Outspoken Chinese writer, Murong Xuecun delivered an astonishing speech in Oslo this week. Delivered during Chinese literature week, an extract of the translated speech by Jane Weizhen Pan and Martin Merz is posted below.

Xuecun begins:

I am a Chinese writer. Allow me to say a few words about my country. Everyone knows that in the past thirty years China has built countless skyscrapers, commissioned countless airports, and paved countless freeways. My country’s GDP is the world’s second largest and her products are sold in every corner of the planet. My compatriots can be seen ontour in London, New York and Tokyo wearing expensive clothes, chattering raucously. My compatriots also fill up casinos and line up to buy LV bags. People exclaim in amazement: China is rising, the Chinese are rich! But behind this facade of power and prosperity there are details of which many people are unaware, and it is precisely these details that make mycountry a very strange place.

…

Living in China is like watching a play in a giant theatre. The plots are absurd and the scenarios are unbelievable— so absurd, so unbelievable that they are beyond any writer’s imagination.

…

In my country, many innocent people disappear, and some people lose their freedom without ever being sentenced by a court. Some people attempt to have their grievances addressed at a higher level by following procedures prescribed in law. These people are branded “petitioners.” In my country, the word petitioner conveys the sense of a nuisance, a mentally ill person, a terrorist. To deal with these petitioners, the government mobilises a huge amount of resources to herd them home, jail them, and in a particularly creative measure, incarcerate them in insane asylums

Make the time to read the rest of the speech here.