Am 19. und 20. Mai verlebten Gäste und Freunde des Projektes LiteraturRaum einen Abend mit Bei Dao und dem Berliner Starkoch Tim Raue. Dieser kreierte exklusiv für die Abende ein Drei-Gänge-Menü.

Das Video des Abends finden Sie unter http://www.literaturraum.de/?page_id=1754

Berlin was the first foreign country I traveled to. Summer of 1985, I set off from Beijing, transferred in Paris then proceeded towards Berlin. At the time Berlin was still divided to east and west. After arriving to West Berlin, I asked a German where the Berlin wall was, her answer was simple: you’ll run into it if you continue to walk towards any one direction. We came to participate in the “Horizon Arts Festival,” it seems that the horizon really was imagination beyond the Berlin wall.

Berlin was built in 1237, it is a calamitous city. It was conquered by Napoleon from 1806-1808; 1933 Hitler rose to power; 1945 Berlin was invaded and exterminated into ruins, administered jointly by the United States of America, Soviet Union, Great Britain and France; in 1948, the Soviet Union carried out a blockade of West Berlin, the Western Allies organized airlifts to transport supplies in order to preserve the control of West Berlin; August 31st, 1961, Berlin wall emerged from the horizon, West Berlin became an isolated region; since then at least 239 people lost their lives while attempting to climb over the wall or to cross the river…

The Berlin Wall collapsed on November 9th, 1989. At that moment, the western media aimed all their cameras toward the celebration. Then I just left West Berlin, moved to Oslo, and was stunned in front of the television. It is said that a small number of German intellectuals, including Günter Grass, called on East Berliners to be cautious of the unification, besides being “annexed” by West Berlin, whether there is a more sensible way out, thus they became the target of attack. During that time the East Berliners’ preoccupation with the pursuit of West Berlin Mark soon acknowledge the brutality of that thing: rabbits turned to ferocious tigers, drove them into despair – industries of East Berlin became entirely bankrupted, unemployment rate remained unyieldingly high, all the inhabitants sunk to the “lower caste.”

I can still recall the feeling when I first read the novel The Divided Sky by the female writer Anna Seghers from East Germany long time ago, by no means limited to its political implications, to further examine it’s actually the split of humanity’s inner world.

Naturally I am split as well. Later I discreetly mentioned to my German friend that I still prefer the West Berlin before unification. To my surprise they all agreed. In those days it was the land of the artists and the poor, today it is ruled by politicians and businessmen; in those days the simple and tranquil way of life, has been replaced by a powerful capital’s ambition and clamor of commercialism. In the end, what I prefer is the special atmosphere of those days – the end of the world sensation, which was a kind of real metaphor for the state of mankind.

This time I’m staying in Berlin for a month, plan to finish a memoir on my childhood and adolescent period, this is a book about growth, the backdrop concerns the Beijing that has already disappeared amid the progress of modernization.

Bleibtreu hotel is lively yet quiet, a suitable place for writing. I begin writing every day after breakfast, take a short break at noon, and continue to work in the afternoon. Have dinner with my daughter, who is staying at a friend’s place, and then take a stroll around the neighborhood.

Yesterday we visited “The Story of Berlin,” a multi-media exhibition introducing Berlin’s 800 years history. My deepest impression was the nuclear shelter below the Kurfurstendamm boulevard parking lot. With the assistance of an English tour guide, we came to this shelter built in the 70s, which was supposed to allow 3600 people to survive for two weeks. It is a typical German design, everyone has their own bed, but there are only four bathrooms (two for men two for women) and one simple kitchen, with the precondition that all the refugees must be healthy and self-sufficient, in other words the old, weak, sick and the disabled are not to be taken in consideration.

Inside the nuclear shelter, the ghostly lights and strange noises make one feel frightened and claustrophobic. Would our nervous system be able to endure it beyond three days, I doubt it. It even makes one associate it with the gas chambers in the Nazi concentration camps.

Without question this is a product of the Cold War, containing Cold War mindsets and propagandas.