Last Post I Ever Write About Bob Dylan—Maybe

I've dedicated my career to working in the media, and I generally defend journalists. But sometimes—especially regarding China—I see how distorted coverage can get, and how willing people are to stick to a narrative that fits what they think about China.

The reason I know is, I pitched the story about Bob Dylan going to China all over the place, and I said, despite what you're reading, the facts—from my own reporting and that of other people including expat blogs, China Music Radar, and James Fallows—don't add up to what's being reported. I don't think Dylan's shows last year were called off by the government. I don't think that his protest songs are being scrutinized by some bureaucrat. But no one was interested in the story, and in some cases, I'm talking about major news and music publications that went on to criticize for Dylan playing a censored set in China.

The reasoning went, any musician who plays a big show in China has to submit a set list and lyrics; therefore, they must all be censored; therefore, Bob Dylan must be a craven coward who caved to Chinese censorship.

I'm gone now, but I thought at the time, people are required to submit a list of songs all the time, and generally nothing comes of it. (Up top, another show that probably wouldn't have made it past the censors if anyone was paying that much attention.) And I wondered why everyone assumed that his set was censored. I mean, just from reports of the show, it's clear that Dylan played protest songs in Beijing.

As if the government is concerned about some old songs—as opposed to separatist movements in Tibet and Xinjiang, loudmouth and homegrown dissident artists like Ai Weiwei, poor people getting upset about getting their land taken over, Taiwan acting like it's a separate country, Falun Gong, Chinese Christians getting a little too bold, and now ethnic Mongolians acting up. (OK, it's just fun to make a list like that of all the things you want to be careful talking about in China.)

So now, reclusive Bob Dylan himself has released a statement saying that he wasn't told not to play particular songs, and that his shows in 2010 were never confirmed. I can't imagine why he'd lie about this, but more to the point, everything he's saying rings true to my experience in China—rather than what was being reported.

Ultimately, China's going to be a bigger part of our lives and play a bigger role in the world in coming years, and we need to start looking at the country realistically, rather than based on a few things that we find disturbing about it: the Sichuan earthquake as an opportunity to rail against the one-child policy; a 19-year-old musician assessed based on events in Tiananmen Square. (Those were real suggestions from editors in the US.)

Read Bob Dylan's whole statement; it's very witty, of course.