Qiu Xiaolong
May 2003
Qiu Xiaolong
St. Louis, Missouri
Qiu (he insists his friends just call him “Joe”) is a transplanted native of China. He has lived in Missouri for 15 years. As he was putting his American life together as a professional writer, he kept body and soul (as well as a wife and daughter) together through a variety of what might be called odd jobs—except that many of us do them and love them. He was a translator, he taught Chinese at night, and he worked in a writing center at a community college.
He came to Washington University in 1988 for a one-year stint as a visiting scholar but, with the outbreak of violence and the subsequent furor over Tiananmen Square a year later, he decided to remain in the States. He ended up pursuing an English doctorate, which he earned in 1996. (He’d earned an M.A. in Western literature from the Chinese Academy of Social Science in the early 1980s.) It was during those years of what might be termed enforced U.S. residence that he also began writing poetry and fiction in English. He now teaches literature at Washington University.
His first published novel in English was Death of a Read Heroine, which proved a major success and received a 2001 Anthony Award for First Novel. It became the first of his “Detective Chen” series, named after the hero of that first novel. By profession, the character is a police inspector, but his job sometimes brings him into collision (but usually professional collusion) with upper echelons of the Chinese Communist party. But his background in English language and literature makes him the ideal host for American visitors, with whom he can discuss his love of Western literature, from T.S. Eliot to Faulkner. This novel was favorably reviewed in Publishers Weekly, The Wall Street Journal, Chicago Tribune, Library Journal, Booklist, and many other publications. It was selected by National Public Radio as one of the 10 best books of 2000.
While Xiaolong insists, “I am not Detective Chen—I have never been a cop or a Party member,” he admits that there is a real similarity of souls “as far as his passion for poetry and for food.”
Briefly discuss your background.
I was born in Shanghai in 1953. The Cultural Revolution broke out during the last year of my elementary school. Among things that had a lasting impact on me from those years, I particularly remember one small incident. My father was a “capitalist” in his class status, so he had to write his confession even at the time of his eye surgery in a hospital. I had to write the confession for him because he was blindfolded. That was perhaps the beginning of my writing career: to write in somebody’s voice. Then the movement of the Educated Youths Going to the Countryside started in the early 1970s, the last year of my middle school. I was allowed to stay in the city because of my bronchitis. I was out of school and out of a job, too, so I started studying English. In 1977, shortly after the Cultural Revolution, I entered the East Chinese Normal University, and then I began my graduate study in the Chinese Academy of Social Science and got my M.A. in Western literature. In the early 1980s, I was assigned a job as an assistant research professor in the Shanghai Academy of Social Science. Around the same period, I started writing poetry and short stories in Chinese, and I also translated modernist Western poetry and fiction into Chinese, including Eliot, Yeats, Conrad, Faulkner, Joyce, and Pound. My writing and translation won several awards in China. I became a member of the Chinese Writers’ Association and attended the third Chinese-American Writers’ Conference in 1986.
In 1988, I came to Washington University in St. Louis as a visiting scholar, but what happened in Tiananmen Square in 1989 changed my plan. I started to study for a degree. In the meantime, I started writing poetry and fiction in English, which won several awards and fellowships in the U.S. In 1996, I got my Ph.D. Since then, I have been writing, translating, and teaching in St. Louis.
When and where did you first learn English, and did you face any hurdles trying to write your first novel in that second language?
I started to learn English in the early 1970s in Shanghai. I first came to the U.S. in 1986 as a member of the Chinese Writers’ Delegation, but that was only a visit for a month. And then I came again as a Ford Foundation fellow toward the end of 1988. One thing led to another, especially after the events of 1989.
As for hurdles trying to write in the second language, I had a lot. Dialogue for one. Even today, I have problems writing dialogue. Background information, for another. Many things are clear to me in Chinese culture, in Chinese language, but not necessarily to readers here, so I have to achieve a balance.
Did you discover any tricks or special conventions about writing in the “detective story” genre?
When I wrote the first book, I had not intended to write it as a “detective story,” so I did not pay much attention to special conventions or tricks at the time. I merely wanted to write a book about contemporary China, which has been little introduced in the West, but it turned out to be a mystery. I think it is perhaps because mystery happens to be one of my favorite genres, and it provides a ready framework for the story. I chose to set the story in the early 1990s, as it’s a transitional period, in which the old value system is being questioned, while the new is not being established. In that sense, I may be more or less like Chief Inspector Chen, an intellectual questioning and being questioned all the time. As a result, the drama is staged outside as well as inside. Of course, I am not Chief Inspector Chen. I have never been a cop, or a Party member, but as far as his passion for poetry (for Eliot especially, whose poetry I have translated into Chinese) and for food, he has my shadow. Another passion I share with him is go chess games, as described in the novel.
With my second book, my editor insisted on the discovery of a body at the very beginning, and I complied, which may be a trick, but not really mine.
There is a treat deal of historical and cultural background material in your first novel. Was it your intention to include this type of material when you planned it?
