Interview with Wang Keping (on April 27, 2014 in his studio near Paris)

Interviewer (Helmut Opletal): Wang Keping, we have first met thirty years ago, right?

Wang Keping: In the 1980s, isn’t it? It seems like 80 years. But it’s thirty-four years.

Interviewer: There were two important movements in Beijing at that time, the political Democracy Movement and a modern art movement. These two movements were interconnected. Looking back today, how do you see them now?

Wang: First of all, these two movements actually originated from the same group of people. Huang Rui or Ma Desheng were also activists of the Democracy Wall. They were editors for underground art publications at the time, doing illustrations for some mimeographed journals and helping with their publication. That time I was not yet directly involved in the publication of the democratic journals. But I wrote plays, which were published in the magazines “Beijing Spring” and “Fertile Ground”.

I passed twice a day by the Xidan Democracy Wall, first in the morning, when I came from my home in Di'anmen on my way to work just next to the Broadcasting House. And I also had to pass there when I returned home. Sometimes at noon, I would also go there just to read the big-character posters that informed about all sorts of things. The Democracy Wall was the center of political activities in Beijing then, and the “Stars” artists were also devoted to the idea of the Democracy Wall, they participated in the Democracy Wall Movement as well as in the Stars Exhibition. Some artists of the Stars Group, of our modern art movement, practiced avant-garde art at a small scale, but it had nothing to do with the mainstream.

Many of those who joined the Stars Art Exhibition, were not necessarily artists. They came to support and help us. The movement connected all strata of society, and a lot of people came to participate, not just artists. On the contrary, most of the artists in the Exhibition just sent their works and their paintings for the show. They didn't participate in anything else, they didn't come for meetings or to our protest rally. They were even worried, as they knew that the main artists of the Stars Exhibition were related to the Democracy Wall, so they were afraid that they might be implicated in these activities if something went wrong. But they were still interested in this arts exhibition and sent their paintings without participating in the activities.

Interviewer: How were the debates between the members of the Stars Group? Did you often discuss these issues? And were you eager to participate also in official arts events?

Wang: Most of our main organizers wanted the exhibition to be purely artistic, and not to be too close to politics. Of course the exhibition itself was a kind of defiance of the authoritarian culture. But they hoped that the works there would not be too political. Except for me, who was more political, most of the other works did not touch on politics at all. Some of Ma Desheng’s works showed the people’s life including some dreadful things, but nothing directly political. But although the Stars Exhibition was not political, it was in a way engaging in something officially forbidden.

First of all, free exhibitions were officially not allowed in China then. All exhibitions had to be scrutinized and approved by the Artists' Association, and it was impossible for private individuals to hold exhibitions. Exhibits had to be inspected first by these Artists’ Associations under the leadership of the Party. Secondly, exhibitions were usually held in art museums, in official venues. When we were outside the Gallery of Fine Art, the way we organized our exhibition was in itself a kind of revolt. And although most of the art works were not political, they were still of a kind not really allowed.

Things like abstract art have always been banned in China; they were considered a reflection of corrupt Western culture. Even after the Stars Exhibition, official art magazines continued to argue against abstract art. It felt ridiculous, as many people considered Chinese art itself quite abstract, and one couldn’t say that abstraction was “Western”. So these debates in China were all quite ridiculous, especially when you look back today. But at that time it was still a big debate. Many painters of the Stars Exhibition engaged in abstract art and also erotic topics concerning sex and the human body. All these had been banned before. Therefore many of the art works were challenging the official line. My own works were more directly political and confrontational. Although most of the works in the Stars Exhibition were not political, they were a way of rising up against China's cultural authoritarianism, and they constituted a kind of opposition. Just like the political statements published at the Democracy Wall, this was also a kind of rebellion.

Interviewer: Did you discuss these issues in the Stars Artists' Association? And did everyone understand their significance? That it was a rebellion against something under the leadership of the Communist Party...

Wang: Of course most people thought at that time that the Communist Party was beginning to change, and that there would be some cultural liberalization after the Cultural Revolution. These were supported by Liu Xun, Jiang Feng and others from the official Art Association. People thought that maybe China would open up in terms of painting, and we thought that we could get some support from enlightened and open-minded people in the Party, although what we did, was in a way against the party line. But we still hoped to get support from the more open-minded faction. Mao had just died not long ago, and society was still in disarray, so everyone was expecting that the Chinese society would change. And no one realized that later on, after Deng Xiaoping had come to power, it were to be exactly the same as before.

At that time, the top post was held by Hua Guofeng, but he was weak and did not know what to do. The Gang of Four had just collapsed, and the Communist Party tried to do something to make people think that things were different now. The “Beijing Spring” period was a relatively relaxed period under the Communist rule. The Party had no plan yet what to do. During the power struggle at the top, the control over the lower strata of the society, like the cultural sphere and the daily life, was a bit more relaxed.

Interviewer: When did you personally start thinking about these issues, about art and politics? When did you start producing art works that were related to politics and had political content?

