Madeleine Thien - Do Not Say We Have Nothing

“Let the rooms be full of friends…” He quotes high-ranking official Kong Rong in chapter 11 of Luo Guanzhong’s 13th-century classic, Romance of the Three Kingdoms , translated by C.H. Brewitt-Taylor. Web edition published by eBooks@Adelaide, https://ebooks.adelaide.edu.au/l/literature/chinese/romance-of-the-three-kingdoms/index.html

“The grass in the meadow…” Ibid. The children’s nursery rhyme from Romance of the Three Kingdoms , ch. 9.

“There is no middle road,” Editorial of the Liberation Army Daily (Jiefangjun Bao): “Mao Tse-Tung’s Thought is the Telescope and Microscope of Our Revolutionary Cause,” June 7, 1966. The Great Socialist Cultural Revolution in China (Peking: Foreign Languages Press, 1966), III, 11–17.

“Before I die,” He Luting said, “I have two wishes.” Based on the life He Luting, as described by Sheila Melvin and Jindong Cai in Rhapsody in Red: How Western Classical Music Became Chinese (New York: Algora Publishing, 2004), 238 and referenced by Alex Ross in The Rest Is Noise: Listening to the 20th Century (New York: Macmillan, 2007), 564.

Shostakovich’s letter to Edison Denisov, as quoted by Laurel Fay, Shostakovich: A Life (London: Oxford University Press, 2005), 199.

“A form of repentance that would bring the individual back into the collective…” Kang Sheng, torturer and high-ranking member of military intelligence for Chairman Mao, as quoted in David Ernest Apter and Tony Saich’s Revolutionary Discourse in Mao’s Republic (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1994), 288. Kang was instrumental in aligning Chinese support for Pol Pot and the Khmer Rouge in Cambodia.

“Zero is a definite point from which…” Quote adapted from Friedrich Engels, Dialectics of Nature, as quoted by Wu Hung in Remaking Beijing: Tiananmen Square and the Making of a Political Space (London: Reaktion Books, 2005), 8.

Students Zhang Zhiyong, Guo Haifeng, and Zhou Yongjun kneel on the steps of the Great Hall of the People, April 22, 1989. Between 1989 and 2002, Zhou, a student at the China University of Politics and Law, served five years in prison. In 2008, while attempting to re-enter China to visit his ailing father, Zhou was re-arrested by Hong Kong police and renditioned to China. Initially charged with political crimes, he was sentenced to 9 years in prison for financial fraud. He has not been heard from since 2014. All efforts have been to find the source of this widely-shared photograph, to no avail. Please contact the publisher if you have information about the photographer or rights to the image.

Tofu Liu’s method of hiding artefacts, based on photojournalist Li Zhensheng, Red-Color News Soldier (London: Phaidon, 2003).

“For every vital movement of the world external to us we behold the image of a movement within us…” Philipp Spitta, Johann Sebastian Bach, His Work and Influence on the Music of Germany, 1685–1750 , Volume 2 (London: Novello, Ewer & Company, 1884), 602.

“Let me tell you, world / I do not believe…” Bei Dao, “The Answer,” The August Sleepwalker , transl. Bonnie S. McDougall (New York: New Directions Publishing, 1990), 33.

“We have no ties of kinship…” from Romance of the Three Kingdoms , ch. 11. Ibid.

“I came into this world bringing only paper, rope, a shadow…” The August Sleepwalker , 33.

“All warfare is based on deception…” Sun Tzu, The Art of War (Stockholm: Chiron Academic Press, 2015), 33.

“We want no more gods and emperors…” Quotation condensed from Wei Jingsheng’s “The Fifth Modernization,” as quoted by George Black and Robin Munro, Black Hands of Beijing: Lives of Defiance in China’s Democracy Movement (New York: Wylie, 1993), 50.

“I’ve been searching for myself…” I believe this is a quote from Xi Chuan, Preface to Depths and Shallowness , but can no longer find the original source.

“A society that speaks with only one voice…” Zheng Yi during 1989 demonstrations, as quoted by George Black and Robin Munro, Black Hands of Beijing , 177.

Toru Takemitsu as quoted by Alex Ross in The Rest Is Noise , 564.

Student radio broadcast, from Chai Ling’s “Declaration of a Hunger Strike,” as quoted by eds. Liang Zhang, Andrew J. Nathan, Perry Link, Orville Schell in The Tiananmen Papers (New York: Public Affairs, 2008), 154.

“There are things that I can’t accept…” Adapted from a quote by Liang Xiaoyuan in The Gate of Heavenly Peace . Directed by Richard Gordon and Carma Hinton, Boston: Long Bow Productions, 1995. Documentary film.

Zhao Ziyang’s speech to the students in Tiananmen Square, May 19, 1989. Wikipedia entry on Zhao Ziyang. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zhao — Ziyang

Noodle seller’s words adapted from interview with Wu Dingfu in “The Tiananmen Father,” from Liao Yiwu’s The Corpse Walker (New York: Anchor, 2009), 217.

“Of course, no one knows tomorrow. Tomorrow begins from another dawn…” Bei Dao, “Stretch Out Your Hands to Me…” The August Sleepwalker, 55.

“I held the letter in my hands and wept…” Zhu’s dialogue, adapted from Liao Yiwu’s interview with Wu Dingfu in “The Tiananmen Father,” The Corpse Walker , 217.

“Beauty leaves its imprints on the mind…” Original source lost.

“Even the Emperor…” Projectionist Bang quotes Romance of the Three Kingdoms , ch. 14.

“Mixed in with Chinese prayers were documents in Sanskrit, Tibetan…” Partially adapted from Colin Thubron’s Shadow of the Silk Road (New York: HarperCollins, 2009), 94. Further expanded based on public domain data from The Dunhuang Project. “Beside the mass of Chinese prayers are documents in Sanskrit, Tibetan, Uighur, Sogdian, Khotanese, Turki in a melange of scripts; a letter in Judeo-Persian, a Parthian fragment in Manichean script, a Turkic tantric tract in the Uighur alphabet, Nestorian scriptures. Ballads, inventories, wills, and deeds. Personal letters, chance intimacies. Somebody pens a whimsical argument between wine and tea. A guest’s apology for behaving indecorously drunk the night before. A funeral address for a dead donkey.” http://idp.bl.uk/

MADELEINE THIEN IS the author of the story collection Simple Recipes, which was a finalist for the Commonwealth Writers’ Prize, a Kiriyama Pacific Prize Notable Book, and won the BC Book Prize for Fiction; the novel Certainty , which won the Amazon.ca First Novel Award; and the novel Dogs at the Perimeter , which was shortlisted for Berlin’s 2014 International Literature Award and won the Frankfurt Book Fair’s 2015 Liberaturpreis. Her novels and stories have been translated into twenty-five languages, and her essays have appeared in Granta, The Guardian, the Financial Times, Five Dials, Brick and Al Jazeera. Her story “The Wedding Cake” was shortlisted for the prestigious 2015 Sunday Times EFG Short Story Award. The daughter of Malaysian-Chinese immigrants to Canada, she lives in Montreal.