Interview with Chinese writer Zhang Lijia

Zhang Lijia is the author of China Remembers (with Calum MacLeod) and the memoir “Socialism is Great!”, which details Lijia's experiences growing up working in a Nanjing rocket factory amidst the social and political ferment of 1980s China.

This interview was conducted in Lijia’s Beijing apartment on 19 July 2008, for a profile for Australian newspaper The Age.

What made you decide to pen a memoir about your experiences in the 1980s?

It was through a lunch with Peter Hessler [author of River Town]. Peter Hessler took over a column – I used to write a column for the Hong Kong Standard, and then he got a job here. He came to Beijing and was working for the Asia Wall Street Journal as a clipper and it paid him very little money. The boss, Ian Johnson, was a very good friend of mine. They wanted to subsidize his income by giving him the column. I thought ‘Why should I?’, but anyway Ian Johnson was my mentor and he persuaded me. It’s so funny looking back. Peter came to see me and I was saying, ‘You can write this and this, and I was saying ‘You can say ‘I’’. I thought I was more experienced than this young man writing this column. Little did I know he would grow into a great writer. He hadn’t published River Town yet.

He wanted to take me out to lunch to thank me. I told him about my factory experience. He was very surprised and he said, ‘You should write about your experience.’ He put me in touch with an editor who did a column called ‘Personal Journey’ in the Asia Wall Street Journal. So I wrote about my experience and it was published. And lots of my friends never thought I’d come from a worker background, they thought I was better educated and they were very surprised. They said, ‘Wow, it’s amazing, we never knew this. Why don’t you write a book?’ I started some research and realized although the market has been flooded by China memoirs, the vast majority of memoirs are bitter suffering tales from the Cultural Revolution – Wild Swans, Life and Death in Shanghai. And there’s so few set in the 80s. And I think the 80s were such an exciting time, when all the changes started to happen. It was so exciting. Some of the best art works and best literature. It was a time when China became what it is today, so it is more relevant to today. Also by then my ex-husband [Calum MacLeod] and I had just published a book called China Remembers, so it some ways writing that book whetted by appetite for writing more books. So I started writing at the end of 2000… it really took a long time.

So how long did it take to write the book?

We went to England and it took me a while to settle down. It took nearly four years. Then after I got a degree – I always felt sorry for myself because I didn’t have a good education. Part of the reasons I went back to England was I wanted to study. So I got a Masters degree in Creative Life Writing from Goldsmith, which is part of the University of London. And I loved every minute of it. And I did feel that I became a better writer. So after that, after my degree, I went back and changed and polished.

Did you find the process of going back over the 1980s and writing about it difficult or traumatic?

I wouldn’t say traumatic, I’d say the opposite – therapeutic. Writing of course itself is difficult, full stop. And I loved this project. Now I think I’ve become a better writer from this, and I’ve also finished my novel. I didn’t find it easy, I just found it emotionally not too difficult. Writing has always been my way of making sense of my life. I started writing – keeping a journal – when I was in the factory. I had nothing better to do so I started writing in my diary. So the challenge is writing a good memoir – that was the biggest challenge, rather than the emotional side.

Presumably those diaries from the factory were an invaluable resource in writing the book?

Yes.

Were you surprised looking back over the diaries at some of their content?

Some were just very naïve. But I also found some of my writing and thought, ‘Oh, that’s not bad…’ [laughs].

In writing the book, were you primarily motivated by a desire to write a personal memoir, or was it a desire to memorialize that 1980s period in China?

People ask me why would I write my memoir? I’ve already been told I’m an egomaniac. But I think in many ways all writers… writing is such a big undertaking. You need a certain drive and motivation and ego to carry out this project. I just love writing, and it’s my way of making sense of my life and also a kind of commemorating of that bygone era, which I think deserved to me remembered.

I’ve certainly only become aware since living in China how ignorant I was about that 80s period…

I don’t know, somehow that era just got lost… sandwiched between the Democracy Wall at the very end of the 70s and the beginning of the 80s, and 1989 – that period just seems to have got lost. But yes, that was the most fascinating era.

