Banned Books Week!

So apparently it's Banned Books Week. As you can imagine, dear reader, a vast number of books have been banned in China through the ages, ranging from the dangerously sexy to dangerously political. Here are a tiny selection of things that have in fact been stricken off shelves at some point (though of course, thanks to long-rooted traditions of piracy and under-the-table trade, the texts still managed to survive in many cases).

1. Plum in the Golden Vase 金瓶梅 [1617， 1627-40]
Considered a great literary classic on par with Journey to the West 西游记 and A Dream of Red Mansions/Story of the Stone 红楼梦/石头记. Plum (and a host of other erotic novels, ranging from the 14th-century New Tales of Cutting the Lamp-wick, with relatively tame and allusive depictions of man-ghost liaisons, to far more "hardcore" works like The Carnal Prayer Mat) was banned constantly almost from its first printing. Indeed, it's still none too easy to find an uncensored edition today, though a vogue among those who can afford it for "banned and destroyed" (销毁 ) books may be changing that.

Awesomely, this influential work is actually a fan-novel of another great novel, Outlaws of the Marsh/The Water Margin 水浒传*, which was also banned (by an Establishment concerned bythe glorification of criminals and less-than-lawful activities). Mao's supposed preference for this book becomes ironic in the light of his own, er, unenthusiastic response to potential "deviants" or questioners of his power.

2. Tombstone: A Record Of the Great Famine of China in the 60s [2008]
This book is terrifying. In two volumes, Yang Jisheng describes the horrors of the so-called "Three Years of Natural Disasters" from 1959-61. Gruesome death by starvation and dropsy are only the start; cannibalism--sometimes of one's own children and other kin--is also recorded with unrelenting detail and gravity.
Of course this was immediately suppressed. If you have to ask why, all that talk about how the response to the milk scandal really marks positive growth and change has turned your head too much. The copy I saw came from Hong Kong, but perhaps somewhere out there in the back room of a shady little bookstore one may purchase a copy. There are a host of websites in Chinese discussing the book, but who knows what people inside the coziness of the Great Firewall can get.

3. Death Note [2003-06]
Yes, I mean the comic series. Apparently schoolkids began writing disfavored teachers' and classmates' names in "Death Notes" in imitation of the protagonist of the manga, whose magical notebook could kill the people whose names were written in it. So instead of thinking about why students would 1) hate their instructors and peers so heartily 2) be unable or unwilling to express such sentiments in less puerile ways, the authorities banned the books--only on the Mainland, though. Hong Kong and Taiwanese kiddies can handle the "poison," so no bans there.**

*Call me immature, but I can't help giggling when I see Pearl Buck's title, All Men are Brothers. Smacks of a whole other arena of fanwork.
**A couple of articles I skimmed about this mention the possibility that bans were enforced because of rampant piracy of the DN series. But banning things doesn't usually resolve violations of corporate licensing. Plus, no legal editions were permitted, either.