1959.07今日中国的作家

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Writers in China Today
PEGGY DURDIN was born in China, the daughter of Southern Presbyterian missionaries. After her graduation from Agnes Scott College in Georgia, she returned to China to teach English in the Shanghai American School. She married Tillman Durdin of the New York TIMES staff in 1938, and during the war years was herself an accredited correspondent in Burma, Chungking, and elsewhere in Southeast Asia.

By Peggy Durdin
DECEMBER 1959 ISSUE
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BY PEGGY DURDIN

CHINA’S long history has not been characterized by complete freedom of expression. But through many, many centuries, Chinese scholars and writers tried to apply Confucius’ maxim: “If, looking into my heart, I find I am right, I will go forward, although those opposing me number thousands and tens of thousands.” Highly respected, even when tyrants frowned dangerously on them, China’s literati generally wrote with courage and frankness. But who, in this Chinese Communist decade, dares criticize border wars, the tragedy of famine, high taxes, heartless officials, peasant suffering, neglected scholars, harmful state policies, as did China’s classic writers? Who, today, would dare to write these ancient lines?


Todays, public morality disintegrates.
True scholarship has no more value
Than a scrap of wastepaper.
He who has no virtue
Is said to be more virtuous
Than the greatest sage.
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In this century, Chiang Kai-shek’s government showed little of the traditional Chinese respect for writers, particularly when many of them criticized his politics and policies. The Kuomintang banned publications, harassed authors into hiding, arrested some, and executed others without trial. But many leftist and Communist writers managed to live through this period to write and be published. None of these men today can hold dissentient views, preserve their intellectual integrity, write and speak out as they did when Chiang Kai-shek’s police frowned on their activities.

The Chinese writer certainly has never enjoyed less freedom of thought than he does today. The intelligentsia — and, in particular, the writers among them — seem the least fortunate group in China. Regularly, through its ten years of rule, the Party has directed “struggles” and campaigns against writers and other creative artists. The better literary works of the decade came from the first few years, when the Party was too busy achieving effective control of the country to concentrate its attention on writers, and from the six or eight months of thaw in late 1956 and early 1957. The worst era for authors — and that of their poorest work — has been since mid-1957, when, to use Communist language, “poisonous weeds” were “uprooted” and “turned into manure.”


Not that the restraints the Communists place on creative writers today have been unheralded. Almost two decades ago, Mao Tse-tung declared his distrust of the intellectual and his view that the writer was a Party propaganda tool. Party functionaries and publications have echoed and underlined these ideas since. The writer’s job is, quite simply, to serve and obey the Party; to further socialism, Communism, and the political, ideological, social, and economic tasks or campaigns of the moment; to reflect “advanced ideas" with the utmost speed and persuasiveness; to glorify the Party and Mao; to expose and fight their enemies.

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Chou Yang, at present the Party’s chief cultural commissar, explains the yardstick for literary criticism: “Anything that is helpful to the development of productivity and social progress is good, and the reverse is bad.” Last year, he also pointed out that members of local Party committees at every level were “in the best position to judge whether a literary work or work of art is a true reflection of life or not.” Of course, the state controls the publishing houses, all publications, and all jobs and assignments; the Party’s puppet cultural organizations approve a writer’s subject, check each section of his work, make corrections and suggestions, and approve the final draft.

Chou Yang has explained that the Party must control authors because it is often through literature and art that bourgeois ideas insidiously corrupt, while battles between the proletariat (good) and bourgeoisie (bad) often commence with “skirmishes on the literary front.” Anyone can see that the potential danger of the written word increases as millions more Chinese become literate.

AS so frequently happens in other areas in Communist China today, those ideas in culture and literature which are generally sound become twisted, exaggerated, and misapplied, and the writer and his audience suffer rather than benefit. For writers to descend from their ivory towers — a process that commenced before Mao Tse-tung controlled China — so that they may better understand, write for and about the common people is healthy. To encourage new young writers from factory or farm, to destroy the tradition that only the highly placed or highly literate can wield the Chinese brush — all this is sensible. But deliberately to humiliate, punish, and break so many professional writers that almost all are cowed; to manacle authors, young or old, with Marx-Lenin-Mao and Party dicta; to compel, however deviously, millions of tired workers “voluntarily” to produce poems, songs, stories — this is distortion.


The writer must, in the Chinese Communists’ religious phrase, “give his heart to the Party” and always obey it; study the works of Mao Tse-tung; continue regular group study and discussion, self-criticism, and, in Party terminology, “the long, agonizing process of self-remolding.”

