Chinese writer Sun Wei on the benefits of lightening up

A two-month residency has inspired the novelist to write columns about Cork on her return to Shanghai, says Colette Sheridan

'Chinese writer Sun Wei on the benefits of lightening up' (Colette Sheridan, Irish Examiner, 28.02.12)

HAVING spent two months in Cork last autumn on the Shanghai/Cork literature residency, Sun Wei is writing columns about Cork for Chinese journals and newspapers and in a series of essays for the Shanghai Writer.

A native of Shanghai, the 39-year-old novelist, short-story writer and essayist fell in love with Cork. While her writing about the city is positive and informative, Sun Wei plans to write about “the soul of Cork in my literary work. I have so many wonderful memories. I have been to many places in my life. I have a feeling that Cork is my second home town.”

In her 20s, Sun Wei worked as a director at the Shanghai Television Station and was general manager of a state-owned TV documentary company. She also wrote fiction. At 30, she quit her job to write. Sun Wei’s focus is the ‘malaise’ in the increasingly materialistic China. In 2006, her novel, To Where the Flowers Blossom, was published. Two years later, she published The Good Old Days with Democracy, Science and Law. She has published two more novels, novelettes and short story collections.

Her first two novels deal with the living conditions and “mental states of the generation born in 1970s China.” This generation, hers, are known as ‘the last idealists’ and her work deals with their lives and dreams.

Sun Wei works ten-hour days. She says writing is not just a job; it is her fate. “I have an obligation to truthfully describe the time I live in. I am lucky to be a writer living in such a time of tremendous change. It reminds me of the sentence at the beginning of A Tale of Two Cities, by Charles Dickens, when he writes: ‘It was the best of times, the worst of times.’ If I am lucky, my wish is to create some timeless work from this unique time,” she says.

Sun Wei says “the day we become writers is the day we are destined to be in the minority of mainstream thinking and the losers in commercial societies. I think this is a kind of honour. I talked about this with Cork writers. We have experienced similar situations. We endure loneliness, misunderstanding and poverty as writers — but compared to the fun we have in writing, it is not a big deal.”

From a family of intellectuals, Sun Wei takes her vocation seriously, rising daily at 6am. She ‘lightened up’ in Cork. “Cork writers told me life is for enjoyment. They said life is too short to work all the time. But Chinese elders usually tell the youth not to waste their time away from work. It seems both Irish and Chinese people know that life is short but Irish people accept the truth of death more, while Chinese people prefer to plan their life as if they will live for a very long time,” she says. “When I arrived in Cork, half a glass of beer would make me tipsy. Drinking at noon or past midnight was incredible for me. I am an introverted person. But in Cork, I began to like staying with people and talking with them. I like the way people in Cork enjoy their literature and their lives. It’s like a kind of celebration. In China, we are used to a way of self-improvement.”

Sun Wei praised Pat Cotter, of the Munster Literature Centre, which facilitates the Shanghai/Cork cultural residency. She met writers Conal Creedon, Tom McCarthy, Madeleine Darcy and Gerry Murphy. “Gerry lives by his own principles and his own way of writing poetry. He told me that because life is so short, writing is a way of defeating time. If one of his poems could survive a hundred years, all the loneliness and hardness in a writing life would be valuable at last,” she says.

Last year was the first of the Shanghai/Cork literary residency and its continuation depends on funding from Cork City Council. City arts officer, Liz Meaney, is hopeful the council’s budget will fund another two-month exchange. “There has been a series of smaller-scale residencies. During 2010, a different poet from Cork went to Shanghai each month and they gave readings during Shanghai Expo 2010 ... Bringing writers from Shanghai to Cork is appreciated in China. It’s a really good model of fostering cultural understanding between the two places, which are twin cities,” she says.