I Travel the Earth in Sound — Marking the 10th Year of Being Barred From Leaving China

Ai Xiaoming, March 26, 2019

Sadness for prisoners. Painting by Ai Xiaoming, on the Chinese New Year’s Eve, 2017.

This is the tenth year since I was barred from leaving the country. I still remember the last time I came back to Shenzhen, from Hong Kong, on March 17, 2009. After that I have never been out of Luohu Border Control.

The first time I was barred from leaving the country was in 2005, because I had made the documentary “Taishi Village” (《太石村》). Perhaps it was because the police putting the restrictions on me hadn’t gotten in touch with the customs yet, or because my passport hadn’t expired (the digitalization of personal data wasn’t as strict back then), so between 2005 and early 2009, I left the country several times for meetings or screening tours to universities abroad.

Over the course of the decade, I made many requests to the police to lift the ban, but all were turned down. They had many excuses, common ones being that the decision had been made by someone at a higher-ranking branch (like the Ministry of Public Security, or they joke that the order was in place for my protection. Whatever the case, no matter how I have tried to argue or defend myself, it hasn’t changed a thing.

Once, in my despair, I told those policemen: “Maybe when the day comes that you let me out, I won’t want to leave.” I was extremely sad when I said those words, for if what I said came true, it would mean that I had lost much more than my mere freedom of travel, but my longing to see the outside world, my thirst for academic and artistic exchange, and my love of freedom. Of course, the guobao (国保, Domestic Security Division) officer may not have understood what I meant. But on the other hand I also know that many have undergone suffering far worse than mine. Many have made far greater sacrifices: Tang Jingling (唐荆陵), Liu Xiaobo (刘晓波), Gao Zhisheng (高智晟). The price I paid is miniscule by comparison. So I don’t let it disturb me.

Each line of the last stanza is the title of a symphony.

It’s been a very long time since I last saw Suli (素利), and I only got in touch with her on WeChat last month. She was missing for a few years. I took wedding photos of her and Qin Yongmin’s (秦永敏, a political prisoner serving a 13-year sentence) and have always stayed in the loop about her situation. After she read this poem, she left me a message saying that it brought her to tears. This morning she sent me a recording of her reciting my poem. I was very touched and felt a sense of solace. I just hope that we can take care of each other by writing and reading poems.

I think, if one day I regain my freedom of travel, I will definitely read out this poem at some gathering. This is one of the reasons why I thought to have this translated into English.

At least ten years ago….

I Travel the Earth in Sound

My passport is an oracle script

The visas are the rubbings on an ancient stele

The custom is a prison chamber

Crossing the border means smuggling yourself to freedom



Gold and silver treasures hide in my heart, fine and soft

The fine is longing, the soft is affection

At border control we are stark naked

Under the gaze of ultrasound or MRI scanning



You ordered me to open up all of my luggage

You say: computer, folders and documents

I say: those are personal photos

Why would I bring the things that you are looking for?



The winter of ten years ago is already dead

The memories of ten years past — sometimes they recur in a flash

Policewomen at my sides, two cold faces as I use the toilet

Turn on hard drive. Do not close the bathroom door.

Police officers’ silence, long and inscrutable

A verdict without trial

Unwritten prohibition



Across the stretch of ten years, the Custom faded into the distance

No hate, and also no love

It is like a world that sometimes feels so far away

Nothing to do with me, like we are at opposite extremes

Don’t tell me anything about travel

A humble puppet dressed in kimono

An ugly doll from the Indian tribes

The delirious cat has grown

I took a Berlin Bear to Tiger Temple

[1]



A passport is a sleeping beauty dying to see her prince

Sometimes I feel a desire to bury her, three feet below

In a grave more dear than her abode when alive

A live burial for a nonexistent kiss

Only a name and a nation

Like the Thirteen Tombs, not knowing what they are



One day, I told the police

The truth is, I don’t want to travel anymore

Pass a life sentence on my passport

However you like: firing squad or lethal injection

For someone who doesn’t have the desire anyway

Whatever the punishment is, it won’t matter



Of course, I didn’t tell him

All the places I want to go

Just hearing a name is a night full of starlight

In Honduras, is there the raging flow of waterfalls?

Like a massive symphony every morning, what a deep romance



In Mexico, there is Frieda, her flowers of the desert

Albania, where the mountain hawk soars high and away

Fighter planes frozen in the secrecy of their cavern airbase

Slovenia, a five-word poem

How splendid, a perfect euphony

Liechtenstein and Morocco

As dashing as secret agents



With the thrill and mystery of Hollywood

The Vatican, Britain, Ireland …

I remember the rain on the street corners coming back from Scotland

I remember the wide embrace of Mike and Sue

And that Australia-accented “bloody something”

Greece, Poland, Iceland, Finland

Every name a work of art

Greece, a sweet-scented candle, or the ruins of ancient shrines?

Does Poland have orchids rocking on rippling waves?

[2]

Consoling those children floating up in the wisps of blue smoke

Austria, my sister has an apple orchard in the countryside

Kafka’s home on a silent street

Yahong sent me a postcard

Portugal, Denmark, Amsterdam

Czech, Norway, Sweden, Switzerland

The white on blue of the Alps

I remember the cellar where the rebel leader was detained

I took the photo for Heping, inside of the castle

A hero rides a mighty steed

Riding gloriously to his homeland

In the splendid summer days by the lakeside in Geneva

We hear the future instructors at Harvard sing Tsai Chin’s songs

[3]



One day I will become a sack of ash

Be careful, I might scatter it around Luohu

At every point of entry and in every escalator

Beneath the wheels of everyone’s luggage

Every strand taking me beyond the border

I will be in the air, I will be on the conveyor belts

Softly rising with the steam from your teacups

I will linger in the chimneys visited by Santa Claus

In the wings of great angels

In the cruise ships sailing the oceans wide

In the melody of the Kol Nidrei

I will wander the vast world in which your sword of power buried in the sand

Going to every city, each one raising a flag to a soul set free



But I am still alive

And my passport pleads not guilty

We guard each other in the time before the expiry date

We can start our journey with the ashes

And we can also in this moment

Travel the earth in symphonies

……

A Night on the Bare Mountain

Don Quixote

Capriccio Espagnol

Also Sprach Zarathustra

Vltava

In the Steppes of Central Asia

Finlandia

Songs of a Wayfarer

My Fatherland

From the New World

……





March 16, 2019





[1] Ai Xiaoming received these gifts from her friends when they traveled

back from the other countries. A friend got two dolls of Berlin bear to

her at Berlin International Film Festival. “Tiger Temple” is a fellow

Chinese documentary maker, now the coordinator for the Chinese

Independent Film Forum in Xi’an. Ai gave him one of the dolls of

Berlin bear as a gift of encouragement.



[2] Poland in Chinese translation consists of the characters 波兰, “wave”

and “orchids.”



[3] Tsai Chin is a pop and folk singer from Taiwan. At the Chinese

diasporas’ new year parties in the United States, those who cannot

return to China sing this song, thinking of their hometowns.



Ai Xiaoming (艾晓明) is a retired professor at Sun Yat-sen University. She works on independent documentary films and is a feminist researcher.



Translated from Chinese by Leo T.

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