Historical accuracy, I would say, but how much of it, I cannot tell. Yes, I did intend to include historical and cultural material in the book. For me, it’s first of all a book about China.
Related to the previous question, have you had any adverse reaction or criticism from anyone in China relating to the stories you relate about the Communist political system?
Not so far. The first book has been translated and may come out soon. Then we will see. There are a couple of Chinese reviews, but the reviewers read the English version. The Chinese publisher did ask that the name of Shanghai be changed to “S City.”
In what countries are your novels available?
France, Germany, Italy, Austria, Japan, Denmark, Hungary, Sweden, and in China soon.
Were you trying to make a point about Chinese culture with the subplot of the failed romance with the newspaper woman. It’s almost as if you set the reader up for a disappointment.
In the books, Chen is a character full of contradictions. On the one hand, he has been exposed to Western culture through his English and literature studies, but on the other, he has been influenced by Confucianism and the tradition. Different value systems clash in him—in that sense, also symbolic of contemporary China. So his failed romance with the newspaper woman Wang may be seen as a result of the conflicting values. (One of my Chinese friends here finds Chen too obnoxiously orthodox and stifling in the episode, and another thinks that Chen is an upright one after all.) I do not set the reader up for a disappointment, but there will be many disappointments for a character like Chen in today’s China.
Is there a real-life model for Chief Inspector Chen Cao? Do you plan to continue your series with Inspector Chen, or will you branch out with other lead characters or write in other prose genres?
No, no real-life model for Inspector Chen. I plan to continue my series with Chen. But I may branch out other lead characters in the coming books. Personally, I don’t like Chen that much. Detective Yu and Peiqin are more presentable characters in my imagination.
Is the China of today fundamentally different from the one you experienced growing up. If so, what are the most significant changes?
The China of today is dramatically different from the one I experienced growing up, both economically and ideologically. In my childhood, a radio, for instance, was a luxury not too many families could have afforded. Nowadays, whatever you can have in Best Buy you can have in Shanghai. Not to mention that a lot of products in Best Buy are made in China. Ideologically, the official dominant discourse in China is still that of communism, but in daily life, everybody knows it’s something like lip service. At the same time, other traditional values are practically gone. So it is like a spiritual vacuum, which worries me a little. With free market and entrepreneurial spirits endorsed by the Party authorities, consumerism or conspicuous consumption seen in a positive color, this certainly forms a sharp contrast to Chen’s childhood (or mine)—simple, idealistic, innocent, yet confident of the future as represented in the current ideologies.
What authors have particularly impressed you as models for your detective fiction? Also, what authors—British, American, Chinese or whatever—are you most drawn to as a thinker and artist yourself?
In the mystery genre, the two Swedish authors Maj Sjowall and Per Wahloo of the Martin Beck police mysteries. I like them because their works provide more than a glimpse into the cultural and the society in which the detectives move. Also, the detectives are more or less antiheroes, who succeed through hard work as well as through luck, or the combination of circumstances beyond their own control. Incidentally, Maj Sjowall is also a poet.
What books do you enjoy reading in your spare time?
I enjoy reading all kinds of books as long as they are well written; for English, I particularly like those written in a neat and crisp language, from which I may be able to learn.
You obviously have a great deal of interest in poetry. Do you write poetry, and have you had any published? And tell us more about your work as editor for the recently published collection titled A Treasury of Chinese Love Poems.
Yes, I like poetry. Before I started writing novels, I wrote poetry for years, both in English and Chinese. My English poems have won several awards, including a Missouri Arts Council Writers’ Biennial Award. And I’ll have a collection of poems published by a local publisher this year.
As for A Treasury of Chinese Love Poems, it is a collection of classical Chinese love poem translations. I translated some of the poems for Death of a Red Heroine, and got some warm response from my readers. So I translated a few more and put them together into a collection. If anything can be said about the translation project, it is my intention to present a translation that, while faithful to the original in image as well as in meaning, will also prove to be as enjoyable to the reader here as contemporary poetry written in English. My friend Mona Van Duyn [former U.S. poet laureate] wrote a blurb about the book concluding, “This is a generous book and a very welcome addition to the poetry of love and longing from our ‘Significant Stranger,’ the Chinese nation.” What impresses and encourages me is the term “significant stranger,” because that suggests I will have a lot to do writing about China.
I visited Italy in April this year. I don’t think I need to describe here my passion for the country. It was so wonderful to take a walk through the little square in front of the Uffizi to the old bridge in the evening, with all the masters whispering in the background. I vowed that I had to visit Italy again. While in China, I also translated a few poems by Giuseppe Ungaretti and Eugenio Montale—from English, of course.
Interview by Dr. Jamieson Spencer, assistant professor of English at St. Louis Community College at Florissant Valley and a member of the Missouri Center for the Book’s board of directors
Books by Qiu Xiaolong
- Death of a Red Heroine
- A Loyal Character Dancer
- A Treasury of Chinese Love Poems (editor)