I hope I’ve given the period a human face. I was just traveling in America, and I have a strong sense there is such a growing fear of China. I can understand some of where that comes from. This huge country doing very well economically, and undemocratic. And I also think some of the fear come from ignorance. If we can relate to China… I think China is such a strange place for many Westerns. If you can relate to China then there won’t such a fear. In some ways this my effort at giving China a human face, and help Westerns to understand China, and understand where China is coming from.

One aspect of the 1980s which you convey very well in the book is the era’s sense of political and intellectual awakening and the idealism that existed among many young people in that period. Do you think those aspects of 1980s China have been lost?

Yes. Lost. Today’s Chinese young people are far more self-centred, far more materialistic, far more commercial, far more self-centred. Some people say they are not interested in politics at all, they saw what happened in the response to the Tian’anmen unrest, but after the torch relay we cannot say they’re not interested in politics. But overall, yes, probably less interested in politics, less interested what’s beyond. I remember, I was just a factory worker, but we were talking very passionately about, ‘What is China’s future?’ – we were obsessed with talking about politics – ‘Was Western-style democracy the answer?’ And we read so much as well. For example, the Shikan poetry periodical now is probably less than a tenth of its original circulation in the 80s. People just are so busy making money, and everything else is just secondary. Today’s young people are certainly far more hedonistic. They’re not shy in pursuing their pleasures and pursuing their wants.

So what do you think has brought about that change? Was it simply the fallout from June 89, when it became very apparent the state was not going to be responsive to any desire for change?

Yes absolutely – don’t even try to think about politics. And then slowly over the years the government relaxed control and now there’s a lot more personal freedom, but there’s plenty of opportunity for the government left to attack people. They say, “You’re getting richer, what have you got to complain about?” I don’t know if you’ve read Zhu Wen’s book I Love Dollars? In some ways the title kind of summarises youth in the 90s – money driven. They were already very different, and that trend has continued. Enjoy life, enjoy yourself, don’t worry about politics. The government has encouraged people to go that way.

One of the comments my girlfriend, who’s 26, has made to me is that young people have infinitely more personal freedom than they did in the 80s, but in some ways their minds are more controlled. The media is more tightly controlled, and the circulation of ideas is more tightly controlled than it was in the 80s.

I agree with her. There was a lot of experimentation. Also open discussion for example – because they wanted political reforms I think. Now, today, it’s totally off limits. And also overall there was a lot more control, but in terms of art people dared more, they experimented more. There were just outbursts of that creativity. Today the market has more diversity and variety, but it’s more commercial as well. So I think in some ways she’s right.

Do you get frustrated when you look at today’s China, and young people in China?

I do get frustrated because I do care about literature, I care about writing, I care about reading. Without a strong reading middle class the country will never become a truly strong nation. I don’t want China to become another Hong Kong, where people just don’t read. They’re just too interested in… in some ways a kind of colonial mentality. But I just hope this is a passing phase China has to go through, where the material is still pressing, where people wanted to get rich and get a certain material security, and then they would want more spiritual fulfilment.

One of the places it seems to me China is trying to model itself on is Singapore, where they have that model of material riches but are kind of culturally vacuous…

Yes, absolutely. And little freedom of speech or human rights.

I think one of the great strengths of your book is that it’s written with a great sense of immediacy – you really feel like you’re in the moment with the younger you, experiencing your reactions and emotions of the time. But you don’t really get a sense of how you, in the present, now regard your younger self. Do you look back on that period with a sense of notalgia, or anger, or some other emotion?

Certainly nostalgic. But also I think a lot of mixed feelings. Not so much anger. I do feel sorry for myself. One of the reasons I wanted to go back to England was so I could have the opportunity to work for a Masters degree – I was still feeling sorry for myself and I wanted to be compensated. But one thing was always clear – I knew my mother – I didn’t like the result, but I knew she thought she did the best thing for me. She did that out of love. And also she was a worker and she never saw the benefit of education, but I understood she probably thought she did the best thing for me.

What was her reaction when you left the factory?

