Beijing-Berlin

"The Corpse Walker: Real Life Stories: China from the Bottom Up" is the book that most Western readers associate with the name Liao Yiwu. Most Chinese have never heard of the work or the author.

Until this week, he lived far from Beijing's politically-charged atmosphere in China’s southwestern Sichuan province. His home was the provincial capital Chengdu. But despite the distance from the center, the secret services were active even there and kept a beady eye on him. Liao Yiwu has spent four years of his life in jail since he was first arrested in 1990 after writing a poem criticizing the massacre on Tiananmen Square.

"I have endured a lot," he once told the BBC in an interview. "But my attitude has changed with time. To begin with I was angry and I could hardly bear these injustices. But I have learnt that if you cannot bear something, you have to learn from it. I have learnt from my suffering."

Anger against a brutal system

However, this does not mean that Liao Yiwu has lost his anger when he describes a system where citizens are tortured behind bars and humiliated. In 2004, he published a report about his jail experiences entitled "Zheng Ci" in Chinese and "Testimonials" in English. It is now being published in German for the first time under the title "Für ein Lied und hundert Lieder: Ein Zeugenbericht aus chinesischen Gefängnissen."

Liao came under great pressure because of his powerful and sometimes downright shocking depictions of prison conditions in contemporary China that is doing so much to boost its image abroad. Since arriving in Germany, Liao Yiwu has told Spiegel Online that the authorities had asked him not to publish his book abroad. He pretended that this would be the case so that he would be allowed to leave but he said such a request was an insult to any writer.

Despite his material, the 52-year-old has never considered himself a political author and does not pass comment on current affairs. His aim was always to give a voice who did not have one in his country - to small-time criminals, migrant workers, prostitutes, people on the edge of society.

His work was never popular with the authorities. "For people in the West it’s the most normal thing in the world to write about everything freely," he once said. "In China, you have to fight for that. You have to try to push open a closed door inch by inch. I will keep fighting to be able to publish here in China and when that does not work out then I will work more. If only one person reads my books, I will have influenced at least one person."

China makes his soul cry

Liao Yiwu does not have a wide audience in China - the censor makes sure of that. Moreover, his topics are a turn-off for some readers. The former prisoner/vagabond/author/musician likes to dwell on filth and show China's ugly, uncomfortable sides. A country in transition does not like to be reminded of the dark sides of life, let alone of history.

But Liao Yiwu loves China, which he says makes his soul cry, quoting another famous poet, Ai Qing, the father of dissident artist Ai Weiwei.

"For me, freedom means to be free in my heart," he once said. "Sometimes it all gets to me and I think to myself I would like to be someone else. But Chinese blood flows through my veins. It would be terrible for me to live in exile. That would be worse than not being allowed to leave the country. I want to stay in China. I can write in my mother tongue here and I have so many people around who give me warmth."

Now Liao Yiwu has left China and it is very unclear when he will be able to return, although he certainly wants to one day.

Author: Ruth Kirchner / act
Editor: Ziphora Robina