Viral Alarm

 

The following essay by Xu Zhangrun, translated by Geremie R. Barmé, first appeared in SupChina on 17 December 2020. It is reprinted here with the kind permission of Jeremy Goldkorn.

— Geremie R. Barmé
Editor, China Heritage
22 December 2020

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Xu Zhangrun 許章潤 Xǔ Zhāngrùn was a professor of law at Beijing’s prestigious Tsinghua University for over twenty years. He was expelled by the university in mid July this year. Stripped of his pension, his accreditation as an educator and thrown out of faculty housing, he moved to a small apartment that he and his wife maintained in the far west of Beijing. His crime was to have spoken up, loudly and frequently, to criticise Xi Jinping’s government.

Xu first came to international attention in July 2018, when he published ‘Imminent Fears, Immediate Hopes’ — a Beijing Jeremiad 我們當下的恐懼與期待, an unsparing critique of Xi Jinping’s first six years in office. Written in a passionate and eviscerating style of prose that combined the telegraphic gravitas of literary Chinese with modern ideas, ironic party-speak and wisecracking humor, the essay was a point by point warning about the direction that the country was taking, politically, economically, socially, as well as on the international stage.

Tsinghua University and the state security organs put intense pressure on Xu Zhangrun to recant. Not only did he refuse, he continued to publish scarifying anti-Xi broadsides. These included a magisterial three-part work that appeared in Hong Kong in late 2018. In it he analysed the reasons for the successes of China’s forty years of economic reform and openness before lambasting the Communist party-state that has set its sights on creating a global ‘Red Empire’. Faced with ongoing persecution, Xu declared ‘I will not submit; I will not be cowed’ 老子不服，老子不怕.

As the outbreak of the COVID-19 epidemic spread in China, Xu published ‘When Fury Overcomes Fear’, another fusillade aimed squarely at Xi Jinping and a cowed bureaucracy that allowed a local epidemic rage out of control, something that not only spawned a global pandemic but also proved to be a boon for surveillance regimes the world over.

In July, Xu was taken in by the police who claimed that they were investigating him for having solicited the services of prostitutes. Tsinghua availed itself of his weeklong detention to dismiss him from his job and strip him of what remained of his professional status. Like many outspoken individuals before him, Xu was now a ‘former person’.

Perhaps it is due to his international profile (Xu was appointed an Associate in Research at the Fairbank Center for Chinese Studies at Harvard University in August), or the fact that he is regarded as having acted alone, rather than ‘gathering others to create a disturbance’ 聚眾滋事 jù zhòng zī shì — a vaguely defined ‘crime’ used by the authorities to jail opponents — Xu Zhangrun remains free, even though, as we see below, he is subject to a regime of all-encompassing surveillance and banned from leaving Beijing, let alone the People’s Republic. The circumstances of this circumscribed ‘freedom’, something widely known among those in China who follow the ups and downs of political life in the country, are also an object lesson to others.

Despite this, Xu Zhangrun has been steadfast in his defiance and he has used what remaining latitude he enjoys to protest the persecution of the publisher Geng Xiaonan 耿瀟男, a long-time supporter and friend to the beleaguered community of independent Chinese thinkers who was detained by that authorities in early September. At the end of this essay, Xu notes obliquely that it was written in a furious mood after he had spent long hours at ‘The Walled Enclosure’, that is, the Haidian Detention Centre, where he had waiting for Geng Xiaonan’s lawyer to update him on the details of her circumstances.

The following translation, made with the author’s permission, is part of a China Heritage series titled ‘Viral Alarm’. For an account of Xu Zhangrun’s background, work and those who support him, see the Xu Zhangrun Archive, also in China Heritage.

Xu Zhangrun’s classics-inflected prose style is sardonic and it brims with literary references. Notes would only interfere with the flow of the text, although a number of minor explications have been added, marked by square brackets. Interested readers are encouraged to consult the Chinese text, also provided here.

— Geremie R. Barmé
17 December 2020

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Cyclopes on My Doorstep

Xu Zhangrun

translated by Geremie R. Barmé

 

At the height of the seasonal transition, just as the final flourish of summer was giving way to the bounty of autumn, dozens of spying eyes were installed in our community. The spies came in the form of CCTV cameras, a modern stand-in for the traditional form of embodied surveillance: undercover security agents. The new cameras were a cover for the real spies.