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The writer must write for and about the masses: workers, peasants, and soldiers in the Liberation Army. He must live among, share the living conditions, pleasures, and pains of, humbly learn from factory workers, miners, soldiers, herdsmen, fishermen. One of last year’s Communist reports estimated that over a thousand writers were to be sent down to live with “the people” and take part in manual labor, some for a limited period, some permanently.

For instance, a Communist magazine reports that, in Mao Tse-tung’s province, novelist Chou Li-po writes in the mornings; in the afternoons and evenings he does Party work, tends an experimental sweet potato plot and keeps pigs. The reader is assured that writer Chou finds it all “much more satisfying than living in Peking.”

In addition to the tough, unaccustomed physical labor in mine, field, or factory, writers are expected to take on other tasks in their spare time. They man the schools, teach people to read, spread propaganda about the new ideas, and help to break old customs, such as the worship of ancestral tablets. They must join the multiple special campaigns (steel-making, fertilizer gathering, ratand-sparrow catching) and participate in the periodic struggles — for example, in late 1959, the struggle against rightist conservatism, or against waste.


Writers must also develop a whole new group of proletarian authors; collect, edit, and improve folk poetry; and inspire the masses to write poems, songs, short stories, reminiscences (politically significant), plays, movie scenarios, autobiographies, commune or factory histories. In the course of practicing collective creation, they must collaborate with these amateur authors. The Communist press states, for instance, that a film director, two worker writers, and one lathe turner wrote successfully a scenario, called Eighty-eight Days, about China’s first home-produced locomotive. Of course, the report adds, they received great aid from the plant’s other workers and Communist Party Committee.

The authors sent to frontier, field, or factory have been important aids in one of the Party’s key programs through the “great leap forward”— to make every Chinese become something of a writer. Besides breaking the professionals, destroying, if possible, the special esteem Chinese have traditionally felt for the literati, developing writers from worker and poor peasant families - that magic, proletarian formula — Peking has probably above all wanted to use writing by the people as mass self-indoctrination and self-hypnosis for right thoughts and increased production. Mass writing has become what Communists call a “political task, under the direct sponsorship of the Party.” Communist articles report that in this literary creativity “the local Communist Party Committee leads, to ensure a high political and ideological level.” It criticizes carefully. Leading Party members Sometimes take a hand in writing; the published results are little short of dreadful. It is safe to say that never has so much bad writing been produced by so many.

Whatever its quality, the quantity of writings the Communists report by the people (often by wordage, in hundreds of thousands or millions) is tremendous. They say that, in the rural areas of China, poems cover trees, doors, walls, and rocks. As for the cities, an enthusiast wrote not long ago of “The hum of machines by day, Drama and singing by night.”

During a year of what the Communists admitted was overwork, the twelve thousand employees of one steel plant created, after the day’s regular shift, more than 160,000 articles, short stories, poems, and dissertations. Liberation Army generals and privates write; 38,000 poems came from one tank regiment. Workers in Tientsin’s Bureau of Light Industry evolved 3400 artistic pieces in a month. In the same time, a Szechuan province cooperative put out 10,000 folk poems, 60 short plays, and 30 ballads; not to be outdone, another cooperative wrote collectively a 30,000word novel. The staff of a Shanghai hotel collectively wrote, staged, and reformed themselves through a play called Better Service. The Communists say that in about half a year Shanghai’s workers alone created more than two million literary items. Most of this “voluntary” literary activity has been done by exhausted people working well over the twelve-hour day.

The writer must make “great leap forward” plans for the year’s work — formal, detailed ones, listing how many novels, plays, essays, poems, songs he promises to produce. Then he must revise the target upward, submit the outline to the Party-controlled Writers’ Union for discussion and approval, and exceed his target.


Writers must try new techniques just as a carpenter does, Communist officials explained last year. They must include in their plan many different forms of writing, “just as a department store supplies everything.” They must produce large numbers of short works on “major battles waged by the people.” Writers must also compete with one another, like factories and mines, and “subject themselves to collective supervision and encouragement.”

