By Liao Yiwu
Translated by Wen Huang
Yunnan Province, in southwestern China, has long been the exit point for Chinese who yearn for a new life outside the country.
There, one can sneak out of China by land, passing through pristine forests, or one can go by water, floating all the way down the Lancang river until it becomes the Mekong, which meanders into Burma, Laos, Thailand, Cambodia and Vietnam.
So each time I set foot there, in a land where red soil gleams in the sun, I turned restless; my imagination ran wild. After all, having been imprisoned for four years after I wrote a poem that condemned the Chinese government’s brutal suppression of student protesters in 1989, I had been denied permission to leave China 16 times.
Read the rest of this incredible story at the Deccan Chronicle