Patricia LaurenceProfessor Writer Critic

Review of Lily Briscoe’s Chinese Eyes: Chinese critic

“Conversation on a Willow Pattern Plate: Virginia Woolf and Ling Shuhua”

University College Cork, School of Asian Studies, Cork, Ireland. May 2011.

The River Is Moving: Shanghai Women Writers Talk About Writing, Feminization and Feminism (2001)

Wang Anyi: I can’t help it, but I don’t, I don’t like to be called a feminist, and I don’t want to be a feminist (laughter).… If I think of this problem from the standpoint of feminism, it should—it would narrow my mind.

What is the consequence of the well-known divide that exists between the literature written by Chinese women sometimes in and for the West, and literature written by women writers in and for the Mainland Chinese audience. Witness the attention that two erotic-pop novels, Shanghai Baby by Wei Hui (2001) and K: The Art of Love by Hong Ying (2003) received in America in the past few years. Wei Hui’s “banned in China” label was a swift advertisement for sales in England and America; and the sensational libel case against Hong Ying in China created a surprising market for her book in Taiwan and England. Read more

September 19: San Wei Teahouse/​Bookstore

On my last night in Beijing, I went to an old teahouse to meet its charming owner, Ms. Liu Yuansheng, who has converted it into a bookstore holding mostly classical Chinese writing, and hosting talks, readings and music. Ming style tables and chairs, bamboo bird cages, beautiful calligraphy, and colorful tea jars graced the room. Another new enterprise in China I noted as a group of young Americans on China Tours–and learning Chinese–entered to have tea, converse and listen to a concert of Chinese classical music. Not quite Barnes and Noble, but established in the spirit of preservation of the culture of old Beijing.

Video excerpts of Patricia Laurence’s talk, “The Narrow Bridge of Art: Bloomsbury, Modernism and China, at Fudan University, Shanghai, China, on September 16, 2008. The talk was part of a book tour in Shanghai and Beijing on the occasion of the translation of her book, LILY BRISCOE’S CHINESE EYES: BLOOMSBURY, MODERNISM AND CHINA, into Chinese by Shanghai Bookstore Publishing Company, July 2008.

September 18: Interview with Chun Sue, BEIJING DOLL

I met another young, successful Beijing novelist whose first novel was banned in China. Written at the age of 19, her semi-autobiographical coming of age novel, Beijing Doll, translated into English by the distinguished translator, Howard Goldblatt, is described as a “novel of cruel youth” in China. In America, it has often been assessed as a bundle of clichés. In my interview, she rejected that assessment and argued that her generation is facing something different, something confusing in Chinese society that Mian Mian’s Candy also expresses. The sentiments may be familiar in America but in the Chinese context, the genre captures, as she states in her Author’s Note to the book, “the irreconcilable incompatibility with society, family and school….Many young people in China wrote to tell me that reading Beijing Doll was the most memorable event of their lives.” What young people were taught by their parents and the schools, she said, is different from “what is.” China, somehow, she mused, does not have the same “integrity”: even in my parent’s generation, the common people’s dream was not realized. “And so young people are depressed now even though some of the elites of the 50s are doing well.” My novels, she said, do not teach you “how to behave or act”—and represent a small portion of Chinese youth– but tell you about another existence of feeling and thinking.” Read more

September 17: A visit to a Beijing Bookstore; Interview with Zhang Yue Ran

Eager to see what was featured in the bookstores in translation, I walked down the fashionable shopping street, Wangfujing Road, to the one of Beijing’s largest bookstores. I noted Chinese literature in translation, but also international bestsellers, given China’s integration into the world market. The Diary of Mo Yan was well displayed, Chun Sue’s Beijing Doll, Lilian Lee’s Farewell My Concubine (adapted for Zhang Yimou’s film), Jiang Rong’s Wolf Totem, Helen Tse’s Sweet Madarin, Su Tong’s Rice, Eileen Chang, Love in a Fallen City, Fan Wu’s February Flowers…And international literature displayed: Amy Tan’s The Opposite of Fate, Barack Obama’s Audacity of Hope (also displayed in Chinese translation), the Gossip Girl series, Harry Potter books (the fifth in the series I was told, sold 500,000 in translation), Jack Kerouac’s Dharma Bums, Ian McEwan’s On Chesil Beach, Iris Chang’s Rape of Nanking, Murakami Haruki, and How they Got into Harvard….On several occasions, I talked with people about the absence of important American and English novels on the shelves, and the issue of translation, an undervalued and underpaid profession (often given to grad students in China). Publishers sometimesin a rush to get titles into the bookstores, use poor translators, and the profession needs standardization and regulation. More to be said on this… Read more