Wang: This is a bit complicated to talk about. My father was a writer, he was an old Communist Party member, but one of the more liberal-leaning intellectuals in the Party. He had studied at university and participated in the student movements. In the 1950s he wrote a novel about the war against Japan. One of his two main characters was a rural party secretary that he portrayed as a bad guy. When this book sold very well and reached a large circulation, it was immediately criticized by the “Literature and Art News”, the most important literary publication in China at that time. My father became regularly criticized during all the political campaigns and he was obliged to write self-criticisms. Although he was an old Party member and cadre, he was not treated as such, but always criticized and asked to write confessions, from the 1950s until the Cultural Revolution. So this sentiment was always there in our family, and I felt it from my childhood, that in communist China, intellectuals and artists enjoyed no creative freedom, and even less so during the Cultural Revolution.

I worked myself in a theater troupe, also in the field of literature and art. Later I started to write plays, that’s how I became to feel this ideological pressure on cultural life. I was originally an actor, but in my view all our plays seemed quite meaningless, there were no really good plays. Later on, some good scripts I wrote were not approved, so I stopped writing. Writing became meaningless for me.

Interviewer: What kind of plays did you write?

Wang: There was a play criticizing the Gang of Four after their downfall. When I had finished it, our troupe thought it was very good, and they moved me from acting to writing and directing. I wrote a big play and another small play after that. But none of them passed the censorship, so I stopped writing and started sculpting again. I knew it was difficult to pass the censorship, and it was useless even if I wrote well. A play that is not performed is meaningless. So I started sculpting. When the Gang of Four had collapsed, there were a lot of things I wanted to say, and now I tried to express it through sculpting.

Interviewer: What year was this?

Wang: It was the end of 1978 or the beginning of 1979. The Gang of Four had fallen in 1976, and the years after I started writing scripts. Then I stopped writing. Following the suggestion by a friend, I started sculpting. The stuff I did was political, but more like a performance. It portrayed the rulers at the top, but also common people. Some sculptures represented Lin Biao and other political characters. What I could not express in the theater, I showed through sculptures.

I was convinced at that time that someone in China had to stand up for freedom, for freedom of the arts. So from the very beginning, my works had a very strong political touch. Although I represented human figures, people didn't pay much attention first. I did human figures and also abstract sculptures at that time. But I didn't know much about Western sculpture then as I had no chance to see any and I hadn't studied arts. So I just created my own works very freely just from what came to my mind.

Interviewer: How were you able to make your sculptures performing…

Wang: I didn't know many professional artists then. Those I knew had just attended some amateur classes organized by the Cultural Palace. They had not been to an Academy of Fine Arts, but met each other at the Cultural Palace. I joined the Stars relatively late, and I was doing wood carving by myself. My original purpose of making sculptures was to exchange them for a tape recorder that I could use for dancing with foreigners. After the fall of the Gang of Four, people felt great, and society began to change. I rode my bike from Di'anmen to work when I noticed some people lining up. I locked my bike and got in line. I was about 30 meters from the store. I didn't know what was actually for sale, but I thought I just line up before more people got in. When I asked the person in front of me what they were selling, he also said he didn’t  know. And it was the same with others waiting in the line. The doors weren't open yet, when I looked more closely, I saw that it wasn't a store, but a barber shop. But I had to go to work, so I said let's go. When I passed Xidan, I noticed that lines in front of several other barber shops. So I parked my bike and got in line again, but nobody explained it to me. I was going to be late for work, so I had to hurry.

Later, when I was with the actors, someone asked me why I was so late. I told about all the places where people had lined up. I had also tried, but had to be at work at eight o'clock. I asked why there were all these queues in front of barber shops. It was one of the female actresses who answered: “Wang Keping, haven’t you heard that there's a new directive from the top that allows barbershops to perm hair now.” In the past, all the women had to wear their hair straight and in pigtails. Then the Central Committee decided, “The Gang of Four is down, we're opening up, barbershops can perm hair.” But why do they all line up? They all want to look pretty, she said, and they are worried that if the government said it was okay today, they could say the contrary two days later. That’s why everyone queued up to get a perm, and when some stood in the queue, others wanted to find out and just followed.

It's a very small thing, but you can see what our society was like at that time. My first impression when I later came to France was that there were so many things to be sold in the stores. China didn't have much at that time. When you asked a little girl in China what she wanted to do, she often answered, “I want to be a salesgirl.” For her that seemed the best profession. When you ask a little girl in China today, none wants to be a salesgirl. But in the past, when there was some interesting merchandise in the store, a salesgirl could hold it back and sell it to her friends. She had this power, and people had to beg her to keep the good stuff for them. So in those days, a salesgirl was like a cadre nowadays, people had to give her gifts.

Al that time, the newspapers still told people that it was not allowed to wear bell-bottom trousers. What kind of things did the Communist Party bother with? Bell-bottoms! That's how our society was at that time. People's pants! The Party wasn’t interested in many other things, but it cared about pants. Even the People's Daily cautioned against wearing bell-bottoms, which they called a bourgeois thing from the West.

At that time the economy had begun to open up a little bit. There were Hong Kong people, Taiwanese, and some foreigners in China. They all came with tape recorders, with songs by Teresa Teng [a famous Taiwanese singer and actress]. People nowadays don't understand why Teresa Teng was so popular. In the past, all you could listen to on the radio were “model operas”. When I then heard Teresa Teng's songs, I realized that they were so beautiful! Her music had a big impact at that time. And when one person possessed a tape recorder, everyone would came to listen.

