary.
5 Work by Lu Xun (1881–1936), an influential left-wing writer, has been regularly included in the Chinese school curriculum since 1949.
6 The Oriental Pearl is a TV tower in the Pudong area of Shanghai, built in the 1990s. Its quirky aesthetics are not to everyone’s taste.
7 Xiaoming is a common “John Doe” kind of name and does not refer to anyone in particular.
8 On May 12, 2008, a severe earthquake struck Sichuan province, killing an estimated 68,000 people. At the Cannes Film Festival later that month, on May 25, Sharon Stone responded to a Hong Kong reporter’s question about the earthquake in the following way: “You know, it was very interesting because at first I am not happy about the way the Chinese are treating the Tibetans, because I don’t think anyone should be unkind to anyone else, and so I have been very concerned about how to think and what to do about that because I don’t like that. Then I have been concerned about, oh, how shall we deal with the Olympics? Because they are not being nice to the Dalai Lama, who is a good friend of mine. And then this earthquake and all this stuff happened and I thought: ‘Is that karma, when you’re not nice that the bad things happen to you? And then I got a letter from the Tibetan Foundation that they want to go and be helpful. And that made me cry! And they asked me if I would write a quote about that and I said I would. And it was a big lesson to me, that sometimes you have to learn to put your head down and be of service even to people who are not nice to you. And that’s a big lesson for me.”
9 Tang Wei’s performance as female lead in Ang Lee’s film Lust, Caution (2007), with its nude sex scenes, led to a media ban in China, imposed in March 2008 by the State Administration of Radio, Film, and Television.
10 In December 2008, there were renewed calls in China to boycott French products, this time as a protest against a meeting between the French president, Nicolas Sarkozy, and the Dalai Lama.
11 A reference to the arrangement whereby the Chinese authorities pay people to post comments on the Internet that are favorable to the government, paying them five mao (one mao is a tenth of a yuan) per post.
12 On the evening of February 9, 2009, a blaze started by fireworks gutted the nearly finished north wing of the China Central Television headquarters on Chang’an Avenue in Beijing, which was designed to house a luxury hotel, TV studio, and data processing center.
13 On April 18, 2009, during a panel discussion at the Boao Forum for Asia, Chan made these remarks when pressed to take a stand against media censorship in China.
14 The “Two Whatevers” policy was associated with Hua Guofeng, Mao Zedong’s successor in the late 1970s, just before the reemergence of Deng Xiaoping. The “Three Represents” theory, adopted by the Chinese Communist Party in 2002, reflected the Party’s effort to present itself as serving broad social interests in China. The “Seven Don’ts,” first promoted in Shanghai in 1995, were injunctions against uncivilized behavior such as jaywalking and damaging public greenery.
15 Jackie Chan’s Chinese name is Cheng Long, which read literally could be understood to mean, “will become a dragon.”
16 In February 2009, after a young man named Li Qiaoming died in police custody in Yunnan, the local authorities blamed his death on him inadvertently bumping his head against a wall when playing hide-and-seek with other prisoners. A furor erupted on the Internet, with many suspecting the death was caused by police brutality.
17 The Founding of a Republic, an historical drama full of cameo appearances by China’s best-known actors and actresses, was released to coincide with the sixtieth anniversary of the founding of the People’s Republic of China in the autumn of 2009.
18 The official theme of the 2010 Shanghai Expo was “Better City, Better Life”—or, more literally in Chinese, “The city makes life more beautiful.”
19 Between November 2009 and February 2010 there appeared online extracts from the diary of Han Feng, director of the Laibin Tobacco Bureau in Guangxi. In them, Han Feng candidly recorded his daily activities, including sex bouts with his mistresses. On March 13, 2010, he was arrested on charges of corruption and subsequently expelled from the Communist Party.
20 Income from bribes, embezzlement, and corruption.
21 At various times, Chinese users of Google have found that searches for “carrot” and other seemingly innocuous words trigger error messages, since these terms may share characters with names of China’s top leaders. The character hu in Hu Jintao, for example, also appears in the word for “carrot.”
22 In the spring and summer of 2010 a spate of attacks in Chinese schools and kindergartens caused the deaths of at least twenty-one children and adults and injured over ninety people.
23 Yang Jia, an unemployed man in his late twenties, stabbed six Shanghai policemen to death in retaliation for alleged mistreatment after his arrest for riding an unlicensed bicycle. He was subsequently found guilty of murder and executed.
24 Han Han is here quoting a remark made by Chinese premier Wen Jiabao at a press conference on March 14, 2010.
25 In early 2010, Google was engaged in a dispute with the Chinese government; in March 2010 it decided to redirect searches on its Chinese website to its site in Hong Kong.
