My poems were written in anger after Tiananmen Square. But what motivates most prison writing is a fear of forgetting. Today I am free, but the regime has never stopped its war on words<\/p>\n
Most of my manuscripts are locked up in the filing cabinets of the ministry of security, and the agents there study and ponder them repeatedly, more carefully than the creator himself. The guys working this racket have superb memories; a certain chief of the Chengdu public security bureau can still recite the poems I published in an underground magazine in the 1980s. While the literati write nostalgically, hoping to go down in literary history, the real history may be locked in the vaults of the security department.<\/em><\/p>\n The above is excerpted from my book June 4: My Testimony, published in Taiwan in 2011. I wrote that book three times, the later drafts on paper much better than the paper I used for writing in prison, which was so soft and brittle I had to write very lightly. Paper outside prison is solid and flexible enough that you don\u2019t have to worry about puncturing it with the tip of a pen. Thus, I restrained myself and filled in a page of paper, and then how many thousand \u2013 ten thousand? More? How many ant-sized words can be packed on to a page? Who knows.<\/p>\n On 10 October 1995, at two in the afternoon, three police cars carrying about a dozen special agents burst in on me. Everything was carried out in accordance with \u201clegal procedures\u201d, the officers\u2019 IDs and search warrant were presented, the entire search process was meticulously videotaped, and all written matter in the house (including manuscripts, letters, and notes) was confiscated. And this included the very nearly completed draft of this testimony \u2013 more than 300,000 characters representing my painstaking efforts of the past year and a half.<\/p>\n I was breathing normally, signed with a smile, and asked: \u201cShould I bring clothes?\u201d The answer: \u201cNo.\u201d I was uneasy leaving my money and valuables at home as I prepared to be the guest of the state for a long time. The agents laughed.<\/p>\n At 10 o\u2019clock in the evening, I exited the Baiguolin police station in the Xicheng district of Chengdu and was politely told: \u201cDon\u2019t leave the city for the next month.\u201d Thank God, my head was still on my shoulders and I could still write.<\/p>\n I cursed my carelessness with the foulest language imaginable and set about rewriting with all my might. Without inspiration or passion, the pen slashed the paper to ribbons, and often I could only produce a few hundred words a day. Staring at the paper was useless, and cold sweat couldn\u2019t solve my writer\u2019s block. But I\u2019d made a bet; I couldn\u2019t admit defeat. I wanted to use this to validate my own stupid way of living as an insignificant individual \u2013 a bet with the world\u2019s largest dictatorship \u2013 with writing materials, so that in future my kids won\u2019t think their dad was just talking big.<\/p>\n