For a Song and a Hundred Songs: A Poet's Journey Through a Chinese Prison

by Liao Yiwu, Wenguang Huang (Translator)

In June 1989, news of the Tiananmen Square protests and its bloody resolution reverberated throughout the world. A young poet named Liao Yiwu, who had until then led an apolitical bohemian existence, found his voice in that moment. Like the solitary man who stood firmly in front of a line of tanks, Liao proclaimed his outrage—and his words would be his weapon.

For a Song and a Hundred Songs captures the four brutal years Liao spent in jail for writing the incendiary poem “Massacre.” Through the power and beauty of his prose, he reveals the bleak reality of crowded Chinese prisons—the harassment from guards and fellow prisoners, the torture, the conflicts among human beings in close confinement, and the boredom of everyday life. But even in his darkest hours, Liao manages to unearth the fundamental humanity in his cell mates: he writes of how they listen with rapt attention to each other’s stories of criminal endeavors gone wrong and of how one night, ravenous with hunger, they dream up an “imaginary feast,” with each inmate trying to one-up the next by describing a more elaborate dish.

In this important book, Liao presents a stark and devastating portrait of a nation in flux, exposing a side of China that outsiders rarely get to see. In the wake of 2011’s Arab Spring, the world has witnessed for a second time China’s crackdown on those citizens who would speak their mind, like artist Ai Weiwei and legal activist Chen Guangcheng. Liao stands squarely among them and gives voice to not only his own story, but to the stories of those individuals who can no longer speak for themselves. For a Song and a Hundred Songs bears witness to history and will forever change the way you view the rising superpower of China.

Genres: China, Nonfiction, Memoir, History, Poetry, Biography, Biography Memoir

432 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 2011

About the author

Liao Yiwu is a writer, musician, and poet from Sichuan, China. He is a critic of the Chinese regime, for which he has been imprisoned, and the majority of his writings are banned in China. Liao is the author of The Corpse Walker and God Is Red. He has received numerous awards for his work, including the prestigious 2012 Peace Prize awarded by the German Book Trade and the Geschwister-Scholl-Preis in 2011 for the publication of his memoir in Germany.

Reviews

[Sheri Fresonke Harper · Rating 4 out of 5]

Intense personal memoir about a Chinese poet who wrote a personal response to the Tiananman Square tragedy and then a second poem and worked with a number of poets to create a film about it. They all ended up in jail. As the primary writer of the poems and film, Yiwu spent more time inside, first in detention and held for longer than allowed, then in the detention center awaiting his trial which took 2 years. He then was sentenced for 2 more years at a labor camp.

What was especially fascinating about this memoir was how it changed a selfish young man whom I didn't much care for into a mellow, wise poet with a lot to offer in terms of his experience.

This book, I think, serves as warning to Chinese to stay out of the legal system and behave, but also as a model that showcases a legal system vastly in need of respect for human rights and modernization.

[Mircalla · Rating 5 out of 5]

Massacro della democrazia

Liao Yiwu non era che un poeta, non si interessava di politica, non era neanche direttamente tra quelli che promuovevano i presidi in piazza Tiananmen in quel giugno 1989, l'anno in cui l'Esercito di Liberazione marciò sugli studenti inermi che chiedevano a gran voce la democrazia in un paese il cui leader politico, all'epoca dei fatti, aveva più di settant'anni e che aveva preso il potere ammazzando e imprigionando tutti i concorrenti dopo la morte di Mao...l'unica colpa di Liao Yiwu è stata scrivere un poemetto dal titolo Massacro in cui parlava di quello che era accaduto in piazza quel giorno...in Cina la poesia è molto amata e spesso i poeti sono popolari tra la gente per la loro capacità di mettere in versi i fatti del quotidiano, Liao Yiwu non faceva eccezione: era un poeta che ha raccontato qualcosa che lo Stato in Cina non ammette neanche adesso sia accaduto...questo ardire gli è costato quattro anni di prigione, campi di lavoro, centri di detenzione e la confisca degli scritti, gli è costato la moglie, la figlia e la famiglia, che non hanno mai capito come mai, quando finalmente è stato liberato, non l'ha piantata là e si è messo invece a rivangare il passato cercando di far pubblicare le sue opere, nessuno ha capito perchè non si sia buttato a inseguire l'arricchimento come prescritto da Deng e come hanno fatto i suoi complici del tempo in cui avevano persino sognato di far girare un video in cui lui declamava la sua poesia...Salman Rushdie lo ha aiutato a fuggire dalla Cina, lui lo ha capito, ha capito cosa vuol dire essere perseguiti per aver detto quello che si pensa, ha capito che dopo una vita spesa a soffrire per aver seguito un impulso artistico non si può dimenticare tutto in nome del quieto vivere...lo ha capito e leggendo questo libro diventa immediatamente comprensibile a chiunque abbia un minimo di cervello che non si può fingere che vada tutto bene se i giovani di un'intera generazione sono stati falciati dai carri armati solo per aver chiesto la democrazia, per non aver accettato in cambio della loro libertà la possibilità di avere l'ultimo telefonino di moda, no proprio non si può...

