Liao Yiwu
| Liao Yiwu | |
|---|---|
Liao Yiwu 2010
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| Born | 1958 |
| Occupation | Author, reporter, poet, musician |
| Nationality | Chinese |
| Ethnicity | Han |
Liao Yiwu (Chinese: 廖亦武; also known as Lao Wei) (born 1958 in Sichuan), is a Chinese author, reporter, musician, and poet. He is a critic of China's Communist regime, for which he has been imprisoned. His books, several of which are collections of interviews with ordinary people from the lower rungs of Chinese society, were published in Taiwan and Hong Kong but are banned in mainland China; some have been translated into English, French, German, Polish and Czech.
Liao was born in 1958, the same year as The Great Leap Forward. During the famine of The Great Leap Forward, he suffered from edema and was close to dying. In 1966 his father was branded a counter-revolutionary during the Chinese Cultural Revolution. Liao's parents filed for divorce to protect the children. His mother was arrested for attempting to sell government issued coupons on the black market.
After High School, Liao traveled around the country. In his spare time he read banned Western poets such as John Keats and Charles Baudelaire. He also started composing his own poems and was getting published in literary magazines. He failed the university entrance exams and began to work for a newspaper. When his poetry was noticed, the Chinese Ministry of Culture gave him a paid position as state writer.
In Spring 1989, two magazine companies took advantage of the relaxed politics and carried Liao's long poems "The Yellow City" and "Idol." In the poems, he criticized the system, calling it paralyzed and eaten away by a collective leukemia. The poems were deemed anti-communist and he was questioned and detained and his home was searched.
On June 1989, after hearing about the Tiananmen Square protests, Liao composed a long poem entitled "Massacre." Knowing that it would never be published, he made an audiotape and recited the poem by using Chinese ritualistic chanting and howling, invoking the spirits of the dead. Liao and friends made a movie, the sequel of Massacre, "Requiem."
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