She was very concerned. In some ways probably she was pleased and happy for me that I found love and my future now had a better prospect. But I don’t know, I’m not sure how much she’s a part of me. I think there was concern, and she was sad that I was going away and she didn’t know when I would be back – actually I came back home the next year. I think she probably expected I would make more money that what I’m doing now, and she just didn’t understand why I would want to write. From my own perspective, I never had a huge material desire and I’m quite pleased with what I have now. You can see I live a very comfortable life [gestures around her large apartment], but I think for many people of her generation, success is measured by money. And she says, ‘Why don’t you buy house’, and it’s, “Well, actually I can’t afford to buy a house…’

Did you find in writing the book and going over the dairies there were memories that you had forgotten that came to the surface again?

I’m sure there are examples, but I have a very good memory. I often impress people by mentioning small things that happened many years ago, and I remember very clearly things related to emotions. But that’s all that’s left of memory – I have trouble with my PIN number – look I wrote it [shows her hand with a number written on it and laughs]. There are simple things I cannot remember, but other things I can remember very clearly. When I was writing, I wrote the first draft about 550 pages. It was too much, and also I didn’t have a clear view about what I wanted to say, I just wanted to write about this. But in the end I just cut it down, selected events which best illustrated the changes on my journey. I can’t give you a good example, but I’m sure… but those emotional relationships I always remember very well.

At what point did the publisher come board? Was the publisher instrumental in cutting back that original manuscript?

After the publisher started to take it on I looked back. James Atlas himself wrote a very, very long biography of Saul Bellow. It was too long, he spent too many years of his life and he complained, and after that he decided to publish short biographies. So originally in the contract he wanted 300 pages. Before I edited it was nearly 400 pages, so I cut down… I can’t remember I think it’s about 350 pages, so I cut down quite a bit. I cut it down and then the editor did quite a good job. She did some cutting as well, but not as much as I feared they would. But they decided the quality and the story was more important than making it 300 pages. I’m happy with the editing.

Was it difficult to find a publisher, given that most of the China memoirs focus on the Cultural Revolution period?

Originally I had an agent in London. Before the book was finished he tried a few. He had a few near misses. I guess there are quite a lot of memoirs, and publishers these days are increasingly dominated by sales people. For example, in a few cases the editor liked the book and the sales people said, ‘No, thank you, there are too many China memoirs on the market.’ They don’t even try to differentiate between memoirs of the Cultural Revolution or in the 80s. So my agent – by then I had started writing my novel and he felt we had a better chance with a two book deal. Then I met the publisher and I told him I had a memoir. He read it and loved it, and decided to publish it straight away. So in that case it was easy. But I had not tried independently on my own – this opportunity just presented itself so I thought, ‘Why not?’ I was working for the Creative Works, which is presented by my agent now – the agent for this book. Creative Works and James Atlas, the publisher, had signed a contract to publish a series of books from China. Anyway, I also wrote a story for South China Morning Post – I write profile stories which I love very much – so I met the publisher because I wrote a profile story on him for the SCMP. Which I thanked in the book – I thanked Chris Wood for sending me [to do the profile on James Atlas]. So to answer your question of how did publication come about. It was easy and difficult…

Did you show the book to any of the people who appear on its pages before it was published?

No I didn’t. Zhou Fang. I showed Zhou Fang one chapter I think. The book is dedicated to her. I didn’t show her the whole thing; I didn’t feel I needed to. But anyway she is very pleased about the final product. And in some ways it just brought back her memories. She’s a very special friend, still very special and close to me. Most of my Chinese friends don’t read English – my parents certainly don’t [laughs]. I always think memories are coloured by emotions – it’s just my side of the story. And I don’t think I deliberately said anything untruthful relating to my parents, but again it’s just my side of the story.

The decision to write the book in English – what was that based on? Was it because you were looking to publish it overseas? I imagine it would be difficult if not impossible to publish a book like that inside China.

