Interview with Harvey Thomlinson

Harvey Thomlinson is a British Hong Kong-based translator, who produced the English version of Murong Xuecun’s Leave Me Alone – A Novel of Chengdu recently published by Australia’s Allen & Unwin. A Chinese literary enthusiast, Harvey has also run the Make Do Studios website for several years, featuring profiles of mainland Chinese authors and translations of sample chapters from their work. More recently, he has established a publishing imprint in Hong Kong specialising in bringing contemporary mainland Chinese authors to an English-reading audience.

Dan spoke to Harvey via phone from Beijing on May 19, 2009, while Harvey was in Shenzhen. Parts of this interview were featured in Dan's article on online publishing in China for New Matilda. Dan's profile of Murong Xuecun for the Sydney Morning Herald can be found here.

Can you tell me a bit about your background? I understand you founded the Make Do Studios website?

That’s right. About five years ago I was back in the UK working in London for a couple of years – I’d previously been in Beijing for about four years before that – and I became aware that the selection of Chinese fiction available in bookshops – certainly in the UK, but I think it’s true of other Anglophone nations as well – was very limited. It was restricted to a couple of genres. For example Cultural Revolution memoirs were very popular. The other genre that was very popular at that time was Shanghai Baby-style chick lit with an orientalising slant. But aside from that there was a whole group of genres and writers that were marginalised within US and UK publishing. So I founded Make Do Studios to promote a broader range of authors. I recruited freelance translators in China – many native Chinese speakers, and some native English speakers as well – and we translated individual chapters from a wide range of books based on peoples’ individual enthusiasms. We put them out there on the website, together with author bios and so on. The idea was to attract interest within the publishing industry in different sorts of authors. So I was delighted when one result of that was [Australian literary agent] Benython Oldfield came to Murong Xuecun through the site, and has subsequently been a great champion of Murong’s writing.

How were you aware of the broader range of Chinese literature before founding the website? Was that through your own reading in Chinese?

In general yes. I’ve published stuff in some industry magazines in the UK, so I’m kind of aware of, and interested in, Chinese writers. After I started Make Do Studios and recruited various literary enthusiasts I asked people to suggest writers they liked. I learned about Murong through people in Shanghai who suggested his book [Leave Me Alone]. After I read it I really loved it. I managed to get in touch with Murong and get his permission to translate a sample chapter.

How long have you been based in Hong Kong for?

I came out three years ago. I actually came out as the Asia Manager for a US Forecasting Company. But last year I left that and am now taking Make Do Studios to the next level. I’ve set up a publishing imprint in Hong Kong, which I’ve just got all the paperwork cleared for. So that’s the next step – to try and publish Chinese novels translated into English, and give a wider range of authors exposure.

So your imprint will exclusively publish Chinese novelists in English?

Exactly. We’re starting with a series of modern Chines masters. Each one is going to be a short novel with an author afterword and a short critical essay about the writer. The first volume is by a Beijing author called Jimmy Qi, whose written a story called Confessions of an Elevator Operator. It’s a very funny story about a ming gong – a migrant worker – who comes to Beijing and works as an elevator operator in a very classy apartment building full of celebrities, VIPs and party bosses. It shows the whole world of rich Beijing and newly rich China through his eyes. It has a bit of Catch 22 about it, even a bit of Kafka. It’s a very interesting novel. So that’s the first one in our new venture.

Have the titles you will be publishing been big hits in China? Or is the selection simply based on your personal likes or what you think might appeal to an English-reading audience?

I suppose it’s combination of all those things. But I think the important thing is – and I think this is true of any publishing venture – there has to be someone who has a personal enthusiasm for that project, and is going to champion it, whether it’s the translator or agent or whoever. I really like this first book I’m doing – I think it’s a really classic little novel. But this project is also designed to give opportunities to translators as well. There are a lot of good translators in Beijing, and in other places, who hopefully will benefit from this new outlet. It will give them a chance to champion their work, and maybe improve their position, as the position of translators in the publishing trade is usually quite weak.

Will you be focussing exclusively on mainland authors, or will you also be publishing writers from Hong Kong and Taiwan?