The writer must combine, in Communist words, “up-to-date Communist and socialist ideology, elegant national style, high skill in expression with revolutionary romanticism and socialist realism.” In brief, writers are to glorify with boundless enthusiasm the Party and socialist society, while exposing enemies with hatred and venom. The heroes and heroines must be workers, soldiers, peasants, and Party men with fighting spirit strong enough to move heaven and earth, model workers with collectivist thoughts, motives, and feelings. While the writer describes only their positive side, he paints totally black villains — landlords, rich peasants, counterrevolutionaries, members of the Kuomintang army, or rightists.

Novels of the last few years describe the heroic revolutionary student movement of the thirties; struggles of peasant heroes, Communist-led, against landlords before Liberation; Chinese peasants “marching toward the agricultural cooperative movement"; the conflict between advanced and backward workers in a steel plant; the struggle between communal-minded and individualist laborers on the Paochi-Chengtu Railway. Themes for short stories and plays are similar.

The author must produce topical works quickly. The Communists claim that writers produced tens of thousands of literary works in a few days after American “aggression” began in the Middle East, while, in a two weeks’ visit to the Fukien front in the fall of 1958, a small group of authors turned out 300 “heroic works.”

The result of these Party policies has been increasingly mediocre writing, with plots, characters, themes, dialogue, and sentiments so politically conventional that one can hardly finish reading any story, novel, or play. The verse is usually so bad that one cannot caricature it. Since the Party demands quantity, speed, and political orthodoxy, one forgives poor construction and style. But it is hard to overlook plain emptiness in writing.

WE DO not know how many Chinese writers have been condemned as rightists; how many are being reformed through labor; how many have lost their housing, jobs, income, and friends; how many Peking has sent to frontier regions, much as Emperor Ch’in Shih Huang Ti sent dissenting scholars to die working on the Great Wall of China.

Among Chinese writers of talent, Ting Ling, a gifted woman from Mao’s own province of Hunan, has been subjected to two years of reform through labor at a desolate spot on the northern fringe of Manchuria. She was no trifling, fellow-traveling scribbler. She was a disciple of Lu Hsün, this century’s foremost Chinese literary figure, a courageous left-wing fighter, master of irony, sarcasm, and satire — dead, and therefore safely enshrined today as their literary god by the Chinese Communists. After Ting Ling escaped from the Kuomintang and crossed China disguised as an army private in the thirties, Mao Tse-tung himself warmly welcomed her to his cave headquarters, Yenan, writing a special poem in her honor. Before the 1949 Liberation, she was a Communist propagandist and political worker as well as writer; she has held many important Communist offices. Chinese Communists admit she achieved reputation in the whole Communist bloc and the respect and admiration of many inside China, especially the young.

But at the end of the short thaw, or Flowerblooming period, two years ago, this Communist novelist was shorn of jobs, Party card, and government office. Her books were banned. The Party belatedly discovered, to use its own official verbiage, that this “wicked, despicable adventurer,” this “soul-corroding bourgeois master,” this “morbidly avaricious exploiter” had long “spread poison” within and without the Party, “viciously corroding” the young especially, over whom she had “cast a spell.”

The Party now found that her first work, published some three decades before, had been full of “bourgeois decadence”; that she had betrayed the Party when under Kuomintang arrest; that she had written anti-Party essays and stories in Yenan two decades earlier; that she had always been a disloyal, dyed-in-the-wool individualist who, behind praise of Mao and the Party, uttered “silly twaddles" about writing with genuine feeling and valued quality more highly than quantity.

Ting Ling illustrates the fact that the author’s dilemma and shackles in China today are greater than those of writers in Soviet Russia, Poland, Czechoslovakia, or Hungary.

Some of the men who were outstanding and prolific before 1949 have been virtually silent; for instance, the novelists Mao Tun and Pa Chin, the dramatist Tsao Yu. Since these men make good and important window dressing for the Communists, Peking has given them money, comfort, position, and face in return for holding office, receiving and impressing foreign visitors, parroting Party dogma, going on delegations abroad, signing protests, and so forth. Perhaps most cooperative of the pre-Liberation authors of talent is Lao Sheh, the first writer in Peking to whom the Communists gave a car, a real sign of status. He not only holds offices in government-dominated cultural organizations but produces propaganda on demand very quickly — plays on how women free themselves from household chores or how a daughter reforms her bourgeois father. It is a tragedy that the men who rule China today have been able to submerge not just literary talent but the individual integrity of the Chinese writer.