[Stephen Durrant · Rating 4 out of 5]

Liao Yiwu was incarcerated for roughly four years for writing poetry sympathetic of the Tiananmen students. The very fact that he survived the hell described in this book is a credit to his physical toughness and willpower. While it is not unusual for prison administrators to appropriate prisoners, often the most violent among them, as a means of controlling and manipulating other prisoners, sometimes as stand-ins for guards and sometimes working in tandem with guards, the particulars of this process in the Chinese detention system, described in Liao's book, are horrifying. Physical torture, some of it disgustingly "original," is the order of the day, and no one escapes it. Moreover, the very ideology undergirding the system emphasizes confessing one's own crimes and reporting the crimes of others, all in the name of reeducation, so that "making people better" becomes the spurious justification for a cycle of violence that can only make everyone worse. Much of this book is not for the queasy, and there were times I felt I really couldn't go on, but I am glad I persevered and eventually concluded that Liao's message is too important for us to turn away. For those of us concerned about mass imprisonment of the Uyghurs that is going on just now and fearful that the prison system in China might not be much better today than it was thirty years ago, this book is a sobering read and a call to action.

[Lisa · Rating 3 out of 5]

For a Song and a Hundred SongsIt’s not easy to read a prison memoir like this one: For a Song and a Hundred Songs, A Poet’s Journey through a Chinese Prison by Liao Yiwu is a confronting book and it took me a while to get through it. It’s a bit like reading Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn’s One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich – one can’t just scamper through it, because each chapter is a catalyst for all kinds of reflections about the power of the state …

Liao Yiwu is the author of The Corpse Walker which I reviewed some time ago when Yiwu was about to visit Australia as the guest of the Sydney Writers’ Festival. Until the Tiananmen Square massacre in June 1989, he had been an apolitical, somewhat bohemian poet, unknown to the west. However, the murder of the protestors by the Red Army provoked his poem ‘Massacre’ and Yiwu rose to prominence as a dissident. He spent four years in prison for his temerity in challenging the Chinese government, and For a Song and a Hundred Songs, is his memoir of that time. (He is now resident in Germany, and free to write whatever he likes).

To read the rest of my review please visit http://anzlitlovers.com/2013/08/18/fo...

[albionlady · Rating 4 out of 5]

Masaker. Kniha so zúfalými a miestami veľmi krutými opismi "života" za mrežami. Najťažšie sa mi čítali časti z vyšetrovacieho a zadržiavacieho strediska: bez ohľadu na to, či ste vrah, zlodej, alebo politický väzeň, ktorý napísal zopár protisystémových básní, tam sa rozdiely zotrú a všetci - či už dozorcovia, alebo, čo je horšie, spoluväzni - sa k vám správajú ako k najpodradneším bytostiam bez akýchkoľvek práv. Mučenie v najhorších predstaviteľných podobách je na dennom poriadku. Trpieť môžete (presnejšie povedané musíte), zomrieť je zakázané. Tak podľa mňa vyzerá peklo na Zemi.