They came in all shapes and sizes, their surreptitious clairvoyance paired with deadly intent. Positioned like stylites on dedicated poles, the cameras survey all that lies within their realm and their perspective is deterred neither by the elements nor by the diurnal cycle. They glare down on our bustling world, capturing in their sweep all creatures great and small. Although the sentinels launched into action in sullen silence, theirs presence announced itself as loudly as a thunderclap.

In reality, everything that happens in our community is being followed by anonymous pairs of eyes behind the cyclops lenses. Now we are all aware that, even at a safe remove, they are snooping on it all: the quotidian grind of eating-drinking-shitting-pissing, as well as all of our comings and goings. They are also voyeurs, peeping-toms who observe the goings on between the sexes. The unfolding seasons, the passage of the days, the phases of the moon, not to mention the private agonies of separation — all are now subject to their inspection. Such all-weather surveillance sucks everything in, no matter how insignificant or irrelevant it may appear to be.

As the focus of singular attention my place enjoys a unique privilege. Just outside my door, which opens out onto a fan-shaped area, and within a stretch of land roughly the size of a fifty metre semi-circle, they’ve installed no less than nine CCTV cameras. Positioned at a variegated array of angles they peer out from different heights and at carefully calibrated distances. Some scan east-west, thereby honing in on my doorway while picking up the oblique angles of my humble abode. Two particularly hi-tech cameras come equipped with their own spotlights. At dusk these flicker on automatically and glower through the night unblinking. Anyone daring to visit me must endure their devoted scrutiny. And on they shine — on the brave few who would pay me a call, or on the drinking buddies who turn up unexpectedly, be they bringing news of unwarranted hope or appearing with sorrowful accounts of despair. Anyone who would beat a path to my place must do so in the dazzling glare of these relentless eyes.

CCTV has become a feature of China’s national landscape in recent years. The eyes are on us; surveillance cameras festoon the highways and byways of our cities. They are as multitudinous as the swarms of flies that were an unavoidable feature of public toilets, and they are as brash and undaunted as the ‘Ladies of Dongguan’ [who are famed for plying the oldest trade]. It goes without saying that CCTV cameras far outnumber that army of zombies who, when ‘on political heat’ in the spring months, annually converge on the Great Hall [of the People for the ‘Two Meetings’, convocations of the National People’s Congress and the National People’s Political Consultative Conference]. But the two bright-eyed, thug-like creatures at my door are new to me; they are a breed I hadn’t previously encountered. They lurk in wait for me, and for me alone.

When the workmen were installing the all-seeing eyes — lazily digging holes for the poles, laying cables and adjusting the lights — I overheard them joke about my particular cyclopes:

‘These little bastards are seriously hi-tech: they see what everyone’s up to and they can listen in as well; they even record what’s being said. You’d better watch out what you and the wife natter about in bed!’

Indeed, [this brings to mind a famous line by the Song poet Zhang Yan 張炎,]

‘they must take wary steps, hiding their embraces amidst the jostling blossoms. Exchanging soft whispers out of sight, the lovers are jealous even of the moon’s unwelcome light.’

Now, there’s no avoiding detection, even in the foliage; the slightest peep and they’ve got you. No-one can escape such assiduous attentiveness. Regardless and heedless, there will, however, always be those who will be unwilling to repress themselves or to take flight. Those couples will still throw caution to the wind and drink deep of the carnal cup. Cries of ribald ecstasy will resound as humping paramours pummel beds asunder.

***

Our small residential area lies beyond the Sixth Ring Road of Beijing. Its occupies a footprint shaped like a maple leaf, with farmlands lying just outside the enclosing wall. An out-of-the-way location far from everything, it is home to a few dozen families, forty or fifty people all told. My place is deep inside the compound near the uppermost tip of the maple leaf. It’s little better than a rustic dwelling, confining as it does this caged animal, a place barely fit for human habitation.

To get to my hovel from the main arterial road within the compound, first you veer left before taking a right-hand turn following which you wend a way along a path to reach my ramshackle door. The path peters out after about ten metres further on in a cul-de-sac, bringing to mind the old poetic line [from the Song-dynasty that mournfully touches on some of the famous sites of the West Lake in Hangzhou. One looks at this dead-end and thinks of]:

‘The teetering form casts a long shadow over Broken Bridge;
Dreams abruptly end at Solitary Hill.’

