Barbara Mittler

Do you hear the people sing?
The Power of Silence, the Classic of Songs and Traditions of Protest in China

Berkeley China Colloquium, Thursday, February 22nd,  8-9.30 pm (European Time) 11.00-12.30 (California Time)

One powerful mechanism to responding to (political) crises in China is the use of evocative silence. Lu Xun, one of the most important modern Chinese writers, once warned in the 1920s: »As long as you can still hear wailing, sighing, crying and begging, you should not be too worried. But confronted with cold silence, you must be careful: ... it is the harbinger of real anger«.A composition by Chinese composer Shen Ye – written during the Omicron lockdown in Shanghai in spring of 2022, and entitled 人们，你们可听见? (Leute, könnt Ihr das hören?) – expresses this type of real anger. His title plays with »Do you hear the people sing?« or, »À la Volonté du Peuple«, the song from Les Miserables which had become the main protest anthem in Hong Kong in 2019. In tracing the history of this reliance on silence and song which occurs already in the conception of the old Classic of Songs, this lecture deals with the unbroken worldmaking powers of dangerously charged silence(s) and the powers of (silent) music as a means of protest in China's long history.

Register here: https://berkeley.zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_Kauz4n2STwO8lLJ-TzMlVQ#/registration