[Maťa Levásovská · Rating 5 out of 5]

Kniha ma chytila od samého začiatku. A držala až do konca. I keď boli tam pasáže, ktoré som chcela preskočiť. Často to však boli pasáže, ktoré obsahovali veľmi podrobné opisy násilia. Takže v prípade čítania tejto knihy sa na to pripravte.

[Weronika · Rating 5 out of 5]

Jedna z najtrudniejszych książek, jakie przyszło mi czytać.

[John Pappas · Rating 4 out of 5]

Liao Yiwu, a Chinese poet, chronicles his journey from diffident and politically apathetic poet to outraged and engaged activist because of the 1989 Tiananmen Square Massacre, and, further, his terrifying descent into the penal system as he is detained and arrested on charges of being a counterrevolutionary for a poem he wrote and a film version of the poem he helped make. The portrait of the Chinese prison system and "justice" system he depicts, and the violence and debasement, at both the hands of the state and the other prisoners, is shocking and horrifying. While his tone is maddeningly cold at times, on the whole, this is a profoundly affecting and extremely revealing memoir.

[Jakub · Rating 5 out of 5]

Neuveritelna kniha, tak silna, priama a ziva...
Zatial pre mna isto kniha roka...
napisana stylom, ze ked raz knihu zacnete citat, nedokazete prestat

samozrejme, zavali vas pocas citania niekedy az explicitna brutalita, ci rozne vazenske nechutnosti, ktore sa tam diali, ale aj na druhej strane odhodlanost ludi, ktori sa nemohli prizerat na to co vlada v 1989 dopustila na mladych studentoch, ktori chceli dosiahnut vacsiu slobodu, a za tieto nazory, akcie,ciny boli tvrdo potrestani, lebo Strana to ustala a pomstila sa...

nikdy sa na nich nesmie zabudnut!
6/5 ak by sa dalo... odporucam precitat

[Chuck · Rating 4 out of 5]

Liao Yiwu was a rather self-indulgent and apolitical poet prior to the Chinese military's June, 1989 massacre of protestors in Tiananmen Square. Learning of that news, however, Liao quickly became a protestor himself. He composed a poem, "Massacre", that was widely disseminated, and he followed that by participating in a commemorative film titled "Requiem". As might be expected, the Chinese authorities did not take kindly to these projects. Liao was arrested in 1990, and spent four years in prison.

For the most part, this book is an account of Liao's incarceration. Prisoners were routinely abused, not only by guards, but also by fellow inmates. Cells were organized hierarchically, with a "chief" ruler, various "enforcers", and newbie "slaves", and torture was commonly used to keep order and maintain the hierarchy. Readers who aren't irretrievably squeamish will find an extensive catalog of torture methods that Liao was able to recall from a prison booklet charmingly titled Song Mountain's One hundred and Eight Rare Herbs. Waterboarding is not included in the recipes, but many of the ones that are seem highly comparable.

Liao's narrative voice lacks the histrionics that his story might well justify, but his matter-of-fact presentation is no less effective for that. Although he describes horrific brutalities, those scenes are interlaced with moments of humor and surprising acts of kindness, generosity, and compassion. In some ways, his story is reminiscent of Mohamedou Ould Slahi's remarkable Guantánamo Diary, although Liao's outcome was somewhat more favorable: Following his release from prison, he escaped to Germany, whereas Slahi remains incarcerated by the United States government after 14 years, despite having never been charged with a crime, and having been approved -- on July 14, 2016 -- for release.

This book is a powerful indictment of Chinese political repression, although its message obviously applies to other regimes too. One small bright spot is that international pressure can sometimes have a positive effect on individual sentences, although that seems to happen only when a prisoner has attained some special notoriety. Unfortunately, the vast majority of political prisoners remain at the mercy of systems that are incapable of showing any.

