In quest of new themes, written by pen

A writer of Yan Lianke's stature can write what he wants, and he doesn't worry much if the truth hurts his readers or his book sales

Acclaimed Chinese writer Yan Lianke is constantly pushing himself for new approaches and new stories in his literary creation.

The 56-year-old Beijing-based writer has been in the spotlight since his residence became a target of "forceful dismantling", which cost him the place where he has long been weaving pastoral stories and dreams. But he doesn't want to write about that, he says, or about the foggy haze that is worsening outside.

"I see nothing new in those themes," Yan says at a cafe in northwestern Beijing.

His warm account in My Father's Generation and I, of the lives of his generation and his father's was a commercial success, but he wasn't as pleased as his readers were. Writing a memoir is too easy, the author says.

The productive writer is always eager to create something "refreshing and challenging". He prefers themes with the potential for powerful narration.

Yan writes all of his work by hand, and when he sent his latest novel, The Chronicle of Zhalie, to a typist's company, the boss gave the task to two "better educated" typists.

"I was surprised when I got the text back because it was totally changed from sentence to sentence," Yan says.

Yan's unconventional usage of words and phrases confused the two typists: They changed all the "grammar mistakes" and "incoherent" expressions.

"But I still paid them," he says, with the thick Henan province accent of his birthplace, adding that he had to restore his original style.

The new novel is about the growth of fictional Zhalie village in Henan, from the home of 100 villagers to a super metropolis with a population of 30 million.

The dramatic expansion came on a wave of money accumulated from men being ruffians and women being sex workers.

"It's an astonishing novel with continual tides of astonishing climaxes," says veteran literary critic Chen Xiaoming, a professor of Peking University.

"It's true about part of the Chinese social reality in the past 30 years, but Yan depicts the truth to an extreme extent that turns out to be absurdly true and powerful," Chen says.

One of the "juicy" urban legends that circulated in the 1980s and 1990s, Yan recalls, was about the origin of overnight wealth gained in the southern cities when China just spread its wings for the reform and development.

"People went to the south and returned home rich. Rumors flew in the home villages, saying they traded morality for money," Yan says.

He intended to write about his pessimism over the loss of moral order and beautiful ideals some 15 years ago. But it wasn't until 2012 that he found his way to tell the story when he was visiting Shenzhen, a city at the forefront of the country's economic transformation in Guangdong province.

"Chinese society and its changes offer an incessant source for the writers. Instead of locating stories, I'm searching for the right way to tell the stories," he says.

He got the name of the growing town Zhalie from a classroom poster he saw in a Korean school. He was inspired to write a chronicle after reading similar books in Hong Kong.

"I researched how a nonfictional chronicle covers all aspects like history, geography, famous people, plants and animals about a single town or city, and then the work is more like assembling small parts to form a giant roaring machine," he says.

The result is a vivid story told in a strictly nonfictional shell.

One night all the villagers have the same dream. In that dream, the first thing one comes across will define that person's whole life.

After the dream, the four brothers from the Kong family set off to change the world in their own ways. A young woman from the rival Zhu family is to marry the second-oldest Kong brother and help him develop the town into a metropolis, though she hates him. Finally the third Kong brother takes all the villagers to sail to the United States in thousands of small boats.

In Yan's novel, a plant can bloom if an administrative paper is put in front of it. A building can be built overnight, by itself, only upon a shout by the powerful Kong brothers.

"Wow" is the reaction of many when they read the book, including writers Ge Liang and Jiang Fangzhou.

"I think readers need courage to finish this marvelous novel," Ge says.

"It's the truth behind those so-called truths," Jiang says. Yan coins a term "inner truth" in his literary theories he occasionally writes.

British newspaper The Guardian describes Yan Lianke as "one of China's most interesting writers and a master of imaginative satire".

Critic Chen notes that Yan is hugely popular among foreign readers, especially the French.

Chen says Yan's books typically sell tens of thousands of copies in France, adding that the French value "his wild imagination and artistry".

"You may have the impression that his writing is rustic and tough. But Yan is really a highly talented writer whose works deserve multiple reading," Chen says.

Yan was trained in an army school, and his early writing was mainly about army life.

"Believe it or not, I'm the originator of so-called politically right propaganda literature," he jokes. "I wrote anti-corruption novels in the 1970s."

He then shifted to rural topics. His works are translated in many languages and read widely. He was a finalist for the Man Booker International Prize in 2013.

Yan occasionally finds himself caught up in controversies that have kept some of his books from being published.

"I hold that a writer whose works have never been controversial is not a great writer," he says.

Yan is currently writer-on-campus at Renmin University of China in Beijing and writes in the mornings. He reads a lot of criticism and foreign literature, but avoids biographies.

He talks about Franz Kafka, Albert Camus and Fyodor Dostoyevsky, but says Chinese writers should insist on writing Chinese stories without traces of Western literature.

As he steps out of the cafe, he suddenly bursts into laughter. "This (The Chronicle of Zhalie) might be the wildest of all my novels," he says, in terms of imagination and absurdity.

"But I light a firefly like hope in the text of total darkness."

Yan's works

Lenin's Kisses (2003)

The novel revolves around the story of buying the corpse of Vladimir Lenin to build a monument in a village. The villagers collect funds for their project, envision large profits, but finally the project consumes the village and the solidarity of the villagers.

Eulogy and Academe (2008)

The novel is a satire of university intellectuals and academic circles. A professor of classical Chinese literature threatens his vice-principal, who is also his wife's lover, for money to publish his research.

Yan was rebuked by intellectuals for this fictional publication.

My Father's Generation and I (2009)

The book is a memoir about Yan's family and his hometown in Henan province. The book, which touched the hearts of many, is an attempt to trace his roots.

Discovering Novel (2011)

The book is a collection of essays that reflects Yan's thoughts on literary theories besides creating novels. Yan believes many ideas in the novel are guidelines for him to write and for the readers to understand his works better. He brings up the theories of "inner truth" and "deity realism" in the book. The Chronicle of Zhalie, his latest novel, is said to be a perfect example of the theory.

"I abandon the logical connections on the surface. What I really care about is not the swirls on the surface of a river, but the physiognomy of the river bed," Yan says.

Beijing, The Last Memory (2012)

To Yan, the book is a pastoral eulogy of his lost "garden"his former residence in Fengtai district in Beijing. Courtyard No 711 was where he grew vegetables and developed his writing.

The book, with detailed narration on the plants and animals and Yan's life in the house, is hailed as China's Walden, a classic by transcendentalist Henry David Thoreau.

meijia@chinadaily.com.cn

(China Daily Africa Weekly 03/14/2014 page29)