AWARD-WINNING author Bi Feiyu urges young writers not to be in a hurry and to resist the temptation of money. He talks to Yao Minji.

One morning after a storm, the dirt courtyard of Bi Feiyu's family home had been turned to a flat slick of mud, like a slate. Bi, seven years old at the time, couldn't resist the temptation to pick up a stick and draw two large characters - Bi Ming - the full name of his father.

According to tradition then and now, children do not speak or write the full name of their father or mother out of respect, because it's considered too personal. Instead Bi was accustomed to say Dad.

As Bi Feiyu completed the characters, his father Bi Ming appeared and walked straight toward him and the boy remembered his complicated feeling as he witnessed his father step into his own name, without realizing it.

"It was a thrilling moment. I both wanted him to notice what I wrote, but also worried that he would consider it disrespectful. You never call your father by his name in China," Bi said. His father did not notice.

"That was the first time in my life that I realized how excited writing could make me feel. It awakened an overwhelming impulse inside me," the 47-year-old award-winning writer told Shanghai Daily.

Bi the writer followed that impulse and in March he received the prestigious Man Asian Literary Prize for 2010 for his work "Three Sisters" translated into English by renowned translators Howard Goldblatt and Sylvia Li-chun Lin. Bi was selected from nominees who included Nobel Prize winning Japanese novelist Kenzaburo Oe.

Bi was the third Chinese to receive the Man Asian Literary Prize, since it was established in 2007; Chinese writer Jiang Rong won in 2007 with "Wolf Totem" and Su Tong in 2009 with "The Boat to Redemption."

Judges described "Three Sisters" as "a moving exploration of Chinese family and village life during the "cultural revolution"(1966-77), that moves seamlessly between the epic and the intimate, the heroic and the petty, illuminating not only individual lives but an entire society, within a gripping tale of familial conflict and love."

In September, the author received China's most prestigious literary award, the Mao Dun Literary Prize, for his 2008 novel "Massage" (published in French, to be translated into English). The prize for a novel has been awarded every four years, since 1982. "Massage" is about blind masseurs, their relationships, their romances and their pride.

Winning two major prizes this year, Bi has become one of the very few contemporary Chinese writers who have won prestigious awards across genres and both domestically and abroad.

Bi has also won the Lu Xun Literary Prize twice, first for 1995-96 with the short story "Nursing Mothers," and later for the novella "Yu Mi" (the first story of the novel "Three Sisters") for 2001-03. It is awarded every two years by the Chinese Writers' Association.

Bi is the author of a dozen short stories, a few novellas and three novels ("The Plain," meaning flatlands, "Three Sisters" and "Massage").

After receiving the Mao Dun Award, Bi spoke to Shanghai Daily in a wide-ranging, three-hour interview at a teahouse near his home in Nanjing city. He talked about writing, the state of contemporary Chinese literature, the art of translation, the "cultural revolution" (1966-76), current events, basketball and other topics.

Wearing a simple T-shirt and jeans, Bi looked youthful and athletic and spoke with animation about his craft and about table tennis, noting that he recently found a retired national champion to help him improve his game.

When he discussed the meaning of literature, Bi returned to his story of the boy who broke an unspoken rule by writing his father's full name.

"Literature is a road to explore the fundamental nature of things, just like my father's name," he said. "His students called him Mr Bi, villagers said The Guy Surnamed Bi, and my mom used Old Bi, but the true nature of his name is Bi Ming, the one I wrote in the mud. Literature helps one to get close to truth and essence."

At its heart, writing means writing out inner desires, he said, "just as my writing of my father's name reflected my desire to approach him."

Further, Bi said, literature by its very nature can offend or invade authority, just as writing his father's full name was an impolite act that quietly invaded his authority.

Bi is known for his natural, logical as well as metaphoric narrative style; he is known as a great story teller who can encapsulate subtle and complex emotions that reflect important issues throughout society.

Bi first won recognition within Chinese literary circles when he was over 30 and he was acknowledged more widely by the mainstream when he was close to 40, much later than his peers (such as Su Tong), most of whom established their reputations early in 1980s.

'Three Sisters'

"Three Sisters" is comprised of three novellas, each tracing the life of one of three Wang sisters during and after the "cultural revolution" (1966-76).

It begins as Wang's wife bears their eighth child, at last a son, after seven daughters. She is greatly relieved that she has fulfilled her responsibility to bear an heir. She turns over household affairs to her oldest daughter Yu Mi, literally meaning corn. All seven sisters are named after different stages in the growth of corn, such as Yu Xiu, corn that is almost mature, and Yu Yang, a corn seedling.

Corn is a major food, a very cheap and common grain in Chinese villages. As writer Li Jing observes in the preface to "Three Sisters," "Bi gives corn a woman's body, beautiful and scarred."

The family's father Wang, a village official, has slept with almost every woman in the village and was sacked when he was found with a soldier's wife (an especially serious offense since it involved the military). The once-privileged Wang family was disgraced and despised in their small village. Older sister Yu Mi decides to marry an even higher official in town to redeem herself and her family.

This novella was first published in 2001 in "People's Literature" magazine. The second story about third sister Yu Xiu, prettier but weak and fearful, followed shortly thereafter. It involved a complicated family power struggle, rape and illicit sex. Nine months later came the story of Yu Yang, which takes place right after the "cultural revolution."

"It was not planned, I had only planned to write 'Yu Mi,' but as I wrote, the other two sisters became so vivid and fleshed out that I couldn't resist the temptation of making them protagonists as well," Bi explained.

He wrote "Yu Mi" in 40 days, but spent seven months on the third story, trying to connect the three in terms of logic and time line, since they had not been planned as a trilogy.