[Stuart Chandler · Rating 4 out of 5]

While I appreciate insight into life from an intellect's or artist's perspective, this book takes a different spin. Liao Yiwu found himself in an unanticipated connection with the student-drive political uprising in China's Tiananmen Square during 1989. As a reader, you have the opportunity to consider how Liao thinks and participates artistically in the world. Upon being placed in a detention center and then prison, I found myself fascinated with the social structure, forms of interaction (both positive and negative), and the yearning for food and hope among prisoners. The book is organized primarily into a variety of vignettes that highlight the many themes of life within the detention center and prison. Liao tells the vignettes with clear perspective, almost as if you're sitting down and listening to multiple stories about life in prison. The stories are somewhat disconnected, yet they blend well together to create an interesting narrative and vision of life in prison. I could consider giving it five stars if there were more emotion from Liao's perspective. In his defense, his experience in the detention center and prison probably left him significantly drained of some inner sense of self and you can see how this writing is, in many ways, his attempt to reconnect with something that he may have lost within himself during his time in prison. I would not hesitate to suggest this to someone.

[Jenna Fisher · Rating 4 out of 5]

Poet Liao Yiwu's account of four years spent in a Chinese prison is raw and disturbing yet also a deeply human and essential read.

The Chinese equivalent of a beatnik, poet Liao Yiwu was known to drink hard, get into fights, and seek out adventures, staying up late into the night with his artist friends to contemplate life. And that’s all he cared to do.

But something snapped inside him upon hearing the news well past midnight on a sleepless June 4, 1989, that government troops would crack down on the tens of thousands of student protesters who had for almost two months come to lodge their peaceful protest across China, including in Tiananmen Square.

As the reality of what was happening hit him, as hundreds if not thousands of students were killed, Liao picked up a tape recorder, pressed record, and spoke two words into it: "I protest." It was the moment that changed the trajectory of his life, he says. That night, Liao recorded a poem called “Massacre,” which the Chinese government would build a case around, calling it “a counterrevolutionary activity.” His poem would land him in prison for four years of torture, starvation, and brutality.

(Read the rest of the review here)

[Aseem Kaul · Rating 5 out of 5]

Liao Yiwu's For a Song and a Hundred Songs is an incredible book - brilliant and devastating, inspiring and humbling. The book recounts the years of his incarceration (for the 'crime' of writing and recording a poem in protest against the Tiananmen massacre), years that Yiwu describes in a way that is neither romanticized nor self-righteous, allowing the specificity of detail to speak for itself. Solzhenitsyn is invoked a number of times, and it is no small praise to say that Yiwu's writing does not suffer by comparison; if anything Yiwu's work, being less structured and less strident with political conviction, seems more authentic.

For a Song and a Hundred Songs is a book everyone should read, not only for the rare glimpse it provides into the horrifying, emotionally excoriating reality of everyday prison life, but for an insider's view of the pathology of political repression, its all-pervasive invisibility. And as a reminder that we live in a world where writers and activists continue to be imprisoned and punished by dictatorial states; men and women who need and deserve not only our respect and our support, but also, and perhaps more importantly, our remembrance.

[Eapen Chacko · Rating 4 out of 5]

Liao Yiwu could have been a prototypical hard drinking, womanizing fraternity brother on an American campus, but instead he got swept into the Tienamen Square protests, about which he wrote song lyrics that got him imprisoned for four years first on Song Mountain Penitentiary, the basis of the title. Liao has a great English translator, and the prose is simple, clear and engrossing. The story of prison life recalls those of the people in Soviet gulags.

China, Liao says, puts more people into its prison system each year than any country on earth, and yet we'd rather read about empty bullet trains "transforming" China than about the inhumanity that their totalitarian system routinely unleashes on its citizens.

Even when the Chinese government decides to release Liao because he has come to international attention, he must sign a document admitting his guilt and absolving the government of any wrong doing. Although he resists with the heart of a poet and the mind of a stubborn person, he eventually succumbs, as we all would. It is a scene from Franz Kafka's world. This is a sobering and worthwhile read.

[Andy · Rating 5 out of 5]

An awesome read. I bought "For A Song And A Hundred Songs:A Poet's Journey Through A Chinese Prison" after reading an excerpt in "Tricycle:The Buddhist Review". The small sample in the article was enough to get me curious. It's not a "Buddhist" book but instead "A Poet's Journey Through A Chinese Prison". It's a memoir of Liao Yiwu's life, from poet in China just before the Tienanmen Square protests, to his imprisonment for 4 years as a "counter-revolutionary" after writing 2 poems about the Tienanmen Square protests.
The book is very well written and was very difficult to put down from the very first pages.

