{"id":1194,"date":"2016-05-16T11:10:34","date_gmt":"2016-05-16T01:10:34","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/callum-smith.com\/chinaheritage\/?page_id=1194"},"modified":"2025-09-22T05:15:33","modified_gmt":"2025-09-21T19:15:33","slug":"in-chinese","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/chinaheritage.net\/academicians-and-archives\/geremie-r-barme\/in-chinese\/","title":{"rendered":"In Chinese"},"content":{"rendered":"

This section of my\u00a0curriculum vit\u00e6<\/i> lists Chinese-language essays, reviews and books\u00a0published under the name \u767d\u6770\u660e. Highlighted works can be downloaded in PDF format. See also ‘He’s Still Alive’ \u4ed6\u9084\u6d3b\u8457, here<\/a>.<\/p>\n

***<\/p>\n

My Life in Chinese<\/strong><\/h3>\n

Most of the essays in the two collections published by Po Wen Books in 1981 and 1984 (see below) first appeared in the arts pages of Ta Kung Pao<\/i>,\u00a0edited by Pan Jijiong \u6f58\u969b\u5770, from the late 1970s.<\/p>\n

The PDF versions of the two books available for downloading here are marked with annotations and corrections made by me in 1986 in preparation for a single-volume selection to be\u00a0published on Mainland China. That selection was undertaken at the suggestion of the publisher and editor Fan Yong \u8303\u7528. In the event, Lao Fan’s\u00a0plan was frustrated by the\u00a0censors in Beijing. This was presumably because from that year I had a regular column in\u00a0The Nineties Monthly<\/em>, a prominent\u00a0Hong Kong magazine\u00a0edited by Lee Yee (The Nineties<\/em>\u00a0had been branded ‘a reactionary publication’ \u53cd\u52d5\u6e2f\u520a in 1981 after it reported instances of high-level Party corruption involving Liao Chengzhi \u5ed6\u627f\u5fd7, the Communist godfather of the Overseas Chinese and patron of the Party establishment Left in Hong Kong).<\/p>\n

Or, was it because of something in\u00a0the file that had been built up on me since my student days in the mid 1970s when my increasingly ‘bad attitude’ saw me becalmed in Shenyang, unable to transfer to another\u00a0university? Perhaps it was because of my lengthy public critique of the 1983 ‘Anti-Spiritual Pollution Campaign’ (see my\u00a0essay\u00a0Culture Clubbed<\/a>), or as a result of the time I was detained by members of Unit\u00a08341, the Central\u00a0Security Bureau,\u00a0as I wandered around the Party compound of Zhongnanhai as a tourist? Anyway, by 1986, I’d been repeatedly told, sotto voce<\/em>\u00a0and only sometimes jokingly, that I was regarded as being a ‘cultural spy’ \u6587\u5316\u7279\u52d9. Oh, and then there was that newly edited book:\u00a0Seeds of Fire: Chinese Voices of\u00a0Conscience<\/em>, published in Hong Kong. All of this was years before 1989 or my work on the 1995 film\u00a0The\u00a0Gate of Heavenly Peace<\/em><\/a>.<\/p>\n

Who’s to say what led\u00a0to the ban? All I knew \u2014 and I had known it for years \u2014 was that the People’s Democratic Dictatorship observed inimical behaviour\u00a0\u6575\u60c5 tirelessly and amassed (both true and false) data obsessively. Like Xu Zhiyuan \u8a31\u77e5\u9060<\/a> some thirty years later, I knew that the truth of the matter was locked\u00a0in the ‘black box’ of Chinese censorship (see Xu’s Elephants & Anacondas<\/a>, published by China Heritage<\/em>). You will\u00a0hardly be surprised to learn then that, for me at least, 1986 was not the year of unfettered Bourgeois Liberalisation and freedom that is so fondly recalled by others.<\/p>\n

***<\/p>\n

The essays that appeared in\u00a0The Nineties\u00a0<\/em>mostly focussed on cultural developments in non-official\u00a0Mainland literature, art, music, film. They combined cultural reporting with the kind of\u00a0‘casual essay’ informality that I had tried to develop when writing for\u00a0Ta Kung Pao<\/em>. Since\u00a0The Nineties\u00a0<\/em>was by then an entirely independent magazine, and one with a curious, global readership, it provided an outlet for the kind of non-conformist writing that I found appealing.<\/p>\n

***<\/p>\n

It\u00a0is with fond regard that\u00a0I\u00a0acknowledge here the mentors who encouraged and guided my fifteen-year life as a Chinese writer: Lee Yee \u674e\u6021 of The Seventies<\/em> (later\u00a0The Nineties<\/em>), Yang Hsien-yi \u694a\u61b2\u76ca and Gladys Yang at Foreign Languages Press, Pan Jijiong \u6f58\u969b\u5770 of Ta Kung Pao<\/em>, Yeung Lai-kwan \u694a\u8389\u541b (\u97cb\u59ae) of\u00a0New Evening News<\/em>\u00a0\u65b0\u665a\u5831, Fan Yong \u8303\u7528 of Sanlian Books in Beijing and Hsiao Tzu \u856d\u6ecb of Hong Kong Joint Publishing, Ng Sing-fun \u5433\u627f\u6b61 of Rediffusion TV \u9e97\u7684\u96fb\u8996, Lo Fu \u7f85\u5b5a of New Evening News<\/em>, Fong Su \u65b9\u8607 of The Nineties<\/em>, Fang Cheng \u65b9\u6210 and Jiang Deming \u59dc\u5fb7\u660e of People’s Daily<\/em>, the translator Dong Leshan \u8463\u6a02\u5c71, the Feng Zikai and Li Shutong scholar Chen Xing \u9673\u661f and Huang Mengfu \u9ec3\u5b5f\u752b (\u9ec3\u70b3\u708e), my publisher at Po Wen Book Company \u6ce2\u6587\u66f8\u5c40 in Wanchai. I’m also grateful for the reassuring enthusiasm of Linda Jaivin, my wife from 1986 to 1992, and Beijing readers like the playwright Wu Zuguang \u5433\u7956\u5149, the calligrapher Huang Miaozi \u9ec3\u82d7\u5b50 and the artist \u9ec3\u6c38\u7389, as well as\u00a0my Guangzhou friends: the film-maker Zhang Zeming \u5f35\u6fa4\u9cf4 and his brother Zhang Zebo \u5f35\u6fa4\u6ce2, the doctor. I was also delighted\u00a0that\u00a0Liu Xiaobo \u5289\u66c9\u6ce2<\/a>, whom I met in late 1986, also got a laugh from my essays. In Taiwan, Bo Yang \u67cf\u694a, whose own essays were an early inspiration, was constantly encouraging, as was Chin Heng-wei \u91d1\u6046\u7152 of Con-temporary<\/em> \u7576\u4ee3\u96dc\u8a8c.<\/p>\n