It’s just out of the question. It was a combination of reasons I started to write the book in English. To start with there’s just no way I can publish the book, or translate the book, in mainland China. And my sense was actually correct – you know the New York Times reviewed it, and the review was quite big. A journalist friend told me, “I saw your story in NYT.” I was very excited and I went to the Friendship store and bought two copies. And when I came back I found in both copies the page where my review should be [makes a ripping action] they’d torn it off. Also I think I need to play up my advantage. I have been writing for Western media for so long, and I think there’s a small group of Chinese people in my position, who actually have an insight into a culture still very little known in the West, yet we can communicate with Western readers. Writing for the domestic market is a very different ballgame to writing for an international audience. I think now my advantage is I know how to communicate with Western readers, and I know where and how to explain. Writing for the domestic market there’s a huge amount of presumed knowledge. I worked for a literary agent to try and find good books to translate into Chinese. And there’s some very good books but definitely only for domestic audience. Without the presumed knowledge it often just doesn’t work. In the 80s I was very taken with Ja Zhe Yin’s book of interview with artists, but unless you are an artist that book just doesn’t work. I know how to communicate with the audience. Also writing in English has freed me. Freed me politically and freed me literally as well… and also given me more space to experiment. I structure sentences differently, I use words differently. Which is why originally my agent in London took me on, because they felt there was a freshness in the language. Also it freed me – for example I don’t think Chinese language is the best in describing personal relationships and emotions. So I think probably the sex scenes would be less detailed. I don’t know, it’s just so difficult to articulate, but I think overall writing in English has freed me from any constraints I might have had, or any inhibitions I might have had if I had written the book in Chinese.

Earlier, and at the talk you gave recently at the Chinese Cultural Centre, you talked about how you are always writing, and often use writing as a way to work through personal issues and so on. When you write in journals and so on, do you always write in English or in Chinese?

No, I write in English.

So all your writing is in English?

Yes.

At what point did that start? Presumably in the factory you were writing in Chinese?

Yes, of course. I started writing in English… how did I start writing in English?… Through writing love letters. I met my ex-husband one fine sunny day in 1988 in an ice-cream que in the Forbidden City. He was taking one year off travelling around China and then we fell in love – it was almost love at first sight. And then he went back to Oxford and I was Nanjing. We met in Beijing – I was on a trip from Nanjing to Beijing. So then I went back to Nanjing and we started writing to each other, and we wrote during those two years of separation, we wrote so much to each other. And sometimes more than once a day. Just letters, not emails…

Of course, in that period…

I guess I’m still missing that part of somebody who cared about you, wanting to share your life with somebody who cared about you so much. Anyway, so that’s how I started to write in English. Then I went to England in 1990, and I always wanted to be a writer, a journalist. In fact when I was young I didn’t understand the difference between the two. So then I went to England and I did a degree in journalism. I wanted to become a journalist, so that’s why I went to England, why I left the factory. I decided to pursue my dream in journalism. So took a journalism course in correspondence. Then we came back to China. I decided to pursue a career and I started helping Western journalists – in fact the ABC. I met a friend called Ali Moore – she was the ABC bureau chief. I helped her. She had an interpreter – very old fashioned. His English was very good, but his spoken English just didn’t exist so I helped Ali Moore do interpreting, and I gave her suggestions and ideas, and she actually started paying me out of her own pocket. And then ABC TV hired me. So from that point my working language has always been English.

And what period was that? Mid-90s?

Yes… I started working for Ali Moore at the end of 94, beginning of 95. No earlier than that – even 93 when I first met her. I lived here in 93. So early 90s. But also I had my writing ambitions. I got my first big breakthrough with Newsweek. I wrote a piece about travelling to Dazhai, this agricultural model in Dazhai. We had two ‘models,’ an agricultural model, that was Dazhai, and the industrial model was Daqing. Anyway, I went to Dazhai and I wrote about how this socialist model had become commercialised, cashing in on their fame. ‘Dazhai’ the brand name. And that was published in Newsweek… so ever since then. After the publication of that article my relationship with the ABC… I had a problem with them and when I became pregnant with my first child I gave up the fulltime job and decided to pursue my own freelance writing. Looking back that’s probably the best decision I ever made.

So you were in the UK from about 91 to 93?

No I went to the UK at the end of 1990 and left in October 92 – so just two and a half years.

So it was shortly after the period where the book ends?

Yeah.

