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Sex is a bust in China's
army
By Antoaneta Bezlova
BEIJING - When Chinese censors axed a
novella about steamy sex in the People's
Liberation Army, it was the timing of its
appearance earlier this year that proved most
crucial in effecting the ban.
Serve the
People, written by award-winning writer Yan
Lianke, premiered on China's literary scene just
weeks before Beijing unveiled a new anti-secession
law that threatens the use of military force
against Taiwan should the island's leaders go too
far in their quest for independence.
Assuming the mantle of China's military
chairmanship last fall, President Hu Jintao set
out a tough policy for dealing with Taiwan's
"splittists", and one in which the Chinese army is
designed to play a major role. The People's
Liberation Army (PLA), he said, must "prepare for
war, and have no fear of Taiwan's
procrastination".
But Serve the
People, which was penned by a former colonel
in the army, undermines the very core of Hu's
mantra. It paints a debauched image of the Chinese
PLA where the lofty Communist Party goal of
"serving the masses" is carried out through sex
and gaining military honors achieved by performing
sexual favors for the bored and lonely wives of
the upper echelons.
"The timing of the
publication was probably accidental but this was
not the image of the army that the Chinese
Communist Party wanted people to read about," said
one source with knowledge of the workings of the
Central Propaganda Bureau - the powerful party
body that oversees censorship.
The ban
came on the eve of the March annual session of the
National People's Congress, or China's parliament,
which approved the anti-secession law unanimously.
All copies of the literary magazine Huacheng, or
Flower City, that had published the novella in its
first issue this year, were withdrawn.
Yet
once word got out about the ban, the novella
became a hit with Internet users. Huacheng, which
took the daring move of publishing the story after
numerous other publications had rejected it, saw
its limited sales of a typical high-brow
periodical soar.
Contacted by phone, the
editors of the magazine, based in Guangzhou,
declined to comment either on the novella or on
its impact. The author Yan Lianke, a native from
Henan province who now lives in Beijing, told IPS:
"It has become very difficult for me to talk about
my work."
According to the edict by the
Central Propaganda Bureau quoted in the Hong Kong
press, the novella "slanders Mao Zedong, the army,
and is overflowing with sex". "Do not distribute,
pass around, comment on, excerpt from it or report
on it," the edict says.
But despite the
stern ban, Internet chat-rooms and literary
circles are abuzz with talk about the book and
speculation that Serve the People will soon
be published overseas.
The novella tells
the story of a young peasant soldier, Wu Dawang,
who is assigned as an orderly to the household of
his division commander. The general has a pretty
and much younger wife who spends her days dressing
up and chasing the orderly with demands for dishes
that boost her complexion.
While the
general never appears as a full-fleshed character
in the book, numerous hints are dropped suggesting
he is impotent - a subversive twist that literati
here interpret as an allusion to the frailty of
the Communist Party's power.
Not
surprisingly, an illicit love affair takes place
when the general is called to Beijing for one of
his lengthy political sessions. The time is set
during the late years of the Cultural Revolution -
the country is preparing for a nuclear attack by
the Soviets and the army is getting ready to deal
a devastating blow to Taiwan's nationalists.
But the obedient orderly and the general's
wife are oblivious to the challenges of the day. A
wooden sign in the kitchen reading "serve the
people" becomes a coded signal for Wu that his
services are required in the bedroom. The lovers
spend days and nights naked, making love and
coming up with "counter-revolutionary" ways of
arousing their passion.
They enjoy sexual
ecstasy after smashing plaster busts of Mao
Zedong, ripping up his photos and his Little Red
Book of revolutionary quotations and even
urinating on the leader's slogans.
"Did I
consider beforehand whether juxtaposing Chairman
Mao's photos with sex would lead to a ban?" mused
the writer in an interview published on
EastSouthWestNorth, a Chinese blog, soon after the
ban. "When I write, I don't think about publishing
issues until I have finished. Expressing emotions
and anger is the driving force for my creativity."
The book combines sex and political satire
- two sensitive subjects that are routinely
frowned on by the Communist Party's censors - but
observers say it is the writer's sharp barb at
corruption and the army's vice that got it axed.
"The sex scenes are not graphic, it is
more about where they take place and about the
title of the book," suggested one literary critic.
"Serve the people" is among the most
famous of Mao Zedong's sayings, a phrase he coined
in 1944 as a Communist Party credo. The slogan,
written in Mao's personal calligraphy, now adorns
the red gate of the Zhongnanhai leadership
compound in Beijing where Communist Party leaders
live.
Ironically, books that have fallen
victims to the ax of Chinese censors tend to
become bestsellers both at home and abroad. Five
years ago, censors outlawed female writer Mian
Mian's breakthrough novel Candy - a
depiction of sex and drugs in Chinese cities - but
this did not prevent it becoming an underground
hit.
Last year, during the same anxious
time before the annual session of Chinese
parliament, censors banned two bestsellers - one
dealing with purges of intellectuals during the
Communist Party's anti-rightist campaigns of the
1950s and the other one a study into the plight of
peasants in modern China.
Both books,
however, can be bought on the streets and continue
to be circulated around China via the Internet.
Cracking down on web subversion has proven harder
than expected and Chinese censors feel compelled
to pour millions into perfecting Internet
censorship.
(Inter Press
Service) |
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