今日中国的作家
PEGGY DURDIN出生在中国，是南方长老会传教士的女儿。从乔治亚州的艾格尼丝-斯科特学院毕业后，她回到中国，在上海美国学校教英语。1938年，她与《纽约时报》工作人员蒂尔曼-杜尔丁结婚，在战争年代，她本人是驻缅甸、重庆和东南亚其他地区的特派记者。

作者：佩吉-德丁
1959年12月号
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作者：佩吉-杜尔丁（Peggy Durdin

中国漫长的历史并不以完全的表达自由为特征。但在许多许多个世纪中，中国的学者和作家都试图应用孔子的格言："如果从我的内心看，我发现我是对的，我就会向前走，尽管反对我的人有成千上万"。中国的文人受到高度尊重，即使是在暴君对他们皱眉头的时候，他们一般都以勇气和坦率的态度写作。但是，在这个中国共产党的十年里，谁敢像中国的经典作家那样批评边境战争、饥荒的悲剧、高额的税收、无情的官员、农民的痛苦、被忽视的学者、有害的国家政策？今天，谁还敢写这些古老的句子？


今天，公共道德已经瓦解。
真正的学术研究没有更多的价值
比不上一张废纸。
没有德行的人
据说比最伟大的圣人更有德行
胜过最伟大的圣人。
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在本世纪，蒋介石政府几乎没有表现出中国人对作家的传统尊重，特别是当许多作家批评他的政治和政策时。国民党禁止出版物，骚扰作者躲藏起来，逮捕一些人，并不经审判就处决其他人。但许多左派和共产主义作家设法度过了这一时期，进行写作和出版。今天，这些人中没有一个能像蒋介石的警察对他们的活动不屑一顾时那样持有不同的观点，保持他们的思想完整性，写作和发言。

中国作家当然从未像今天这样享有思想的自由。知识分子--尤其是他们中的作家--似乎是中国最不幸运的群体。在十年的统治中，党经常对作家和其他创造性艺术家进行 "斗争 "和运动。这十年中较好的文学作品来自最初的几年，当时党忙于实现对国家的有效控制，无暇关注作家，以及1956年底和1957年初的六、八个月解冻期。对作家来说，最糟糕的时代--也是他们最差的作品的时代--是自1957年中期以来，用共产党的语言来说，"毒草 "被 "连根拔起"，"变成了肥料"。


今天，共产党人对创作人员的限制并不是没有人知道。近二十年前，毛泽东宣布他对知识分子的不信任，认为作家是党的宣传工具。此后，党的职能部门和出版物一直在呼应和强调这些观点。作家的工作很简单，就是为党服务，服从党的安排；推动社会主义、共产主义以及当时的政治、思想、社会和经济任务或运动；以最快的速度和说服力反映 "先进思想"；颂扬党和毛泽东；揭露和打击他们的敌人。

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目前是党的首席文化委员的周扬，解释了文学批评的尺度。"凡是对生产力发展和社会进步有帮助的就是好的，反之就是坏的"。去年，他还指出，各级地方党委成员 "最能判断一部文学作品或艺术作品是否是对生活的真实反映"。当然，国家控制着出版社，控制着所有的出版物，控制着所有的工作和任务；党的傀儡文化组织批准一个作家的主题，检查其作品的每个部分，提出修改和建议，并批准最后的草案。

周扬曾解释说，党必须控制作家，因为资产阶级思想往往是通过文学和艺术来暗中腐蚀的，而无产阶级（好）和资产阶级（坏）之间的斗争往往以 "文学战线上的小规模冲突 "开始。任何人都可以看到，随着数以百万计的中国人开始识字，书面文字的潜在危险也在增加。

就像今天在共产主义中国的其他领域经常发生的那样，文化和文学中那些普遍健全的思想被扭曲、夸大和误用，作家和他的听众非但没有受益，反而受到伤害。作家们从他们的象牙塔中走出来--这个过程在毛泽东控制中国之前就已经开始了--以便他们能够更好地理解普通人，为普通人写作，这是健康的。鼓励来自工厂或农场的新的年轻作家，摧毁只有地位高或文化高的人才能挥舞中国画笔的传统--所有这些都是明智的。但是，故意羞辱、惩罚和打击如此多的专业作家，以至于几乎所有的人都畏缩不前；用马列毛和党的论述来束缚作者，不管是年轻的还是年老的；强迫，不管多么狡猾，数百万疲惫的工人 "自愿 "创作诗歌、歌曲、故事--这是扭曲的。


用中国共产党人的宗教用语来说，作家必须 "把心交给党"，永远服从党的安排；学习毛泽东的作品；继续定期进行集体学习和讨论，进行自我批评，用党的术语来说，就是 "漫长而痛苦的自我塑造过程"。