Later also videotapes became popular, but at first it was just tape recorders. In the past, the Gang of Four, like Jiang Qing, imported famous Western movies for themselves to watch. After the fall of the Gang of Four, all the major units, like our Broadcasting Bureau or various army branches, found ways to obtain Western movies. They called them “illustrative material”. Leading cadres could borrow some from the Film Archive and show them for “educative” purposes. Tickets were not sold, but given for free. If such movies were shown somewhere, people in Beijing quickly knew and tried to obtain tickets through their connections. So of course it was people with connections, not ordinary people, who got to see these movies.

When the Chinese looked at the lifestyle of Westerners, they were surprised to see that they had refrigerators, TVs, and they were dancing Swing. This created some kind of craze because Chinese until then were not allowed to dance. Swing is very simple, you just move with the music. So after watching such a film, cultural organizations like ours also organized small dances. Troupes like our theater possessed tape recorders and played some old music or Teresa Teng's songs, and everyone danced together. Slowly this became more popular. Dancing was not yet considered counter-revolutionary.

At that time, people couldn’t just listen to music like we do now. When you put up a tape recorder on the roadside or in a small square, hundreds of people would come to listen and dance. Those who didn't know how to dance just watched. Everyone went dancing in the small parks and squares of Beijing at that time. Dancing was actually a kind of rebellion. It was even forbidden to use the word “dancing”, but suddenly dancing was everywhere. Then the Beijing government put up big posters banning dancing in the streets. Dancing was considered a bourgeois, a decadent way of life. But the young people had already started, so you could hardly ban it. And with private tape recorders, they could organize dances at their homes, hidden from the public.

So I also thought about getting a tape recorder. With a tape recorder I could ask girls to dance with me. But how to do it? I knew a painter, a friend of mine, who had traded some his paintings for a tape recorder. So I said, “I'll paint too.” I did two canvases, but as I had not learned painting, it didn't work. Then I carved a sculpture. I had worked in a factory where I learned to use all these tools, so I gave it a try.

The place where I lived was a courtyard house. They burned coal for cooking and heating. Coal could not be freely bought, each family had a ration book for it. But coal could not be easily inflamed, but paper was not enough, so each family was also allowed to buy a small amount of firewood in Beijing, just very little. The state had allocated some large logs to the coal and electricity system. They sawed them off  and split them into small pieces to be sold to the residents. But there were always some crooked pieces and branches that the workers couldn't split. I went up and down the stairs every day, and when I I saw such branches that the workers had thrown aside, I finally asked, “Don't you need these anymore?” They said, “If you want them, just take them.” They were actually happy about this, because otherwise, their superiors might come and ask, why they didn't split these, as wood was very precious. So I took these pieces away, to their satisfaction also. Of course, I gave them something, food stamps, cigarettes or the like. Wood, like food or cloth, were all rationed by the state then. One could not just buy and sell them, and one could not just cut trees. That’s how it was, nobody questioned it. So I passed by this coal store every day, and the wood was waiting for me there to be taken.

I started wood carving very quickly, hoping to exchange my works for a recorder. I had a Chinese friend at the Language Institute who taught painting and calligraphy. When foreign students left China, they didn't want to take their tape recorders with them, and rather wanted to trade them. He was able to arrange something for me. I asked him to come to my home and said, “I want to exchange an art piece for a tape recorder.” He took a look at my sculptures and asked who made them? I said I myself. He was a graduate from the Academy of Fine Arts and said, “You can't fool me, they are not made by you, who gave them to you?” When I repeated that I had made them myself, he still didn’t believe me and thought I was ridiculous. A few days later, I asked him to come over again and repeated that I wanted a tape recorder. I had even more sculptures to show, so he asked again, “Did you really make all this?” I confirmed. He was surprised. I asked him who should give all this to me? He admitted that it was good stuff, and I asked again if I could trade a piece for a tape recorder. I was ready to exchange “Silence” [that later became one of Wang Keping’s most famous sculptures] for a recorder.

I would have regretted this for the rest of my life. He called my works then a “national treasure” and said it would be too much of a loss if I exchanged them for a recorder. He thought they were very valuable, so I didn’t want to exchange them anymore. And I didn't trade the best one of all with him.

Life went on. I didn't have a teacher then for sculpting, and I didn't know any other artists to learn from, I did it all by myself. I didn't know other artists around me, except for a few painters, colleagues in the troupe who painted the stage sets. When a friend of mine, Yuan Yisheng, came to my home and saw the carvings, he thought they were very good, and told Qu Leilei, another artist, about me and my sculptures. Qu was already part of those who prepared the Stars Exhibition, together with Ma Desheng and Zhong Acheng. There were many painters who wanted to participate in the Exhibition then, but very few sculptors. So the word about me spread.