[Jana · Rating 2 out of 5]

Książka czytałam bardzo długo. Wynikało to z tego że opis pobytu w więzieniu jest przedstawiony bardzo szczegółowo. To opis okrutnych, poniżających, dehumanizujących praktyk więziennych. Rozumiem dlaczego autor zdecydował się na ten zabieg, wiem ze wnosi on wiele do książki będącej uczciwym opisem pobytu w zakładzie, jednak dla mnie tak trudnym i wymagającym ze lektura była istnym koszmarem. Podsumowując książka świetnie oddaje doświadczenie życia w więzieniu niestety mam za słabe nerwy na lekturę wyszukanych i okrutnych tortur oraz problemów z defekacja dotykających całe cele, które dominują nad 1 czy 2 cennymi spostrzeżeniami na temat poszukiwania sensu.

[Richard · Rating 4 out of 5]

Liao Yiwu's prosaic language suits his descriptions of the Chinese criminal justice system, and reading this book was helpful as I read news about the Bo Xilai trial now underway.

I found it interesting that prisoners everywhere, regardless of the regime, organize themselves in similar ways and enforce similar hierarchies to maintain their own order and power. And what I found also particularly enlightening is how the brutal prison system fosters and encourages the brutality among prisoners. His frank description creates both shock and empathy.

[Usagi · Rating 3 out of 5]

Ich hatte zum Anfang Probleme dem Buch zu folgen. Was sich aufhob, als es losging mit den Verhaftungen und dem Rest. Zum Ende hin allerdings, war ich dann wieder etwas verwirrt um kam, warum auch immer, wieder nicht hinterher.

Sein Schreibstil ist flüssig,scher und dennoch gewöhnungbedürftig.

Die Erinnerungen und all das was er erleben musste und durfte, zeigt immer wieder, dass man es an andern Stellen des Lebens einfach nur gut hat.

[Tara · Rating 4 out of 5]

After reading this book, I can definitively say that I don't want to go to prison in China. I can also say that I have some concerns about purchasing products manufactured in China, after reading about the prison slave labor. I did question the author's animosity towards his wife at the end of the book - it sounds like in addition to his time away from her in prison, he treated her pretty terribly before his incarceration.

[Alok · Rating 4 out of 5]

A fascinating, addictive read. The protagonist is not a particularly sympathetic character, and the worst punishments are carried out not by the state but by fellow prisoners. However, I suspect if all prisoners were able to tell their stories, and more people within China read them, the system would get improved. I highly recommend if you want to understand better the human rights situation in China.

[Riet · Rating 4 out of 5]

Een indrukwekkend boek van een Chinese schrijver, die voor zijn gedicht over de massamoord op het Tian an Min plein in 1989 tot vier jaar gevangenisstraf werd veroordeeld. Ongelofelijk, zijn beschrijvingen van de Chinese gevangenissen en zijn leven daar. Het is een rauw boek. Ik vond vooral de gedichten achterin erg mooi.

[Whitney · Rating 5 out of 5]

A must-read, life-changing book. Images of unimaginable brutality and suffering. The best and worst of humanity and the range of all human drama playing out between inmates inside the confines of a prison cell. Disturbing, funny, terribly sad. I will never think of modern China in quite the same way again.

[Ulrike · Rating 5 out of 5]

fremd und doch so vertraut. Eintauchen in eine andere Kultur, in eine andere Sprache, eine andere Symbolik - und am Ende dieses Bemühens steht ein nackter Mensch.
Nackt bis auf den Kern der Seele.
Hochachtung!

[Klaus Metzger · Rating 4 out of 5]

Auf eine berührende Art und Weise schildert Liao sein Leben in verschiedenen chinesischen Gefängnissen. Die Brutalität, mit der die Inhaftierten behandelt werden, spottet jeder Beschreibung. Das Buch ist sehr interessant - teilweise aber auch langatmig.

