Living in London is like being on a luxury cruise liner.
Ma Jian
Everything I was I carry with me, everything I will be lies waiting on the road ahead.
travel
I meant that the Chinese people are not aware of their own entrapment. They believe they live in a free society, but don't realize how much they are being monitored and controlled, how much the information they receive is restricted and warped, until they step out of line, that is, and feel the heavy hand of the state fall on them.
information people society
I wanted to analyse and understand how the Chinese people could have their lives so crushed by fear.
people
Red Dust was about the late 1980s; it was a time of burgeoning hopes and opening up and people searching for new ways.
people thetimes time
The Chinese people have been forced to forget the Tiananmen massacre. There has been no public debate about the event, no official apology. The media aren't allowed to mention it. Still today people are being persecuted and imprisoned for disseminating information about it.
information people the-public
To become self-aware, people must be allowed to hear a plurality of opinions and then make up their own minds. They must be allowed to say, write and publish whatever they want. Freedom of expression is the most basic, but fundamental, right. Without it, human beings are reduced to automatons.
rights people mind self
When history is erased, people's moral values are also erased.
people history
I believe that the power of literature is stronger than the power of tyranny.
literature power
My hope is that the Chinese government will come to realise that it is futile to repress free speech, and that contrary to what they believe a regime's strength rests not its suppression of a plurality of opinions and ideas, but in its capacity and willingness to encourage them.
strength government rest suppression
In 1989, I was on Tiananmen Square with the students, living in their makeshift tents and joining their jubilant singing of the Internationale. In the two decades since, each time that I have gone back, visions from those days seem to return with increasing persistence.
vision thetimes time
China is completely lacking in self-awareness and as someone who has stepped outside that society, I have a responsibility to write about it as I see it.
self society self-awareness
Only when you are aware of the uniqueness of everyone's individual body will you begin to have a sense of your own self-worth.
worth self
Tyrannies not only want to control your mind and thoughts but your flesh as well.
mind
luxury
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