That’s why, setting out from my front door, first I have to take a left-hand turn then, after about ten metres, I go right for about another thirty before reaching the main road. From there I can catch sight of the farmlands and the city beyond. My line of vision is drawn to follow the rows of willows that line the waterways stretching out to mist-covered mountains in the distance.

The main road cuts a swathe through all of this, forming a T-junction. Nowadays for me to confront the newly populated topography requires more than workaday courage, for they have re-made the landscape and pock-marked it with hazards: those all-seeing lookouts. Still, I find myself to be equal to the confrontation: after that left-hand turn from my door, at about a distance of ten metres, I encounter the first sentinel, its obsidian lour boring into me. In fact, there’s two cameras up there that are set back to back, janus-like. They provide their cloaked masters an unhindered east-west view. They aren’t trained on the path itself, however, for their heads are twisted just so, allowing them to take in my doorway.

Having thus set out, I make sure to acknowledge their mute presence with a greeting appropriate to the time of day. Maybe I’ll add a ‘Fuck You!’ for good measure, before turning right. Then, some thirty metres there’s another ‘darkling monocle’. This too is a two-headed hydra; these conjoined brothers have stewardship over the north-south line of sight. They are the ones mentioned earlier that, in pursuance of their intrusive task, have the wherewithal to bring their own light to bear on the subject — me — employing the latest hi-tech thingamajigs to do so. The T-junction is a transportation nexus for the community and to the south-east, where the terrain rises up a little, they’ve implanted more snooping eyes. The two cameras affixed there, again back-to-back, cover the southeast and northwest vectors. So, within a fairly small radius they’ve actually installed four CCTV cameras ensuring thereby their panoptic purview.

Walking east along the left-hand arm of the T-junction takes me towards the heart of the maple shaped fan of the community. Along the way, I’ll encounter a CCTV camera every twenty or so metres. If, instead, I decide to strike out to the right, that is towards the west, I’ll soon reach a forked path where, yet again, cameras are trained to catch anyone approaching from either direction. There is also camera fixated on the southwest. Here, for once, they have chosen to overlook me, but as I said earlier, it still means there are nine CCTV cameras dedicated to keeping an eye on me.

Faced as I am with all of this, allow me to enumerate my feelings [by employing a few classical turns of phrase], for I’d describe what I face as being like

‘an ambush laid out in all ten directions,
one that extends a hundredfold embrace of solicitude, that in turn
offers a patronising concern expressed itself in a thousand little ways,
amounting in toto to a ten-thousand manifold of claustrophobic absorption.’

Or, to put it more plainly, the authorities are subjecting me to relentless and suffocating attention.

[As a result, as the poets would say:]

‘Now, paths swept clean, cautious silence reigns.
The days of carefree carousing and friendship all long gone,
now but sundry pleasures of the past.’

Yet, still I count myself fortunate; after all, surely this part and parcel of ‘la Comédie humaine’!

***

At first, I couldn’t help looking up at them whenever I set out on a morning or evening constitutional. Of course, they’d stare at me dumbly, in the surreptitious fashion that is their nature. Over time, however, I lost interest in them and, sometimes, I might forget about them altogether if I hadn’t left the house for a few days or even a fortnight. Then, when I did catch sight of them looming up in their perches, all steely and morose, I’d be taken aback. Then I’d remember — that’s right, it’s all part of their ‘Pacify Project’. Don’t be surprised! Don’t freak out — or so I’d try to reassure myself.

Their Pacify Project goes something like this: the state funds the installation of the surveillance system, it coordinates the rollout and pays for the lot using the hard-earned taxes of the citizenry. The profiteers that take it from there are hi-tech companies that design the eye-spy cameras. Added to that is a bevy of manufacturers who are involved at every point in the chain of production — that doesn’t include all the managers in charge of the teams of workers who actually do the job. By means of this seamless concatenation of plunder everyone gets to gouge their fill. People say that a typical procurement process like this means that each echelon of the commercial enterprises and party-state bureaucracies involved know just how to divvy up the tasks so they can be sure to score their particular share of the spoils. After all, hundreds of millions of cameras have been installed throughout the land, in the countryside and the city alike. Everyone who has a stake in the process takes their cut, public and private entities feeding off each other, top and bottom in cahoots, each level piling on, resulting in the present situation. What a bonanza!

