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Seeds of Fire: Chinese Voices of Conscience
Presents the works of some of China's highly controversial writers and thinkers, who discuss their country, its ancient cultural roots, and contemporary struggles under totalitarianism and other forms of repression as they represent these issues through artistic works
491 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1986
42 people want to read
About the author
Geremie R. Barmé
20 books15 followersGeremie R. Barmé is an historian, cultural critic, filmmaker, translator and web-journal editor who works on Chinese cultural and intellectual history from the early modern period (1600s) to the present. He is Founding Director of the Australian Centre on China in the World in the ANU College of Asia & the Pacific, The Australian National University (ANU), Canberra, where he also edits the online e-journal China Heritage Quarterly.
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Displaying 1 of 1 review
November 29, 2021
▪️SEEDS OF FIRE: Chinese Voices of Conscience, edited by Geremie Barmé and John Minford, 1986.
Still can't believe my luck for stumbling across this one in a Little Free Library in early 2020. Must have been someone's textbook in the 80s (still in great shape!), and this stunning anthology is now a treasure on my shelf.
Collected by two Australian and NZ researchers on Chinese literature and politics, this book gathers hundreds of censored materials, dissident writings, and political cartoons and art from the 1960s-1980s in China, Hong Kong, and Taiwan. Some pieces are individually translated and reprinted here, others were translated by the editorial team for the anthology.
In the 🚫 censored material section, I read a lengthy and brutal [uncensored] excerpt from "The Butcher's Wife" by Taiwanese writer Li Ang, translated by Howard Goldblatt and Ellen Yeung from 1983, loosely based on a true story of a woman who kills her husband after years of abuse. Some dark stuff here, and the PRC definitely didn't want "a woman scorned taking revenge" stories getting out to the patriarchal public...
One of my favorite art pieces in the book: "The Bestiary of Huang Yongyu" from the 1960s. The wry humor and subversiveness of these aphorisms (bed bugs, silverfish, spiders, germs!) were listed as one of the major "crimes" against Huang in the Cultural Revolution.
So much more here (more art, plays, poetry, short stories, essays, and oral histories) and one you continue to jump in and out of...
The human mind is mysterious. There are crazy people who do nothing but destroy works of art. But for a culture that suffocates individuality, this kind of destruction becomes a collective neurosis. A culture that prohibits people from developing 'the beauty of individuality', just regard the people who possess this beauty as a threat; a culture that forbids people to create beauty, and forces everyone to consider ugliness as an honour, must regard beautiful people as immoral; a culture that does not allow people to bloom, must be against life, must worship death. People who cannot be 'alive' themselves will try to deaden those who are.
~ "The Pursuit of Ugliness" excerpt from "The Deep Structure of Chinese Culture" by Sun Longji (Sun Lung Kee), translated by Fok Shui Che.
Still can't believe my luck for stumbling across this one in a Little Free Library in early 2020. Must have been someone's textbook in the 80s (still in great shape!), and this stunning anthology is now a treasure on my shelf.
Collected by two Australian and NZ researchers on Chinese literature and politics, this book gathers hundreds of censored materials, dissident writings, and political cartoons and art from the 1960s-1980s in China, Hong Kong, and Taiwan. Some pieces are individually translated and reprinted here, others were translated by the editorial team for the anthology.
In the 🚫 censored material section, I read a lengthy and brutal [uncensored] excerpt from "The Butcher's Wife" by Taiwanese writer Li Ang, translated by Howard Goldblatt and Ellen Yeung from 1983, loosely based on a true story of a woman who kills her husband after years of abuse. Some dark stuff here, and the PRC definitely didn't want "a woman scorned taking revenge" stories getting out to the patriarchal public...
One of my favorite art pieces in the book: "The Bestiary of Huang Yongyu" from the 1960s. The wry humor and subversiveness of these aphorisms (bed bugs, silverfish, spiders, germs!) were listed as one of the major "crimes" against Huang in the Cultural Revolution.
So much more here (more art, plays, poetry, short stories, essays, and oral histories) and one you continue to jump in and out of...
The human mind is mysterious. There are crazy people who do nothing but destroy works of art. But for a culture that suffocates individuality, this kind of destruction becomes a collective neurosis. A culture that prohibits people from developing 'the beauty of individuality', just regard the people who possess this beauty as a threat; a culture that forbids people to create beauty, and forces everyone to consider ugliness as an honour, must regard beautiful people as immoral; a culture that does not allow people to bloom, must be against life, must worship death. People who cannot be 'alive' themselves will try to deaden those who are.
~ "The Pursuit of Ugliness" excerpt from "The Deep Structure of Chinese Culture" by Sun Longji (Sun Lung Kee), translated by Fok Shui Che.
Displaying 1 of 1 review