Towards Normality-- An Interview With Ah Cheng

"Why are my works popular? I suppose because of the strong storytelling element!" says Ah Cheng as he lights up his pipe, still bleary-eyed from chatting until dawn with friends in Taipei. Since he left China for far-off America six years ago, he has published few full-length books like King of Chess, King of Trees, King of Kids. Instead his essays and short stories have been appearing in such publications as Hong Kong's The Nineties and Italy's La Repubblica. Many concerned readers are wondering: "Why isn't Ah Cheng writing so much any more?"

Ah Cheng says he isn't really writing less. In fact, he writes every day, "a word at a time." When he finishes something, he puts it aside, and waits a while before taking another look at it. "If it's interesting I keep it, if not, I throw it away." As for why he seems to be publishing less recently, it is because "when you first go to a new place, it's hard to 'integrate' right away, and so I'm in no hurry to publish things."

Ah Cheng does not see himself as an "author in exile" who went overseas for political reasons. Going to America was his own choice, and he did not go there to seek better career opportunities or permanent residence, but just to "find a desk to write at with no-one looking over my shoulder." So far he has been very pleased with this desk, and has never had the feeling of not fitting in.

"Most people will only feel unsettled if they go from a normal place to an abnormal place. For instance, normal cars have four wheels, and no one thinks there's anything strange about them. Its only if you keep seeing cars with five wheels or three that you think something's amiss Going from mainland China to America was a move from an 'abnormal' place to a 'normal' place, so why should I feel it was strange?

"When I was in my teens, I left Beijing and went to places like Inner Mongolia and Yunnan. Meeting with cultures completely different from the Han Chinese, in fact it was the same as if I'd gone abroad to study as a child. For me, the USA is just a modern 'minority area.' It's really no different from my experience when I was little," says Ah Cheng.

People often ask him, since "writing takes a close relationship with place," whether "by going abroad you've lost contact with your roots." But he believes that perhaps because of his past experience, this is not a problem for him. He also feels that although these concepts may be very pretty and poetic as a way of giving vent to one's emotions, they cannot threaten him. But paradoxically, since being in America and having to "integrate" with local people, he really has been writing less.

But there are some things which are different there from in mainland China. Ah Cheng still finds it difficult to closely link the different elements of writing, publishing and readers' reactions. He says, "Western authors write for publication and for their readers, but this concept is still very foreign to some mainland Chinese authors." His concept of creative writing has never included consideration of whether what he writes is to be published.

"During the Cultural Revolution, if you wrote anything then it was for yourself, or to show to a very few friends, and if you showed things to friends you weren't asking them to give an opinion or anything like that; it was just another way of speaking to them. It's just as if you say: "Isn't it cold today!' and he says 'It is, isn't it!'--it's an extremely natural way of responding, not like readers who are always wanting to ask a lot of strange questions, questions you'd never expect," describes Ah Cheng.

For instance, in King of Chess, Ah Cheng originally intended the old man who appears at the end of the novel as a negative figure, and when his friends read it they too were very clear that he was a negative character. But unexpectedly, some critics and readers kept saying that the old man was a positive character, which was a complete surprise for Ah Cheng.

He thinks that King of Chess's popularity in mainland China stemmed from the reappearance of the popular tradition in literature after the mainland's many years of self-imposed isolation.

"If people like to read my books, it's basically no different from people liking to read things by Chiung Yao and San Mao, or listen to Theresa Teng singing in soft, gentle tones. Its basically just because it's been so long since they've heard it."

"There has always been a popular tradition in Chinese fiction. Things like the 'new literature' [an anti-feudal, anti-imperialist vernacular literature movement which started with the May 4th movement in 1919] which don't fit into that tradition are not necessarily something which many people can understand, and there are some non-populist works which most of the general public would not comprehend. But later this role was taken by poetry, and so traditionally in Chinese literature, poetry has been separate from prose fiction."

After 1949 the popular tradition suffered severe attacks, and popular novels written before then were suppressed. "It was not until 1984 or '85 that we were allowed to see works like Chang Ai-ling's Love Turns the City Upside Down, which was written in the 1940s and is such a delicately crafted work. In the long years between, literature was burdened with too many missions. People hoped to use essays to impart morality and wanted novels to 'save the nation.' In fact there is a tradition of people being misled by such ideas."

Ah Cheng comments that since the 1980s, due to the relaxation of political control, there has been a great deal of space for the popular tradition, so that there is an enormous market for books like Su Tong's realist Wives and Concubines or Wang Shuo's satirical novels, and 1992 finally even saw the appearance of erotic novels like Decadent City. The recent flood of all kinds of popular works may appear abnormal, but in fact they are recreating the link with China's tradition after a hiatus of 40 years.

"Many people worry that the growing flood of rampant popularism may run disastrously out of control, but in my view we should let that flood come, for it is only when people have had enough of its excesses that later works will become more moderate, and things will reach an 'ecological balance.' Left alone, things will regulate themselves, but artificial interference will only achieve the opposite of what is desired," says Ah Cheng.

Ah Cheng believes that people's reactions when reading these "popular works," including his own, are rather abnormal. One will have to wait until enough of such works have appeared--whether in the traditional literary romantic style of Chang Ai-ling, the rich-boy-meets-pure-hearted-girl love stories of Chiung Yao, or even erotic novels like Decadent City--before everyone's reactions will tend towards "normality."

All this is rather like the reaction of the Chinese to Westerners. From the late Ching dynasty on-wards, the Chinese have overreacted to Western culture, and this "abnormal" situation has persisted for a hundred years. In Ah Cheng's view, people were most normal in the Tang dynasty. "Just read writings of that time about the relations between Chinese and foreign authors. The poet Li Bai sat down with Japanese monks as an equal, discussing poetry over a few drinks. People understood each other as neighbors, and were not suspicious of each other's motives."

Before 1949, when there was more contact with the West, people's reactions were also more normal. "For instance, in Shanghai in the 1940s, Chinese and Westerners were intermixed. If you just count the Jews in the Concession district, there were half a million of them. Everyone had plenty of contact and naturally there were more opportunities to coexist 'normally,'" says Ah Cheng.

Applying this concept of normality and abnormality to the triangular relationship between mainland China, Taiwan and Hong Kong, he says that, of the Chinese he has met in America since 1987, those from the mainland seem to him to be the most "abnormal." They appear suffocated and shut off. People from Hong Kong are the most "normal," while people from Taiwan lie somewhere in between. But the mainland Chinese he has met in the last two years have been different; they gradually seem able to "breathe" again. Nonetheless, he still thinks that Hong Kong and Taiwan are the places where Chinese have the greatest opportunity to act "normally," and where the greatest hope for Chinese culture lies.

"The people in Taiwan are 'bursting with vitality,' everyone knows there are things you can do, and knows what you shouldn't do; the whole atmosphere here is different." Ah Cheng seem smore optimistic than the people of Taiwan themselves.

"Throughout history, it has generally been the normal which has overcome the abnormal." Ah Cheng believes that whether one looks at literature or at other fields such as politics or economics, people in Taiwan really don't have too much to worry about, "unless there are a lot of abnormal things hidden under this normal exterior," concludes Ah Cheng on a seemingly abstract note.

Lisa Wang's expressions are animated when she talks, and her refreshing, bold laughter can often be heard.