The focus is on mainland authors for the foreseeable future. We’ve got some good ones coming up. The next one we’re hoping to do is a really interesting guy called Chen Xi Wo. He’s been published in Taiwan, but he hasn’t been published – or at least not for a long time – on the mainland. His books are seen as too controversial. Not necessarily politically, but they tend to have bizarre sexual content. He has a really interesting background, and spent some time working in Japan as a mama san [laughs]. If you’ve read contemporary Japanese literature, it tends to have this perverse stuff in it, so he has a bit of that.

He’s also interesting because he’s actually suing the Chinese government for not letting him publish his books in the mainland – basically for restriction of trade. I think he was provoked when coming back from Taiwan, via Hong Kong through the mainland customs at Lo Wu in Shenzhen, and he happened to have some personal copies of his own works in his bag. They were confiscated as illegal material. That made him really mad, so he’s started to take action [laughs]. He’s based in Fujian. He teaches at a university there.

You mentioned you were instrumental in introducing the Australian agent Benython Oldfield to Murong Xuecun. Can you tell me how that came about?

My understanding is Benython obtained some kind of grant from the Australian Federal Government – or maybe the NSW State Government – to come to China to discover new writers. He was over here for about six months. During that period I think in Shanghai he met one of the literary enthusiasts I’ve recruited to help with translating, identifying authors and so. She showed him the Make Do website where he saw some draft chapters of Murong’s novel. Since then he’s been a really fantastic champion of it. It’s a really long process to get a new novel from China published. It’s a big risk for publishers.

There is a directness to Murong’s prose which seems quite unusual in Chinese literature. His stripped back style reminded me of American fiction.

Definitely. I think a lot of Chinese writers feel the dead hand of past prose styles on their work. Your average university educated Chinese person, if you ask them to compose an essay, will probably do a better job than the average graduate in the UK. In college they study composition and rhetoric and things like that, so they learn all these styles based on conventions. So in a way they are better, but I think that is also a dead hand on creative composition. But Murong seems to be able to step away from all that and has a much more direct approach, which at the same time is very informed by past creative styles.

Murong is one of the best known of China’s internet writers. Do you think the phenomenon of online writers has changed the direction of Chinese literature in the past decade?

I think its has certainly broken up the mix and provided some revitalisation, providing an outlet that was much needed. One way to look at this is there are really two types of writers in China. One is the official writers – zuo zhe – most of whom belong to the Chinese Writers’ Association. If you belong to that it’s like having a job – you get a salary just for belonging. They convene various conferences in places like Hangzhou, Taishan and places like that. The writers go along and it’s all very pleasant, but at the same time there is a subtle ideological pressure to be “constructive.” So that’s one group of writers.

Then there are other writers like Murong, and many others who do not belong – or chose not to belong – to that association. Murong was actually invited to join but declined. They are very much out on their own. They don’t have any of the support that official writers enjoy in terms of official favour, getting in with the big publishers, being promoted at book fairs and that kind of thing. They have to do it themselves.

Mirroring that there are also two types of publisher in China. The big official ones, which are all state owned, and that have the right to apply for ISBN numbers [compulsory for all mainland Chinese publications]. But then there are the private companies. If they want to publish something they have to obtain a book number from one of the official publishers. So there is this two-tiered system. The internet coming along in the late 90s really provided a big boost for this second tier of writers who have chosen to go it alone and don’t belong to the official writers’ association. It provided them with a forum to get their work out there easily and inexpensively, and find a readership.

So presumably that wave of online writers has provided a big boost to the second tier of private publishers?

Absolutely – it’s very definitely led to an evolution of publishing. There’s been a lot of new publishers coming up who have basically grown with these writers. And you also find writers are getting much more involved in publishing than in other countries. Murong, for example, last year started a publishing venture based in Guangzhou. He is publishing his own work obviously, but he is also publishing other people he knows, most of whom started on the internet as well. People like Wu Sumei, a Suzhou-based writer who writes a lot of very romantic travel literature, and other writers in a similar position to Murong, except not as famous.

Is the involvement of writers in publishing a reaction to some of the difficulties they’ve had getting published, and censorship of their work when they do get published?

