TOPPLING LIU XIAOBO

Christopher Rea

S THE LUNAR NEW YEAR ap- The inversion of characters con- Aproaches, Chinese households veys allegorical meanings ranging might paste onto their front doors a di- from the auspicious to the innocuous amond of red paper with the character to the hostile. Joke books of the early

for ‘prosperity’ or ‘good fortune’, fu 福, twentieth century would invert the 福 upside down as 福. This folk custom is character for ‘laughter’ 笑 on their based on an aural pun: the verb dao covers to indicate that the reader 倒 — meaning to turn upside down, would be toppled by or bowled over invert, or topple — is a homophone of with laughter 笑倒, a phrase that also dao 到, to arrive. To turn prosperity up- appears as the title of a Ming dynasty side down is to express the wish that joke collection. the New Year will bring prosperity to On 5 August 1903, the Chi- one’s door. Dao fu 倒福 leads to fu dao nese-language Melbourne daily The 福到. Chinese Times 美利賓埠愛國報, fol- lowing a practice common among an- ti-Manchu newspapers, expressed its hope that the Qing government would fall by printing the characters for Qing 清 and Empress Dowager Cixi 慈禧太后 upside down. On 19 December 2013, Taipei’s Invert ‘prosperity’ and it will arrive Source: Wikicommons Apple Daily 蘋果日报 newspaper re- CHINA STORY YEARBOOK Toppling Liu Xiaobo 11 10 2017 Christopher Rea yi Progressive Party legislator LeeChun- tural criticand human rights activist sion. On18September 2006, the cul- alike feed on inversion and subver- Ma istoppled’ . Ma inverted: ‘successwill arrive when New Year’s coupletswith the character wan’s legislature. by amemberof the oppositioninTai- ported on a New Year’s greetingcoined time was MaYing-jeou horse arrives’horse on the idiom ‘victory as soonthe ents were ‘aninstant success,’ punning ly report that Ma’s visits to constitu - 2008, theTaiwan press would routine ‘horse’. From thetimeof hiselectionin surname, Ma,isthecharacter for Source: apk.tw arrive whenMaistoppled.’ Lunar NewYear’scoupletsreading‘Successwill 李俊俋 Laughter andpoliticalprotest suggested that citizens post 馬到成功 1 The president at the 馬英九 . Democratic , whose - writer Wang Shuo lysed theriseof e’gao itarian dictatorship’ in which he ana- about ‘politicalhumour in apost-total- create a new language entirely: cool, to jargon official pompous with — got urban ar- slang —in his case, Beijing’s popular merging for flair today,a was generations, including the netizens of mockery. Wangto Shuo’slegacy later ing oppositionthrough sarcasmand express to statements defiant making Liu wrote, a generation turned from during the 1989 Tiananmen Massacre, freedom impaled on bloody bayonets’ Party-state intheirwork. logical language of China’s Communist appropriated and subverted the ideo Liu Xiaobo such as thesinger Cui Jian tone of sarcasmback to 1980srebels to information. its Buthealsotraces access expanding radically by flourish Internet with enabling this culture to and the self-important. Liu credits the cially theauthoritative, thefaddish, everything and anything, but espe had Chinese netizens begun e’gao age. Over two shortyears,he wrote, various expressionsintheInternet hoaxing, and facetiousness and their refers to a culture of parody, mockery, Having seen its ‘passions for 刘晓波 王朔 wrote anessay

恶搞 , both of whom 崔健 . 2 The term andthe -ing - - - playful, insouciant, and ironic. In doing had been released on medical parole. so, he spurred the rise of a new culture During the following weeks, Chinese of amusement. state media broadcast images of Liu Liu Xiaobo recognised that the receiving medical attention in hospital, e’gao trend had negative effects too, es- smiling for the camera and assuring pecially in how it fostered malice and viewers that he was being well cared cynicism, and saw it partly as a symp- for. The diagnosis and treatment both tom of ‘spiritual hunger and intellec- having arrived too late, this carefully tual poverty at the same time’. Cynical orchestrated media spectacle did not laughter inoculates against genuine last long. Liu Xiaobo died on 13 July rage leading to meaningful political 2017. action; it placates and pacifies. But Liu Liu Xiaobo’s true crime was not also saw hope, observing that in places just his truth-telling — his advocacy of such as Czechoslovakia ‘truth-telling free speech, democracy, and political and joke-making have worked hand- freedoms, or his broadcasting of collec- in-hand to dismantle post-totalitarian tive will in Charter 08 — but also what dictatorships’. A few fearless people he shared with China’s joke-tellers, of conscience tell the truth, while namely irreverence toward a govern- joke-makers dig away at the base of ment that demands obedience from cit- the wall of popular support for the re- izens and claims immunity from their gime. ‘Without the truth-tellers, there would be no open expression of pop- ular resistance or of moral courage; without the jokesters, the words of the truth-tellers would fall on barren ground.’ On 26 June 2017, the Liaoning Prison Administrative Bureau an- nounced on its website that Liu, who had been awarded the 2010 Nobel Peace Prize while incarcerated under vague charges of state subversion, was Liu Xiaobo suffering late-term liver cancer and Source: Andy Shuai, Flickr CHINA STORY YEARBOOK Toppling Liu Xiaobo 13 12 2017 Christopher Rea monious [society]’ — a homophonous ‘fuck-your-mother’ 操你妈 Horse pitting Grass-Mud harder to tame.Avirale’gao be silenced,butacollective voice is thought. Individual truth-tellersmight into prohibited zonesof speechand in breakingtaboosandventuring ture of impertinencethat delighted ofand emboldened acul- expression civil society. Ithad enhanced freedom that the Internet was a boon to Chinese was: noclemency. or symbolic — his lack of reverence — to Liu’srefusalto defer to power, real against dictators. The state’s response veigh againstdissidents asreadily as revered cows nosacred andwould in- his criticalwritingsalsoshow that he that hehad ‘no enemies,nohatred’; not motivated by personal animus, criticism. Liu professed that he was ima) againstRiver Crabs Over a decade ago, Liu recognised (caonima)against‘[the]har- 和谐［社会］ 草泥马 河蟹 campaign (hexie) (caon- (hexie remain potent well into China’s future. — will the regime’sbrutalresponse Liu Xiaobo’s moralcourage —and of tune hasensured that memoriesof martyrdom, andthisreversalof for- sistance. Death is inevitable, but not more powerful symbol of politicalre Communist Party made him an even the Chinese him, In toppling fate. fic one irony byoccasioned his horri- humour, Liu would have appreciated the power and the limitsof political died Ossietzky inaNazi prisonin1938. reate to die in custody sinceCarl von Liu was the first Nobel Peace Prize lau- December sentenced to eleven years. was formally arrested in June and in he of imprisonment; stint final his be months indetention inwhat was to time, early 2009, Liu had already spent quent signs that he was right. By that for atime,was oneof the many subse [shehui]) —which evaded censorship A critic who understood both - - This text is taken from China Story Yearbook 2017: Prosperity, edited by Jane Golley and Linda Jaivin, published 2018 by ANU Press, The Australian National University, Canberra, Australia.

doi.org/10.22459/CSY.04.2018.00B