26 Chinese officials seeking a foreign haven where they can enjoy their ill-gotten gains have found Canadian cities such as Toronto and Vancouver attractive choices.
27 To “jump over the wall” is to circumvent China’s Internet censorship (sometimes referred to as the Great Firewall of China) by resorting to proxy servers that are not subject to government restrictions.
28 Foxconn, a large electronics business headquartered in Taiwan, operates extensive manufacturing facilities in mainland China where both the iPhone and iPad are produced. Foxconn has often been accused of abusive employment practices, and over a dozen of its Chinese workers committed suicide in 2010.
29 A Taiwanese supermodel.
30 The small, uninhabited Diaoyu Islands, known in Japan as the Senkaku Islands, lie in the East China Sea between Taiwan and Okinawa, and are claimed both by China and Japan. On September 10, 2010, a Chinese fishing boat col
lided near the islands with patrol boats from the Japanese Coast Guard, who then took the fishing boat and its crew into custody. China submitted a strong protest and demanded the fishermen’s immediate release. Japan soon permitted the crewmen to return home, but held the captain until September 24.
31 In Peking opera, actors wearing blackface paint tend to play honest, brave, impetuous characters, whereas those in whiteface play crafty, calculating roles.
32 September 18, 1931, was the date of the Mukden Incident, when Japanese forces invaded Manchuria on the pretext that Chinese subversives had committed an act of sabotage.
33 Tang Fuzhen, a resident of Chengdu, died on November 13, 2009, after setting herself on fire in protest at the forced demolition of her home. Xie Chaoping, an investigative journalist, was arrested on August 23, 2010, after the publication of his book The Great Relocation, an exposé of the disastrous aftermath following construction of a Mao-era dam across the Yellow River.
34 Qian Yunhui, a village chief who had protested against abuses by the local government, died on December 25, 2010, after being hit and crushed by a truck. According to some reports, he had been forcibly pinned to the ground by security men so that the truck would run over him.
35 A sardonic echo of the catchphrase associated with the economic reforms inaugurated by Deng Xiaoping, “Getting rich is glorious.”
36 Huang Yibo, thirteen years old in 2011 and a leading activist in the Wuhan branch of the Young Pioneers of China—a primary-school branch of the Communist Youth League—became the subject of much comment on the Internet in China after a series of promotional photos was posted online.
37 Construction was completed in 2006.
38 “Asia’s No. 1 Curve” was the name given to the curved ramp that used to connect the east-west Yan’an Elevated Road with Zhongshan Road, the boulevard that runs along the Huangpu River, next to the Bund. The ramp was demolished as part of an ambitious plan to ease traffic congestion.
39 Xintiandi is a small, consumer-oriented district in central Shanghai that appeals to some foreigners and affluent young Chinese; incongruously, the site of the first congress of the Chinese Communist Party is located almost next door.
40 This made-up film title mockingly echoes the title of the 2009 film The Founding of a Republic.
41 According to a leaked diplomatic cable, Politburo Standing Committee member Li Changchun was shocked to discover results critical of himself when he conducted a Google search and typed in his own name.
42 The White Lotus Rebellion in the late eighteenth century and the Taiping Rebellion in the mid-nineteenth century both led to immense destruction and loss of life, and took many years to suppress.
43 Ma Huateng is founder of Tencent, Inc., the third largest Internet company in the world after Google and Amazon. Tencent’s online currency, Q coins, can be used to buy virtual goods.
44 Robin Li is the CEO of Baidu, China’s biggest Internet search engine; Bai Ye is a prominent Chinese literary critic; Chen Kaige is a well-known Chinese film director. At various times, Han Han has been critical of all three.
