China Candid and the 'official' version
TweetIf you're interested to understand life in China, one of the best books you can read is China Candid by Sang Ye.
It's a series of short transcripts of interviews with average people in China from all walks of life - a disabled student, an Olympic athlete, a businessman, a foster family to name a few. Perhaps better than any formal account, it reveals the intimate lives and thoughts of Chinese citizens throughout the 1980s and 1990s, both good and bad.
Unfortunately the book is not available in China, and I could only get my hands on a samizdat version photocopied and bound with a bulldog clip. A couple of weeks ago I bought a book called "China Lives: Bitter Sweet Portraits" in the bookshop, thinking by mistake it was China Candid. In fact, it was an officially produced copy of the concept, with subtle differences.
For example, in China Candid the interviews often revealed people's struggle with either the government, or with some of the absurdities of the 'reform and opening up' system.
Like the retired English professor whose pension couldn't support him, but lending his face to a new private English training school brought kept him alive. Or the Olympic athlete who spoke of the strict hierarchies for medallists (ie. Gold gets you first class seats and perks, whereas Silver is considered a failure and you get economy class flights home). Or the prostitute, talking about her life in Shenzhen and dreams to return to the countryside.
One of the most striking examples was a businessman who contracted to maintain the trees and shrubs on the highways. Throughout his long interview he talked about how honesty, good business sense and integrity ensured his success, and only in the last sentence did he reveal that his father was actually the government official in charge of awarding contracts.
The official Foreign Language Press version of the book has different interviews, but as you'd expect, there's a noticeable lack of negatives. Everyone is happy, everyone is working hard and full of praise for the policies of the government. The toilet cleaner enjoys his job, the Taoist priest has 'religious freedom', the migrant worker is learning skills and sowing seeds for her future.
It's a huge contrast to the original book, where both uplifting and sad stories sit side by side in quite a natural way and a range of emotions, desires, opinions and aspirations are felt.
So I guess that this is what censorship sometimes looks like - perhaps we imagine secret documents, blocked websites, clandestine detentions, but in fact censorship is often this subtle distorting of the truth, or an omission of it.