衛報 刊出 姜戎專訪及相關報導 (詳全文) http://books.guardian.co.uk/interviews/story/0,,2215055,00.html?gusrc=rss&feed=10 Living with wolves Once he burned books as a communist guard, but now he is one of China's most celebrated literary stars. Jiang Rong tells Jonathan Watts how working as a shepherd brought about his own cultural revolution Thursday November 22, 2007 In the fervid early months of the Cultural Revolution, in 1966-67, Jiang Rong was in a Red Guard gang that ransacked homes in Beijing, confiscating and burning any books deemed counter-revolutionary. Western novels and Chinese classics were condemned as equally evil. These works were seen as promoting bourgeois decadence, imperialism and old thinking. Like all good Maoists, Jiang knew his duty: he should turn the words into ashes. But the 21-year-old was torn. He was a political firebrand who loved chairman Mao Zedong, but he was also an art student with a passion for literature. Faced with this dilemma, he took another way out. While publicly following the mob, he squirreled away many of the novels, adding them to a secret collection he had bought and kept in two large trunks. You might call it stealing. But for him in that morally chaotic era, it was a case of saving the pages from the flames. Forty years on, the wheel has turned in typically dramatic Chinese fashion. The former book burner, book thief and book saviour is on the way to becoming one of the most celebrated and controversial Chinese novelists in the world: Jiang's first book, Wolf Totem, has not only escaped a ban since its publication three years ago, but has picked up almost a dozen major literary awards in China - and has now gained international recognition by winning the first Man Asia literary prize, created to highlight authors from the region who have yet to be published in English. It is part of a transformation that Jiang hopes could herald a new age of enlightenment in China. But he has seen too many upheavals in his 61 years not to hedge his bets. A former artist, shepherd, political prisoner, Maoist lecturer and democracy activist, he has experienced the spectacular ups and downs that form the epic backdrop to much modern Chinese art. "It is a miracle that I am alive," he says. ........................................................... --

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