Index
A
Agricultural tax, 6–7, 219
Air pollution, 140
Amazon, 237n
Analogy, x
Ang Lee, 58n
Anglo-French forces, incursion of, 44
Anhui Province, excess births in, 9–11
Audi, 139
Australia, World Rally Championship in, 109–13
Autopsies, 146–48
B
Baidu search engine, 145, 146, 251n
Baixi Township, 101
Bai Ye, 251
Ba Jin, 53
Begging, 193–96
Beijing, 81, 84, 138, 143
bringing grievances to, 141, 192
cars in, 121
CCTV headquarters in, 89–93
cost of living in, 197–99
high-speed train between Shanghai and, 218
Olympics in, see Olympics, Beijing
Public Security, 89
rally competition from Hong Kong to, 249–50
Belgrade, bombing of Chinese embassy in, 43
Bicycles, battery-powered, 117–20
Bing Xin, 53, 54
Blacklisting, 49, 142
of celebrities, 49–50
Boao Forum for Asia, 95n
Boeing 737 airplanes, 127
Boyang Lake, 210
Boycotts, 41, 67
of celebrities, 49–51
of French businesses and products, 33–36, 38–40, 42, 73–77
Brainwashing, 167
of North Koreans, 177
Brazil, 175
Bribery, 11, 79–80, 133
see also Corruption
British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC), 92
British colonialism, 97
Buddhism, 47, 189
Buds (magazine), 1
Burma, 175
C
Cable News Network (CNN), 43
Cadillac, 58
Cambodia, 177
Canada, 162
Cannes Film Festival, 47n
Carrefour supermarket chain, Chinese boycott of 33–36, 38–40, 49, 74
Cars, 237–38
cost of owning and driving, 197–201
racing, ix, 6, 34, 64, 75–76, 109–13, 116, 200, 229, 241–42, 249–50
in Shanghai, 121–22, 153, 215–16
taxes on purchases of, 13
Cash, charitable donations of, 71–72
Celebrities, 49–50
excess births by, 9
with foreign passports, 105–6
value placed on deaths of, 8
Cell phones, 134, 135
government capability to block signals, 232
restrictions on messaging function, 122–23
Censorship, x, 95n
Internet, 164n
of movies, 18, 28
in publishing industry, 222–24
self-, 161, 223, 224
Chan, Jackie, 95–98
Chemical plants, pollution from, 169–70, 190
Chen, Joan, 105
Chen Hong, 105
Chen Kaige, 105, 251
Chen Ming, 105
Chen Qiqang, 61–62
Chen Xiaoqin, 105
Children, 242
attacks on, 157–60
begging by, 193–96
education of, see Education, Chinese system of
exposed to contaminated products, 67, 160
China Central Television (CCTV), 2, 42, 72
fire at headquarters of, 89–93
China Soccer Association, 63–64
Chinese Communist Party (CCP), 86, 97n, 103, 111, 115, 144, 204
in elections, 236–37
First Congress of, 215
Han Feng expelled from, 133n
in Hengyang, 129
membership of, 242–43
in Shaoxing, 79, 80
Chinese New Year, 74, 81, 124, 130, 139, 243, 245
Chinese Rally Championship, 109–13
Citroën, 38, 75
Class, 185, 204, 235
disadvantaged, 216
power and, 178
ruling, alignment of poor with ideology of, 130
Clothing, charitable donations of, 69–72
Commerce Talks, 160
Communism, collapse of, 246
Communist Party
Chinese, see Chinese Communist Party
Soviet, 246
Communist Youth League, 203n, 207
Conduct, standards of, 2–3
Congress of People’s Deputies, 246
Constitution
Chinese, 85, 102
Soviet, 246
Consumer tax, 5
Contamination of milk products, 67, 160
Corruption, 79–80, 133n, 147, 162–63, 217
clamping down on, 75, 232
resentment of, 242
Coubertin, Pierre de, 38
Courts, 143–44, 1
48–49
sentencing of netizens to jail terms by, 145
Credibility, loss of, 2
Criminal syndicates, 121
Cultural Revolution, 2, 49
Czechoslovakia, 239–40
Czech Republic, 240
D
Dalai Lama, 38, 47n, 49
Dams
Three Gorges, 127, 209–11
Yellow River, 187n
Defection, 76
Democracy, 192, 247
freedom and, 232–33, 242
multiparty, 253
reform and, 240
revolution and, 237
and rule of law, 245
in Taiwan, 96
Demonstrations, see Protests, mass
Deng Xiaoping, 97n
Development zones, 7
Diaoyu Islands, 181–83, 185–88
Divorce, 1, 106, 107
Donations, charitable, 69–72
Dongfeng Peugeot Citroën team, 76
E
Earthquakes, 47n, 49, 50, 69, 209
E-bikes, 117–20
Education, Chinese system of, 14, 23–26, 41, 64
end-of-year reports in, 249
news sources in classrooms in, 204
principles for, 165–68
Education Today, 18
Egypt, 235
Eight-Nation Alliance, 36, 44
Enlightenment Daily, 92
Environmental degradation, 209, 210
see also Pollution
Essays, student, 23–26
European Union, 76
F
Factory workers, quality of life of, 169–73
Feng Shunqiao, 79–80
Farmland, see Land
Fatherhood, 250–51
Federation of Literary and Art Circles, 246
Ferrari, 76
Fifty-centers, 123, 129–31, 252
Flags at half-mast, 21–22, 39
Floods, 211
Foreign Affairs, Ministry of, 182
Foreign reporters, interviews with, 161–64
Founding of a Republic, The (movie), 105–6, 216n
Foxconn, 171–73
