From the Faculty Members and General Audience:
We had such a great intellectually provocative time at the Georgia Tech event for Political Comics in China: the Works of Li Xiaoguai. His work creatively deconstructs and reconstructs Chinese characters to capture the sometimes elusive essence of current China society and bitterly attack the injustice of the day. It is definitely extremely intriguing! As one of the panelists has pointed out, aside from creativity it takes tremendous courage to do what Li Xiaoguai has done. Thanks for organizing such a well-thought-out event. The whole event starts with a wonderful introduction video made by Dr. Liu’s students about the artist, followed by a talk by Li Xiaoguai, then insightful commentaries by China research experts. Step by step, I was deeply drawn into the carefully constructed narrative and my thoughts never deviates a second, which is rare in the nowadays interruptive work and live environment with all the media constantly around us 24/7.
Thanks for organizing this wonderful event. I enjoyed it a lot and was very impressed by the introductory documentary you and your students created.
The event was a super success! So interesting and entertaining.
Congratulations for a very successful event! It was very interesting and I learned a lot.
Wow…I couldn’t believe how many people showed up. Next year you are going to need a larger venue!
From the students in CHIN 4004 on Contemporary China:
李小乖是一个博客艺术家。他创造新汉字，来表达他的意见。他点评很多中华人民共和国的问题如户籍制度、国家在中国人的生活中的重要性等等。我觉得他的艺术特别好，甚至更促动我学习汉字 (His art made me motivated to learn more Chinese characters) 。而且他对美国的印象很有意思，他说他在美国没有什么异国感，因为他跟笼子里的鸟一样，在空中一被释放就没有异国感，因为鸟应该在空中飞。- Felix Faltings (天琴)
李小乖是中国有名的政治漫画家。 他作品的焦点是中国言论自由的缺乏和新闻审查制度。这个活动非常有趣。 因为中国的文化与文字和书面语有很密切的关系，创造新的字是对抗中国政府的叛逆行为。他创造的字常常结合两个事先的字，然后制成新的字。在中国，如果政府官员请你“喝茶”的意思是他们要审讯你。李小乖已经三次被官员请“喝茶”了。我觉得李小乖很勇敢，为了他能畅所欲言而敢于对抗中国政府。- Adam Schatz（查伟龙）
李小乖是一位政治漫画家，他介绍了他的一些艺术作品，以及是什么激励他创作的。 他谈到了中国的审查制度和互联网上的隐私问题。 看到中国政府控制公民的方式发生了变化，我觉得很有意思。 他的漫画短暂而强大，表明中国政府的问题以及人们在国内治理的方式。在他的介绍后，我们的政府和中国政府的差异变得非常清晰。 虽然我们的政府有时也会试图保守秘密或提供虚假信息，但至少我们有权就此事进行调查并提出我们的想法。 Connie Zhao (赵玮婷)