Other than the general information I found in the bio section (from Norton World Literature, Volume F) it was extremely difficult for me to find more personal information on Chu T’ien-Hsin. This makes me wonder if there is a correlation between a lack of information on authors and China’s influence on Taiwan. I am curious to know more about Chinese censorship and how much “control” they have over their own writers (which, depending on your personal beliefs, may or may not include Taiwanese writers).
In a sense, they are controlling a part of the author/book’s identity and integrity by choosing to omit something or by deciding to rewrite plot lines.
According to a NYT article from October 2013, foreign writers who “agree to submit their books to China’s fickle censorship regime say the experience can be frustrating.”¹ A St. Louis-based writer whose thriller books are set in Shanghai said that Chinese publishers “altered the identity of pivotal characters and rewrote plot lines they deemed unflattering to the Communist Party.”
To be quite honest, I had forgotten that China was a communist nation. Living in a democratic country where we have the freedom to do anything we want and be anything we want, sometimes, your mind doesn’t think twice about freedoms that other people may not have.
If Man of La Mancha has been published in China, what information has been altered? Would someone reading the same work in China have a different opinion on the narrator’s identity? In my previous post, here, I summed up his identity/character as irritating. However, if something has been altered or omitted, would he still be the same character?
Would (or, has) Chu T’ien-Hsin allow(ed) China to make edits on Man of La Mancha?