My friend also told Huang Rui to take a look. Qu Leilei worked at the TV station in an adjacent building, just ten meters away. Qu always came to see our TV troupe, but I wrote my texts at home and didn’t go to work every day, but he was told I would come on the fourth of each month to pick up my paycheck. So on one of those days, someone told me that there was a man who kept coming to see me, and he was there again that day. When I asked who it was, Qu Leilei was already at his side and said loudly, “I heard that you are engaged in wood carving.”

I was scared and said, “Don't shout, people in our unit don't know that I do woodcarving at home, they only think that I write scripts.” He told me, “We want to have an exhibition and we want to see your work.” I said okay. I gave him my address. He, Huang Rui and Ma Desheng then came to my home. My room was very small, only eight square meters. I believed that because I hadn't studied arts, I was just messing around, and they wouldn’t necessarily want my creations. When they saw them, Qu Leilei didn't say anything, neither did Ma Desheng. Also Huang Rui who seemed to be their leader, remained quiet afterwards. Later Huang Rui just said, “Our exhibition will be a sensation.” Then some more artists came and said how much they liked it. That's how I got involved with them. I was late for the party, but I joined in and attended all their meetings.

Interviewer: Did you already make politically inspired works at that time?

Wang: Yes, I did. Actually my earliest sculptures were political. The first one was “Ten Thousand Years” [or “May he live long, long, long” – a slogan to praise Mao, or the emperor, in the old days]. That one was later bought by the Fukuoka Art Museum in Japan. “Silence” and “Idol” were acquired by Uli Sigg [a Swiss ambassador in Beijing from 1995 to 1998 and an important collector of contemporary Chinese art]. These were my earliest works, and they were quite political. Then I started to do human figures, mostly abstract ones. I proposed “Silence” and “Idol” to the Stars Exhibition, but many people cried no, no, no, that is too dangerous! Most of them were scared and didn’t want them in the exhibition. In the end, I insisted in taking “Silence”.

One could think it was still the Gang of Four that suppressed freedom. That “Idol” looked too much like Mao. How one could make him into that “Idol”, I was asked. But I was strongly convinced then that the Communist Party and Mao Zedong were practicing idolatry. An idol is a Buddha. But I had never made a Buddha, and I had never made a sculpture of Mao, I didn't know how to make one. But I think it was clear what I tried to express.

I had never looked closely at a statue of Mao, so I actually took a mirror and looked at my own face to see where it should be concave and where it should bulge out. That's how I did it. I then thought this was just a cartoon mocking idolatry. But everyone else looked at it and said, “Oh, this is Mao, this is Old Mao.” I was skeptical and asked, “Does it really look like Mao?” And the answer was, “Yes, it looks like him!”

I asked people several times, they all said yes. But to me it didn’t look like Mao. I held up a portrait of Mao to compare, and thought it looked different at close inspection. In Chinese, it's the question of resemblance in spirit or resemblance in form. So it was not similar in form, but in spirit. Later I also got to think that it did look a bit like Mao. Because everyone said it was similar. Actually I was not good at portraying him, unlike the painters and sculptors who had made Mao pictures and statues every day during the Cultural Revolution. They were very experienced in this and traveled around doing Mao statues all the time. But I had never made one.

The Stars Exhibition was initially intended to be held at the Democracy Wall. But that place was too disorganized. Later, we attended an exhibition at the Gallery of Fine Arts. We had no telephones then, so we contacted each other by going to places by bike, for example to fix a meeting at Huang Rui's home, or at the art gallery. That’s how we organized to see that exhibition, and we looked for a place to discuss together. I then thought that it would be great to hold an exhibition in the small park just outside the Fine Arts Gallery and I told my fellow artists, “Let's hold the exhibition in the park in front of the gallery. It's convenient to hang the paintings there, and it's next to the venue.” That year the Fine Arts Gallery celebrated its 30th anniversary, and it showed a national jubilee exhibition. That’s how we decided to hold our exhibition there.

Interviewer: When you made your first “political” sculptures, did you already know anyone from the Stars?

Wang: No.

Interviewer: So what gave you the idea to produce such kind of art work that didn’t really exist in China and was quite dangerous too? What inspired you?

Wang: I already had attended some Democracy Wall activities like poetry readings, and I had published plays I had written in two of the magazines. But I didn't know yet Huang Rui, Ma Desheng, or any of the others  involved in art. I also thought about my father and my family's background. I knew that my father had been very talented, but still he was criticized later. Many of his friends, all of them very talented, were arrested. They had written excellent pieces, but they all ended up in prison. I thought China needed freedom of speech and freedom of thought. Although I didn't know Hu Ping, he wrote an article on “Freedom of Expression”, which he considered the most important thing in China. It was a common wish of all of us. It had been suppressed by the Communists for so many years. I firmly believed that in order to change Chinese society, we must first have freedom of speech and freedom of thought.

Interviewer: So when you made your first sculpture, the “Ten Thousand Years,” what was going through your head then?

