Wei
Jingsheng Foundation News and Article Release Issue: A1169-W798
魏京生基金会新闻与文章发布号：A1169-W798
Release
Date: December 22, 2018
发布日：2018年12月22日
Topic:
French Sino Expert Marie Holzman's Speech at the Symposium in Observance of the
40th Anniversary of the Democracy Wall in the US Congress
标题：法国中国问题专家侯芷明女士给美国国会举办的“纪念民主墙40周年”研讨会的书面发言
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Sino
Expert Marie Holzman's Written Speech at the Symposium in Observance of the
40th Anniversary of the Democracy Wall in the US Congress
Dear
Friends,
It
is a great honor and a great pleasure for me to be able to bring my testimony
to this commemoration of Wei Jingsheng's famous big charactered poster
(dazibao), "the Fifth Modernization - Democracy". I hear everybody is getting ready to
commemorate June 4th and its 30th anniversary next year, but I believe this
event today might be the only one to commemorate the first "Beijing
Spring" of 1978. It is both
regrettable and understandable. I
remember those days in Beijing very clearly. There were few foreigners living in China at that time. Practically no camera crews were there
to take pictures of the new dazibao being stuck every day on the Xidan
Democracy Wall, so the democratic world was not really conscious of what was
going on in China then.
For
me those days influenced my whole career, if the word "career " can
be used in such a case... Indeed, when I had arrived in China in 1975, the
Cultural Revolution had not yet ended and we, the foreign students in China
were exposed to a kind of constant brain washing. For me, having spent over a
year in Taiwan, and being used to speak and understand Chinese, it was a great
surprise. The Chinese I had known
before seemed like friends who had aspirations that were very close to mine:
they liked getting together with us, sharing meals, talking about life, love,
their future, their family, and it never occurred to me that we did not share
the same values.
But
in Beijing, and in particular in our Peking Language Institute, things were
completely different: the constant presence of Chairman Mao was the first thing
that struck me. Nothing could be
said (or even thought) against the Great Leader. Everything followed: what we were allowed to read, Old
Foolish Man who moved the mountain, the biography of Henry Norman Bethune,
etc., what we were allowed to listen to, Eight Model Operas (of the Cultural
Revolution period) over and over again, who we were able to talk to, etc. I remember my only "real
friend" at the time was a simple-minded man who was in charge of menial
errands, sweeping the alleys on our campus, cleaning the dining hall and such
things. He was kind and friendly
but obviously not really aware of what the world was like around him. Hence his willingness to spend time
with me. All other
"normal" Chinese were careful not be seen alone with me, or not to
pronounce any sentence that was not politically correct. It took over a year before I was
invited to share some dumplings at one of our French speaking professors of the
Institute.
So,
slowly, I came to accept that, somehow, Chinese people in Mainland China were
really different from me, and did not share what appeared to me before as being
simple straightforward aspirations like, of course, freedom, democracy, human
rights. They were actually
creating a new society that did not look terribly appealing to me but I had
gotten used to it and thought that: "Oh well, if that's what they want,
I'll just have to accept it..."
The
beginning of the Beijing Spring movement, which started at the end of the 1978 summer
and went on through autumn and winter, was a real eye opener for me: more and
more Chinese citizens tried to approach me, and tell me what was really on
their mind. I particularly
remember one night in November. It
was really very cold, well under 0 ° Celsius, and I did not notice that someone
had discreetly put a letter in the pocket of my overcoat. That is not so surprising: people would
go at night to Xidan corner and read the new articles others had posted on the
Wall. There were crowds standing
there in the cold, not thousands of people but certainly 3 or 4 hundred men and
women, passionately engrossed in their discovery of what people like Ren
Wanding, Xu Wenli, Xia Xunjian, and many other writers had to say. It was fascinating because the debate
between those silent readers, and those eloquent writers went on night after
night, with very different requests.
Some wanted more Human Rights, and appealed to President Jimmy Carter to
listen to their plea. Some wanted
more rights to the workers, real independent and free worker's unions, and were
inspired by the Polish Lech Walesa, others just wanted more sexual freedom and
grumbled about the lack of privacy in their lives as the Resident Committee had
at the time the capacity of reporting everything they heard and saw, and
provoked disaster in people's lives whenever they felt like it...
The
man who had slipped a note in my pocket had written that there was no one in
China who had dared to expose what went on in the Laogai like Solzhenitsyn had
done for the Russian gulag, but that this only proved that the situation was
much worse in China than it was in the USSR. This idea sent shivers down my spine...