But that’s just what I’ve heard. The real-life outcome of such machinations is that you often come across dozens of cameras jostling on the same single pole, nestling there like a flock of weary raptors. Now, everyone, everywhere is living year in year out ‘under foreign eyes’. [Note: In April 2019, Radio Free Asia reported that, by the year 2022, there would be two CCTV cameras for every man, woman and child in China.]

And it has come about that there are now all those spying eyes trained, cyclops-like, on my doorstep. Yet, strange as it may sound, I’d venture that I feel a measure of reassurance when I think about the despicable pairs of eyes that lurking behind the camera lenses — those gazing fixedly devoted to me. Sometimes, I imagine them to be weary blurry eyes clouded with fatigue; or bloodshot eyes exhausted by staring at a screen all day. Then there’s the eyes are brimming with frustration and resentment. Then, again, they might be pellucid optics, as youthful and alert as the young man or woman to which they belong. They might even think that they know exactly what their job entails, or they are proud that they their particular cog has found just the right place in the vast machinery of the state. Though, it’s also more than likely that theirs is a flickering gaze behind which hides a spirit ill-at-ease with itself. Then there are times that I think to myself: the eyes belong to a nondescript and numb observer, or they are dusky windows on a doughy, dull-witted soul.

Regardless of the kind of person ogling me through those arms-length lenses, they are part of a mechanism ticking over tirelessly and behind that skulks the scowl of undivided attention. Of that I am sure.

There’s a particularly poetic and meaningful line in A Luminous Republic, a novel by Andrés Barba:

‘Tiring of the same landscape, the vast earth began to move itself and, from that, rivers were born to flow’.

One day, surely, China’s myriad of camera lenses will also tire of the landscape it surveys. Or, conversely, those whom the CCTV cameras surveil may eventually tire of them and break forth in rebellion. What will then lie ahead will be the surging river and an irresistible tide.

The Season of the Great Cold
Twenty Third Day of the
Tenth Month of the Gengzi Year
7 December 2020 of the Gregorian Calendar

Written in haste at my home By the Old River,
having just returned after a long wait
outside The Walled Enclosure

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我家門前探頭多

許章潤

夏秋之際，物華濃盛，小區裡新裝了幾十個探頭。探頭者，監控攝像頭，CCTV也。此為現代產物，部分代替細作的肢體，為細作之技術張本。它們形狀各異，大小不一，鬼鬼祟祟，鷹視狼顧。它們橫立桿頭，危欄送目，風雨無阻，晝夜兼程。它們俯視下界眾生，掃描飛禽走獸，雖則默然無聲，但卻如雷貫耳。大家的吃喝拉撒，每個人的行藏出處，男男女女的來往過從，乃至於鶯飛草長、日升月落、鳳凰臺上憶吹簫，全都在鏡頭後面那雙眼睛的照看之下，而且，是全天候、整體性、巨細無遺的悉心照看。

我家獨蒙厚澤，待遇優渥。柴門往外，扇面形散開，五十米半徑內，居然新裝了九個探頭。它們參差錯落，指東打西，齊齊聚焦門口，密密圍攏寒舍。其中兩個，鏡頭下方自置光源，每到傍晚便華燈初上，一夜通明，直射來者去客。燈光照耀，念奴嬌，滿庭芳，雨中花慢，踏莎行樂，前程似錦。晚近幾年，吾國新景，大街小巷探頭多，多如舊日城鄉茅廁的蒼蠅，多如昔年東莞的女人，當然更多過春天政治發情期大會堂裡的行尸走肉。可這兩個勞什子卻是頭回見，而且徘徊街巷，別處未之見也。安裝的工人師傅一邊懶洋洋挖坑埋柱，引線調光，一邊打趣調笑：這玩意兒，除了盯人，新產品，還能聽聲，呃，就是採集聲音，今後跟婆娘床頭說話小聲點兒啊。

