In this monthly column, writer Sohini Basak sets out to interview contemporary writers from Asia to understand the nuances of cultural practices, power hierarchies, literary lineages, gender norms, all the while asking the question: Is there an Asian way of thinking? The hope for the column is to not only celebrate, but also sharpen our understanding of the countries geographically closest to us, and heighten our collective curiosities about the shared colonial histories, mythologies, sentimentalities and anxieties. Here’s an excerpt from her interview with writer Yan Ge:
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Yan Ge is a fiction writer in Chinese languages and English. Born in Sichuan, China, and now residing in England, Ge’s works have been translated into eleven languages. She has received numerous awards and was named by People’s Literature magazine as one of twenty future literature masters in China. If you’re new to Yan Ge and want to savour the wide range of her worlds, start with Strange Beasts of China, which in its English translation was named as one of the New York Times Notable Books of 2021. Then, move on to her English-language slice-of-life stories in Elsewhere or if you’re intrigued by small-town life in China, pick up the witty and moving Red Chilli Bean Clan.
You have written in Mandarin, and also its Sichuanese dialect, and after publishing fourteen books in that language, you published your first book of English short stories last year. Is there a distance or a closeness you must negotiate with when you write in the different languages? Do you find yourself being a “different” writer in different languages, perhaps like a persona, or putting on a mask — or do they merge more seamlessly?
What originally incentivised my switching of language, namely from Mandarin to Sichuanese, in my fiction was the story itself. Back in 2008, I began to work on some stories that took place in small towns in Sichuan and was compelled at a certain point to answer the following question: why would the characters, Sichuanese living in their home province, converse with each other in Mandarin instead of their native tongue? This revelation left me with little choice but to have my characters and later my narrators speak Sichuanese, a dialect true to the setting of my fiction.
In a similar way, my decision to adopt English as my literary language was ‘made for me’ by the circumstances I was in and the stories I wanted to tell. There was my English persona who, after living in Dublin for a few years, had developed an unquenchable desire to express herself artistically as a fiction writer; there were also a few stories that had been simmering in my head, eager to articulate themselves in and only in English.
For me, writing in a different language is to explore a new writer’s identity and embrace the plurality and fluidity of the identities that exist in us, both as human beings and artists.
Continuing with the theme of “distance” a little more, in the new book of English-language short stories, Elsewhere, the stories take readers to a wide range of places: Stockholm, Dublin, New York, and also 5th century BC China. As you’re no longer based in China, how does the distance affect the worlds you create these days?
As a writer, one always writes from a place that’s been slightly removed from reality. No matter where you are, you want to maintain the tension between your fictional world and the real world in a way you never want to have full access to the real world on which, in an obvious or imperceptible way, your fiction is based. Denis Johnson said, write in exile. And I totally agree that is the best place, geographically or psychologically, for a writer to be.
Strange Beasts of China, translated into English by Jeremy Tiang, was published 15 years after the original work. I think it is a book that will change every reader and make them interrogate themselves. English-language readers got to read it in 2021, so it was surprising when I learnt that it was your fifth book! Do you remember what first inspired you to write about these beasts?
Strange Beasts of China was written when I was twenty-one and blissfully ignorant and wild as a writer. I didn’t have a clear sense of the distinctions among literary genres and was simply writing stories. Looking back, I think my view on reality hasn’t changed much in that I don’t quite believe in the existence of the one absolute, hardcore realistic reality. All of my stories are, to varying degrees, surrealistic.
And will we see more of such work in the genre regions of the speculative or hyper-real or slipstream in the future?
Definitely. As I said, I don’t ever see myself as a writer for social realism. And now working mostly as a writer of colour in the West and in English, speculative fiction, which enables the creation of a third space, is my sanctuary.
I found it so fascinating that your first novel was published when you were still a teenager. Was that a rarity in the Chinese literary world? And do you recall if there were any challenges to being a young woman writer back then?
It was not a super rare thing. But then, there was a trend in the publishing world there to publish ‘teenage writers’ who were particularly popular among secondary school students. After entering and getting first place in a national writing competition, I was approached by several publishers and soon published my first book, a short story collection.