China, the Unwelcome Guest: Controversy as Frankfurt Book Fair Fetes Beijing

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China has an enormous, colorful range of media, and has rapidly risen to become an economic superpower ever since the chairman of the Communist Party, Deng Xiaoping, spurred the masses by saying "To get rich is glorious!"

Yu Hua, a short, stocky man with a wild shock of hair and a mischievous twinkle in his eye, has sold 1.5 million copies of his latest novel "Brothers" -- not including the many pirated copies. "I was just lucky," he says loudly, waving his arms around. "A few months earlier, or a few months later, and my book would have never been allowed to appear in China!"

He "slipped by the censors," Yu assumes, because his book was published shortly after the death of a famous politician's widow, a prominent victim of the Cultural Revolution, and the state watchdogs were waiting for new directives about whether it was permissible to speak more openly of the murderous insanity of this period in Chinese history.

"Brothers," which takes an irreverent look at this slaughter ordered by Mao and the turbo capitalism of present-day China, also promises to be a hit in Germany, where it has been translated, along with many other Chinese novels, to mark China being guest of honor at this year's Frankfurt Book Fair. It is an epic, bawdy, picaresque novel. The book tells the story of the shrewd businessman Baldy Li and his unfortunate brother Song Gang, who is a sensitive loser.

Grotesque Real Life

Baldy Li is uneducated, but self-assured, a typical member of the nouveau riche in today's China. He's one of those guys who yell into their mobile phones in the first-class lounges of airports, who grab at girls in karaoke bars, speed through the city in expensive convertibles and like to flash big rolls of bills. Li amassed a fortune with garbage, second-hand imported suits from Japan and shady real estate deals. He used his profits to buy himself a golden toilet.

Li's brother Song Gang is one of those people in today's China who can't cope with the rapidly changing times. He is one of the many who sit in tea salons or dusty offices and desperately brood over the question of how to catch up with those in the fast lane of society. At least Song manages to hook the most beautiful girl in the city -- but she later becomes the madam of a whorehouse. His career is no better. Song manages to eke out a living as a purveyor of "breast enhancing cream," and he even gets breast implants to demonstrate the effectiveness of the product to skeptical customers.

"Brothers" may be grotesque, but Yu Hua emphasizes that his novel is based on real life. Even the golden toilets really exist. "Shortly after my book came out, two readers called me and said: 'Unbelievable, you've written about my toilet!'"

The Limits of Dissent

Yu was born in 1960 and grew up in a small city in central China. He worked for years as a village dentist. For over two decades now he's been living as a novelist in Beijing. In 1994, when director Zhang Yimou filmed his novel "To Live," with the famous actress Gong Li in the leading role, the film was banned in China. It doesn't look good for the film version of "Brothers," either. Yu says that the authorities have already indicated their disapproval, telling him that the book does not cast a positive light on Deng Xiaoping's reforms and opening-up policy.

Yu will travel with the official delegation to the Frankfurt Book Fair, but he still says things that one wouldn't expect from a successful Chinese novelist. "The most urgent problem in China is injustice," he says. "Our judges and police are corrupt. Over the past year, 10 million official complaints were made across the country. Ten million people feel like they have been treated unjustly. That is our greatest human rights problem."

Perhaps the country cannot be fully controlled because it is simply too large. Perhaps it is merely a coincidence that Yu is rich and famous today and is representing Chinese literature in Frankfurt while others are locked up in prisons or writing books that will never be published in China. It's very difficult to understand where the limit lies between being outspoken and being a dissident.

Controversial Orgasms

Renowned Chinese novelist Yan Lianke is also not a dissident, but he has nevertheless written a fairly open and courageous book. It is entitled "Dream of Ding Village," and it deals with a real scandal. During the 1990s, tens of thousands of people were infected with HIV from dirty needles and tainted blood. The dealers who were responsible for this man-made disaster were protected by corrupt party functionaries. Needless to say, the book is banned in China.

Yan was a career soldier until the mid-1990s and, ironically, worked as a propaganda writer for the military. But after he produced objectionable texts and gave interviews, he was discharged from the People's Liberation Army. Recently he has become a professor of literature at the People's University in Beijing, where he teaches classical literature of the 20th century.

"Dream of Ding Village" is not the first book by Yan to be banned. In an earlier work, the 2005 novel "To Serve the People," the wife of a high-ranking military officer has such wild sex with one of the soldiers under her husband's command that busts of Mao get broken, causing them to have incredible orgasms. The censors were not amused.

If a book is banned, there are generally no discussions and no objections can be made. It can also be an expensive affair. In contrast to the film business, where screenplays have to be presented for approval, book censorship only takes place after publication. Yan's "Dream of Ding Village," for example, was in bookstores for three days. Then the publishers had to collect all the printed copies. Due to the loss, they quarreled with the author over his fee. It is this financial risk, often exacerbated by penalties from the authorities, that makes Chinese censorship so effective. "Self-censorship is much worse than all the interventions of the watchdogs," says Yan. "I've also made compromises for years. And what good has it done? None at all! China's novelists have censorship in their blood."

'I Have to Think of My Mother'

Then Yan says with a sarcastic smile that the situation of Chinese authors has actually vastly improved. "Thirty years ago, disagreeable novelists were tortured and killed. When one of my novels was banned for the first time 15 years ago, I regularly had to report to state offices for half a year and write self-criticism. Today, no one interferes with my private life."

Yan was prevented from traveling to Germany as part of the official delegation. Since his books are published by Germany's Ullstein publishing house, he could come to Frankfurt anyway, but he would rather not. "It's better not to travel there and to remain quiet," he says. In Frankfurt they are organizing "a temple fair" like at a Chinese spring festival, he says, and he would only contradict the politicians and functionaries who traveled there, and that would be dangerous.

"I have to live in China," he says. "I am not strong, sometimes I'm even a coward. I have to think of my mother, my wife and my daughter. I don't want to get them into trouble."

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• Part 1: Controversy as Frankfurt Book Fair Fetes Beijing
• Part 2: 'An Incredible Feeling of Rage'
• Part 3: The Nouveau Riche's Golden Toilets