An interview with Ying Chen.

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[ILLUSTRATION OMITTED]Ying Chen is a Canadian francophone writer who was born in China in 1961. She grew up in Shanghai and came as a student to Montreal in 1989. She now lives in Vancouver, British Columbia. She is the author of eight books in her adopted language, which have been published in Canada and France. Several of her books have been translated into other languages, including English and Chinese. Her novel L'ingrafitude (1998) attracted considerable and highly laudatory critical attention. Concerning her choice of French for her literary voice, she states: "No matter what the language, one writes the same thing. The importance is not writing in a particular language, but writing."DINAH ASSOULINE STILLMAN At what age did you begin writing? And what motivated you?YING CHEN I always wanted to become a writer. In primary school, I created humorous plays. For example, I would read tales and embroider stories out of them. I enjoyed the Chinese language that I learned at school. (I am Shanghaian, and the Shanghai dialect is different from the written language.) I love languages, and I was very good at them. My first foreign language was Russian. When I write, I become another person. I am not orally eloquent when I speak; I have many ideas that come to me at the same time, and I cannot express them satisfactorily. As a result, I am frustrated, whereas when I write, I can better construct the expression of my thoughts.DAS Why did you wish to write in French, which is not your mother tongue?YC I did not choose. It was by chance. We have to go back to the time when I went to the university in China. At first I wanted to study in the department of Chinese literature, but I couldn't because too many people want to go into this area. My Russian was very good, and therefore I was directed to the department of foreign languages. At that time just after the Cultural Revolution, there were only three languages offered: Japanese, English, and French. I chose the rarest of the three, French. One could read French literary works in Chinese translation, but only those of the nineteenth century, particularly the realist authors, such as Balzac, Stendhal, Flaubert, and Zola, and also a few works of Victor Hugo, like Les miserables. Five years later, I left China for Montreal because I wanted to continue my French studies. I enrolled in the French department for a master's degree in the creative writing section rather than in the literary criticism section. We had writing workshops, for which I was required to do writing assignments and to finish and hand them in on time. The thesis that I wrote for the diploma is half of my first novel, La memoire de l'eau. At the time, I had a lot of nostalgia for China.DAS The question of choice of language seems very important and crucial for your activity as a writer, yet you write that "the language of literature that contains the mother tongue of all is the fruit of all the literatures of all times." You write only in French, but permit yourself nonetheless to translate your work into Chinese as you did for your novel L'ingratitude. However, you also write that this auto-translation is difficult.YC I believe deeply that in no matter what language, one writes the same thing. It is a universal mechanism. The importance is not writing in a particular language, but writing. Specific characteristics exist for each language. As for me, I prefer to write first in French, with all the difficulties this implies even if it means translating into Chinese next, rather than the reverse. I am less courageous about translating Chinese to French. It is also true that in order to translate a text as closely as possible to its meaning, I sometimes have to change the initial expression itself.DAS Have you entertained the thought that you are more at ease with French because it allows you to feel in exile? Why do you say, for example, that "the writer is in exile in his own language"?YC Yes. First of all, there is this liberation. I was very afraid of making a grammatical or an orthographic error in Chinese. As I was not raised in French, I don't have such formal constraints as "That is not said" or "That is not done." On the other hand, the constraint of writing in French is strong and enormous. I have to function within the limits of my knowledge of the language and to give the maximum with a minimum of means. The writer is not only in physical exile; it is not enough for her to employ a foreign language. She has to bring something different to the literature already in place.DAS In your novel L'ingratitude, the soul of the heroine soars into the air after her suicide, and she contemplates humanity and particularly her family from far above. You write in one of your essays that every time you take an airplane, you think of death, and that this makes you reflect all the more about life. Is it the same elevation that you seek as a writer to be detached from the mundane in order to better examine life on earth?YC Writing is detaching oneself. Stepping back is important. Writing is distancing oneself. Besides, one closes oneself off in order to write. When I write a first draft, calm is indispensable for me. I mean an internal calm. That does not mean complete silence. Actually, background noise does not bother me, but I must not be interrupted.DAS Among your novels and essays, is there one that you prefer, and if so, for what reason?YC I like Le mangeur very much, but I also like Querelle d'un squelette avec son double and Le champ dans la mer. I received good reviews for the first two, but not for Le champ dans lamer even though it has a great deal of significance for me. It is a memory of childhood in which I speak of a cornfield that is destined to disappear. I speak there of childhood, of the disappearance of a civilization, because civilizations--just like human beings--are mortal.DAS Why do you say, "The writer can be surprised by his own text"? Is he not himself the producer and the actor of his own imagination?YC That is the artistic part of the writer. You are at the same time a creator and carried away by a voice that speaks in spite of you sometimes.August 2008Translations from the FrenchBy Norman & Dinah StillmanWanderingA few years ago, l left Shanghai. I wanted to get away from a reality that was too close, from an existence that seemed regimented from even before my birth. I entered upon a path that was to lead me elsewhere and to an unfettered life. However, today l realize, not unhappily, that I was mistaken, that although I have left, I have not arrived. And perhaps I never shall. Elsewhere is that star which is infinitely far away, whose light barely comes to caress the weather-beaten face of the voyager. Then I look back and I cannot see my footsteps. They were quickly blurred by the whirlwinds of time. I find myself halfway between my point of departure and my elsewhere. My fate is broken into pieces. I am and I am not.I live from now on in memory as well as in hope. My soul races between two lovers, each of whom takes charge of a part of me. I tell myself, as well as others, sincere lies so that I will neither abandon them, nor be abandoned. I wouldn't know how to live without one or the other ....From Quatre mille marches (2004), by Ying ChenUntitledI prefer you dead, in a time passed, elsewhere. Let the yellow sand stifle your bad breath and the white murmurs exhaust your :nerve, and let the river of gold drown your footsteps. Then in this smoke of time I can amuse myself, my insatiable heart content with the impossible that you are. The hour is now to end this pain, my crucified butterfly, my enduring homeliness. Let the seasons be dead for you and borders recede beneath your footsteps, but in descending into the trap of the eternal, you have to die at every moment and suffer the distant looks in order to rejoin a mortal past. Tell me how I may console you more, my love already in the other world, and if not how I can end this agony of the centuries by putting you in a mirage window.... I prefer you dead, in a time passed, elsewhere.From Quatre mille marches (2004), by Ying ChenDinah Assouline Stillman, Instructor of French at the University of Oklahoma, holds two Licences d'Enseignement et de Litterature and a Maitrise from the Sorbonne, as well as a Diplome Superieur from the Institut National des Langues et Civilisations Orientales in Paris (INALCO). She was part of a team that created educational CD-ROMs in English for French students. In 2002 she received the Diplome Universitaire de Didactique des Langues for teaching French as a foreign language from the Sorbonne. Her teaching and research interests also include francophone cinema, literature, and popular culture.Norman Stillman holds the Schusterman/Josey Chair in Judaic History at the University of Oklahoma. He is the author of seven books and has published numerous articles in several languages (including French). He is currently executive editor of Brill's forthcoming five-volume Encyclopedia of Jews in the Muslim World, and was for ten years the editor of the AJS Review, the journal of the Association for Jewish Studies.