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Silent and Listening

Thoughts on The Wall Dancers by Yi-Ling Liu

For Westerners, it may be tempting to read stories from China about forced labor or gaming restrictions and simply respond, “I would never.” It’s understandable, if not forgivable, since our media pushes that take so hard (and don’t get me started on the absolute clown car that is the US federal government).

That’s where Yi-Ling Liu comes in. Recognizing her role as a sort of traveler between segregated Eastern and Western audiences, she relishes exploring the nuance behind life in China1. She tells the stories of five remarkable individuals (inspiring case-studies of integrity, bravery, and cunning) and highlights noble motivations that in other contexts might appear contradictory or even hypocritical. In a broader sense, she celebrates the peoples’ rejection of the CCP and draws out unobvious parallels between lived experiences in disparate places2. Her reportage is by no means naive, though: Liu is every bit as comfortable castigating shameless capitulation. I couldn’t get enough.

See, the longer I’ve worked on the web platform, the more curious I’ve become about how people are using tech in foreign countries. Western media is almost too good at covering Silicone Valley, all but unilaterally reinforcing that region’s supposed centrality rather than challenging it. It’s why I’m always trying to read more from Rest of World (where, it turns out, Liu previously served as China editor). It’s also why I feel so lucky to participate in global tech organizations like the W3C and (as of next month) Igalia.

So it’s no wonder the subtitle “Searching for Freedom and Connection on the Chinese Internet” popped off the shelves at a recent book signing. Far from simply curating those five case-studies, Lui weaves them together in service of the pace and analysis. For instance:

Like Ma Baoli, who became a custodian of China’s gay community, creating an online space for gay men to seek kinship, Lü [Pin] had dedicated her life to nurturing China’s feminist activists, providing them with a platform to speak out. He was empowered by his decision to have children; she was by her freedom not to.

It’s the kind of writing that illuminates even as it propels you forward. It proves the work is more than the sum of its parts. It gives you hope that maybe you could understand a little more about this impossibly complex world, and it inspires you to keep trying.

  1. Liu peppers the book with autobiographical details that don’t simply give insight into her experience as a journalist; they further demonstrate the divide between cultures. Here’s a personal favorite:

    […] my writing [at the Associated Press] was limited to the handful of topics about China deemed relevant to an international, which typically meant American, reader. To reduce huge concepts to a few hundred words, I had to describe Weibo as “China’s Twitter,” Sichuan as “The Chinese province the size of France,” and Hong Kong as “the former British colony” and prescribe most problems to the “tightening grip of the ruling Communist Party.” I wrote stories that felt meaningful to me–from a kindergarten abuse scandal to the devastating consequences of migrant evictions in Beijing–but mostly about how they “sparked public outcry,” without delving into deeper systemic issues, such as the hukou (“household registration”) system of the private education industry.

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  2. In this, she repeatedly draws from Václav Havel, a thinker who’s quickly becoming a through-line for my favorite writers on freedom and justice. ↩︎