I think it is. My impression is that fiction is not often subject to censorship on the internet unless it tackles a really sensitive issue like Falun Gong or something. But obviously print publishing is a different ball game. Murong’s latest novel Dancing Through Red Dust had around 20,000 words cut out. There’s one particularly interesting scene in that book, in the penultimate chapter, which sees the downfall of the main character. He ends up in prison on death row. There’s a hilarious scene where his jailors try to force him to sign a contract giving them the right to sell his organs after execution. Which is interesting, because it’s a great urban legend of China’s human rights that you often read about, so it’s a really sensitive thing. He was able to publish that on the internet, but in the book edition that scene is gone.

Do you think online literature has affected the work of China’s “official” literary scene?

That’s hard to say because to be honest I don’t often read those writers – I find them very boring. I’m sure there has been an influence but I’m probably not familiar enough with those writers to describe it in detail.

Have online writers like Murong largely been ignored by the big state-owned publishing houses?

To a large extent I think writers like Murong would be seen as too risky, too controversial. He just wouldn’t fit into that culture. He focuses too much on the dark side. As you know, the big government slogan for the past few years has been this “harmonious society,” so he’s very much “unconstructive” in the way he focuses on negative things in society. The broadcast of the TV version of Leave Me Alone was delayed in the run up to the CPC Congress in 2007 for just that reason – it conflicted with the party line.

The negativity in Murong’s work is really striking when you compare it to official public discourse in China. It’s such a contrast to the party line. Is that negativity common in online writing, or is the tone of online work quite varied?

It is varied but I think it’s fair to say that one characteristic of online writing is that it has opened the door for writers to deal with darker or more unorthodox themes. There are a number of examples of that aside from Murong. But one point I should make is that writers like Murong, who can be considered top quality, are the tip of the iceberg. As in other countries, the mass of online literature is of a lower standard than that. There’s a lot of fantasy writing, a lot of teen angst. Historical romance is a very popular genre. The bulk of it is this, but if you’re looking at the higher end stuff then online literature has definitely opened the door to more controversial themes. There have been books about corruption in village politics, and darker writing about sex and violence.

Another big genre focuses on very individualistic themes. There’s the writer Anni Baobei (Annie Baby), who features on my website. She’s the other online writer who really achieved big commercial success – probably even more so than Murong. Her writing is very inwardly focussed, very romantic in the individualistic sense. It’s kind of the individual against the crowd, the woman governed by her emotions and doing what she wants to do – that kind of thing. That has found a resonance among a lot of women working in white-collar jobs in cities like Shanghai and Beijing, who live rather regimented and perhaps boring lives. It’s not explicitly rebellious in the way that Murong’s writing is, but it’s rebellious in another way, in that it’s not weighed down by the obligation to social responsibility that you find in a lot of the official writing. So her writing’s been very successful, and there have been a lot of other writers like her. Wu Sumei, who Murong is publishing, is another writer very much in that style. If you talk to Chinese women in their 20s and early 30s you’ll probably find a lot of Anni Baobei fans. It’s not my cup of tea, but it’s very popular. When I recruited my literary enthusiast volunteers to help, a whole lot of people wanted to translate Anni Baobei.

You mentioned that a lot of the online writing is not of a particularly high standard. But given the limited opportunities to put this work out in other forms in China, do you think there is more quality online writing here than in other countries?

It’s an interesting question. I think it’s hard to quantify, but my impression is that the situation in China is, to some extent, unique. I’m not really sure why that is.

There could well be historical reasons for this. I think the roots of literary culture maybe go deeper in China. If you know your Chinese history you’ll know that in feudal times the ability to compose poetry and elegant prose was part of the examination to become an official. I think it’s retained that image of being part of the make up of a cultured or university educated person to a much greater degree than elsewhere. I also think the school system emphasises that, maybe to a greater extent than in some other countries. A lot of Chinese people can recite some Tang or Song poetry. Although this may be changing as consumer society broadens, I think it helps explain the

explosion in online literature. There are websites like Rongshuxia where there are thousands and thousands of postings of novels and stories and so on. Maybe that’s a sheer matter of numbers in part, but I think the internet literature phenomenon has probably met a need as well. It was probably a conjunction of the platform and the right social conditions that saw these authors to emerge.

Cover art for the recently-published English-language edition of Leave Me Alone – A Novel of Chengdu by Murong Xuecun, translated by Harvey Thomlinson.