是啊，“隨款步、花密藏春，聽私語、柳疏嫌月。”既然遁跡無望，呢喃有聲，那就乾脆，得兒，捧流霞，溢玉質，任性叫嚷，放聲喧騰，把個牙床折騰散架算了。

小區在六環外，狀如一片桑葉，圍墻外就是田野。天遠地僻，常住不過二三十戶，攏共大約四五十人。寒舍位處葉梢，接近葉尖，形如農舍，性比獸窩，恰堪人居。一條小徑左拐右拐後通向柴門，再往前十米就是盡頭，走投無路，近似於古人口中之“瘦影橫斜，斷橋路小，如今夢斷孤山了”。因而，出門必須左轉十來米，再右轉三十米，然後始能走上小區的主幹道，進而，有望出小區，進城鄉，上山下河，且看清陰垂柳沿岸連綿雲山外。主幹道在此橫切，形成一個丁字口，形勢險惡，萬夫不當。由此，格局出矣，氣象生焉，豪邁湧兮：出門左轉，迎面十來米處，危桿聳立，黑黢黢的探頭衝著你。其實是兩個探頭，它們背靠背，監控東西，不正向掃描小道，卻歪著脖子直射柴門。跟它打個照面，道過早安晚安，有時加送一頭草泥馬，立馬右轉，前方三十米處，又是一個黑頭危立。同樣是背靠背的兩兄弟，掌管南北。這兩處切近體己，均自帶照明，用的是高科技新玩意兒。丁字口交通要道，除此之外，偏往東南方，地勢稍高，另立一桿，再裝兩個探頭，兼顧東南與西北。如此，五米方圓，共置四個探頭，前後左右，合攏照看宇宙蒼生。往丁字一橫的左邊走，東向斜抵扇軸，每距二十來米，各有一個探頭。往丁字一橫的右邊走，西向不遠分叉，路分兩條，再有兩個探頭，分別照看來去。因有一個探頭眺望西南，將寒舍撇開不管不顧，故爾至此共計九個探頭，十面埋伏，百般體貼，千般殷勤，萬分周到，全方位伺候。

掃花遊，聲聲慢，流觴事遠繞梁斷，灑家有福，旖歟盛哉！

我早晚散步，免不了抬頭望它們一眼，彼此探頭探腦，後來慢慢地也懶得望了。有時十天半月不出門，竟把它們忘了，待出門轉身抬頭就瞅見個黑黢黢的鐵傢伙正對著自己，還有點兒一驚一乍的，頃刻又想起這是平安工程，喲，莫驚，莫詫。

平安工程，公家出錢，主要是安裝監控系統。統一部署，用的是納稅人的血汗。設計探頭的科技公司，生產設備的上下游廠家，安裝系統的包工頭，一條龍，食物鏈，都賺得盆滿缽滿。神州大地，遍佈城鄉，數以億計的探頭，一筆大買賣嘛。據說政府採購，工程分片發包，包而複包，層層疊疊，姐夫郎舅，油水也挺大，不知真假。馬路上一桿橫立，而探頭數十，仿佛倦鳥棲枝，遂為尋常景象。總之，人人參與，個個賺錢，公私聚力，上下合謀，同分一杯羹，而都層層加碼，最後讓每個人都時時處處、春夏秋冬生活在鏡頭之下。

我家門前探頭多，而一想到探頭後面有雙眼睛陰鷙森森地整天價兒在盯著你，在照看你，心裡甭提多舒服。有時候不免瞎想，那可能是雙倦怠渾濁的眼睛，因整天盯著熒屏而充滿血絲，也充滿怨憤。也可能明眸清澈，如同他或者她那稚氣未脫的臉龐，自認為明白這份工作的意義，為身為一顆螺絲釘納入這部龐大機器而自豪。更有可能的是一副飄忽的眼神，一顆恍惚的心神，一腔麻木不仁的精神，它們聚集堆砌於一具癡肥的肉身。但無論是哪種情形，那裡有一部機器在運作，那裡有一雙人眼在盯梢，則必定無疑也。

在《光明共和國》這部小說中，當代西班牙新銳作家安德烈斯·巴爾瓦曾經寫下這樣一句話，詩意盎然，哲理悠然，蘊藉軒然：“看倦了同一種風景後，大地開始行走，於是誕生了河流。”如此，則鏡頭裡的風景，總有看倦了的那一天，或者，被看倦了的那一天，而太原倉窄，臨潼關隘，等待它的必是大河奔流，洪水滔滔。

耶誕二0二0年十二月七日，庚子十月廿三，節氣大寒，

從大墻外返家匆草，故河道旁。

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