[Pam · Rating 5 out of 5]

Just finished this grim but powerful memoir of a Chinese counterrevolutionary poet from the Tiananmen Square student protests and massacre of 1989. The author, Liao Yiwu, tells a terrifying account of his time spent in a Chinese detention center and prisons. An important read.

[Moira]

NYTBR review: http://www.nytimes.com/2013/04/10/boo...

[Dylan Suher · Rating 5 out of 5]

Keeping my powder dry, I have a review in mind, if I have the time to write it.

[Bryan Neuschwander · Rating 3 out of 5]

Disturbing.

[Dholsten · Rating 2 out of 5]

plan to spend more time reading. WAs discouraged to really get engaged with this novel based on some of the reviews I read.

[Asaria · Rating 3 out of 5]

Książka Yiwu należy do tych pozycji, które naprawdę ciężko mi ocenić. "Za jeden wiersz [...]." doskonale wpisuje się w nurt literatury więziennej z takimi tuzami gatunku jak Aleksander Sołżenicyn (często przytaczanym przez Chińczyka) czy Tadeusz Borowski dla lit. obozowej. Wszyscy wiedzą, że Chiny praktycznie od zawsze prawa człowieka mają za nic i wątpię by cokolwiek się w tej kwestii zmieniło. Sam autor, zgodnie z przedmową, został aresztowany po nakręceniu razem z przyjaciółmi filmu upamiętniającego masakrę na placu Tiananmen w 1989 roku. Autor w areszcie i więzieniu spędził w sumie cztery lata.

Ale nie uprzedzajmy faktów. Rok 1989, do więzień i aresztów zaczynają napływać tzw. więźniowie polityczni. Opór jest bezcelowy, odebrano im nawet możliwość realnej obrony, bo ich procesy to typowa pokazówka organizowana wyłącznie dla zasady. Oczekiwano od nich wyłącznie przyznania się do winy. Niemniej w więzieniu wg relacji Yiwu traktowano ich nieco lepiej niż przestępców.

Sporo można dowiedzieć się z książki o relacjach władza-więźniowie, więźniowie-sąd, więźniowie-więźniowie czy więźniowie-strażnicy. Tak, patologie też! Chociażby rodzaje tortur, szeroko pojęta przemoc, "inicjacje nowych" czy gwałty na współwięźniach albo warunki w jakich przebywali. Cały czas miałam z tyłu głowy jednak irytujące wrażenie, że gdzieś już o tym czytałam, lecz nie w kontekście chińskim. Chodzi mi o słynną Łubiankę, co tylko pokazuje, że chyba warunki więzienne reżimów totalitarnych oraz autorytarnych nie różnią się zbytnio między sobą.

I tutaj zaczyna się moja zagwozdka. Jak odbierać "Za jeden wiersz [...]."? Należy brać przymiarkę, że autor napisał kilka wersji w przeciągu wielu lat (często przymusowo, ponieważ policja uwielbiała rekwirować jego rękopisy), więc niemal na pewno rozmowy z więźniami i detale musiały umknąć mu z pamięci. Nie wątpię, że opisywane zjawiska mają tam miejsce, ale czy można aż tak kozaczyć i opierać się w aż takim stopniu władzy jak opisywał Yiwu? W Łubiance się zbytnio nie dało, z tego co pamiętam.

Od strony literackiej problem tkwi w samej formule książki. Jak długo można czytać o przemocy i złym traktowaniu, nim kompletnie zobojętnieje się na przemoc? Autor traktuje ją jako coś smutnie normalnego, oczywistego. O ile początkowo pochłaniałam jednym tchem, to od połowy zaczęła mi się dłużyć (IMO). Jako literatura obozowa/więzienna nie imponuje, bo w przeszłości pojawili się inni, lepsi... Podkreślam, w moim odczuciu, a jak wiadomo, te bywają subiektywne.

Technikalia:

Czerwona kartka dla polskiego przekładu! Przekłady z języka pośredniego są fe, tutaj tradycyjnie z j. angielskiego zamiast chińskiego.