During the years\u00a01975-1977, my\u00a0teachers at Fudan University in Shanghai (Qin Xiang \u79e6\u6e58<\/a> and Wu Huanzhang \u5433\u6b61\u7ae0<\/a>\u00a0\u2014 formerly\u00a0a member\u00a0of the Shi Yige \u77f3\u4e00\u6b4c<\/a>\u00a0Lu Xun writing group \u2014 in particular) and Liaoning University in Shenyang (Wang Xiangfeng \u738b\u5411\u5cf0<\/a>) inducted me into the world of ‘Party Eight-Legged Essays’ \u9ee8\u516b\u80a1. My efforts took the form of jejune ‘literary denunciations’ \u6279\u5224\u6587\u7ae0 of banned traditional operas and stilted collective ‘letters of gratitude’ \u611f\u8b1d\u4fe1, composed and often literally writ large at the factories and people’s communes where the clumsy efforts of foreign students like me were imposed on kindhearted labouring people.<\/p>\n

More important was the crucial impact on my Chinese life of\u00a0my\u00a0undergraduate mentors, those who introduced me to and guided my\u00a0study of the Chinese world, its\u00a0languages, literature and cultural history: Pierre Ryckmans (Simon Leys)<\/a>, Liu Ts’un-yan \u67f3\u5b58\u4ec1<\/a>, Vieta\u00a0Dyer (Svetlana Rimsky-Korsakoff<\/a>), Anita Chang \u5f35\u5178\u59ca<\/a>\u00a0(a noted writer who helped me concoct a\u00a0Chinese name), (then) Sister Julia Ching \u79e6\u5bb6\u61ff<\/a>, ‘The Silent Traveller’ Chiang Yee \u8523\u5f5d<\/a> and others. They were the\u00a0first to\u00a0reveal the palimpsest layers, and\u00a0clashing\u00a0registers, of Chinese: literary, classical, modern-Republican, as well as that of Hong Kong journalism, Taiwan officialdom along with\u00a0the judgemental and measured hysteria of Cultural Revolution New China Newspeak.<\/p>\n

I am grateful to Adam Ni and Callum Smith for scanning this material.<\/p>\n

Geremie R. Barm\u00e9 \u767d\u6770\u660e<\/p>\n

\n

\u300a\u5927\u516c\u5831\u300b\uff0c1978\u5e74\u81f31983\u5e74<\/strong><\/h3>\n

\u5728\u300a\u5927\u516c\u5831\u300b\u6587\u85dd\u526f\u520a\u300a\u5927\u516c\u5712\u300b\u767c\u8868\u7684\u6587\u5b57\uff08\u5305\u62ec\u6563\u6587\u3001\u96dc\u6587\u4ee5\u53ca\u4e00\u822c\u6027\u5831\u5c0e\uff09\u5747\u7d50\u96c6\u6210\u66f8\uff0c\u56e0\u6b64\uff0c\u8af8\u7bc7\u6587\u7ae0\u7bc7\u540d\u53ca\u767c\u8868\u65e5\u671f\u7b49\u4e0d\u4e00\u4e00\u5217\u8209\u3002\u8acb\u53c3\u770b\u300a\u897f\u6d0b\u93e1\u4e0b\u300b\u548c\u300a\u81ea\u884c\u8eca\u6587\u96c6\u300b\uff1a<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

\u300a\u897f\u6d0b\u93e1\u4e0b<\/a>\u300b\uff0c\u9999\u6e2f\uff1a\u6ce2\u6587\u66f8\u5c40\uff0c1981\u5e74<\/h3>\n

\u300a\u81ea\u884c\u8eca\u6587\u96c6<\/a>\u300b\uff0c\u9999\u6e2f\uff1a\u6ce2\u6587\u66f8\u5c40\uff0c1984\u5e74<\/h3>\n

\u00a0***<\/p>\n

\u300a\u4e03\u5341\u5e74\u4ee3\u6708\u520a\u300b\uff0c<\/strong>1979\u5e74<\/strong><\/h3>\n

\u4e01\u73b2\u6f2b\u8a71\u4e8c\u5341\u5e74\u906d\u969b<\/a>\uff0c\u300a\u4e03\u5341\u5e74\u4ee3\u6708\u520a\u300b\uff0c1979\u5e748\u6708\uff0c\u53c3\u898b\u300a\u897f\u6d0b\u93e1\u4e0b\u300b\u3002<\/p>\n

***<\/p>\n

\u300a\u4e5d\u5341\u5e74\u4ee3\u6708\u520a\u300b, 1986\u5e74\u81f31991\u5e74<\/strong><\/h3>\n

1986\u5e74<\/h4>\n