Annual literary festival writes another chapter
Print Edition
The annual Shanghai International Literary Festival offers readers a chance to interact with authors from around the world. Yao Minji reports.
The city welcomed the opening of its annual Shanghai International Literary Festival yesterday. The three-week event will lead to explorations and insights into old China, modern China, art, architecture, film, wine, travel and music, among other subjects.
Hosted by M on the Bund since 2003, the festival has expanded to Beijing and established a reputation beyond China.
This year’s guests of honor include travel writer and historian William Dalrymple, wine critic Jancis Robinson, cinematographer Christopher Doyle, journalist and writer Evan Osnos, and rapper and comedian Doc Brown.
“There is never just one highlight. For everyone, it’s different,” M on the Bund owner Michelle Garnaut tells Shanghai Daily. “For me and many people who attend, the highlights are often surprises — emerging authors or authors I didn’t know very much about.”
There are many to explore from the list of more than 60 writers and artists scheduled to attend. A large percent of the sessions are about China, specifically, stories set in old China and analysis about modern China.
Emma Oxford brings her “At Least We Lived” (2013), based on her parents time in China in which they met and got married during World War II. Frances Osborne will tell another story from the same period. “Lilla’s Feast” (2004) is about how her grandmother, who lived to 100, wrote a cookbook filled with recipes while interned in a Japanese camp in China.
Andrew Field will present his studies on Mu Shiying (1912-40), a new title in the Shanghai Royal Asiatic Society’s monograph series. Mu, an avant-garde writer who was regarded as a genius by his contemporaries, is little known today even to Chinese since he was killed at age 28 for being a Japanese collaborator. Later, his family said he was working as a double agent and was mistakenly assassinated.
While old China continues to lure writers with its unique charm, the incredible pace of modern China also attracts authors to study, analyze and write about it.
Osnos, who has covered major China stories for The New Yorker, has written “Age of Ambition: Chasing Fortune, Truth, and Faith in the New China.” It is based on his eight years in Beijing. The inner account of the rapidly developing and transforming China is to be released in May.
Osnos will give a talk on the upcoming book and also attend a panel discussion with history professor Jeffrey Wasserstrom and Shanghai-based writer Mishi Saran on “Writing China: Journalism, Fiction & History.”
A literary festival veteran, Wasserstrom considers the event special in the way that “all authors tend to stay at the same hotels and eat many of their meals at the host venue, which means that a feeling develops of being part of a community of authors, who may be based in widely varied parts of the world, but for a short time come together for a common purpose.”
“There’s also a real sense of fun to the M festivals, a feeling that, even when discussing serious books and issues, a bit of humor can always be thrown in,” Wasserstrom adds.
Author of four books about modern China and co-editor of more, Wasserstrom also hopes to see more events “that bring together local and international authors working on related topics or writing in similar genres into dialog with one another on panels.”
Bringing writers from different backgrounds to one table and keeping the balance is a specialty of Dalrymple, author of “In Xanadu” (1989) and “Return of a King: The Battle for Afghanistan” (2012).
Dalrymple is also co-founder and co-organizer of the Zee Jaipur Literature Festival, the world’s largest free literary festival that welcomed 200,000 visitors over five days in India in January.
“There are many reasons,” he says via Skype. “Attracting a local audience is a major part. It took us the first three to four years to do so, and now 90 percent of our audience is Indian.”
“Indian readers love to see panels where international and Indian writers sit together to offer their insights. It is very unique to host literary festivals here because we deal with multiple cultures and multiple languages.
“It is very important to keep balance of local and international writers,” he adds.
Based in India, Dalrymple adds he hasn’t been to China since the 1980s, although he hears about it all the time and is curious about its rapid development and progress. “I really look forward to meeting a lot of authors and exchanging ideas,” he says.
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