Wang: Yeah, I thought, “Ten Thousand Years” was about Lin Biao and the Communist Party worshipping Mao Zedong. That's what I was also doing myself during the Cultural Revolution, holding up Mao’s Little Red Book and shouting “Long live Mao” and “ten thousand years” every day! When I was working in the countryside, we had to shout “Long live Chairman Mao!” holding up a book with his sayings before we went to work. Long live Chairman Mao! Long live Chairman Mao! Therefore producing this sculpture was a kind of revenge. I thought very negatively about the Party and Mao. They did not only suppress my generation, but had also suppressed the previous, my father's generation. I had not had the chance to attend school during the Cultural Revolution. Before finishing middle school, we were already sent to work in the countryside, and we could never go to college. I thought it would probably never be possible, even after the Communists. I was really angry, just like when you want to beat him up and scold someone very bad. There was this kind of hatred in me.

Interviewer: Were you not afraid that people were seeing your creations at that time?

Wang: How could I be afraid? I really wanted people to see them! Not like today, when some of my works cannot be shown in public. At that time, I wanted everyone to get to see them. I wanted to express myself, and I hoped that people would appreciate them. I had always been proud of myself since I was a child, and I always thought I was great. That's why my father was so scared.

Interviewer: I was just going to ask you that question. How did your father react?

Wang: My father said to me, “I've seen people who were smarter than you and more talented” – he was surrounded by a lot of people like that – “and they all went to jail.” My father had been attacked quite early, at the beginning of the fifties. This wasn't very harsh then. Many of his friends, who were sent to prison, were labeled rightists. He told me, “Sooner or later you'll fall on your ass.” He was really scared. When some of my father's friends heard that I was a sculptor, they came to see me at home. Before they opened the door, my father told them not to praise me like many others did. My father was quite afraid, so he didn't allow them to say nice things to me. He always told me, be careful, don't show yourself proud or too self-conscious. According to his own experience, people like me would definitely be ill-fated and sooner or later have to go to jail. That's why he was so scared. But me, I believed that China would eventually change.

Interviewer: What did politics mean for you then? The October 1st march [by artists and Democracy Wall activists in 1979] was certainly a political event, right?

Wang : Yes. But there were other problematic things that were not political as such, like contacts with foreigners. Of the Stars artists, it was only me who dared to talk to foreigners. Foreigners liked to ask questions and have conversations. But many Chinese immediately stopped talking when they saw foreigners. Pre-Angst! If you say something, the Public Security people could know and think that you are a spy or secret agent when you talk to foreigners. The Security agents might not know what you said, but just talking to a foreigner could make you a secret agent and you could get arrested.

When my work received a lot of attention at the Stars Exhibition, foreigners wanted to talk to me. Huang Rui said, “Wang Keping, people already criticize you, so don't say anything when you see foreigners, don't talk to them at all. Xu Wenli told me the same thing: “Keping, be careful, don't talk to foreigners.” He suggested putting a tape recorder when foreign journalists interviewed me, to have evidence of what I said, and be able to prove it in the future. If you talked freely to foreigners, he said, the Public Security could accuse you of having said this or that, and you would not be able to rectify it.

But I was not afraid and said, “Why should all the foreigners be secret agents? They are friendly and just want to know about us.” No one dared to associate with foreign journalists then. But I said that journalists were just helping us and gave us publicity. The New York Times had sent someone to visit the Stars Exhibition. They worked with Jan Wong, a Canadian of Chinese descent. She was an assistant to Fox Butterfield [ the resident correspondent then] of the New York Times. Maybe you knew her. She came to the art gallery to take photos. But all the works from the Stars artists were kept in a place inside the gallery. So she pretended to take some pictures for the “China Reconstructs” magazine [on official propaganda publication]. Then we went to talk to people inside where our works were still being kept.

Interviewer: This was the second exhibition?

Wang: No, the first one [in November 1979 in the Beihai Park]. This NYT’s assistant was of Chinese origin. Fox Butterfield had told her that the New York Times wanted to publish an article but needed some photos. But Jan Wong actually lied to us. She said she was not a foreigner, but worked for a Chinese magazine, and authorities had permitted to make photographs. Huang Rui went with her. At that time, Ai Weiwei's sister (who was not Ai Qing's daughter) was working at the art gallery and taking care of our works. They spoke to her. She then opened the door and the works were brought out for them to take pictures. Jan Wong just clicked and clicked and then quickly left.

I could already tell and said to Huang Rui, this little Wong is not Chinese. Huang Rui immediately understood. The ways Chinese and foreigners speak, are completely different, so it was quite clear that she was not Chinese although the face may look like. Huang Rui said, if this is like that, I will go and snatch the film. I pulled him back and didn’t let him go. Huang Rui was not as strong as me, and although he insisted to get the film back, I was afraid and held him back. Huang Rui may not remember all this, but I remember it very clearly. As a result, two days later, the New York Times published one of his paintings on the front page. Another picture showed me holding the sculpture “Silence”. Later, Fox Butterfield approached me and said that that it was due to his assistant Jan Wong, who was the wife of a Canadian that worked at the Academy of Sciences in China.

No one dared to associate with foreigners at that time, including people from the Democracy Wall. Fox Butterfield wrote in his paper that when we met at the Beihai Park to talk, police found out and came over. There was a policeman sitting to the left, and another one sitting to the right, and they listened to what we spoke. They really frightened Butterfield. Butterfield took out a big bag of art books. The police sat there all the time listening to us talk about art, and then left.

