From the writings of San Mao to Jia Pingwa, the sanwen or essay is easily one of the most beloved genres in Chinese literature. Monika Gaenssbauer’s survey essay in our Spring 2013 edition spotlighted just four of the most prominent practictioners of this art and explored why Chinese essays are only rarely translated into English. On the occasion of Yao Yao’s delightful essay “Colourful Fruit Trees” in Samuel Liangxing Luo’s translation appearing in this week’s Translation Tuesday showcase, our editor-in-chief sat down with the author to discuss her latest collection and the outsized influence of Fujian writers in this particular genre within contemporary Chinese letters.
Why did you go with As Mentioned, No Names Are Mentioned as the title?
Tang poet Wang Wei once wrote a poem, beloved through the ages, which contains the line: “Even in a deserted mountain, one yet hears the whispers of man.” To hear your fellow man but see no one—the implications behind this conceit are endless. I based this collection of essays on the stories of my Chinese art circle friends, ascribing anecdotes to made-up names like Yi yi or Yi er. Even without proper attribution, the stories are one-hundred percent taken from real life. Not only does the title befit my mode of storytelling, it also hints at the playfulness inherent in the anthology.
Creative nonfiction in the Western tradition typically centers the author, but in these essays, it’s your friends who take centerstage; you, on the other hand, mostly stay in the wings. What would you say to the readers who might have come to this essay collection hoping to read about you, only to be denied this familiarity?
This may be a book that takes as its subject the lives of my friends, but, as author, I am in fact everywhere. What I have expressed is entirely what I have chosen to express; what my readers encounter is what I have chosen for them to encounter. Though I may be offstage, I am like a director, staging tableau after tableau, mapping thought after thought, carrying the reader through space-time, perspective, and logic. Should the reader derive pleasure from the work, it will be my pleasure too. I’m at the scene with the reader.
Within your text, you intersperse other writings by authors and artists alike. In addition, after each essay—and this is a novel idea that I haven’t encountered elsewhere—you also add readers’ online comments that the articles attracted when they were first published on a website. How did you go about selecting these comments? And do you treat these comments as equal to the other texts?
Adding readers’ comments is a new thing for me as well. Inevitably, different readers will react differently to the same text. No matter what point of view is being expressed, if there is substance to their opinion, I’ll be happy to use it as a kind of annotation or a finishing touch, if you will. As for quoted text lifted wholesale from other writers or artists, these serve as elaboration or counterpoint; this way, there’s something for everybody. That’s also one of the aims of this essay collection.
If your work is a collage of sorts, then would it be appropriate to compare your work as a writer to that of a deejay?
Yes, in fact, not only do I remix content like a deejay, I also reconstruct or enlarge or fragmentize space and time like a director would. These are modes of creation that are deeply inherent to Chinese culture.
Both the five elements (a theory that the world is made up of wood, fire, earth, water, and metal) and the Yi Jing (also known as The Book of Changes) make numerous appearances in your essays—is there a special significance to this? How would you explain them to Western readers?
Both the five elements and the Yi Jing are foundational to Chinese culture; they express how Chinese people conceive of space and time; their value system—one might even go as far as to say that they carry a special signification within our very being. We Chinese people often say that profound philosophies can be distilled into simple sentences. The frequency with which these get mentioned in my essay collection is another corroboration of this view. It’s a little difficult to explain the Yi Jing and the five elements to Westerners. Perhaps, it suffices for the reader to bear in mind the following simple phrase, which gets to the heart of the matter: “one begets two (yin and yang), two begets three (Heaven, Earth, and Man), three begets all things.” The universe can be infinitely large, yet at the same time infinitely small—it all depends on where you happen to stand. As Archimedes says, “Give me a firm place to stand, and I can move the world.”
In Wu Ming Chun’s introduction to your essay collection, Fujian is cited as a major province for essayists. Tell us more.
Among the masters of the craft hailing from Fujian provice are Guo Feng, He Wei, Sun Shao Zhen, Shu Ting, all of who are important players in China’s contemporary scene. That’s why Fujian is a major province for the Chinese essay.
Which two would you especially recommend?
I recommend the essayists Guo Feng and Nan Fan. Guo Feng is a famous essayist and a children’s literature author; his works are elegant but unpretentious as well as plain-speaking with a child-like point of view. Not only do they overflow with human brilliance, but they also capture the unique flavors of Chinese tradition and local custom. Many of his essays are studied in primary and secondary schools across China where they are deeply loved by readers. Nan Fan, on the other hand, is a recipient of the Lu Xun Literature Prize. Wit and personality are abundant in his unique style, best characterized as a kind of anti-lyricism that treats its subjects with clinical acuity and perfectly blends intellectual abstraction with aesthetic sensuality.
Translated from the Chinese by Lee Yew Leong
Yao Yao (摇摇), the pen name of Yao Qingqun (姚青群), is a senior editor and writer in China. She is also a registered member of China Writers Association. Yao Yao resides in the city of Fuzhou, Fujian Province. Her published literary works include the collection of her short stories 玫瑰灰 (Dried Roses) and the collection of her essays 说好不说名字 (As Mentioned, No Names Are Mentioned), out this year. She is the executive editor-in-chief of the Editorial Office of the Journal of The Open University of Fujian.
Lee Yew Leong is the founder and editor-in-chief of Asymptote, which received the 2015 London Book Fair Award for Literary Translation Initiative. Between 2015 and 2017, he curated a weekly showcase of literary translation in the Guardian, which remains to date the highest-profile weekly showcase of world literature in the anglophone world. Among the three book-length works he has translated, Fu-chen Lo’s From Taiwan to the World and Back (Avanguard Publishing House, 2015) is the most recent. Winner of Brown University’s James Assatly Memorial Prize for Fiction (2003), he has written for The New York Times and served as a judge for PEN International’s 2016 New Voices Award.
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