Ma Jian Quotes & Sayings

I am trying to persuade my family to spend more time in China. It's no fun to be in exile. I can't even figure out the basic 26 letters, let alone operate, in English. I often feel that although I've found the sky of freedom above my head, I've lost the soil I stand on. I need to be back in my motherland, where I can find inspirations. — Ma Jian

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. — Ma Jian

On July 3, 1968, Chairman Mao issued an order calling for the ruthless suppression of class enemies. He wanted all members of the Five Black Categories to be eliminated, together with TWENTY THREE NEW TYPES of enemy , which included anyone who had ever served as a policeman before the Liberation, or who had been sent to prison or labor camp. And not only them but their family and distant relatives as well.
That's a lot of people.
Yes. Just think, the literal meaning of the Chinese characters for "revolution" is "elimination of life — Ma Jian

Before the sparrow arrived, you had almost stopped thinking about flight. Then, last winter, it soared through the sky and landed in front of you, or more precisely on the windowsill of the covered balcony adjoining your bedroom. You knew the grimy window panes were caked with dead ants and dust, and smelt as sour as the curtains. But the sparrow wasn't put off. It jumped inside the covered balcony and ruffled its feathers, releasing a sweet smell of tree bark into the air. Then it flew into your bedroom, landed on your chest and stayed there like a cold egg. — Ma Jian

In my 20s, when I was a photojournalist in Beijing. I joined an underground art group and put on clandestine exhibitions of my paintings. — Ma Jian

I am a writer. Being critical is a writer's responsibility. — Ma Jian

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. — Ma Jian

I wanted to analyse and understand how the Chinese people could have their lives so crushed by fear. — Ma Jian

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. — Ma Jian

My mind flashed back to the Cultural Revolution, when a group of Red Guards pulled our neighbor, Granny Li, out of the opera company's dormitory block and ordered the rest of us to bring out our thermos flasks. We then had to stand and watch as the Red Guards poured ten flasks of boiling water over Granny Li's head. — Ma Jian

Red Dust was about the late 1980s; it was a time of burgeoning hopes and opening up and people searching for new ways. — Ma Jian

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. — Ma Jian

If you exile a writer, however free the country he is sent to, there will always be a sense of internal constraint. — Ma Jian

I believe that the Tibetans should have the right to control their own destinies and decide for themselves whether they want to be part of China or not. But this view isn't shared by most Chinese, or even the leaders of most Western democracies. As long as the Communist Party is in power, there is little hope for Tibet. — Ma Jian

It is vitally important for me, both personally and for my writing, to be able to return to China freely, so being barred entry has caused me deep concern and distress. — Ma Jian

I am completely in favour of dialogue and engagement. But it must be a true, open dialogue. — Ma Jian

I left Beijing in the late 1980s to live in Hong Kong because, having been blacklisted by the government, I couldn't publish my works on the mainland. — Ma Jian

In February of this year I returned to China to research my next book. The authorities know about the novels of mine that have been published in the west, including the latest one, Beijing Coma, about a student shot in Tiananmen Square, but so far have allowed me to return. — Ma Jian

While I was writing 'Stick Out Your Tongue' in Beijing, the police began knocking on my door again. As soon as I finished the book, I moved to Hong Kong so that I could work undisturbed on my next novel. — Ma Jian

I left Beijing in 1987, shortly before my books were banned there, but have returned continually. — Ma Jian

Living in London is like being on a luxury cruise liner. — Ma Jian

'Three Kingdoms' gives you a panoply of different routes; everyone can find their own path. It shows that sometimes the route to fulfilment or success is not the obvious one. You must take twists and turns to achieve a goal. — Ma Jian

The great quality of the 'Three Kingdoms' is that it seems to encapsulate and portray every facet of the Chinese personality. — Ma Jian

Before the counter-culture revolutionary Li Lian was executed in 1971 for criticising the Cultural Revolution, pour policemen pushed her face against the window of a truck, lifted her shirt and cut out her kidneys with a surgical knife,' Mau Sen said, his face stony and white. 'I think that removing the organs of convicts while they are still alive is too much. It completely contravenes medical ethics.' 'This is a dissection class, not a political meeting,' Sun Chunlin said. — Ma Jian

Tyrannies not only want to control your mind and thoughts but your flesh as well. — Ma Jian

Beauty can make a woman rich, but if she relies solely on her looks to get by, she'll always remain under a man's thumb. — Ma Jian

I left Beijing because I wanted to be alone and to forge my own path, but I know now that no path is solitary, we all tread across other people's beginnings and ends. — Ma Jian

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. — Ma Jian

When history is erased, people's moral values are also erased. — Ma Jian

When the written and spoken word is censored, the urban landscape becomes a nation's only physical link to the past. — Ma Jian

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. — Ma Jian

On the face of it, China has won the Olympics. But it is not China that has won, but the Communist party. The Chinese people have lost. — Ma Jian

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. — Ma Jian

When people are poor, they find ways of making things taste like fish. — Ma Jian

Beijing Coma took me 10 years to finish. — Ma Jian

I feel I have walked onto a stage. The people around me are absorbed in their parts, putting on this great show, but nothing seems real. Every object looks like a prop. Since I have no part I am reduced to the role of a spectator, but there is nowhere to sit, so I have to mingle with the actors on stage. It is a terrible feeling. — Ma Jian

I have to live within my memories, within my private universe, and continually return to China, the land where my thoughts are locked. This is a very painful kind of existence, this feeling of nowhereness. — Ma Jian

Everything I was I carry with me, everything I will be lies waiting on the road ahead. — Ma Jian

Whatever China I'd been born into, I would probably still have become a painter - I loved sketching portraits as a child, and began art classes at the age 7. But if China hadn't been under Maoist rule, I might never have become a writer. — Ma Jian

I see my skeleton walking down the street now. I'm walking behind it. Our feet touch the ground at the same time. I am my own shadow. The road we're walking along looks familiar. The trees lining the pavement have been bleached by the sun. There are stone steps on my left. I climb them. This is the route I used to take after school. It's very dark. The skeleton has disappeared. — Ma Jian

After the Tiananmen Massacre, I felt compelled not only to continue writing but to actively resist the restrictions placed on freedom of speech. I set up the publishing company in Hong Kong, with offices in Shenzhen in mainland China, and managed to publish works of fiction, philosophy, and politics by unapproved authors. — Ma Jian

The Beijing Olympics represent China's grand entrance onto the world stage and confirmation of its new superpower status. — Ma Jian

The Chinese have made a faustian pact with the government, agreeing to forsake demands for political and intellectual freedom in exchange for more material comfort. They live prosperous lives in which any expression of pain is forbidden. — Ma Jian

I will not let a political party tell me how to live, when to die or what to believe in. Our souls are linked to the universe, but we can never see heaven, because our flesh ties us to the earth and the people around us. But when the people around you have lost their will to be free, then earth becomes a hell. — Ma Jian

I paint as the mood takes me- it is an emotional release. But in this society moods and images can incriminate you. Writing is much safer for me. I can hide myself behind a maze of words and the details of people's lives. — Ma Jian

I believe that the power of literature is stronger than the power of tyranny. — Ma Jian