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An exile gives hope to Chinese writers

By Cao Chang-Ching

Saturday, Oct 14, 2000, Page 9

The Swedish Academy has bestowed the first Nobel Prize in literature of the new century on the exiled Chinese novelist and playwright Gao Xingjian (高行健). The choice has surprised almost everybody; Gao is little known either in the West or among Chinese, either in China itself or overseas. However, as a leading modernist playwright and short story writer, he was highly esteemed in China's literary circles in the 1980s. Almost all his plays and stories departed from the traditional descriptive Chinese prose forms. Instead Gao adopted a contemporary Western writing style that could be seen as closely resembling the so-called stream of consciousness, expressing emotions and thoughts that are more familiar in existentialist writings.

After the death of Mao Zedong (毛澤東), existentialism, particularly in its formulation by the French author Jean-Paul Sartre swept through China, eulogized by intellectuals and college students. Many of those so impressed thought existentialist themes -- the absurdity and meaninglessness of human life -- could be used to combat communism.

Having studied French literature in Beijing's Foreign Language Institute before the Cultural Revolution, Gao was one of the first Chinese to become acquainted with Western modernism. His plays represent a lofty ambition to start a trend in China to break away from the restrains of both traditional Chinese prose and the Communist literary mentality. He used Western techniques to manifested the absurdity of China's reality in his plays such as Absolute Signal (絕對信號) and Bus Stop(車站). While these plays seemed to Chinese audiences and readers like a breath of fresh literary air, they fell foul of the "anti-spiritual pollution movement" in the mid-1980s and were banned. Gao left China for Paris in 1987, to permanently settle there in the wake of the Tiananmen Square massacre in 1989. In Paris he continued to write in Chinese, while make a living by painting.

After Tiananmen he wrote the play Fugitives (逃亡), in which the slaughter in the square is the setting of the play. Three protagonists, two men and one woman, try to escape from the massacre. Gao describes there plight as trying "to escape not only from political oppression, but also from the wretchedness of other people; and (what was) ultimately inescapable was themselves." His 1996 essay Why Do I Write echoed this theme.

heretic

In Fugitives, he also expressed through the play's protagonists his contempt for the hollow concepts of "people," "country" and "collective will," all concepts that flooded Chinese literature not only during the communist era but throughout the 20th century. The play has one central theme, that trying to escape is human destiny. Obviously, this theme, as the themes in many of his plays and other writings, is heretical to China's authorities. But Gao's work is not trammeled by its Chinese background.

The background and characters of Fugitives could be easily replaced by another setting or group of protagonists. The aspirations of the characters in the play are to be met in every society, and it is for this reason that Gao's work can be said to be "an oeuvre of universal validity," as the Swedish Academy acknowledged.

Even though Fugitives was seen as a political play by the Chinese authorities, condemned in the official media and banned in China, Gao declared he had no intention to use literature to express political ideals.

"I write simply because that, as a human being, not merely as a Chinese, I want to prove my existence," he wrote.

But he also believes that "faced with political and social oppression, one must resist and rebel." Therefore, he publicly declared after the 1989 Tiananmen massacre that he "would not go back to the so-called motherland as long as it remains under a totalitarian regime."

Gao's most weighty work so far is Soul Mountain, (靈山) which was first published here in Taiwan. The book is based on a 10-month trip Gao took in early 1980s. In the story, "I," the leading character, travels along the Yangtze river to escape from the net of the authorities and encounters a string of mysterious women. Throughout the trip, he roams and rambles from river's source to its mouth in search of the meaning of life.

"I have put all the memories of my youth, my thoughts and my doubts about Chinese culture into that book," Gao has said. However, this modern Western-style work of art failed to attract any attention at all in Taiwan where traditionalism continues to dominate.

Another work of his, One Man's Bible (一個人的聖經) which was also initially published in Taiwan, sold only 200 copies in 10 years, once he told friends. Certainly, his works, with virtually no plots and story lines and full of absurd daydreaming and consciousness are very hard for the general reading public to understand.

Also, though refreshing in style and rich in the use of the Chinese language, some of his works lack the originality that masterpieces should display; sometimes they can seem too derivative of Western literary works and forms.

Nevertheless, his daring inspires reflection about being not only a Chinese but a human being, and his robust rejection of writing to support an ideology, be it nationality, motherland or the masses, but rather writing in search for satisfaction of the needs of one's soul may truly be considered refreshing for Chinese.

Following is a list of winners of the Nobel Prize in literature since 1975. The prize was first awarded in 1901.

2000 Gao Xingjian (China)

1999 Guenter Grass (Germany)

1998 Jose Saramago (Portugal)

1997 Dario Fo (Italy)

1996 Wislawa Szymborska (Poland)

1995 Seamus Heaney (Ireland)

1994 Kenzaburo Oe (Japan)

1993 Toni Morrison (US)

1992 Derek Walcott (Trinidad)

1991 Nadine Gordimer (South Africa)

1990 Octavio Paz (Mexico)

1989 Camilo Jose Cela (Spain)

1988 Naguib Mahfouz (Egypt)

1987 Joseph Brodsky (US)

1986 Wole Soyinka (Nigeria)

1985 Claude Simon (France)

1984 Jaroslav Seifert (Czechoslovakia)

1983 William Golding (Britain)

1982 Gabriel Garcia Marquez (Colombia)

1981 Elias Canetti (Britain)

1980 Czeslaw Milosz (United States)

1979 Odysseus Elytis (Greece)

1978 Isaac Bashevis Singer (US)

1977 Vicente Aleixandre (Spain)

1976 Saul Bellow (US)

1975 Eugenio Montale (Italy)

Cao Chang-ching (曹長青) is a writer and journalist based in New York.
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