Writers need more social conscience
By Wolfgang Kubin | China Daily | Updated: 2010-10-09 07:23
What I often hear or read in German-speaking countries about contemporary Chinese writers amounts to contempt. Though poets like Zhai Yongming, Ouyang Jianghe, Wang Xiaoni, Wang Jiaxin and Xi Chuan, may be the exceptions.
I have never read deeper condemnation of a Chinese writer than that of Gao Xingjian in the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, first in 2000 and then last year. But, I have to confess, I'd prefer dying to writing Soul Mountain and winning the Nobel Prize for Literature for it, as the novel is a real shame.
What makes contemporary Chinese writers in general, suspicious in the eyes of German intellectuals, writers and scholars is that they do not seem to fulfill the duties of a true author.
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