So
I was still out on the street, practically every night, reading passionately
what was written, and discovering with great relief and joy that, after all,
the Chinese people were, indeed, just like me, with a strong desire for freedom
and happiness.
Wei
Jingsheng's article appeared only in December, at the height of the excitement
of the Xidan Democracy Wall. It
had a great impression and, for the first time, all the journalists that were
present in Beijing wanted to publish a translation of the entire dazibao, which
happened to be one of the longest that got posted. It had a tremendous impact in the world, and people were
quoting Wei Jingsheng's name everywhere: France (my country), America, Japan,
Germany, England, all over the planet.
It was as if, suddenly, one Chinese had opened a new era in the mental
and political atmosphere in China.
Democracy was explained to the Chinese readers in simple and clear
words. No concession was made to
the communist regime, and the disasters it had created (the Great leap forward,
the Cultural Revolution, the numerable arrests and tortures) were clearly
exposed. The only solution to
bring progress and prosperity to China relied on one single concept: democracy.
Although
the 1989 democracy movement was of much greater importance as far as numbers
are concerned, since we had only a few dozen people daring to speak out in 1978
while millions of demonstrators were in the streets in 1989, the political
impact was not, as far as I am concerned, as innovative and provocative as the
first Beijing Spring I had witnessed.
In 1989, the young people who took the lead of the movement didn't even
know Wei Jingsheng's name, and were not conscious of what Deng Xiaoping was
capable of. Because Wei Jingsheng
had been thrown in jail in March 1979 and his writings completely erased from
the Chinese people's memories, no one knew about his prophecy concerning Deng
Xiaoping: that he would become the new totalitarian despot of China, after Mao
Zedong's death.
I
have the feeling that the best way to protect the Chinese Communist Party's
single authority over the fate of one billion Chinese has been to extinguish
the impact, the content, the memory of this first Beijing Spring. If the Chinese population had been able
to be informed and pursue the discussion in 1979, things would have taken an
entirely different turn in China, and we would not be here, just a handful of
us, regretting one of History's biggest wrong turns!
I
wish you all a great meeting, and a meaningful commemoration.
Marie
Holzman
From
Paris, on Decembre 2nd 2018
Photo
of Marie Holzman:
http://www.weijingsheng.org/pic/newsletters/newsletters2018/newsletters2018-4/HolzmanMphoto.jpg
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中文版
Wei
Jingsheng Foundation News and Article Release Issue: A1169-W798
魏京生基金会新闻与文章发布号：A1169-W798
Release
Date: December 22, 2018
发布日：2018年12月22日
Topic:
French Sino Expert Marie Holzman's Speech at the Symposium in Observance of the
40th Anniversary of the Democracy Wall in the US Congress
标题：法国中国问题专家侯芷明女士给美国国会举办的“纪念民主墙40周年”研讨会的书面发言
Original
Language Version: English (Chinese version at the end)
此号以英文为准（英文在前，中文在后）
如有中文乱码问题，请与我们联系或访问:
http://www.weijingsheng.org/report/report2018/report2018-12/HolzmanMspeech181222atDemocracyWall40thA1169-W798.htm
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法国中国问题专家侯芷明女士给美国国会举办的“纪念民主墙40周年”研讨会的书面发言
亲爱的朋友们，
能够为魏京生著名的大字报"第五个现代化-民主"的纪念活动作见证，我感到非常荣幸和高兴。我听到大家都在准备纪念六四以及明年的三十周年。但我相信今天的这个活动可能是唯一一个纪念1978年第一个"北京之春"的活动。这既令人遗憾又可以理解。我非常清楚地记得那些在北京的日子。当时在中国生活的外国人很少。事实是没有带相机的人员在那里拍摄每天都在西单民主墙上出现的新的大字报，所以民主世界并没有真正意识到当时中国的情况。
对我来说，那些日子影响了我的整个职业生涯，如果在这种情况下可以使用"职业"这个词......事实上，当我1975年来到中国时，文化大革命还没有结束，我们外国留学生接触到的是一种持续不断的洗脑。对在台湾待过一年多，且习惯于说和理解中文的我而言，这很令人惊讶。我以前认识的中国人是有着与我的愿望非常接近的朋友：他们喜欢和我们在一起，分享饭菜，谈论生活、爱情、以及他们的未来和他们的家庭。我从来没有想过我们不共享相同的价值观。
但在北京，特别是在我们的北京语言学院，情况完全不同：不断出现的毛主席是第一件令我印象深刻的事情。任何反对伟大领袖的话是不可以说的（甚至不可以想的）。接下来的一切：我们被允许阅读的内容是：愚公移山，白求恩的传记等等；我们被允许听到的，是一遍又一遍的八个样板戏；以及我们可以和谁交谈，等等。我记得我当时唯一的"真正的朋友"是一个头脑简单的男人，他负责如打扫校园里的小道，清理餐厅等粗活。他善良友善，但显然并不真正意识到他身边的世界。因此他愿意和我共度时光。所有其他"正常"的中国人都小心翼翼，不愿被人看到单独和我在一起，也不说任何政治上不正确的话。过了一年多，我才被邀请到我们学院的一位会说法语的教授那里一起吃饺子。
所以慢慢地，我开始接受因为某种原因，中国大陆的中国人与我真的不同的这种想法。我以为他们并不与我分享我之前认为简单直接的愿望，比如自由、民主和人权。他们实际上正在建立一个对我并不太有吸引力的新社会，但我已经习惯了并认为："哦，如果这就是他们想要的，我就得接受......"
