In 1992 the writer Ah Cheng 阿城 kept a Venice Diary. One of its entries consisted of a single line: “Today is June 4, it’s been three years.” These words appear in the book’s Hong Kong and Taiwan editions.
When Ah Cheng’s seven-volume Collected Writings were published by the Jiangsu Phoenix Art Publishing House in 2016, the entry became: “☐☐☐☐, it’s been three years.” Starting in 2018, however, subsequent printings of supposedly the same edition carried no more blank squares, only a parenthesised notice at the end of a piece: “(This text has been abridged.)”
In China, June 4 is not just another day of the year. Here in the suburbs of Philadelphia where I am writing, it is, this particular one filled with lugging, unpacking, and arranging that constitute the occasional mundanity of moving. Here, when I take a break from the boxes, I can write about June 4 and expect it to be posted. But the words are not forthcoming. Perhaps Ah Cheng was beset with a similar speechlessness. Even when writing in Venice, even when publishing in Hong Kong or Taiwan, all that he could muster on the third anniversary was a single line.
How to cite: Chen, Thomas. “Just Another Day: Thomas Chen.” Cha: An Asian Literary Journal, 4 Jun. 2023, chajournal.blog/2023/06/04/thomas-chen.
Thomas Chen is an associate professor of Chinese at Lehigh University. He is the author of Made in Censorship: The Tiananmen Movement in Chinese Literature and Film (Columbia University Press, 2022).
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