Butterfield didn't dare to talk anymore and said let's go. He suggested giving me a ride in his car, but I said, “It's no use. The police already know who I am. “No matter where you drive me, they can arrest me if they want to.” His two bags contained picture volumes on Western art, and Butterfield asked me if it was ok to give them to me? Would the Public Security not harass me? I said it didn’t matter, I could take them. I already knew how they were, and it was useless to make a secret out of it. You need not be afraid of them. But as a matter of fact, things around the Stars Exhibition continued to be a struggle with the officials. Like talking to foreign journalists, going to foreigners' homes to dance, all these were not allowed. But starting from the Stars Exhibition, things became more relaxed.

There was something else that had a big impact on society at that time. The whole society suddenly started dancing, in the streets and in the big hotels, like the Minzu Hotel or the Beijing Hotel. These places organized dances to make money. There were foreigners and Chinese girls, and they danced together. The foreigners got to know the Chinese girls, and slowly some started a closer relationship. It was when Deng Xiaoping made a big speech at the Great Hall of the People. Chinese cadres at that time generally thought that dancing was a bad influence from the West, and that it was not good for a Chinese girl to sleep with a foreigner. As a result, dancing was also banned.

When Deng spoke at a national conference in the Great Hall of the People, it was attended by high-level cadres. While Deng was speaking, everyone was sleeping. Suddenly Deng Xiaoping said: Nowadays, some Chinese girls sleep with foreigners and lose their national dignity. Instead of speaking about personal dignity, he invented the term “national dignity,” adding that if you lose your national dignity, you should be severely punished.

In my job at the theater, I had access to all the central policy documents as they were read out to us. And we were told that these cadres in the Great Hall of the People were almost falling asleep, but hearing that Chinese girls who slept with foreigners lost their national dignity and should be severely punished, everyone immediately woke up and the whole audience applauded. [On June 14, 1980, the Ministry of Public Security and the Ministry of Culture of the People's Republic of China jointly issued a “Notice on the Outlawing of Commercial Dances and Spontaneous Dances in Public Places” prohibiting people from gathering for ballroom dancing.]

All at the sudden, the Beijing Municipal Public Security Bureau began to arrest a large number of people who had danced with foreigners, or girls, or who had slept with foreigners, and they were sentenced to reeducation-through-labor. The “national dignity” was lost, everyone's face was lost.

Later, Li Shuang was arrested for sleeping with a foreigner. I slept with foreigners too, but I wasn't arrested. Some people asked me why they didn't arrest me. I joked that I had earned my national honor. A Chinese girl who sleeps with a foreigner loses her national dignity, but a Chinese boy who sleeps with a foreign girl earns his national honor, doesn't he? People today should know that there were many such small things showed how Chinese society was like at that time. It was often irrational and ridiculous.

Interviewer: To what extent, do you think, were the democratic and artistic movements in China influenced by foreigners then?

Wang: The Chinese had been suppressed for so many years and wanted to revolt, and suddenly, from watching movies, they realized how the life of Westerners really was. They had always been told how bad life was abroad, how foreigners were exploited by capitalists, and how happy Chinese people were. When I was in a TV drama troupe at that time, I was recruited for a broadcast directed to Taiwan. We had to read a script saying how well peasants were living now in China, how every family possessed a thermos for hot water. But watching movies from the West, or from Hong Kong or Taiwan, we could see that people there actually had TVs and refrigerators. But the radio broadcasts tried to explain how good our life was with thermos bottles in every home.

There was a big gap between the official propaganda and actual life. Democracy and freedom were of course demands by intellectuals, people in general rather want to live decently, have enough food to eat, and be able to buy things in the stores. Looking at life in the West, what does socialism mean? We were told that people in the West were living in dire straits; that workers and peasants suffered there, while they were happy in China. But people no longer believed all this. They rather wanted to transform our society some way. Intellectuals and young people knew about democracy and got interested in Western politics. Western influence on China was very strong then, in daily life and culture. And we had many contacts with foreigners or people from Hong Kong and Taiwan including Western journalists.

Interviewer: So the political movement, the democratic movement and the art movement in China...

Wang: At the beginning, Lü Pu's theories [Lü Pu was a dissident with the Forum April 5th Group], Xu Wenli's lectures, our protest march for the Stars Exhibition, were influenced by Marxism. We didn’t understand much about the West then, but expressed our dissatisfaction with our society. Some of the artists of the Stars Group knew about Western art, at least half-knowingly. Unlike me, they knew some. They were dissatisfied with the official art and wanted to create something new. The West influenced our painting, but there was no exchange or deeper understanding, and there were even some misunderstandings about Western art. That was okay. They just thought they had to change the old Chinese art. Politically we were all convinced that we had to do away with the leftovers of the Gang of Four, and we were longing for Western democracy. We knew a little about it, but not much, not like the 1985 Art Movement [also known as the ‘85 Art New Wave influenced by Western modernism and dissatisfied with the values of revolutionary realism.] Subsequent Chinese art movements were directly influenced by the West, but we rather relied on our own inner expression of our feelings.