Was it difficult to leave the factory?

The difficulty in leaving the factory was I needed a chop to state that I was politically clean enough to go. And that was bit challenging because the fact I had organised a demonstration left a black mark in my personal file. My sister had risen in the ranks, and she secured that chop. She knew somebody in the factory who could make sure they could give me the chop and let me go ahead. My sister always says without her I would have rotted in the factory, but actually in later years China relaxed control of people who had played a part in the 1989 democratic movement. A lot of them were rehabilitated. Not all of them, but most of them have been rehabilitated.

Did you suffer any other repercussions other than the interrogation you describe in the book?

No.

And what was it like when you first went to the UK? – that was your first exposure to the outside world.

I was in Oxford, and in some ways that proved to be my intellectual enlightenment. I remember I was arguing with my ex-husband’s friends, and I didn’t even know how to argue. I would start a conversation with, “No! You are wrong in my view it should be this, this, this and this!” And then I realised they would say, “Yes, I can see your point. I appreciate your dah dah dah, but in my view it might be this, this and this.” [laughs] Also I was very surprised with some of the things they discussed. Even though at that time I was very argumentative I wasn’t well-versed yet in history, but that’s the time I started reading quite a lot about Chinese history.

Did the image of China in the outside world surprise you? Did it jar with your own perceptions, and what you had been taught about Chinese history?

It’s interesting. After a year I was asked by a ?Chinese? publishing company to write a book about the Western image of Chairman Mao. So I did, but that book didn’t get published. It was just far too negative, the image of Mao was far too negative. But I really enjoyed that project because it made me realise that China’s image was very much associated with the image of Mao, and was largely very negative.

That’s something that still strikes me today – how unaware many Chinese people are of how negative China’s image is on the outside.

Yes. And another interesting thing is I find myself… as a journalist I criticise the government all the time. But also I find myself often defending China. I will try to explain why these things happen, from simple things – I just wrote a piece for the Enquirer about Chinese manners, and why Chinese people spit, and why Chinese people talk so loudly. Not defending, but just explaining why there is this behaviour. You know spitting is just socially acceptable, and also we believe swallowing is very bad for you. And it doesn’t really matter, it’s just something socially acceptable… China is so dirty it doesn’t really matter [smiles].

You talked before about seeing reviews of your book excised from publications here. Has the book provoked any kind of reaction in China that you are aware of, either from readers in places like online forums, or from the government?

I have some personal friends who said they liked it very much. They thanked me for keeping a record of what went on there. But one guy didn’t believe me about the period police.

Do you think a lot of people your age are frustrated about the level of ignorance amongst young Chinese people about that period?

Yes, there’s certainly a lot of ignorance because history is not taught properly in school.

What made you decide to return to China after being in the UK? Or did you not have a choice?

No, it was purely my own choice. We decided to return to China… it made sense because my ex-husband was studying Chinese. We were originally going to live here for just one year so he could make use of his Chinese and make use of his knowledge. Just for a while – we didn’t plan to stay long. And I wanted to become a journalist, so I came back to China. And we worked here for one year. I worked for a Hong Kong trade magazine called Asian Sources. So I wrote about [laughs] evening wear, I wrote about clocks, I wrote about the opening of factories and stuff like that. But in the end it was all journalism, and lots of fundamental tricks I learned through that. And then Calum, my ex-husband, wanted to write a guidebook to Uzbekistan, and I thought it was a great idea, just to do something whacky before you settle down with a job. So we went back to England and met with a publisher and went to spend six or seven months in Uzbekistan. We settled there for the guidebook. After that we came back to China… we didn’t have any money. We lived off friends, stayed with friends. And before he’d left he’d had a vague promise of employment from a company. So he pursued that and after he’d finished the guidebook the company gave him a job, as an investment consultant. Life was really interesting. We didn’t have a clear plan about what we wanted to do. And then I became a journalist, I loved the job, I loved being in China, so we just stayed on for quite a few years until 2001. In May 2001 we left. I just thought we’d been here for so long, it was my decision to go back to England. I felt we’d been here for so long. I wanted to have a proper degree [laughs]. I always felt sorry for myself that I had a poor education.

