Writer free at last, but leaves his artistic inspiration in China

Before exile … Liao Yiwu in Germany in 2010. Photo: Getty Images

BEIJING: After being denied an exit visa 17 times, yanked off planes and trains by the police and threatened with yet more prison time, one of China's most persecuted writers, Liao Yiwu, slipped across the border into Vietnam last week and then made his way, via Poland, to Germany, where he declared himself an exile.
''I'm ecstatic; I'm finally free,'' he said in a telephone interview from Berlin on Monday morning. ''I feel like I'm walking through a dream.''
However, by fleeing, Liao, 52, made the difficult decision to leave the wellspring of his work, much of it journalistic explorations of China's downtrodden.

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''I'm trying to convince myself I won't be away from China very long, that things will change sooner than later,'' he said.
Liao is best known for The Corpse Walker: Real Life Stories: China from the Bottom Up, which was banned in China soon after it was published in Taiwan in 2001.
He was barred from travelling to literary festivals in Germany, Australia and the United States and was forced last year to sign a vow to cease publishing outside China. The threat increased with the impending US publication of God is Red, Liao's book about Chinese Christians, and a memoir, The Witness of the 4th of June.
Liao is relying on the generosity of friends, his German publisher and, he hopes, royalties from books. He speaks neither German nor English. ''Germany, the US and Australia have all welcomed me,'' he said. ''But the place I really want to be is China.''
The New York Times


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