Millions of pints of blood are pumped through underground pipelines from a big developing country to wealthy consumers in the United States and elsewhere. The blood trade has produced the most spectacular boom in human history. In just five years, the formerly dirt-poor state at the heart of the haemo-business has become the richest nation on earth.
Such is the scenario of the novel that Yan Lianke — one of China’s greatest living authors and fiercest satirists — was planning to write until the censors intervened.
Based on a three-year study of the blood-selling scandal in his native Henan province, The Dream of Ding Village was to be the defining work of his career; not just an elegantly crafted piece of literature but a devastating critique of China’s runaway development.
But it has turned out to be one of the most traumatic experiences of his artistic life. For his attempt to tackle a harrowing man-made disaster, Yan received a ban from the censors, became embroiled in a legal dispute with his publisher, and — worst of all — suffers a lingering sense of shame that he compromised too many principles.
In a rare insight, the author told the Guardian how he attempted forestall a ban by doing the censors’ work for them. Out went the novel’s most ambitious features: the blood pipeline, the global trade angle and direct criticism of national politics. Instead he narrowed the focus to a single village, where blood is bought and sold with horrific consequences. ”This is not the book I originally wanted to write,” says Yan, who has won China’s top two literary awards. ”I censored myself very rigorously. I didn’t mention senior leaders. I reduced the scale. I thought my self-censorship was perfect.”
But the authorities still issued a ”three nos” order: no distribution, no sales and no promotion. Yan found out it was banned when he tried to sue his publisher, the Shanghai Literary Arts Publishing Group, for failing to pay a promised advance on his royalties and a donation to the village where the book was researched.
Yan has been banned before. In 1994, his first novel, Xia Riluo, outraged the censors with its tale of two military heroes who gradually debase themselves. The plot was particularly bold considering that Yan, a Communist party member, was employed at the time by the People’s Liberation Army to write morale-boosting stories for the troops.
In 2004, he was asked to leave the army after publishing (Enjoyment), which satirised the bizarre wealth-creation schemes of many local governments. In the award-winning novel, county officials force a village of disabled people to set up a travelling freak-show to raise money for the planned purchase of Lenin’s corpse from Russia. In the ultimate marriage of capitalism and communism, they hope Lenin’s dead body will attract tourists.
Last year, Yan overstepped the censor’s invisible line with Serve the People, a steamy and subversive parody of the Mao Zedong cult during the Cultural Revolution. It tells the story of a lusty general’s wife so turned on by counter-revolutionary heresies that she and her lover smash Mao icons, rip up the Little Red Book and urinate on Mao’s epigrams to reach new heights of passion.
”This novella slanders Mao Zedong, the army, and is overflowing with sex,” said a banning order that prompted Yan to scale back his subsequent book, The Dream of Ding Village.
Now the author fears he sacrificed too much. ”My greatest worry is that self-censorship has drained my passion and dulled my sharpness,” he says.
However, he sees some improvements in the censorship climate. In 1994, when his first novel was banned, he was forced to write self-criticisms for four months.
Now, there are no personal repercussions and his work is published overseas. The first English translations of his novels are expected next year.
”My work has caused more disputes than those of any other author in China. But the attacks on me have become fewer. I think this shows that in many respects, society is improving, reforming, developing”.
Yan is never going to be a cheerleader for China’s development. It would go against the grain of a self-taught peasant whose novels are rooted in the soil.
He feels different from other mainland writers. ”Contemporary Chinese literature is gripped by a desire for popularity. It is like a soft-bone disease,” he says. ”But I come from the bottom of society. All my relatives live in Henan, one of the poorest areas of China. When I think of people’s situation there, it is impossible not to feel angry and emotional. Anger and passion are the soul of my work.”
The Dream of Ding Village is about a community in Henan where almost everyone is infected with HIV/Aids because of unregulated blood-selling in the 1990s. Far more than any of his previous novels, it is rooted in reality, yet Yan says it is no less surreal.
”What I saw was more absurd than what I could imagine,” he says. ”No novel has ever made me feel sadder. This may not be the best piece of literature I have written, but it is the one that brought me the most pain. Even now, months after I finished, I am drained. I cannot bring myself to start another book. The situation in the village was so desperate.”
Yan became interested in the subject when he was asked to sponsor two Aids orphans in 1995. One died before he paid the first instalment, the other soon after.
For research, Yan went undercover as the assistant of a Beijing anthropologist to study one of the worst-hit but least-known villages. The locals told him that at the height of the blood-selling frenzy, they ran out of utensils and so used soy sauce bottles, and used plastic bags to store the blood.
With the money, they bought houses and electrical appliances, and paid for marriages. Some peasants sold so often that they became dizzy and had to be turned upside down to get the blood into the tubes. Years later, one by one, they started dying of HIV/Aids.
There is no grimmer illustration of how China’s short-term rush to get rich has drained natural resources and contaminated human lives. ”I think the Aids epidemic in Henan is a warning from God that we are developing too quickly. We just haven’t realised it yet,” Yan says. ”China is always chasing utopias. That was the mistake we made during the Great Leap Forward. And today, again, China seems to be in too much of a hurry to realise its dreams.”
Banned or not banned?
Xia Riluo (1994)
Two decorated army officers dream of promotion so that they can move their families out of the countryside, but their plans are ruined when a young army cook under their charge commits suicide. The two destroy their friendship and their reputations in trying to pin the blame on each other. Yan said his aim was to bring heroes down to the level of humans. The book was banned and he was forced to write self-criticisms for four months.
Enjoyment (2004)
A county official dreams up a wealth-creation scheme that he hopes will boost his career. He forces a village full of disabled people to set up a travelling freak-show. Audiences pay to race against the fastest one-legged runner on earth and to let off fireworks next to the ear of a deaf man. With the money, he plans to buy Lenin’s embalmed body from Russia so that he can market the village as a centre for communist tourists.
Serve the People (2005)
At the height of the Cultural Revolution, the bored wife of a military commander takes advantage of her husband’s absence to seduce a young peasant soldier. As a signal that her lover’s services are desired in the bedroom, she leaves the slogan ”Serve the People” on the kitchen table. Whenever the passion flags, they smash her husband’s beloved Mao icons and rip up the Little Red Book. The propaganda department was not impressed.
The Dream of Ding Village (2006)
A Henan village is desperate to keep up with China’s economic boom. With no other resources, officials decide to milk people’s veins and soon everyone is buying or selling blood. Locals are so desperate to buy televisions and radios that they bleed themselves dizzy. A few years later, however, when they start dying of HIV/Aids, only the coffin sellers benefit from the market economy. The book has been banned. – Guardian Unlimited Â