Interviewer: After 1979 came 1980 and 1981. The Democracy Movement was suppressed, some people were arrested and democratic publications banned. What were your feelings then?

Wang: I thought that the Beijing Spring was very short-lived, and afterwards everything would be pretty much the same as before. After Deng Xiaoping had assumed power, things basically remained the same as in the past. Economically, he opened up a bit, but politically and culturally, he restored the same old ways of the past. I didn’t see any future for me in China. Continuing my personal way in China, I would certainly end up in jail, or I wouldn’t do anything at all. Doing something, I would definitely get arrested. I reckoned that although there was still an open-minded faction in the Party, they wouldn't have a great deal of influence.

Interviewer: What do you think of Hu Yaobang [the reformist Secretary General of the Party at the time] then?

Wang: I think he was a good man. Many people, including myself, thought that he was not bad at all. When I applied for a passport to go abroad, my father knew people in the Public Security Bureau. I was already married, my marriage had probably been approved in 1981, but they didn’t want to issue a passport for me. I contacted many people at the Public Security Office before I found the person in charge. He said that no one would be willing to act in my favor, and there were only two people in China who could decide this, they have to say yes or no. Only then will the Public Security Bureau be able to act, anyone else would just give excuses, but no one would do anything without approval from the top. The two people who could say yes or no were Deng Xiaoping and Hu Yaobang.

I first approached Hu Deping [Hu Yaobang’s son] who passed a letter from me to his father. Later, when a French parliamentary delegation came to Beijing to attend the 20th anniversary celebrations of the establishment of diplomatic relations, my [French] wife gave the letter to the head of the delegation. He then asked Hu Yaobang directly. Hu immediately gave his ok and had the Public Security Bureau informed accordingly. They immediately told me to get my passport. Only Hu Yaobang dared to make a decision.

The same year I had a contact with the Supreme Procurator’s office when I tried to find out what was going on with a manuscript of mine for a play. Someone told me that there were a lot of rehabilitations approved, wrongful convictions [from the time of the Cultural Revolution] removed, and it was Hu Yaobang who was strongly behind this. Zhao Ziyang's [then Prime Minister] always asked for the opinions of the Supreme Procurator or the provincial party committees first. But Hu Yaobang immediately gave instructions himself and decided to reverse the wrongdoings of the past. He always had a clear opinion and spoke with authority. And it was actually Hu who authorized me to go abroad.

Interviewer: When did you first wish to go abroad?

Wang: I had wanted this for a long time. But at that time probably everyone in China had the idea to go abroad. I wanted to leave China even before the Democracy Wall Movement. I had read some Western literature and stopped long ago believing in the communist propaganda about how bad foreign countries were.

Interviewer: Having left China, after how much time did you come back to visit again?

Wang: I left in 1984, and came back two years later, in 1986 when we should have held an exhibition in the art gallery of the Concert Hall. But the exhibition was banned. When the Public Security Bureau found out about it, they told the art gallery that they weren't allowed to do it. In 1989 I knew that they wouldn't allow me to go to China, so I didn't try.

Interviewer: Looking back, would you say that the Democracy Movement was a failure?

Wang: The Beijing Spring was not a failure. It had a great impact on China's political culture. The Beijing Spring people I knew were all from a generation that had gone through the Cultural Revolution. They knew their society and were willing to sacrifice their lives. They knew the dangers and sacrifices they had to make, but they still went ahead. They were different from the June Fourth crowd who usually were students and much younger. Those who participated in the 1989 June Fourth Movement probably thought that there wouldn’t be any great danger and their lives were not threatened. But most of those who left China after June Fourth did not do very well abroad.

Of course, also some of the Democracy Wall participants did not play any role any more once they were in exile. But all of them had been quite courageous, they were not afraid of sacrifices, and they were quite smart. Many of the student leaders of the June Fourth Movement were not so intelligent and did not have much of a political opinion in contrast to those from the Democracy Wall Movement, like Hu Ping, Xu Wenli or Liu Qing who might have had different opinions among them, but they were more like real politicians, and they all survived very well in prison.

Interviewer: Then why do those pro-democracy activists now in exile have so many conflicts with each other?

Wang: I think people in politics all show such a tendency. They all want to be leaders, not assistants or secretaries. Every one of those who had come out wanted to be in command. And then there's the Chinese culture where people don't trust each other much. After the years of the Cultural Revolution, basically there was no trust among them. They didn’t want to be on the other side of the table, subordinated to someone else; they all wanted to be on top of others. A number of them had spent many years in prison, and their brains and culture had stagnated, they couldn’t keep up with the society after they had come out.

Look at Wei Jingsheng, who had made great sacrifices, squatting in prison, and he hadn’t been afraid to do so. When he came out, he thought he should become the president and be the leader. But becoming a leader, you need to be elected by others. He wasn’t able to become someone's assistant, but others had to be his assistants. The one I admire most is Hu Ping. He was very good at what he did, and the articles he published after he had left China, were all written quite well. But as a whole, the influence of those in exile on the situation in China was getting smaller and smaller.

