{FRONT} China
The older generations have a wider focus. Playwright and novelist Gao Xingjian, who won the Nobel prize for literature in 2000, has lived in exile in France since 1987. He is discussing the full range of his work – screenplays, translations, his most recent project, a libretto for a dance performance – at the Edinburgh International Book Festival. There is a also lot of heat around Chan Koonchung, whose novel The Fat Years is an Orwellian look into the very near future. Not officially available in his homeland, it is being translated into 11 languages, is widely available in neighbouring Asian countries and is also online in China if you know where to look. ‘From early on I have decided that, if my novels cannot be published in China, so be it,’ he says by email from his home in Beijing. ‘If you can live with that, with giving up the huge Chinese mainland market, you have freed up half of your self-censor impulse. The other half comes from the fear that you may have displeased the authority. That I have also made a conscious effort to disregard when I decided to write The Fat Years.’
That is an understatement: the title comes from an archaic Chinese term meaning the prosperous age, of the time of glory. Out of use for a century, it has recently made a comeback. The story is set a few years in the future, when the superpower nation has universally forgotten a month of harsh repression. It was written in the wake of the Olympics and the economic meltdown in the west, when Koonchung sensed a switch in the country’s mindset.
‘It’s a political mystery and a love story with
some thriller elements. It’s about people who give up the urge to find the truth.’ It’s an unmissable metaphor, yet
Koonchung is not a spokesman for anything other than his own work. ‘I feel the responsibility to continue writing about China, not to represent the country but to present as authentically as possible my feeling about China through fiction.’
experimental phase of trial and error. There’s a lot of kitsch, a lot of amateur work. But in a couple of years, I think we’ll see things we’ve never seen before. Just as the US gave us modern dance and Germany gave us tanztheater, China will create new genres we have never seen before. It is going to blow our minds.’ Drift, Udderbelly’s Pasture, 0844 545 8252, until 29 Aug (not 17), 1pm, £9-£10 (£8-£9). Gao Xingjian, Charlotte Square Gardens, 27 Aug, 8.30pm, £10 (£8). For details of other events see edfringe.com, edbookfest.co.uk and eif.co.uk. For a full list of Chinese events at the Edinburgh festivals 2011 see bit.ly/edfestchina
‘THERE’S A GAP OF UNDERSTANDING IN BOTH DIRECTIONS’
He operates at arms length from the state: not published but not harassed either. ‘The
in my In China, regime has never come to me directly. I’m not constrained writing. whether one is a dissident or not is ultimately up to the state. It is not up to you. You are on the receiving end. If the state apparatus decides to mess you up, then the outside world will label you as a dissident. Before the state does that, anyone trying to express critical views of the state is just a citizen exercising his or her constitutional rights.’
L A V I T S E F
That’s the voice of maturity. Friedman sees a lot of the current performance output as juvenilia, a culture’s adolescent experimentation and culture blending. (She calls this, wearily, ‘hip hop with a fan’). But this won’t last. facile
‘China has such an ancient and rich and diverse cultural heritage. At the moment artists are colouring outside the lines, they’re
in
the Drift. Above left: The Peony Pavilion. Above: Qing Cheng on the Fringe.
22 THE LIST 11–18 Aug 2011