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作家必须为群众写作，也必须写关于群众的故事：工人、农民和解放军的士兵。他必须生活在工厂工人、矿工、士兵、牧民、渔民中间，分享他们的生活条件、快乐和痛苦，谦虚地向他们学习。去年的一份共产党报告估计，将有一千多名作家被派下来与 "人民 "生活在一起，参加体力劳动，有些是在有限的时间内，有些是永久性的。

例如，一家共产党杂志报道说，在毛泽东的省份，小说家周立波上午写作；下午和晚上做党的工作，照料一块试验性的红薯地，养猪。读者可以确信，作家周立波认为这一切 "比生活在北京要令人满意得多"。

除了在矿山、田野或工厂进行艰苦的、不习惯的体力劳动外，作家们还被要求在业余时间承担其他任务。他们负责管理学校，教人读书，宣传新思想，并帮助打破旧的习俗，如对祖先牌位的崇拜。他们必须参加多种特殊运动（炼钢、采肥、捕鼠、捕雀），并参加定期的斗争--例如1959年末，反对右派保守主义的斗争，或反对浪费的斗争。


作家们还必须发展一个全新的无产阶级作家群体；收集、编辑和改进民间诗歌；激励群众写诗、唱歌、短篇小说、回忆录（有政治意义）、剧本、电影情节、自传、公社或工厂历史。在实践集体创作的过程中，他们必须与这些业余作者合作。例如，共产党报刊指出，一位电影导演、两位工人作家和一位车床工人成功地写出了一部名为《八十八天》的剧情片，讲述了中国第一台自产机车。当然，报告还说，他们得到了工厂其他工人和共产党委员会的大力协助。

被派往边疆、田野或工厂的作者是党通过 "大跃进 "实施的关键计划之一的重要助手--使每个中国人都成为一名作家。除了打破专业人员，如果可能的话，摧毁中国人传统上对文人的特殊尊重，从工人和贫苦农民家庭中培养作家--那个神奇的无产阶级公式--北京可能首先想利用人民的写作作为大众的自我灌输和自我催眠，以获得正确的思想和增加生产。大众写作已经成为共产党人所说的 "在党的直接赞助下的政治任务"。共产党人的文章报告说，在这种文学创作中，"地方共产党委员会领导，以保证有较高的政治和思想水平"。它认真地进行了批评。党的领导成员有时会参与写作；公布的结果几乎是可怕的。可以说，从来没有这么多人写出过这么多的坏文章。

无论其质量如何，共产党人报告的人民群众的写作数量（往往按字数计算，以数十万或数百万计）是巨大的。他们说，在中国的农村地区，诗歌覆盖了树木、门、墙壁和岩石。至于城市，一位爱好者不久前写道："白天是机器的嗡嗡声，晚上是戏剧和歌唱。"

在共产党人承认过劳的一年里，一家钢铁厂的一万二千名员工在一天的正常工作之后，创作了超过16万篇文章、短篇小说、诗歌和论文。解放军的将军和士兵都在写作；38,000首诗来自一个坦克团。天津市轻工业局的工人在一个月内演化出3400件艺术作品。在同一时期，四川省的一个合作社推出了1万首民间诗歌、60个短剧和30首民谣；另一个合作社也不甘示弱，集体创作了3万字的小说。上海一家酒店的员工集体编写、上演了一部名为《更好的服务》的戏剧，并对自己进行改造。共产党人说，在大约半年的时间里，仅上海的工人就创作了超过200万件文学作品。这种 "自愿 "的文学活动大部分是由工作时间远远超过12小时的疲惫的人完成的。

作家必须为一年的工作制定 "大跃进 "计划--正式的、详细的计划，列出他承诺创作的多少部小说、剧本、散文、诗歌、歌曲。然后，他必须向上修改目标，将大纲提交给党控制的作家联盟讨论和批准，并超过他的目标。


共产党官员去年解释说，作家必须像木匠那样尝试新的技术。他们必须在他们的计划中包括许多不同形式的写作，"就像百货商店提供一切一样"。他们必须制作大量关于 "人民发动的重大战役 "的短篇作品。作家们还必须像工厂和矿山一样相互竞争，"使自己受到集体监督和鼓励"。

