exile 157had planned to live abroad for an extended period but not indefinitely,
which makes his “acceptance” of repatriation a moot point.
Not so for Yang Lian and Bei Dao, as the above discussion of their
circumstances shows. Since 1993 Yang has visited China freely, albeit
on a foreign passport. Other such “foreigners” have been denied entry
to their country of origin—Bei Dao, for example—and the 1998 and
2003 publications of something very close to a collected works would
seem to imply the possibility, however uncertain or qualified, of Yang
going back to continue his literary career in his native land. Without
condoning any degree of censorship, I note that textual differences of
Yang’s 1998 domestic survey anthology with his publications abroad
that point to (self)-censorship are limited to things like the removal of
massacre (ሴᴔ) from the title of one poem, of the year nineteen eighty nine
(ϔбܿбᑈ) from that of another—incidentally, this phrase does oc-
cur in the title of a published poem series by Ouyang Jianghe—and of
the prose poem «The Square», full of direct references to June Fourth,
in its entirety.^37 Many foreigners are now living in China, and many
of those previously in exile have returned, whether as Chinese or as
foreign citizens, including Duoduo. Yang Lian has, however, rejected
repatriation on political grounds, stating that he doesn’t wish to be
part of China under its current political system and this system’s cur-
rent implementation. Whether his exile could be called “enforced” as
late as 1999, as on the cover of his bilingual English-Chinese collection
Where the Sea Stands Still, is open to debate. None of these considerations
cast doubt on Yang’s exile status per se.
Bei Dao’s 1994 deportation from the Beijing airport made him
what Glad calls a “true exile,” in that repatriation hasn’t been an op-
tion, regardless of whether he would want to resettle in China. True
enough, 2003 saw the domestic publication of two rich collections of
his poetry, but the conditional nature and the recent revocation of his
right of entry belie any assumption that the authorities have developed
a tolerance for his presence and his writings. Witness, for instance, his
otherwise inexplicable exclusion from the Selected Poetry by Famous Con-
temporary Chinese Poets series mentioned in chapter Three.
(^37) On (self-)censorship of Yang’s post-1989 poetry for official publication in Chi-
na, see Edmond 2006. On literary censorship in the PRC, see McDougall 1993 and
Link 2000: ch 2 and 2002. Ouyang 1997: 123-130.