"I just had to write the last story for Yu Yang, the first generation of university students after the 'cultural revolution.' And you can see from the novella that the situation is basically the same as in the 'cultural revolution' - people criticized each other behind their backs and to their superiors, they spied, and worried in turn that they themselves would be betrayed by others," Bi said.

In 2005 Bi wrote another novel about the "cultural revolution" titled "The Plain." The novel follows a few young people in a small village in 1970s during the "cultural revolution" as they try to make their way forward in life but are limited by the political and social environment and what seems like destiny.

It was less commercially successful than the others, but Bi considers it equally important.

"These two stories ("Yu Mi" and "The Plain" are works that I cannot avoid as a contemporary Chinese writer. Writers confront history, present and future, and the 'cultural revolution,'(1966-77) so grand and disastrous, is unavoidable for Chinese writers who experienced it.

"So I wrote about it in those two books, since I would have to write about them at some time in my career anyway. So I wrote them, dealt with the period and issues and moved on."

Born in 1964, Bi spent his childhood in a remote village in Jiangsu Province as his father, a teacher, was considered a right-wing intellectual who had to be re-educated in the countryside and learn from farmers. Bi cannot consider his childhood apart from what he calls "the disaster" of political tumult. But he said that it was during the "cultural revolution" that he actually learned his father's name for the first time, Bi Ming. Earlier he had only known him as Dad.

He learned in a frightening way. Bi remembered that when he was age three or four, a group of villagers came to the house and asked for his father by name - they wanted to criticize him in what would be an ugly struggle session.

"They kept asking for Bi Ming, and that's how I learned his name," he said.

Blind Massage

After spending his childhood in the strife-torn village, Bi went to a small town nearby for middle school, then a county high school. Then he went to the small city of Yangzhou, Jiangsu Province, for university, and soon settled himself in Nanjing, a larger and more developed city. He worked as a special education teacher for the blind and visually impaired.

After a few years, he became a reporter for the largest media group in the city. As the group changed from a state-owned enterprise to a corporate, the work environment became more regulated and uncomfortable. Bi quit and became a professional writer in 2008.

"My life experience pales in comparison with that of the generation of writers before me, whose youth coincided with the most dramatic earlier years in China and gave them a large variety of experiences," he said.

But he acknowledged that his own experience is special because he has lived in every kind of Chinese jurisdiction, from a small poor village to big city. "It has driven me to make my work more realistic," he said.

"Massage," which won the Mao Dun prize last month, is considered by critics one of the best realistic contemporary novels in recent years. The novel follows a group of blind masseurs in a massage center, depicting their relationships with each other, their romances, ambitions and most important, their pride.

Bi is no stranger to the world of the visually impaired, since his first job was teaching in school for the blind. Every week he visits a "blind massage" center near his apartment for a massage for back problems caused by bending over his writing desk and sitting at a computer. He has become friends with many of the masseurs.

"Pride is particularly important for these blind people, it motivates many of their actions. That's why I'm interested in this group, because I'm interested in pride," Bi explained.

"I want to find out what pride means to contemporary Chinese. I want to explore how much pride we have sacrificed over the past years, when we became the fastest growing economy in the world and most people tried hard to make more and more money."

Bi is not a prolific writer and he doesn't worry about his writing speed or recognition. He has learned to resist the temptation of money, partly thanks to film director Zhang Yimou.

It is little known that Bi was hired by Zhang to adapt his own novella "Once Upon a Time in Shanghai" into the script for Zhang's award-winning film "Shanghai Triad," in the early 1990s. At that time Bi was a nobody.

"I couldn't tell you how much I made, but it was a lot of money, the equivalent of a couple of years of salaries. So I signed the contract and learned about contract assignments. I would not want to do it again," he said.

It was then that Bi learned about "the irresistible temptation of money, especially when you are counting it. So I decided from then on to shut down any chances of such seduction from the very beginning," he said.

In 2000, Bi was offered 30,000 yuan (US$4,700) per episode to adapt his novella "Moon Opera" into a 20-episode TV series. At the time, 600,000 yuan was a very powerful inducement, but Bi turned it down without hesitation.

"I was writing 'Yu Mi' at the time and there would have been no 'Yu Mi' if I took that offer," Bi said. "Even if it wasn't 'Yu Mi," it would have been another work that I sacrificed for a TV series."

He called the period between ages 30 and 50 the most productive years for a writer. "I cannot risk wasting any bit of that time to do something else besides writing. I might not be able to return."

Advising young writers

This observation that time is short for writers led him to the subject of young Chinese writers. "They are experiencing such a great era now with rich opportunities, unlike those in my time," Bi said.

When asked about his favorite young writers, he kept saying "they are good, there is someone," and thought for a while, but never came up with a name. He said that the young writers were sharper in perceiving social phenomena and incorporating social issues into their work, yet they generally seem to lack the willingness and capability to dig deeper.

"That doesn't mean that we (Bi's generation) are smarter, it is only the consequence of different time periods. We were fortunate to experience the 1980s, a time period much like the Renaissance," Bi said.

"The entire society encouraged young people to think independently. But now, they are in the IT era, a commercial society that offers great opportunities but also pushes them to be faster."

He was emphatic in his advice: "Young writers really need to be patient, to think thoroughly, to write slowly and pace themselves. They must not rush. They must not speed up to accommodate this rapidly developing machine of China."

Young writers today don't need to read too many novels, he said, adding that a few classics would give them an idea of what great literature is supposed to be.

His recommendations include Homer's "Iiad" and the "Odyssey," works of Shakespeare, Italian poet Dante Alighieri and Russian writer Leo Tolstoy, and Cao Xuqin's "A Dream of Red Mansions," among others.

Among contemporary Chinese novels, he recommends "The Right Bank of Er'guna River" (2005) by Chi Zijian.