Writing as a mode to fight back

“Big Character Poster” –In support of Fighter Yue Xin

In April this year, students in China's Beijing University are fighting for their freedom of speech and rights to know the truth on social media. It all started from an old case 20 years ago.

A promising sophomore girl at Beijing University, named Gao Yan, killed herself in March, 1998, soon after she was sexually violated by one of her respected professors, Shen Yang, who later denied his conduct and slandered her as a lunatic while keeping sexual relationships with other girls. The school authority relied purely on the professor's unilateral story and simply gave him a warning as a punishment based on his “inappropriate relationship with students”. However, this didn't seem to jeopardize Shen's career at all. He went to work at another university and for the following 20 years, he fared well and was promoted to a prestigious position. The poor girl's suffering wouldn't have been known to the public if it were not for the publication of an article on a popular social media platform for people to share their writings, by a woman using her true identity. Inspired by the #MeToo movement in the United States, Li, a former close friend with Gao since middle school through college, reported Gao's unbearable suffering after she was repeatedly violated by Shen in this article, demanding an apology from the professor who had caused her friend's premature death.

The exposure of this 20-year-old case triggered widespread outrage among college students, who were angry at both those professors who abuse their power and the clampdown of information and student reaction on the part of the school authority. It was reported earlier this year that two graduate students chose to kill themselves to escape their advisers’ obsessive control of their life and future development. After the tragedies, the campuses were surveilled by undercover agents and students were not even allowed to organize a memorial for their deceased colleagues, for fear of student uprising, something that the government dreads most and therefore is ready for a clampdown anytime. A group of students at Beijing University were not satisfied with the school’s revelation of it’s treatment of the case and asked for a transparency of the information. But this request was turn down. What’s more, the student leader, Yue Xin, was threatened and grounded at home by her parents, who were “suggested” by the authority to persuade their child. Every thing Yue Xin posted online to question the authority was censored and deleted, including articles in picture format published upside down. This caused a new wave of outrage both online and offline. While online media outlets were gagged for students, they put up hand written posters or “Big Character Poster” (大字报, da zi bao) in the school’s bulletin, declaring their support for Yue Xin. Scared by these bold posters, some schools even installed surveillance cameras facing the bulletins to deter further actions.

The incident triggered by the #MeToo movement helps foreground a group of young fighters. In this war that goes on both online and offline, both parties know the importance of the modes of meaning-making and articulation. Those who can control the modes and the means of distribution win. Needless to say, students are much inferior to a merciless dictatorship in this power struggle. But they are not submissive and ready to admit defeat. When the online media outlets are blocked and screened, they appealed to a very audacious mode of expression: the “Big Character Poster”. The calligraphy carries the writer’s anger when his/her brush touches the large piece of paper in front of him/her. Contrary to the calligraphy works often displayed at certain places for decoration as a piece of artwork, this piece of work is not used to exhibit manual skills and aesthetic value, but to express the voice of the gagged and downtrodden. Even though it was removed soon after its appearance, the photo of this work, together with the audacity of the writer has gone viral.

With a multimodal perspective that a mode’s meaning-making potential is socially and historically shaped and the meaning-making process is activated in different contexts by a repeated association, the psychological effect of this poster on us can be better interpreted. This poster strikes me and especially those who experienced the so-called “Cultural Revolution”, as powerful and shattering not so much by its content as by the very form it takes. This is because we know that this mode of expression—“Big Character Poster” had once been the very weapon used by the political dictators in the 1960’s to persecute and humiliate those innocent people whom they condemned as “evil capitalists” (see the picture below). We are shocked as well as moved because we have learned the special meaning of this special mode through history. Now, the young fighters are taking up the very weapon once used by the oppressors and fight back. The meaning it sends out has transcended the word itself.


A "Big Character Poster" in Nanjing University in the 1960's

Translation of the title: Single out the capitalist representative Kuang Yaming, beat him to notoriety, beat him to collapse, beat him down.

(Kuang Yaming, President of Najing University at that time)