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David Wilson

Writers from China's diaspora

Diane Wei Liang's non-fiction debut was unblinking in its portrayal of the atrocities she witnessed in Tiananmen Square in 1989 - violence carried out by troops and students.

The Lake With No Name  describes protesters spotting a lone army truck. They stone it, drag out the driver, who is no more than 19, beat him and leave him weeping.

The book triggered a minor backlash against the 1989 rebels. After being interviewed for BBC Worldwide, Wei says Chinese listeners were 'very interested in whether I think that the students had pushed too hard and whether they should take responsibility for what happened ... I really think that there are lessons to be learned by each side.'

The lesson of The Lake with No Name is that the  mainland is integrating with the rest of world, says the London-based business studies lecturer. 'Contemporary China is not, as many people may think, a strange and exotic place somewhere faraway, but a country where the same ideals of love, equality and freedom are as alive as in many other parts of  the world.

'It is a country with intelligent and courageous young people, and thus a country full of  hope and possibilities.'

The epilogue, however, gives a different impression, revealing that, in the time it takes to say 'spiritual pollution', most of her Tiananmen comrades emigrated   to the US.

The latest Amnesty International report on  China hardly suggests  the nation has blossomed into a democratic utopia. The report says tens  of thousands of people are still 'arbitrarily detained or imprisoned for peacefully exercising their rights to  freedom of expression, association or belief'.

Among other examples, Amnesty cites the case of Tohti Tunyaz, an ethnic Uighur who was arrested in 1998 and continues to serve an 11-year sentence for researching the history of his native region.

Cocooned in the demure London  borough of Kensington, Wei can come across as  complacent and yet she describes herself as homeless, explaining that she feels she doesn't belong in Britain, America or China.

She concedes that, by default, she identifies with China because she spent the first 23 years of her life  here.

But now  she has lived in the US and Europe for almost 15 years, she often feels an outsider, thanks to China's 'inefficiencies and unprofessionalism'. She complains about unco-operative Beijing taxi drivers and the  who-you-know culture of  Chinese business.

Because of her lack of allegiance to east or west, Wei says she considers herself 'an international nomad' and has no time for the notion of a Chinese perspective in literature. 'The so-called China books - fiction or non-fiction - in my opinion simply offer another way that  life unfolds.'

But she accepts that her heritage affects how she  writes, lending her 'an emotional closeness' to the stories.  'It is like a child writing about her family - biased, perhaps, but never indifferent,' she says. 'When I write, I know in my heart that I am writing about my country, my history and my people.'

Her two favourite books about her people are, she says, 'as different as day and night': Wild Swans by Jung Chang  and Shanghai Baby, the Beijing-banned soft porn novel by the  girl wonder of modern Chinese literature, Wei Hui.  She says Chang's 1992 classic is 'the  best chronicle of modern  China', adding that she loves  its epic quality.

On the subject of Shanghai Baby, the tale of carnal Coco, a young waitress who falls for an impotent junkie before an affair with a married German, Wei says she sympathises with Coco's bare emotions and admires the darkly convincing way in which she is drawn. 'She is far from perfect and thus more real than a lot of high moral characters I have come across in modern Chinese-English literature,' Wei says.

This admission of her connection with Coco hints at a wild side behind the writer's dainty, professional veneer.

It will be fascinating to see whether, in her planned first  stab at fiction, Wei gravitates  from the serious to the salacious. Her Chinese astrological sign is the horse which, by her own reckoning, means she is 'immensely ambitious'.



Diane Wei Liang