| Take heart! Hope is at hand!
The following is a translation of a section of an article in the June 2005 issue of Open magazine (in Hong Kong).
This is the first of a multi-part series titled "The Secret Behind China's Ten Most Profitable Industries." This article covers the top three industries: real estate, education and underground publishing. I am going to stick to underground publishing.
In the busy Sanlihe strict of Beijing, there are a number of national government offices. It is also adjacent to the headquarters of the People's Liberation Army. This can be said to be the heart of the Chinese government.
Yet, there is a little side street full of various underground bookshops which sell all kinds of banned books, pirated books and pornographic books and past issues of magazines such as Open, Cheng Ming and The Spring of China. Everything can be had. They carry pirated copies of books published in Hong Kong and Taiwan and even books banned by the Chinese government. "Friendship and Enmity in Zhonghanhai", "Love Affairs in the Red Capital", "Zhou Enlai in his Latter Years", "How the Red Sun Rose", "The Truth About June 4", "A Heavy-Hearted Look Back", and even Adolf Hitler's "Mein Kampf" and Chiang Kai-shek's "The Fate of China" can all be bought cheaply. The "Recollections of Mao Zedong's Private Doctor" was once very popular, but nowadays "The Past Is Not Like Smoke" is popular. Also, the series of sexually explicit books by female Chinese writers such as Mu Zimei as well as the sexually explicit "Serve The People" which debased the image of Mao Zedong. These are all available from the underground bookshops.
from a long post at EastSouthWestNorth  | 
