His books, several of which are collections of interviews with ordinary people from the lower rungs of Chinese society, were published in Taiwan and Hong Kong but are banned in mainland China; some have been translated into Spanish, English, French, German, Polish and Czech.

[4] In the spring of 1989, two magazine companies took advantage of the relaxed politics and carried Liao's long poems "The Yellow City" and "Idol."

In these poems, Liao Yiwu criticized the political system, calling it paralyzed and eaten away by a collective leukemia.

[2] In June 1989, after hearing about the Tiananmen Square protests, Liao composed a long poem entitled "Massacre."

Knowing that it would never be published, he made an audiotape and recited the poem by using Chinese ritualistic chanting and howling, invoking the spirits of the dead.

One of China's vice premiers called it a "premeditated attempt to overthrow the government, and [claimed it was] supported by powerful anti-China groups.

"[3][page needed] Although it is currently banned in China, the book is easily found on Chinese file sharing websites.

[2] The French translation Quand la terre s’est ouverte au Sichuan : Journal d’une tragédie appeared in 2010.

In February 2010, he wrote an open letter to Chancellor of Germany Angela Merkel after having been denied permission to leave the country many times.

[8] In June 2010, the Berlin International Literature Festival held a worldwide reading for Liao Yiwu in order to commemorate the massacre of Tiananmen Square, and to admonish China's human rights record.

from China, he lived under police surveillance with his wife in Chengdu, supporting himself with the royalties from his books published abroad.

[4] Liao Yiwu in an email dated April 1, 2011, wrote:[citation needed] Friends: I originally planned to leave for the United States on April 4 in order to make a publicity tour for my book God is Red which will be published in English translation by Harper Collins and for my book The Corpse Walker which was published by Random House.

I had originally planned to travel to San Francisco, Chicago, Boston, New York, Washington and other cities and to give lectures, readings and musical performances at Harvard, Yale and other universities as well as participate in the New York Literary Festival where I was to make a speech and perform, and to have a dialogue with writers from around the world on the theme "Contemporary Writer and Bearing Witness to History".