Reading
The regular reading material in the jail is People's Daily. Other reading materials includes publications in China provided to prisoners by the visiting relatives of prisoners. There is a prison library that only high-ranking prisoners were allowed to use. Most reading materials were originally donated by the former Nationalists classified as war criminals by the Communists, and consist mostly of works by Mao Zedong, Karl Marx, Friedrich Engels, and Joseph Stalin. The other source of donation is from the prisoners' relatives and reading materials donated by released prisoners.
All reading materials are screened and those deemed improper for the prisoners are rejected. However, the censorship varies according to the political situation in China. For example, after the death of Lin Biao, copies of Quotations from Chairman Mao Zedong (Little Red Book) were confiscated and pages with Lin Biao's words were removed. Even during the era without any political turmoil, it is worth noting that many publications legally publicized in China and available to the general public would not be permitted for prisoners.
Read more about this topic: Qincheng Prison
Famous quotes containing the word reading:
“The logical English train a scholar as they train an engineer. Oxford is Greek factory, as Wilton mills weave carpet, and Sheffield grinds steel. They know the use of a tutor, as they know the use of a horse; and they draw the greatest amount of benefit from both. The reading men are kept by hard walking, hard riding, and measured eating and drinking, at the top of their condition, and two days before the examination, do not work but lounge, ride, or run, to be fresh on the college doomsday.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (18031882)
“Human contacts have been so highly valued in the past only because reading was not a common accomplishment.... The world, you must remember, is only just becoming literate. As reading becomes more and more habitual and widespread, an ever-increasing number of people will discover that books will give them all the pleasures of social life and none of its intolerable tedium.”
—Aldous Huxley (18941963)
“My mother ... believed fiction gave one an unrealistic view of the world. Once she caught me reading a novel and chastised me: Never let me catch you doing that again, remember what happened to Emma Bovary.”
—Angela Carter (19401992)