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Some people in China don't look at freedom of speech as an abstract ideal, but more as a means to an end.

Yiyun Li

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Yiyun Li
Age: 52
Born: 1972
Born: November 4
Journalist
Screenwriter
University Teacher
Writer
Peking
Speech
Freedom
Means
Look
Mean
People
Ideal
Abstract
China

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Everybody contributes something to the system, and everybody suffers from the system.
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To write about a struggle amidst the struggling: one must hope that the muddling will end someday.
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No one is immune from either taking the wrong action or not taking action at all, but the sense that something is completely out of a person's control is stronger in China.
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If I didn't self-censor, I would be in jail, and then I wouldn't be effective at all.
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What a long way it is from one life to another: yet why write if not for that distance if things can be let go, every before replaced by an after.
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She wonders if this is what people call falling in love, the desire to be with someone for every minute of the rest of her life so strong that sometimes she is frightened of herself.
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It is a Chinese tradition that everyone has to be in everyone else's life.
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I think our eyes are trained to look for what we want to see.
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What is revolution except a systematic way for one species to eat another alive?
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But loneliness is as delusive a belief in the pertinence of the world as is love: in choosing to feel lonely, as in choosing to love, one carves a space next to oneself to be filled by others - a friend, a lover, a toy poodle, a violinist on the radio.
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Even the most innocent person, when cornered, is capable of a heartless crime.
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Chinese people don't care about freedom, but they do care about justice.
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Regarding heroism, I grew up in a culture where you learn about heroes and heroines all the time. In a way, when you call someone a hero or heroine, it's the same as calling them a villain.
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Why do I write about China? That is a very good question. I think there are questions about China that I haven't been able to answer. The reason I write is that there are questions to which I want to find answers - or I want to find questions beyond those questions.
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I would never describe a cloud as 'fluffy'—in Chinese or in English.
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Your characters are always your children. And while you are writing, you're keeping them safe. Now they're ready to go into the world and it's sad. I'm happy with the way the novel came out but all the characters' ending really saddened me.
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Only the smaller fish pay for the goverment's face-lift. The big ones - they just become bigger and fatter.
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Mrs. Pang was once a nanny for me, and she spoils me the way I imagined kindhearted women would spoil an orphan, loving me for whom I am, exactly the opposite of my mother, whose love I have to earn with great effort and with little success.
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There is a certain amount of politeness here in America, which is probably more than just politeness.
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