Writing Tiananmen

I've visited China six times in the last six years, and every time I've gone I feel like I've visited a different place. The pace of change is simply incredible, as is the scale of variations between its mountains, plains, towns, cities and regions. China is a crowded, dazzling nation, and one that has begun to enthrall the world. Yet, for those of us on the outside, understanding what it means to be Chinese today, and what it might mean to be Chinese in the future, can seem unassailably alien questions.

The barriers to understanding are at once linguistic, cultural and political. China is ancient, yet there are deafening silences in its official history. Its culture is among the world's richest, yet it remains constrained by official channels narrower and more zealously regulated than those in any other similarly affluent, influential nation. This month, I met one of China's most significant modern authors, Ma Jian—a writer who has worked from Britain in self-imposed exile since 1997—and discussed his monumental recent fictional account of the 1989 Tiananmen protests and their aftermath, Beijing Coma.

Beijing Coma embodies many of the contradictions of modern Chinese self-exploration. A work quietly raging at the suppression of both historical accounting and individual rights, it won't be printed in mainland China; its greatest impact is likely to be in the English translation crafted by Ma's wife, Flora, which will make its way both online and through the international reading world. Yet it's a delicate, hopeful book, which suggests the enduring force of introspection, and the ways in which a thoroughly Chinese literature might come to address those events forbidden from public discourse—and unlock the lessons they contain.