International writers find there’s more to China than meets the eye

2015年01月13日10:07 來(lái)源：Shanghai Daily 作者： 點(diǎn)擊: 次

In a week, nine writers from all across the globe are leaving Shanghai with memories, first-time experiences, along with new inspirations and works.

The Shanghai Writing Program, launched in 2008, invites foreign writers to live in one of the most vibrant cities in the world, experience Chinese culture and to talk to people who have lived through the most rapid economic and social transformations in the world.

“Exploring the city has changed my perception of China and writing forever,” says Argentinian author Victoria Caceres. “When you are stuck in the same routine, in the same house or in the same city doing everything again and again, you get bored and you lose perspective. Being in China has inspired me to think in a new way.

“I’m rediscovering the sense of adventure, how much I love learning about other cultures, and how much this enriches me. I want to sit down and write on the one hand and on the other I want to keep learning,” she adds.

She is not alone. Shanghai Daily talks to six writers to learn about their works and the highlights of the past two months.

Peter Gerocs

From Hungary

In 2011, Gerocs made a documentary film about the late Hungarian author Milos Meszoly, one of the country’s most important and influential contemporary writers. One of his novels was adapted into the movie “The Falcons,” which won the Jury Prize at the Cannes Film Festival in 1970.

Gerocs, who made the movie in the middle of his PhD program, is interested in the writer for other reasons.

He interviewed many of Meszoly’s followers, some of whom are also excellent writers.

“But they lie and deny their relationship with the author,” he reveals. “They don’t admit they are influenced by him, even when it is so obvious in their works.”

He says for decades Meszoly has been considered one of Hungary’s most outstanding writers, but that attitudes started changing in the mid-1990s when he was suddenly considered outdated.

“What’s intriguing about this is the two trends in literature, one where text refers to reality and the other where it only refers to itself, constantly fighting each other,” the 29-year-old writer says. “Why is there this eternal fight between the two? I want to see clearly how it works, how the two trends go parallel.”

Reality is also what Gerocs explores in his own writing, often times in the form of memory, a constant theme in his stories.

“The House of Ill Health,” his first novel, follows two parallel stories, one about a journalist who hates the world yet forgets why and another of a man who can only remember things for a minute.

“I’ve always been interested in the question of memory, both in a personal way and in a historical way. And I only recently realized it had been a repetitive theme in my stories ever since the beginning,” he adds.

Alberto Villarreal

From Mexico

The phrase “to break the system” comes up dozens of times during a talk with Mexican director and playwright Alberto Villarreal, who recently moved back to Mexico City before joining the Shanghai Writing Program. Having traveled to 21 countries, Villarreal says this is his first visit to Asia.

“I really try hard to travel as much as possible. That is the only way to break the system, to break the reality,” he says.

By system, he not only refers to reality, but also a range of rules from existing customs while growing up in one place to established principles applied in theater work.

He refers to himself as a “flaneur,” a French word describing someone who observes, ponders upon and lives in a particular moment while walking.

“By leaving Mexico and living in other cultures — for example, to China, and not as a tourist, but living as if I were Chinese — is the only way I can become less Mexican, and to get out of the Mexican system,” he explains.

“And that is very important for me. By doing so, Mexico has to become another country for me, not the one I’m overly familiar with. By doing so I get to look at it from the outside and understand it better.”

In his late 30s, Villarreal has written about 30 shows and directed 48.

“The B Side of Matters,” his latest stage work, integrates different forms of theater, from a live stage documentary to opera, into a discussion about the hidden or ignored side of issues.

“I want to make something interesting, something that breaks out of the system and reveals new possibilities. That is very important to me,” he notes.

Victoria Caceres

From Argentina

The Argentinean author became interested in China after she met and befriended a Chinese author at an international residence in Iowa of the United States.

“Coming to China, everybody told me, ‘you’re going to have culture shock’,” Cáceres says. “I didn’t feel that at all. I have always lived downtown and I love the noise and the traffic so maybe that’s why I feel comfortable here.”

