On Nov. 24, exactly two years after a fire in an apartment building in Xinjiang killed 10 people and sparked a wave of historic protests across China, two dozen people gathered in a small bookshop in the Netherlands to reflect on the event.
“When anger becomes infectious, / when words are seen to be dangerous, / leave me blank, please!” Hongwei Bao, an associate professor at the University of Nottingham, read to the small, predominantly Asian audience.
Bao’s poem, White Paper, was inspired by the protests that erupted in China in late 2022, as anger spread about the harsh “zero COVID” measures that were seen as leading to the fire’s death toll and the suffering that people in China had endured on and off for three years during the pandemic. It was the biggest mass uprising against the government in decades.
Photo: Reuters
Bao was in the Netherlands to launch his new poetry collection, The Passion of the Rabbit God. The book’s title poem is a contemporary retelling of story of Tuer Shen, a mythical Chinese rabbit god who has become a symbol for the LGBT community.
“I can’t imagine that my book would be sold in China,” says Bao, who focuses on Chinese queer cultural studies. “Partly because it is written in English, partly because it touches on political and social issues such as queer rights and feminism … It is no longer possible to sell those books or publish those books in China.”
That Bao was able to present his work to a largely Chinese audience is thanks to Nowhere Netherlands, the latest branch of the Nowhere chain of Chinese-language bookstores that has set up shop in Chiang Mai and Taipei. Other independent bookshops have also been forced to close in China and Hong Kong, and are reappearing everywhere from Japan to the east coast of the US.
Photo: AP
Since China’s borders reopened at the start of last year, there has been a flood of people leaving the country, especially from the middle classes who had previously enjoyed a comfortable life in the country. While people have never had free rein to talk about certain topics, such as human rights and politics, for years the rising standard of living and limited space afforded to independent venues to hold small gatherings made living in a Communist party-controlled country worthwhile, or at least tolerable.
But now, for many, the calculation has changed.
China’s economic growth is slowing, with this year’s GDP expansion rate expected to barely reach the government’s target of 5 percent. And China’s president, Xi Jinping (習近平), has placed a renewed focus on national security at the expense of all manner of free expression. That has increased the pressure on independent outfits such as bookstores, cinemas and discussion groups.
Photo: EPA-EFE
Hosting even private gatherings of people who are known by the authorities to be interested in discussing topics such as feminism and human rights has become difficult. As well as selling thought-provoking titles, independent bookshops used to be places that held uncensored film screenings and talks by academics. But such activities are becoming harder to organize.
One victim of China’s crackdown on civil society was Jifeng Bookstore, a popular independent bookstore in Shanghai that was forced to close in January 2018 after the landlord refused to renew its lease. Yu Miao, Jifeng’s manager, thought it was the end of a two-decade run of serving curious and intellectual-minded customers in China’s most cosmopolitan city.
“At that time, my thought was that the bookstore was shut down, and I had done my best. I didn’t have any regrets,” says Yu, the bespectacled former businessman who bought Jifeng from its original owner in 2012.
Yu had long been familiar with the cat-and-mouse game of evading the authorities. But in 2017, as he explored trying to find an alternative venue for Jifeng, he realized that the shop was bugged. The local police told Yu they had recordings of the bookshop’s activities, and they seemed to know the content of even small meetings.
So the Jifeng team would gather at a nearby bookstore and cafe, for privacy. Its name was 1984.
The 1984 bookshop provided space for “a more relaxed conversation, and there was a cat there, which we really liked,” Yu recalls.
Today, however, Yu feels a world away from China’s all-hearing big brother. In September, more than 7,000 miles away from its original location, Jifeng reopened as JF Books in the Dupont Circle neighborhood of Washington DC. Already, Yu has received customers from New York, North Carolina, and Pennsylvania, including people who used to visit the shop in Shanghai.
JF Books is Washington DC’s only Chinese-language bookstore. Yu is hoping to recreate some of the cosmopolitan atmosphere that made the Shanghai branch unique. About 30 percent of his stock is English books, and the rest are Chinese-language volumes on politics, social sciences and philosophy, including titles by African and South American writers.
“In China, we used to say we were an independent bookstore, because we were independent from the power of the government … it showed a sense of freedom,” says Yu, who relocated to the US with his family in 2019. “But in the US, I don’t think the term ‘independent bookstore’ is very important to us any more.
“Because here, you are already independent, right? You don’t have an authority that controls you. So I usually don’t call my shop an ‘independent bookstore.’ It’s just a bookstore.”
May 26 to June 1 When the Qing Dynasty first took control over many parts of Taiwan in 1684, it roughly continued the Kingdom of Tungning’s administrative borders (see below), setting up one prefecture and three counties. The actual area of control covered today’s Chiayi, Tainan and Kaohsiung. The administrative center was in Taiwan Prefecture, in today’s Tainan. But as Han settlement expanded and due to rebellions and other international incidents, the administrative units became more complex. By the time Taiwan became a province of the Qing in 1887, there were three prefectures, eleven counties, three subprefectures and one directly-administered prefecture, with
It’s an enormous dome of colorful glass, something between the Sistine Chapel and a Marc Chagall fresco. And yet, it’s just a subway station. Formosa Boulevard is the heart of Kaohsiung’s mass transit system. In metro terms, it’s modest: the only transfer station in a network with just two lines. But it’s a landmark nonetheless: a civic space that serves as much more than a point of transit. On a hot Sunday, the corridors and vast halls are filled with a market selling everything from second-hand clothes to toys and house decorations. It’s just one of the many events the station hosts,
Two moves show Taichung Mayor Lu Shiow-yen (盧秀燕) is gunning for Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) party chair and the 2028 presidential election. Technically, these are not yet “officially” official, but by the rules of Taiwan politics, she is now on the dance floor. Earlier this month Lu confirmed in an interview in Japan’s Nikkei that she was considering running for KMT chair. This is not new news, but according to reports from her camp she previously was still considering the case for and against running. By choosing a respected, international news outlet, she declared it to the world. While the outside world
Through art and storytelling, La Benida Hui empowers children to become environmental heroes, using everything from SpongeBob to microorganisms to reimagine their relationship with nature. “I tell the students that they have superpowers. It needs to be emphasized that their choices can make a difference,” says Hui, an environmental artist and education specialist. For her second year as Badou Elementary’s artist in residence, Hui leads creative lessons on environmental protection, where students reflect on their relationship with nature and transform beach waste into artworks. Standing in lush green hills overlooking the ocean with land extending into the intertidal zone, the school in Keelung
RSS