148 chapter four
was banned as part of a multiple-author book series called Toward the
Future (䍄ᴹ) that was terminated in its entirety. As for Yang’s
poetry collection, a number of copies did actually reach their readers
and made it into domestic and foreign libraries. In any case, there is
every reason to believe that at the time he was on a censorial blacklist
of sorts. The fact that such lists are difficult to obtain, verify or evaluate
doesn’t make their existence any less real.^17 Had Yang gone back to
China in the first few years after June Fourth, he could have expected
problems with the authorities and would have been unable to write
and publish without their interference. He first returned for a visit late
in 1993, with New Zealand citizenship, and has since regularly gone
back. He has said that toward the end of 1989, the trouble surround-
ing the publication of his two books and a failed attempt to renew his
Chinese passport made him realize that his original intention to travel
and return had to be superseded by a decision to live in exile and view
the People’s Republic as a foreign country unless it should see political
change.^18
Has Yang Lian perceived and presented himself as an exile? As
noted by Krämer, at one point in the early 1990s Yang resented the
Chinese term ⌕ѵ ‘exile’ and preferred ⓖ⊞ ‘wandering.’^19 He has,
however, continued to use both terms, and the Chinese part of his
website speaks of his literary career in exile (⌕ѵ⫳⎃). Presumably
in consultation with his translators, he has stuck with exile in English
and its cognates in other European languages. This may be because
of its currency in general usage, or, in Barmé’s words, the “bankabil-
ity of packaged dissent.” Examples include numerous newspaper and
journal publications, the English part of Yang’s website and the title
of a dialogue he originally conducted with Gao Xingjian in 1993. The
dialogue appeared in German and Italian in 2001 as What Has Exile
Brought Us? (Was hat uns das Exil gebracht?) and The Bread of the Exile:
Chinese Literature before and after Tiananmen (Il pane dell’esilio: La lettera-
tura cinese prima e dopo Tienanmen), and was excerpted in English
for Index on Censorship in 2002, as “The Language of Exile: When Pain
Turns to Gain.” Interestingly, its 1994 domestic publication in Chi-
(^17) Beach 2001: 13-15.
(^18) For Words of Mourning, see Yang Lian 1990: 41-42. Mabel Lee’s translation is
entitled “In Memory of the Dead” (3-4). Yang Lian 1989a and 1989b are the books
whose circulation was withheld or limited.
(^19) Krämer 1999: 168. Krämer translates ⓖ⊞ as floating.