September 16: Beijing Bookworm

It was a rainy evening in Beijing and I traveled across the sprawling city to the Chao Yang new diplomatic district to the Beijing Bookworm. I gave a talk to an audience of about twenty ex- pats at this trendy, successful English language bookstore, restaurant, lending library and, now, writer’s residency in Beijing. I’m told that they have about 2000 members, the audience being 75% ex-pats and the rest, Anglophone Chinese. It’s an attractive candlelit space in the evening with three large rooms, and has become a literary center for readings, talks, debates. That night, I met an international bureau chief, a reporter from the Beijing News, a director from the British Council, and an American with an interest in Bloomsbury temporarily working in Beijing. The idea for the store, I’m told, was Alex Pearson’s, a Sinologist, who set up a small library and restaurant about five years ago, that has now has expanded with branches in Suzhou and Chengdu. Jenny Niven, the energetic handler of bookstore events and marketing was my contact through their attractive website describing events and writers (www.beijingbookworm.com).

The bookstore often features young Chinese writers who either write in or are translated in English. This past month, they presented Hu Wen, Chinese Dollar and Guo Xiaolu, A Concise English-Chinese Dictionary for Lovers, shortlisted for the Orange Prize in London.

September 12: Thinking about the Writer’s Union

When Mao and the Chinese Communist Party took power in 1949, many writers suffered a literary death. Expected to follow a realist formula with a political mission, many stopped writing or were imprisoned because of “rightist” sentiments. After Deng Xiaoping’s economic and cultural reforms in 1979, the stance toward writers and literature changed. Deng announced that literature would not simply serve politics, and international literature and free-er discussion was once again allowed into the culture, to a degree. This opening up has evolved, and what has changed in contemporary Chinese writing is that most writers are less overtly concerned with politics—not only because the censors that all writers are subject to do not allow criticism of the government, reference to events like Tiananmen 1989 or too explicit sexuality or homosexuality in writing—but also because they are more concerned with the market. Because of the influence of the market and new venues for publishing, authorities in the ministries are having diminishing influence in literary circles. Though censorship still exists…. Read more

September 11: Literature, Politics and Culture

Aware of PEN’s campaign for writers detained during the Beijing Olympics, I thought I might discreetly explore the issues of being a writer in a socialist/​communist country. Acutely aware, however, that any revelations by writers or others could mean serious punishment, I expected little. But the questions were in mind: what does it means to be a writer in a socialist/​communist country as compared to a capitalist country. How does the economics of writing differ in each country? The freedoms? The censorship? The punishments for candor? What are the structures for publishing and distribution now that joint ventures have formed since China entered WTO in 2001? What is the role of the Writer’s Union? Read more

September 8-9: Attending the China Forum, Shanghai Exhibition Center

I attended and spoke at the 3rd World China Forum on China Studies, a two-day conference sponsored by the Shanghai Municipal Information Office, the Shanghai Academy of Social Sciences in cooperation with State Council Information Office of PRC. Read, CP. It’s now an annual conference focused on China’s economic, technological and cultural development and challenges. Some of the more interesting items on the agenda were China’s health care system, reform of property rights, China’s global responsibilities, anti-Americanism in China, Sino-Israeli relations, political trust in rural China, development options of China’s democracy, and a review of the Chinese legal system. The question for me was what do all these economic and cultural shifts mean for literature? Read more

September 7, 2008

In my first week in Shanghai, a busboy told me that he wanted to go to America. “Why,” I asked. “To get the human rights.”

I was invited to China in early September to give some talks about my book, Lily Briscoe’s Chinese Eyes: Bloomsbury, Modernism and China, recently translated into Chinese. I was initially amazed that there was an interest, expressed no less, by a government press, Shanghai Bookstore Publishing Company. China, now more engaged now in following international trends, purchased the rights to my book as many others these days from my US publisher The book is a study of the relationship between the literary and intellectual circles of Bloomsbury and the Crescent Moon group, an Anglophone literary community in China in the 1920s-30s. The group I focused upon, Crescent Moon, was once labeled “decadent” and vilified because of its identification with English culture and literature; art for art’s sake; and humanitarian values. It was a group that was international in spirit at a time when China was not. It championed the value of the individual voice at a time of national crisis when the social mission (propaganda) of literature was all. Recently though, the group has drawn some attention because of its individualist stance and connections with Bloomsbury, and some of the writings of Ling Shuhua, Chen Yuan, Xu Zhimo, Lin Huiyin are being republished Read more

“Beyond the Little Red Book: Literature in China Today”