Two Kinds of Truth: Stories and Reportage from China. Liu Binyan , Perry Link

Abstract

Two Kinds of Truth: Stories and Reportage from China, by Liu Binyan, edited by Perry Link. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2006. xiv + 304 pp. US$55.00 (hardcover), US$21.95 (paperback). The name of Liu Binyan will be very familiar to anyone who has been watching China in recent decades. His novella, People or Monsters, first published in Chinese in 1979, was an example of what became new genre of narrativized investigative reporting (baogao wenxue) that sought to expose dark side of socialism. Two Kinds of Truth is revised and expanded version of Perry Link's translation, People or Monsters? And Other Stories and Reportage from China after Mao (Indiana University Press, 1983). For readers who already have the earlier work, the revised version includes an additional two short stories, two review essays on 1990 works, and an interview with Liu Binyan in September 2004, year before his death. Liu Binyan was talented writer who had decisive impact on late 1970s and early to mid-1980s China. After falling out with the authorities, he left China in 1988 and, after his denunciation of the Beijing massacre of June, 1989, was never able to return. In exile in the US, Liu remained an assiduous follower of the Chinese contemporary scene, and, as Link points out, he retained a powerful analytical ability (p. x) which allowed him unrivalled insight into the workings of the Chinese political system. In this book Perry Link allows us to see Liu Binyan, the man and his works, from the perspective of three decades of observations on Chinese literary culture. The interview with Liu Binyan is particularly interesting and offers insights into the sorts of conditions that emboldened authors in China to publish works they knew could expose them to insecurity if not imprisonment and exile. Born in Harbin, Liu Binyan joined the Communist Party as young idealist in the 1940s but in the early 1950s he was deemed rightist for his early publications and spent decades under cloud. During the Cultural Revolution he did stint at cadre school in rural Henan. As with many intellectuals who were sent down to the countryside, he was shocked by rural poverty but impressed by the ingenuity and resilience of the Chinese peasants. By the late 1970s he was able to return to his hometown of Harbin and was struck by the cynicism and corruption he saw there. His reportage was born of this sense of disillusionment with the socialist ideals of his youth. On reading these stories and reports from more than twenty years ago, it is sobering to notice how very relevant they are to the situation today. In the twentyfirst century, Chinese newspapers routinely expose corrupt officials and reports of executions of major offenders are regular occurrence. …