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Writer dips a nib in city's lifestyle
By David Maguire |
February 8, 2009, Sunday
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Print Edition
Print Edition
THE best-selling author Gail Jones "found" Shanghai for the first time early last year when she was a speaker at an international literary festival. She returned a couple of months later as a "writer in residence" guest of the Shanghai Writers' Association and continued to "find" the city.
Jones, by dint of her profession as a celebrated contemporary writer and teacher, "finds" influences of life and location wherever she may be but only she can tell how much they benefit her novels.
Her stint in the city involved two months in a period straddling the Olympic Games in Beijing when she was one of a trio of the first foreign writers to do an official writer's residency in Shanghai.
Jones joined the Japanese author Yukiko Chino, famous for writing a history of the Barbie doll, and the Canadian writer Madeleine Thien, the three separately "living in the suburbs, shopping locally, catching public transport."
During the visit, two of the Australian writer's novels translated into Chinese, "Sixty Lights" and "Sorry," were launched at the Shanghai Book Fair.
Her books, two of short stories and four novels, have won a number of literary awards in Australia and have been short listed for international recognition.
Jones gathered material during her time here for a novel she's working on which includes a character from Shanghai who lives in Sydney.
She also wrote a short story on the Chinese writer Lu Xun after a visit to the house in which he lived and died.
"I hope I have a sense of where and how my Chinese character might have lived," she wrote to me last week about her current work.
"I like to observe behavior in the public spaces in any city - the parks, the markets and so on - and loved the proximity of so many people in Shanghai."
Jones enjoyed living in an apartment, rather than a secluded expat enclave, and found life around her "enormously stimulating and interesting."
"Since I'd never lived in a high-rise before, I found having a view of the city, and the sense of watching daily life unfold on the streets below, fascinating," she said.
"I know of Ye Xin's 400,000-word novel based in a Shanghai apartment block, and look forward to reading it, so I can get a view of a Shanghainese narrative about local apartments."
Jones read a lot about the city's history during her stay and is a devotee of Qui Xiaolong's detective stories set in Shanghai.
"I felt that his works gave me a kind of literary access to the city beyond my own narrow experience of it," she said.
"I think writers work at many levels, some of which are simple responses to the texture of daily life, to the food, the scents in the air, the anomalous visions in the city, the very basic pleasures and frustrations of daily life. For me there is also the city that is already the 'text' - all those books, images and films that have preceded any visit and which one filters in odd ways in situ."
Her perspectives of the city ranged across a wide spectrum as she met one of China's most famous authors, Wang Anyi, was introduced to local writers, visited the Expo Center, a water village and Chongming Island.
"I find Shanghai somewhat overwhelming and believe that only good Chinese language skills would help me gain serious access to the city," she said.
"There is inevitably a sense that one knows things superficially or inauthentically, and that foreigners see Chinese cities as a kind of inscrutable spectacle. This is why I undertook to seek out the literature and history of the place.
"I was impressed by the pride Shanghainese take in their city and by the hard-working population, their energy and pragmatism.
"I also thought the rate of change had a melancholy aspect - to see so much of the cityscape transform so rapidly must bring a profound sense of loss to some of its inhabitants.
"I have never seen so many building sites or had a sense of so much restless reconstruction governing people's lives," she said.
Perched in her 13th floor apartment, Jones sensitivities were sparked by the building workers living below, "at the edge of a great city block of rubble."
"I would see these workers eat collectively outside on trestle tables and come and go in single file across the rubble to work on the building site of a high-rise nearby," she recalled.
"This daily sight - and passing these workers as I came and went from my apartment - made me think about the laboring underclass that is constructing Shanghai, about their lives and their conditions, about how paradoxically hidden and visible they are.
"I had a distinct sense of the gap that must now exist between these laborers and the wealthy of Shanghai and would have liked to learn more about their lives."
Jones, professor of writing at the University of Western Sydney, has been a resident writer in other countries and enjoys the "strangeness of an unfamiliar place and the way it inspires one to think relativistically about one's own space."
"I gave a talk on 'homeland' at the Shanghai Library at which I chose, among other things, to talk about the dense and complicated Chinese history in Australia and the fact that I grew up in a small town that had a significant Chinese population.
"I actually enjoy the challenge of cultural difference and find large cities in other nations intrinsically hyper-stimulating. Occasional discombobulation is part of that," she said.
