Writing with one's own special character
Q: You once said that "children's tales aren't the monopoly of foreigners." Besides being created by ourselves, is the content of Chinese children's stories any different?
A: Besides things from daily life, our cultural inheritance is the best material for stories. For example, I took Tao Yuan-ming's The Story of the Peach Flower Spring and rewrote it through the eyes of a child. In the story, "Little Li Isn't a Big Liar, " Little Li comes back from the Peach Flower Garden to tell people that there is such a place. But no one can find it. Because he is a child, the county magistrate doesn't punish him, but other people all say that he is a liar. Little Li says, "Don't call me that. I didn't lie. I know what it looks like. Now I'm going to plant peach trees to create a place like it." Changing it in this way, I have created another Utopia, and I believe that Tao Yuan-ming would approve.
Or take the story "The Foolish Old Man Moves the Mountain." A modern version could be written of it.
It may be that these stories are just child's play, but I think of child's play as a serious matter. Now there are too many people who start writing stories for children only after they fail writing books for adults. It shouldn't be like this.
Previously, when everybody was reading translated novels people said that this represented a kind of xenophilia, and so they would call for realism in literature, for a native literature, for a literature of the land. But the truth is that children need these ethnic tales even more. Now most of the children's stories are from abroad and aim to impart knowledge, but what we really lack are creative, imaginative books. But no one is making a call for this. I want to go down this road. I want to be a model for others.
Q: You have worked as a planner in an ad agency and as an elementary school teacher. And you have even sold boxed lunches. Some people say that because you have this variety of experiences, your work is closer to the real nature of people. What do you think about this?
A: The experiences that you can really form ideas from probably come mostly after you're 20. Within the limits of one life, sampling different walks of life may indeed give you more experience than other people. But literature engraves an image of an age, a group or a person. If it is written well, it can create a projection of an individual's life. This is because people have many things in common. Experience can be classified. To the creator, it doesn't make much difference if it's direct experience or indirect experience.
Establishing the authority of the classics
Q: Could you give today's parents some practical suggestions about buying children's books?
A: It's hard to make just one standard. There are in fact a great number of current children's books, and they are dazzlingly packaged. Adults can first make some direct judgments about a book. Will children like the book? Is the content imaginative? If you as an adult think it's good, it probably shouldn't be too bad. Some books, while printed well and illustrated attractively, are dull, leaving no room for the imagination and providing no food for thought for the minds of young readers. And parents should try to read more children's books.
Most people ought to establish what are the classics for themselves. There are a great many books that appear in a historical setting, such as books by Mark Twain or Gabriel Garcia Marquez that already transcend time and space. They've been around for 200 or 300 years but they haven't been forgotten and are still being translated. If you read more of these books, you'll establish your own authority and standards.
The creators and the readers can thus both put demands on themselves to see whether or not there is a standard close to being authoritative. The more contact you have with something, the more you will have your own way of looking at it.
[Picture Caption]
p.92
A solitary lamp and a closet full of books; It is here where Huang Chun-ming creates his children's books.
p.95
When his children were still small, Huang was off in America. He would illustrate the letters sent home to his children, which told of his everyday experiences in a distant land.