She says her role model and favorite author is Virginia Woolf, who “mixes feelings and actions in a way that’s like magic, as if you are inside a person.”

“Her novel, ‘A Room of My Own,’ changed my life. In that book she says that for a woman to write in her day she needed two things: her own money and her own room so that the process of thinking or writing was not interrupted.”

While Cáceres believes “l(fā)ife and literature go hand in hand,” she has found that “the Chinese don’t see literature the same way. I want to read Chinese literature and find the perception that may explain a lot of the things I’m seeing.”

She has traveled half way across the world for this program. In light of this fact, it seems quite fitting that the analogy she gives for her writing is: “When I’ve finished a novel and I haven’t started the next one yet I feel homeless, like I’m living in an airport waiting for a plane and I don’t know when it’s going to come for me.”

“My goal, when I go back, is to start a writing residency program in my hometown copying this one,” she says, adding writers should help other writers.

“My Chinese friend told me when she saw me, ‘You must write about Shanghai when you go back.’ I replied, ‘I’m not only going to write about Shanghai, I’m going to dream about Shanghai’,” she says.

Imre Korizs

From Hungary

Though Korizs holds a PhD in Latin language and literature and teaches it, he didn’t start out devoted to the subject.

“Learning Latin was not my decision, it was just by chance. I hated Latin the first time, but then I got used to it, had extra classes and ended up winning the national contest in the last year of high school, which allowed me to enter the university without taking an exam,” he recalls.

Since arriving in Shanghai, he has discovered Zhongshan Park in Changning District, near where he lives. He went to the park every day in the first month, writing two poems a week there. He will include a series titled “Poems from Zhongshan Park” in his next collection.

Size, of course, was the first aspect of the city outside of the park that caught his attention. It is the first example of a modern metropolis he has ever visited.

“If you come to Shanghai to find traditional China, you may be disappointed. It is here that you see the future,” Korizs points out.

Despite the progress and modernization of the city landscape, “if you look in the homes, even if they look Western outside, the inside is still very Chinese. The material can only go so far in changing a culture.”

In addition to spending time talking to locals and expats, Korizs has taken advantage of the program by getting to know his fellow writers.

“That,” he explains, “has been the main success of the Shanghai Writing Program for me, the friendships we nine writers have been able to develop here. I think it is a service to world literature to bring international writers together like this,” he notes.

Hans Henning Harmer

From Denmark

The Danish-born author has been traveling and writing for over two decades. His works combine elements of reality and fantasy, with his destinations operating as the setting for telling a story.

“It is very strange: only one of 10 novels is about Denmark. The rest are about foreign countries,” the writer says.

Harmer is in Shanghai for the first time. “This was amazing. I felt like a dwarf or somebody who has been invited into ‘Gulliver’s Travels’ together with the giants!” he says.

His work in progress is a story that starts with a Russian family that settles down in the former French concession area in Shanghai, and ends back in his home country of Denmark.

It is a story of travel and immigration, of creating a new home while at the same time feeling homeless, concepts that resonate deeply in an international city like Shanghai.

He is most impressed with the city’s modernity and history. When he says modernity, it is not simply the skyscrapers, but Shanghai’s Metro, roads, shops, restaurants, and countless other material trappings that give off a modern air.

“This modernity is on a higher level than I have ever seen in any country. Really, I mean it!” he says.

“I love the former French concession area. In different parts of it, you suddenly come into an oasis of calmness and stillness, and it’s completely beautiful and amazing. You can really feel the grind of time, and you get to see people living there, walking around, washing clothes ... it’s really fantastic.”

Harmer appreciates the opportunities that the writing program has given him and the other writers.

“I’ve never been to a retreat that is so well-organized and generous to writers,” he exclaims. “This program has been able to bring together such a strange group of people from all over the world, and make very good relationships between them. It’s very interesting.”