Opinion

Singing Songs No One Hears: Ethan Gutmann’s New Year’s Greetings to the Chinese People

On the occasion of the Chinese New Year, the author Ethan Gutmann recalls a story told him by religious refugees from China.
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Singing Songs No One Hears: Ethan Gutmann’s New Year’s Greetings to the Chinese People
Young women dressed in traditional Chinese gowns walk in the Lunar New Year Parade in Flushing, New York, on Feb. 8, 2014. Samira Bouaou/Epoch Times
Ethan Gutmann
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In my mind, Chinese New Year usually announces its presence through a long-forgotten song. The first notes–often something I accidentally hear on the street–acts as an emotional tripwire. Just for a moment, strangers are transformed into fellow passengers on a breathtaking journey. So I know of no better way to express my New Years greetings to Chinese people across the world than to tell a story about people singing together in extremely difficult circumstances. The following account was told to me in Bangkok, by five religious refugees from China:

While she was in prison, a thought kept running through her mind: will the world ever know what happened here?
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Ethan Gutmann
Ethan Gutmann
Author
Ethan Gutmann is an investigative writer and author of “The Slaughter: Mass Killings, Organ Harvesting, and China's Secret Solution to Its Dissident Problem” and “Losing the New China: A Story of American Commerce, Desire, and Betrayal.” Gutmann is also a senior research fellow in China Studies at the Victims of Communism Memorial Foundation whose work has investigated surveillance and forced organ harvesting in China, and co-authored, with David Matas and David Kilgour, an extensive report on China's transplant industry, “Bloody Harvest/The Slaughter: An Update.”
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