用共产党的话说，作家必须把 "最新的共产主义和社会主义思想、优雅的民族风格、高超的表达技巧与革命的浪漫主义和社会主义现实主义相结合"。简而言之，作家要以无限的热情歌颂党和社会主义社会，同时以仇恨和毒辣的眼光揭露敌人。男女主人公必须是工人、士兵、农民和党员，具有足以感动天地的战斗精神，是具有集体主义思想、动机和感情的劳动模范。虽然作家只描述了他们积极的一面，但他描绘的是完全黑色的恶棍--地主、富农、反革命分子、国民党军队成员，或者右派。

最近几年的小说描述了三十年代英勇的革命学生运动；解放前共产党领导的农民英雄与地主的斗争；中国农民 "向农业合作化运动进军"；钢铁厂先进工人与落后工人之间的冲突；宝鸡至成都铁路上有公社意识的工人与个人主义的工人的斗争。短篇小说和戏剧的主题是相似的。

作者必须迅速创作出主题鲜明的作品。共产党人声称，美国在中东开始 "侵略 "后，作家们在几天内创作了数万部文学作品，而在1958年秋天对福建前线的两周访问中，一小群作家创作了300部 "英雄作品"。

党的这些政策的结果是写作越来越平庸，情节、人物、主题、对话和情感都很政治化，人们几乎无法读完任何故事、小说或戏剧。诗词通常是如此糟糕，以至于人们无法对其进行讽刺。由于党要求数量、速度和政治上的正统性，人们可以原谅糟糕的结构和风格。但很难忽视写作中的空洞。

我们不知道有多少中国作家被谴责为右派；有多少人正在接受劳动改造；有多少人失去了住房、工作、收入和朋友；有多少人被北京派往边疆地区，就像秦始皇派不同意见的学者在中国长城上工作一样。

在中国的天才作家中，来自毛泽东自己的省份湖南的天才女性丁玲，在满洲里北部边缘的一个荒凉地方接受了两年的劳动改造。她不是一个轻率的、同道中人的文人。她是鲁迅的弟子，本世纪中国最重要的文学家，一个勇敢的左翼斗士，讽刺、挖苦和反讽的大师--已经去世，因此今天被中国共产党人安全地奉为他们的文艺之神。在三十年代，丁玲从国民党手中逃脱，伪装成一个军队的小兵穿越中国后，毛泽东本人热烈欢迎她到他的山洞总部延安，并为她写了一首特别的诗。1949年解放前，她是一名共产党的宣传员和政治工作者，也是一名作家；她曾担任过许多重要的共产党职务。中国共产党人承认她在整个共产主义集团中取得了声誉，在中国国内得到了许多人的尊重和钦佩，尤其是年轻人。

但在两年前的短暂解冻期，即花期结束时，这位共产主义小说家被剥夺了工作、党证和政府职位。她的书被禁了。党迟迟没有发现，用它自己的官方语言来说，这个 "邪恶的、卑鄙的冒险家"，这个 "腐蚀灵魂的资产阶级大师"，这个 "病态的贪婪的剥削者 "长期以来在党内和党外 "传播毒药"，特别是 "恶毒地腐蚀 "年轻人，她对他们施了魔法。

党现在发现，她三十年前发表的第一部作品充满了 "资产阶级的颓废"；她在被国民党逮捕时背叛了党；二十年前她在延安写过反党的文章和故事；她一直是一个不忠诚的、不折不扣的个人主义者，在赞美毛泽东和党的背后，说着 "愚蠢的废话"，写着真正的感情，把质量看得比数量还重。

丁玲说明了这样一个事实：在今天的中国，作者的困境和桎梏比苏维埃俄国、波兰、捷克斯洛伐克或匈牙利的作家都要大。

一些在1949年以前就很出色和多产的人几乎已经沉寂了；例如，小说家毛顿和巴金，戏剧家曹禺。由于这些人是共产党的好帮手，北京给了他们金钱、舒适、地位和面子，作为对他们担任职务、接待和讨好外国访客、鹦鹉学舌、出国代表团、签署抗议书等的回报。在解放前的天才作家中，最有合作精神的也许是老舍，他是北京第一个被共产党人赐予汽车的作家，这是地位的真正标志。他不仅在政府主导的文化组织中担任职务，而且根据需要迅速制作宣传品--关于妇女如何从家务中解放出来的剧本，或者女儿如何改造她的资产阶级父亲的剧本。今天统治中国的男人们不仅能够淹没文学天赋，而且能够淹没中国作家的个人操守，这是一个悲剧。