Chinese-style Censorship and the Barbarians at the Gates of Substack
Jimmy Lai, Courageous Fighter for the Freedom of Expression, Yet Endures
(Click here to view the photo in the office of Jimmly Lai which was the inspiration for this brief essay.)
Recently, Substack founders valiantly fought and won the argument against the strident, yet barely intelligible hollerings of pseudo-intellectuals who wish to shut down this and any platform where expression is left to the liberty of the individuals who choose to make use of it.
Their unbudging nature — most admirable! — made me think of Jimmy Lai (黎智英), a courageous man whose enemies think nothing of constraining his liberty, imprisoning his body, committing calumny against his stellar character and, of course, confiscating his property.
Hundreds, if not many thousands of young Hong Kong warriors for freedom have fared much worse, for they are unknown. Jimmy Lai is the poster child. Historically, Chinese have always adopted in practice the tactic of 斬頭嚇體 — killing the head to scare the body — and this is what the has happened to Jimmy Lai. Read about Jimmy Lai in 錢志健 (Edward Chin’s) essay here.
The Chinese, that is, the CCP-led version, of censorship in Hong Kong is, in fact, the endpoint that America-hating, yet American autocratic panderers of their own supposed moral superiority wish to achieve in the United States of America — the crushing of speakers against whom they have no argument upon which they can rally freely thinking adherents to their loathsome ideas.
Shut them up and shun them, they cry — in a nation where more than two centuries ago, our nation’s founders codified and sanctified our inalienable rights given us by God, including the liberty to speak freely, which no man can confiscate.
THE COUPLET
The calligraphic couplet hanging on the wall above Jimmy Lai’s head in the photo (link below) originated in an 8th century poem of the Chinese official and writer, 杜甫 (romanized as T’u Fu in the Wade-Giles system and Du Fu in pinyin).
(Click here to view the photo which must be licensed to be displayed.)
The couplet reads:
豫章翻風白日動
鯨魚跋浪滄溟開
The olive and the camphor shake [their treetops] in the wind and [seem to] make the bright sun to move [from the perspective of the viewer on the ground]
The whale walks through the waves and kicks up the spray in the vast infinitude of the oceans
(My interpretation thus, to give larger sense of meaning and implication, rather than more terse, yet rhythmically similar approximation of the original.)
The couplet may be found in 贈王郎司直 [To the Literati Official Wang Lang], contained in a many-centuries-later collection of the poet’s work (短歌行). Wang is a young and talented mandarin down on his luck in search a bureaucratic position. Swooning with grief, he swings his sword as he dances drunkenly about. The poet tells him of his faith in the young man’s talent — think of the giants of nature, these trees and the whale, he writes. Cease your sorrow! Go straight into the land of Shu (present-day Sichuan) and search out the official who will recognize your talent, for I am old, but you are young.
Jimmy Lai, taking upon himself the role of a model of action, elderly though he may be, exhorts the young and the talented to take it straight into the guts of the dynasty. He has the force of Chinese traditional culture behind him. That is the purpose of this couplet and my best estimate as to why it hangs in his office.
An admirable couplet, beautifully drawn — I could not make out the name of the calligrapher — for an admirable warrior for liberty and dignity.