"It also allows us to better acknowledge and honor difference within our own countries."
Having gained such an insight into Shanghai, and with her antenae tuned to its nuances, the character in her new book should be all the richer.
Jones, by dint of her profession as a celebrated contemporary writer and teacher, "finds" influences of life and location wherever she may be but only she can tell how much they benefit her novels.
Her stint in the city involved two months in a period straddling the Olympic Games in Beijing when she was one of a trio of the first foreign writers to do an official writer's residency in Shanghai.
Jones joined the Japanese author Yukiko Chino, famous for writing a history of the Barbie doll, and the Canadian writer Madeleine Thien, the three separately "living in the suburbs, shopping locally, catching public transport."
During the visit, two of the Australian writer's novels translated into Chinese, "Sixty Lights" and "Sorry," were launched at the Shanghai Book Fair.
Her books, two of short stories and four novels, have won a number of literary awards in Australia and have been short listed for international recognition.
Jones gathered material during her time here for a novel she's working on which includes a character from Shanghai who lives in Sydney.
She also wrote a short story on the Chinese writer Lu Xun after a visit to the house in which he lived and died.
"I hope I have a sense of where and how my Chinese character might have lived," she wrote to me last week about her current work.
"I like to observe behavior in the public spaces in any city - the parks, the markets and so on - and loved the proximity of so many people in Shanghai."
Jones enjoyed living in an apartment, rather than a secluded expat enclave, and found life around her "enormously stimulating and interesting."
"Since I'd never lived in a high-rise before, I found having a view of the city, and the sense of watching daily life unfold on the streets below, fascinating," she said.
"I know of Ye Xin's 400,000-word novel based in a Shanghai apartment block, and look forward to reading it, so I can get a view of a Shanghainese narrative about local apartments."
Jones read a lot about the city's history during her stay and is a devotee of Qui Xiaolong's detective stories set in Shanghai.
"I felt that his works gave me a kind of literary access to the city beyond my own narrow experience of it," she said.
"I think writers work at many levels, some of which are simple responses to the texture of daily life, to the food, the scents in the air, the anomalous visions in the city, the very basic pleasures and frustrations of daily life. For me there is also the city that is already the 'text' - all those books, images and films that have preceded any visit and which one filters in odd ways in situ."
Her perspectives of the city ranged across a wide spectrum as she met one of China's most famous authors, Wang Anyi, was introduced to local writers, visited the Expo Center, a water village and Chongming Island.
"I find Shanghai somewhat overwhelming and believe that only good Chinese language skills would help me gain serious access to the city," she said.
"There is inevitably a sense that one knows things superficially or inauthentically, and that foreigners see Chinese cities as a kind of inscrutable spectacle. This is why I undertook to seek out the literature and history of the place.
"I was impressed by the pride Shanghainese take in their city and by the hard-working population, their energy and pragmatism.
"I also thought the rate of change had a melancholy aspect - to see so much of the cityscape transform so rapidly must bring a profound sense of loss to some of its inhabitants.
"I have never seen so many building sites or had a sense of so much restless reconstruction governing people's lives," she said.
Perched in her 13th floor apartment, Jones sensitivities were sparked by the building workers living below, "at the edge of a great city block of rubble."
"I would see these workers eat collectively outside on trestle tables and come and go in single file across the rubble to work on the building site of a high-rise nearby," she recalled.
"This daily sight - and passing these workers as I came and went from my apartment - made me think about the laboring underclass that is constructing Shanghai, about their lives and their conditions, about how paradoxically hidden and visible they are.
"I had a distinct sense of the gap that must now exist between these laborers and the wealthy of Shanghai and would have liked to learn more about their lives."
Jones, professor of writing at the University of Western Sydney, has been a resident writer in other countries and enjoys the "strangeness of an unfamiliar place and the way it inspires one to think relativistically about one's own space."
"I gave a talk on 'homeland' at the Shanghai Library at which I chose, among other things, to talk about the dense and complicated Chinese history in Australia and the fact that I grew up in a small town that had a significant Chinese population.
"I actually enjoy the challenge of cultural difference and find large cities in other nations intrinsically hyper-stimulating. Occasional discombobulation is part of that," she said.
"It also allows us to better acknowledge and honor difference within our own countries."
Having gained such an insight into Shanghai, and with her antenae tuned to its nuances, the character in her new book should be all the richer.
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