Q&A With Lauded "Northern Girls" Author Sheng Keyi Ahead of Apr 5 Great Outdoors Talk

Despite all the lofty praise Sheng Keyi has received for writing novels like Northern Girls and Death Fugue, the author is by no means above a bit of crude humor. Indeed, a pile of excrement that appears in a town square serves as a major catalyst in the latter novel, and from there its characters are galvanized in a variety of page-turning ways. Ahead of her book talk at The Great Outdoors (which is part of Spittoon's book club) on Apr 5, Keyi tells us more about attaining that balance in her prose, writing about the hardships of tenacious women, and what is inspiring her next project.

In the afterward for Northern Girls you write: “the hardships they [migrant laborers] encounter are actually more shocking than anything I’ve recorded, reaching well beyond the scope of what is represented in my novel.” Tell us more about why that is the case, and why you didn’t include such all-the-more-shocking moments in your book.
The author Lu Xun writes about how contemporary development leads to not only a dog-eat-dog world, not only a person-eat-person world, but even machi eat person world. On the Pearl River Delta, for instance, 30,000 laborers' fingers are broken each year, and more than 40,000 fingers are amputated by machines, according to the Guangdong Business School's "Pearl River Delta" report. These laborers rarely receive reasonable compensation for their severed fingers. Some people become disabled and return to the countryside with nothing as a result.

I think it is difficult for a novel to cover all the burdens of life, and the writer cannot present all the disasters in one work. In the rapid development of China's social economy, how many innocent people have been turned to ash? How many dreams have been crushed? How many protests have been washed away? And how many beliefs have been trampled? Society does not give these anonymous people more attention, and history does not record their aspirations or details about their lives. Because history is a little girl dressed up, and history must obey her parents.

When you were working as a migrant laborer in the '90s, what was something you witnessed that made you think “I want to write a book about ‘northern girls' someday”? Was there an “a-ha” moment when you realized that you had to share these stories with the world?
I don't know migrant laborer what is the accurate translation. I was a clerk at the Shenzhen stock exchange and was responsible for buying and selling stocks. I have been sentimental since my childhood. I later realized that sentimentality is because I have a sensitive mind. Then I found out that I liked to be upset, and I couldn't help but talk about injustice. Obviously, it is based on these factors that I am quietly beginning to speak in words.

If by an "a-ha!" moment you mean an easy and interesting discovery, I don't think there is such a thing. It's never easy. When I wrote Northern Girls, what pushed me was a heavy theme: women's survival. It was my first novel, and I didn't even think about it when I wrote it. I was only thinking about how to finish this work.

A few days ago I attended the Beijing Bookworm Literary Festival, and an American writer told me that she had a copy of Northern Girls at her bedside. I was very happy to hear that.

One review for the book notes: “When confronted with her inability to speak an unfamiliar dialect, [the character] Xiaohong articulates what turns out to be her guiding principle: ‘Then we learn! There’s nothing that can’t be learned.’” When did you learn that principle yourself, and how does it feel to impart that in your book?
It's really interesting that you captured this little detail. It has to do with my own language. I'll explain it to you: going from the Hunan dialect to Putonghua, it's very difficult to learn the proper pronunciation, almost as difficult as learning English. The difference between both dialects is so big, but on the other hand, bridging that gap might have given me talent and strength. Now, I believe that everything can be learned and that people grow by learning. Not only talking, but also through language, writing, technology and so on. There is an old saying in China: "It is never too late to learn." I am more and more sure that a person who loves learning and is eager to learn will always go further than lazy people.
 
After writing about such a compelling heroine in Northern Girls, you went on to write about a very different protagonist with Fields of White. That 2014 short story centers on Jason, which the publisher, Penguin, describes as“a 30-something, white-collar salesman on the verge of a mid-life crisis. The threat of redundancy and the demands of the multiple women in his life –  wife, mistress and a business client with whom professional and personal boundaries have begun to blur …” How did it feel to write about the adulterous, conflicted Jason after writing about an empowered female like Xiaohong? The contrast sounds interesting and challenging.
I have published three collections of short stories, which are all different from Northern Girls. There is a gay story, a love story based on the history of China's great famine, a story about the birth of a child and how to face death. In my seven published novels, only Savage Growth has slight similarities to the characters in Northern Girls. Savage Growth is about a rural family and their dismal fate through several generations. They are the victims of their respective social systems over different eras.

My eighth novel, The Metaphor Detox Center, will be published in Taiwan this year. It's a political fable, alluding to absurdities in Chinese history. It's also a critique of the present society and predicts horrors of the future, like there being only eight flowers that are able to bloom outdoors thanks to the state of the environment.

My creations are not confined to certain subjects, but there is no doubt that I will always pay special attention to the fate of women. They are my pain points.

Giramondo, the publisher of your novel Death Fugue, notes how that book describes “a huge tower of excrement" that "appears one day” in “a large square in the center of Beiping, the capital of Dayang … causing unease in the population, and ultimately widespread civil unrest.” If such a pile of excrement was to appear on a busy Beijing street today, how do you think the passersby might react?
First, I don't think there will be any suspicious items in the square today. Police stations are open 24-hours and there are security checks. But if there is a foreign body in the busy streets, I think people's reaction is to attempt to escape and avoid trouble. The police will immediately evacuate people. If someone posts a picture of it, it will be deleted by the network and the search engine will automatically block the content.

I often wonder what would happen if people were satisfied with food and shelter and all kinds of entertainment, but relinquished their freedom and their power. The world's Western philosophers and novelists have built utopia after utopia in their own minds, but none of them can truly be realized because human nature is too complicated. People are always animals that pursue freedom and the rulers always give the free discount to the people, so the rulers and people become the eternal contradiction and the conflict cannot stop. I think that's probably why you mentioned that there are some of the same core themes in these novels. It is better to be free and simple, and not to be locked in a cage of happiness.
 
What are you working on next, and what is inspiring it?
I just finished my ninth novel, The Uterus, during Spring Festival. The Chinese version will be published later this year. It was my first time writing about native people in my hometown and I think I have gained a brand new writing experience: I wrote about my hometown in my hometown, and my imagination was very vivid. It's about four generations of women and their uteruses. There's a 30-year-old widow who feels vacant, a woman devoid of sex after undergoing legalized sterilization, and more. These women, with their hearts and bodies, took the days of their lives with them and tore off the days of their lives.

See Sheng Keyi at Great Friends Outdoors (formerly known as The Great Outdoors) on Fangjia hutong on Apr 5 at 8pm. For more information, click here. 

More stories by this author here.
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Photos courtesy of Sheng Keyi