Q: Weekly Report of Young Big Head Chun is very different from your earlier writings. As an adult writer imitating an adolescent, what message do you hope to convey?

A: Originally the idea came from a newspaper column written by a number of different authors under the title Weekly Report on the Life of a Writer. I was not part of it at the very beginning. I thought that anyone could write a weekly report and that it was just the kind of thing you gave to your teacher to read. A weekly report has a fixed object, style and structure. Firstly, seeing as there is a fixed subject, it cannot say anything that is completely true.

Secondly, a weekly report has a fixed structure, examining the important things of the week and one's life. Its form is fixed as a compulsory piece of writing according to educational regulations. It cannot just tell me about my love life, or what the menu was today.

Finally, there is the problem of style. When schoolchildren write their weekly reports, they have their own coarse and undeveloped style. All of these points have to be paid attention to.

However, when I saw Edward Yang's recent film about middle school students, I Submitted an article that very day called Testament of Young Big Head Chun. This was originally just a single article, but later I felt that I could continue working on it. I wrote two or three drafts and gradually became aware of my own limited understanding of the life of adolescents, although I am the person of my generation who is closest of all to teenagers. I therefore carried out some surveys and interviews and made new contacts. When I met a young person, I always made a point of observing him or chatting with him.

After this, the column became very different to what it had originally been and became an appeal for a self-examination and observation of youth culture.

Q: Is your target teenagers? Will they have the ability to understand your introspections? As for adults, might it seem a little too simplified?

A: I am aiming at a target range of ten to fifty years of age. The reactions of readers have been the exact opposite of what you just said. One junior high school pupil told me that the book is great fun, but too silly. He said his age group could not write such silly stuff. When senior high school students read the book, they feel the subject is too mature, more adult-like, and that there is a deeper level of meaning.

We are not discussing the quality of the work or whether it does justice to reality. I think that if a ten-or twelve-year-old child reads the book again ten years later, he will find a different meaning there.

Some people say to me that Big Head Chun is really stupid. I do not feel at all wounded by that. Some friends also joke that you can only sell well if you write this kind of trash. I agree that selling well is not in itself a great achievement, but I do think it can let more people get to know my work.

However, what is even more important is whether our views are prejudiced, thinking that something is rotten just because it sells well.

Q: When you were writing, did you think about the problem of what kind of influence you might have on adolescents?

A: If you want to ask me whether I had any intention to give young people moral guidance, I think I only had one comparatively benign aim. This was to write a weekly report that would understand the thinking of adolescents, their feelings and emotions, and the problems of life faced by them. I am also pointing out that adults are still limited. Our society still does not have the ability to understand youth, and teenagers belong to an, as yet, still unopened territory.

In the 1960s, parents would say their children were the generation of revolt, and young people in the 1950s were the angry generation. So today we think that if young people are not rebellious, then they are angry. What I want to especially stress is that adolescence is not rebellious but a period of communicating in the dark. There is no way to connect.

In the past we had an object for our rebelliousness, but teenagers today just inherit our words. If you ask them, of course they will say they are rebels and like to revolt. Rebellion has become a kind of fashion. This fashion is not what the earlier fashion was. The problems must be clarified.

The generation born after the war were rebelling against the system of paternal authority and the whole world was the same. They did not believe in, or did not want to rely on, the bitter experiences of their parents. What they felt was that, during the Cold War, there was suspicion and mistrust between people. They wanted to go back to some kind of innocence and purity. There was a going back to basics, nature, and a life of renouncing civilization. By the 1980s, these people had become yuppies and returned to the fold.

What is the object of adolescent rebellion today? It is pure rebellion and there has still not appeared any way for young people to sort themselves out. The root of the problem of this directionless generation lies not in themselves, but in their growing up in an environment of affluence. They have not yet had to discover their own way of confronting themselves. But the whole of society is in the age of the information explosion and they have no way to respond to such a massive change.

Q: From the structure of the weekly report and the narrative of the book falling between the worlds of two generations, some critics say that this is a designer's book and not an author's book. What do you think?

A: Of course it is an author's work. But I also admit that this is a designer's work. I toyed with this design work for a year, more or less. I often feel that the nature of the author is really like that of the craftsman. You do not have to say he is an artist. When he is dead, people will say he is an artist, and they should feel ashamed.

A writer is a word craftsman. If he is not a craftsman, or does not have the qualities to be a craftsman, then he does not have the qualities to be an artist. Look at Michelangelo or even Mozart and Bach. Which of them did not go through a basic craftsman's training? It was only then that they could develop their own artistic styles. It is only after such a training that an artist is skilled and can continue in his craftsman's creations.

No matter whether somebody is an artist or not, what must come first is the skilled craftsmanship; only then can we know what this thing is we call creation. No matter whether it is cleverness and talent, the ability to be receptive, curiosity, or varied repetitive training, you only need to be free of bias and fully drop your prejudices, then you can have an opportunity to develop creative work on your foundation of craftsmanship.

Q: Why have some artists recently come to a kind of unwitting consensus about making young people the subjects of their works?

A: When a lot of film makers and writers get to middle age, they come to a kind of consensus in their works, portraying the last dregs of their youthful spirit. I can think of many such examples. Take some of the films by directors like Hou Hsiao-hsien, Edward Yang, or Bergman's Fanny and Alexander. What is the reason?

At middle age we can look again at the source or our creativity. When we get older, we can go back to childhood and look at the course of life. This kind of theory is based on evidence. Cheng Pan-chiao developed his calligraphy up until the last and some of it is like the scrawls of an infant.

A pure and mature craftsman, who can be called an artistic person, can in the course of the development of life reach back to some of the sentiments of youth. I think this is related to the source of creativity. It is also freedom and trying to search out an alternative area of freedom. It is a rebirth of creativity and freedom.

At times, by maintaining a degree of curiosity, paying attention to children and taking children as your teachers, you can see a lot of new things. "Concern" is a very popular word these days but it does, in fact, help us to reflect on our past. We do not prove our own past in this way, but we learn anew from the young ones.

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(photo by Vincent Chang)