1978年夏，北京之春运动开始，并经历了之后的秋冬。那对我真是大开眼界：越来越多的中国人试图接近我，并告诉我他们到底在想什么。我特别记得11月份的一个夜晚。当时非常冷，摄氏零下，我没注意到有人小心翼翼地在我的大衣口袋里放了封信。这并不令人惊讶：人们会在晚上去西单角阅读其他人在墙上张贴的新文章。寒冷中有许多人站在那里，虽没有成千上万，但起码有三、四百人。他们热情地投入，来发现如任畹町、徐文立、夏寻剑等许多作家的说法。这真是令人着迷，因为那些沉默的读者和那些雄辩的作家之间的辩论在一夜又一夜地进行着，伴随着非常不同的要求。有些人想要更多的人权，并呼吁吉米·卡特总统听取他们的请求。有些人希望工人有更多的权利，真正的独立和自由组织工会，并受到波兰莱赫·瓦文萨的启发。其他人只是想要更多的性自由，并抱怨生活中缺乏隐私，因为居民委员会总是报告所听到和看到的一切，并导致人们的生活发生灾难......
那个在我的口袋里放了一张便条的人写道，中国没有一个人敢揭露劳改，就像索尔仁尼琴为俄罗斯古拉格所做的那样，但这只能证明中国的情况比苏联更糟糕。这个想法如一股凉气爬上我的脊梁......
因此，我几乎每天晚上都在那街上，热情地阅读着那些书写出来的内容，给我以极大的安慰和喜悦的发现是，原来中国人的确和我一样，对自由和幸福有着强烈的渴望。
魏京生的文章在十二月才出现，但是正是西单民主墙令人兴奋的高峰期。这篇文章给人留下了深刻的印象。第一次，在北京的所有记者都想要发表这篇大字报的全部译文，而该文恰好是发表的大字报中最长之一。它在世界上产生了巨大的影响，人们在世界各地包括法国（我的国家）、美国、日本、德国、英国，引用着魏京生的名字。似乎突然间，一个中国人开启了中国精神和政治气氛的新纪元。这篇文章以简单明了的文字向中国读者解释了民主。这篇文章没有向共产党政权让步，并清晰地揭露了共产党所制造的一系列灾难（大跃进，文化大革命，许多逮捕和酷刑）。而为中国带来进步和繁荣的唯一解决方案就依赖于这单一的概念：民主。
虽然就数字而言，1989年的民主运动具有更大的重要性，因为在1978年只有几十个人敢于大声疾呼，而在1989年街头就有数百万的示威者。但在我看来，就政治影响而言，1989年并不如我所见证的第一个北京之春更具有创新性和挑衅性。1989年运动领头的年轻人甚至不知道魏京生的名字，也没意识到邓小平会做什么。因为魏京生于1979年3月被投入了监狱，他的文章被完全从中国人的记忆中抹去，所以没有人知道他有关邓小平的预言。在毛泽东去世后，邓将成为中国新极权主义的暴君。
我感到保护中国共产党对十多亿中国人命运的单一权威的最好办法就是消除第一个北京之春的影响、内容和记忆。如果中国人民能知道，并在1979年继续其讨论，那么中国的情况就会发生完全不同的变化，那么我们就不会在这里，只是少数几个人，来对历史上最大的错误转变而感到遗憾！
我祝大会成功，并祝纪念活动意义深远。
侯芷明
2018年12月2日于巴黎
侯芷明的照片：
http://www.weijingsheng.org/pic/newsletters/newsletters2018/newsletters2018-4/HolzmanMphoto.jpg
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