'My novels are not my babies'

By Liu Wei (China Daily)
Updated: 2009-05-27 09:06

Many of Yan Geling's novels have been adapted into films and TV series, including those by top Chinese filmmakers Chen Kaige, Joan Chen, Jiang Wen and Zhang Yimou.

Unlike many writers who treat their work like their babies, Yan has an easy-going attitude toward her scripts.

"There is more than one way to make fried potatoes," she says. "As long as the final product is good, it is OK. Every story has many different elements. If the directors can develop one of them with their own vision, why not?"

Yan is thankful for having worked with some of the great directors.

She wrote the script for Chen Kaige's Forever Enthralled (on the life of Peking Opera master Mei Lanfang) and says Chen has a clear vision of what he wants. "He 'exploits' me," she says. "He always takes the good part and pushes me to revise the rest until it's the same quality."

Yan revised the script of Forever Enthralled seven times. "It was a very good chance for me to learn what is drama and what is not," she says.

Joan Chen has been Yan's buddy for many years. They read novels, listen to music and watch art house films together. "Our most meaningful way of playing together is by making films," she says. "I believe in her intuition. She has very good intuition. She reads many books."

Yan is highly complimentary of Chen's directorial debut, Xiu Xiu, the Sent Down Girl (Tian Yu), because the filming of the tragic story set in the "cultural revolution" was as beautiful as a fairytale.

The film was nominated for the Golden Berlin Bear and won seven awards in Taiwan's Golden Horse Awards in 1998.

Jiang Wen bought the adaptation right to Yan's Grey Dancing Shoes, her first love story and semi-biographical.

Yan describes the director of In the Heat of the Sun and Devils on the Doorstep as "a real man," strong and funny.

"But people often miss his sensitive part," she adds. "He is often obsessed with details and loves to convey it to the audience."

Zhang Yimou has bought the rights to her novel 13 Girls in Jinling (Jinling Shisan Chai) about 13 prostitutes during the Nanjing massacre of 1937.

Yan is now translating the novel into English for Zhang to cast actors in America.

Although a popular novelist among filmmakers, Yan prefers writing novels to scripts.

"I have to worry about whether my writing works in a film's structure," she says. "But when I write novels, I have no such worry at all. In my kingdom, they all work."