So returning to China in the future, as a politician without any real political or economic training, people certainly won't elect you as they leader. People at the Democratic Wall should have anticipated that when democracy would be realized one day, citizens would not necessarily elect them as their leaders, but maybe just acknowledge their contribution and award them some special recognition. They have certainly made some contributions. But like for a painter who participated in the Stars Exhibition at that time, it did not mean that he would become a great artist in the future. It also depended on hard work and talent. And those who participated in the Democracy Movement and went to jail may not become like Kim Dae-jung of South Korea [who made his way from jail to President (1998-2003)]. A future role as a top politician will still depend on future efforts, not on some by-gone merits.

Many in exile now, can't make a living themselves. They have to rely on the US government or some public foundation to give them money and grant political asylum. Their life is not easy. Some hope to get more funding when become leaders. The most important thing for those arriving in exile is to tackle the challenges of daily life. In China they had a job, relatives and friends, and it was easy to solve the problems of living. But who do you rely on abroad? In the beginning, some people will sponsor you, but later on, you have to rely on yourself which is more difficult. Most of them didn’t know any foreign language, so they couldn’t work in their original fields and life was not easy.

But there is a difference between political activists and artists. An artist may also be involved in politics, but his ultimate goal is not to become a politician, but still to engage in art. Although he might continue to care about China’s affairs, he doesn’t necessarily want to get involved. People involved in politics do have a desire for power and they want to change the society. But with so many people, not everyone, but  only one can eventually hold the power. Even if China turns democratic and holds elections one day, these prominent people might attack each other and compete for this power, that’s normal. So there will always be conflicts, there will always be struggles between the politicians. Even when political activist unite temporarily, they will ultimately exclude others to exert power themselves. Unity is not inherently in politics.

The history of the Stars artists is not important; it all lies in the past. What counts is weather we are still able to produce new works. In the past many people said that the Stars were not all that good, they were artist who played politics. And if you play politics as an artist, you are not patriotic. Nowadays such contradiction is not important. Everyone in exile is “not patriotic”, engages in politics and disagrees with the Communists. What counts are our artistic creations, our unique style and how we can establish ourselves in arts. The Stars Exhibitions played a certain role at the time, but only a few excellent artists have emerged later. Was this the final result?

Of course we contributed to a transformation of the art scene at the time. I believe my works were quite unique, so the Stars produced at least one unique artist who could establish himself in the history of art. Not everyone will recognize this. Today we basically talk of artists like Wang Guangyi and Zhang Xiaogang who write art history because their works sell for a high price. Their art uses Western or Chinese forms with some Chinese content added, but without any real artistic language of their own. I do have a completely independent and unique artistic language. It’s clear that my art is not African, not European and not Chinese, it is fully my own language. I am a Chinese artist, but I don't produce Chinese art or Chinese contemporary art. I do my own personal art.

Interviewer: How do Chinese media now speak about the art of the Stars and those who once participated in the Stars Group? Do the official media report on your works or activities?

Wang: They covered my recent exhibition in Beijing where at least photos of some works like “Silence” were shown. Although the official media didn't talk a lot about it, some journalists still made reference to the Stars within the limits of what they could publish. In the past, we were not mentioned at all, because nobody dared or nobody cared. There were several forces that made the Stars a taboo. Officials of course did not and were not allowed to mention them because the Stars were considered anti-government and anti-Communist. In the view of the Academy of Fine Arts, the Stars had no orthodox training. Most of their own people were still influenced by the revolutionary realism of the Soviet Union, and they thought that the Stars were messy and had no basic skills. But there was another big force later on in the eighties, when some artists suddenly sold very well in the market. They claimed that they represented Chinese contemporary art and that they were the first ones, and they did not want to mention the role of the Stars in the past. That’s why nobody wanted to talk about Stars.

Today there is no explicit official ban on the Stars. Most of the old generation of teachers at the Academy of Fine Arts has left. The art world and critics are also getting tired of Wang Guangyi and Zhang Xiaogang, and they feel that their art is repeating itself over and over again, with a lot of hype. They now have a more critical attitude towards them, and they develop a new understanding and appreciation of the Stars. They realize that the Stars movement was much more profound and intense than the “85 New Wave”. At least there are a few artists whose creations seem more profound, including me, Ma Desheng, or Huang Rui who all continue to create, although Huang Rui is still a bit trendy. How much we sell for is another matter. But we are still creating sincerely and continuously. Al lot of the art that is popular on the mainland now, or sells well, is not done by the artists themselves, but they have students and workers do it for them. But we are different.

Interviewer: When you had your exhibition in China recently, how were your conversations with young people?

Wang: Most of them didn’t know us, they didn’t understand much about the social environment at that time. When you tell them that we were not allowed to talk to foreigners at that time, they think that’s not possible. They have no idea about the society in the past. When they saw the works of the Stars Group or the “No-Name Artists Association”, all the impressionist canvasses were amazing. Those abstract paintings, although they don't seem like much now, had a great impact at that time. It was really something then, but those young people couldn’t imagine the strict control by the Communists that was in place, that one could end up in jail for just saying a word. They thought all this seemed quite unlikely, and we were exaggerating. Now the Communist Party wants everyone to forget this history, including the Cultural Revolution. So you better don’t talk too much about the Stars.