So you went back at that point and did a Masters? The early 90s was undergrad?

Early 90s was my first degree. I didn’t have a proper… it was a diploma. Even that, I didn’t finish it because I came back to China. But it was very interesting, I was glad I did that. Then I did a Masters degree. Now I have a Masters degree.

So you’ve been back in China a few years now?

Yes, two and a half years.

Are you still a Chinese citizen?

No, I have a UK passport. For the simple reason I love travelling, I travel so much and it’s a lot easier to have a British passport. Also, I don’t think one’s identity is defined by your passport. The passport in my case is for convenience. Also I do hope having a British passport will give me some protection. I do criticise the government a lot in my articles.

Finally, can you tell me a bit about any projects you have in the pipeline? You mentioned at the Cultural Centre that you’re working on a novel about prostitution in China?

I just finished the prostitution one. I just met my agent. He felt it needed more polishing. He polished the first chapter… I don’t know if you should write about this, but I’m not happy. He’s so extremely educated and literary, I just worry he will destroy my voice. Some of his corrections make the English language more natural, but I think he’s smoothed it out a bit too much. Anyway, I’m going to get some friends who understand China better to probably go through that. After that he will try to sell the book, but before that he wants to polish it up.

Is that your first novel?

My first novel. I could be wrong, but I just think writing a fiction is a finer form of literacy.

Has it been a very different experience writing a novel?

Oh it’s very hard. Writing is hard full stop, but I find this harder. When I write my life story, all the material is there. But all this open space -– I feel really intimidated by this. You can make up anything, but I also feel intimidated by this freedom, by this space [laughs]. My next one hopefully will be women being kidnapped and sold as wives to farmers.

A novel?

No. I don’t want to give up non-fiction. And fiction… I haven’t tried to sell the book yet, so I don’t know how good I am [laughs].

So the story of the trade in women, is that something you’re working on or is it just at the idea stage?

I’ve started. I wrote a big feature for the Sydney Morning Herald and I did loads and loads of interviews, so I’m still transcribing the interviews. I interviewed three people. A woman who was kidnapped and had an horrific experience. I spent a few days with her, just describing her experience. And I also interviewed a guy who used to make a living from selling women. And then another guy whose self-appointed mission in life is to set women free – woman who have been kidnapped. He rescues women. So I’m just trying to do those three peoples’ lives – that’s the rough idea. But now I’m on my own noone can help support me any more. So I have to make a living, so I’ve been working as a journalist. And also promoting this book takes so long… and I have children. Slowly I think.

Are there any plans for part two of the memoir?

Not for the moment. I don’t know if you should write about this or not, but one thing I really want to write is not a part two, but this big unwanted drama that happened in my life – my husband left me. And I’m very interested in, again, how writing helped me. I kept a very detailed journal about all the emotional ups and downs I went through. I want to write a book, maybe one day, about this – it sounds like a cliché – but it was indeed a journey of self-discovery. I lost a lot of confidence. I was very confused. It’s such a painful experience. It was such a journey of discovery about myself, and I want to write a very funny anecdotal -– you know it was miserable but also a lot of humour, and funny parts in it… my affairs and so on [laughs]. But I don’t want to embarrass my children and I don’t want to embarrass my ex-husband, so I haven’t decided weather to write it out… if I write it at all, or weather I write it in fiction form or non-fiction form. That’s a possibility. Sometimes I get fan mail and people say, ‘We loved it, please write a sequel.’

Were you always going to end the book with the events of June 89?

No the original one lasted longer. The reason it ended there was I felt by the time I organised the demonstration, mentally I was out of the well. So that’s the journey out of the well. Most people find it very frustrating… ‘What happened? What happened to you personally? You should write an epilogue.’ There was an epilogue, but decided not to put it in.

You mentioned you met your ex-husband in 88. So that overlapped with the period covered in the book. Was the decision not to include the beginnings of that relationship because it was another story?

Yes, it was too complicated. Another story. I will write that story one day. I have no doubt I will write about it. We have thousands of letters… one day. I still need to let the dust settle I think.