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Writers from China's diaspora

'NO, OF COURSE there's no one Chinese style shared by all the overseas Chinese writers,'  says Adeline Yen Mah. 'There are over a billion people in China. They are a very diverse group, and so are we, the overseas Chinese writers.'

The only constant in overseas-Chinese literature, she says, is its debt to best-selling authors Jung Chang and Amy Tan.

'Jung Chang opened the door with Wild Swans. After her and Amy Tan, publishers around the world looked at Chinese writing.'

Mah should know. Like Chang, her best-known book is also a memoir about a difficult childhood on the mainland. Falling Leaves has notched up more than a million sales since its release in 1999, at the peak of the west's post-Wild Swans infatuation with China.

But Mah's focus was more specific than Chang's. Whereas Wild Swans showed how three generations were  affected by China's culture and history, Falling Leaves took the reader inside her childhood home and revealed its particular personalities.

Two weeks after Mah's birth in Tianjin in 1937, her mother died. Her wealthy father, Joseph Yen, married again, to a French-Chinese, Jeanne Prosperi.  Mah was  regarded as being bad luck  after her mother's  death. Her stepmother shunned her five stepchildren, devoting herself to the two children she had with Yen.

'Even though my stepmother loathed me, I never hated her,' she says. 'I was afraid of her. As a child she kept threatening me to get me out of the house. She told me to go away, to go wherever I wanted. But where could I go at the age of nine or 10? I kept thinking that if I did well at school or became class president she would think I was worthwhile. This has never gone away.'

When she won a writing competition at the age of 14 her father decided she should study in England. However, her literary aspirations were deemed a frivolity with poor earning potential.

Mah's father pushed her towards becoming an obstetrician, believing that only women would want to be treated by a female doctor.

'I wanted to be a writer as a child. I hate to admit this but I became a doctor because my father wanted me to. My father thought so little of me that he asked, 'Who on Earth would want to read anything that you write? Certainly not I'.

'The only problem was that I hated obstetrics. I absolutely loathed it. So, my one little sign of rebellion was that I didn't do obstetrics.' Mah became a successful physician in California, where she  lives with her husband, Robert Mah.

She's spent most of her adult life trying to tap into her childhood love of writing. But for years she discarded every attempt to write her memoirs.  'I couldn't continue after a couple of pages,' she says. 'I didn't know this, but the act of writing an autobiography is very much linked to our feelings towards our parents. I knew that they wouldn't be pleased about what I wrote. They would see it as a betrayal.'

But when her father and stepmother died within two years of each other, Mah typed more than one million words about her childhood. 'I had to cut out 90 per cent of it. But it was still a relief to write it.'

After the success of Falling Leaves came two more non-fiction titles: A Thousand Pieces of Gold, a personal history of China told  through its proverbs; and Watching the Tree,  essays about Chinese culture, food and language.

Mah has also released two children's novels that echo her early years. Chinese Cinderella and Chinese Cinderella and the Secret Dragon Society depict a mistreated girl forced to find her own way in the world. The novels are taught in British and Australian schools.

Although all her books deal with China, Mah says none   is inspired by the country. Her homeland will continue to appear in her work simply because she sees her literary assets as 'my familiarity with Chinese and China and the ability to portray the emotions of a child'.

'I think it was Charles Dickens who said an unhappy childhood is the writer's vocabulary. As a child you're abused, bullied and insulted, and you don't have the power and the vocabulary to justify yourself. It's all bottled up within. You retain those feelings. Then one day you become free. My chance to speak out came when my parents died. For the first time I was able to vocalise what I felt during my miserable childhood.'

Her books have been hits internationally, but success on the mainland has been lacking and Mah has grown tired of devoting two years to each Chinese translation of her books.

'Mainland people are so involved with making money that reading for relaxation and enjoyment is a secondary consideration. The Chinese can be too practical. The books that do well in China are about getting rich. Eventually that will change.'

In the meantime, Mah sees a role for herself untangling misunderstanding between the west and  China. She spends large parts of the year in Shanghai, Hong Kong and Beijing, where her daughter Ann Mah - a South China Morning Post book reviewer - lives with her husband Chris Klein, the son of Joe Klein, author of Primary Colors. In Shanghai, her childhood home, Mah indulges her love of watching tennis during events such as this month's Masters Cup.

'It's nice to be able to speak my dialect and look at the development in front of my eyes. I doubt that China has ever changed so rapidly as it has in the past 25 years. In the history of mankind I don't think a city has changed so rapidly as Shanghai.

'I've lived a long time and I've seen China from different angles - for instance, how the Chinese were really treated as second-class citizens in their own country. If there was a long line in Shanghai or Hong Kong and a white face came in, the white face would go immediately to the front ahead of the 100 Chinese faces. Nowadays it's unthought of. But not so long ago it was a fait accompli.

'I don't want there to be a backlash when China becomes strong. I feel a tremendous sense of responsibility to act as a bridge between the two cultures to help them act rationally and responsibly.

'I'm even against the Olympics. I think the Olympics, instead of uniting, can be divisive. You cheer for countrymen, regardless of right or wrong. It's all right if he cheats sometimes. I don't want to see that kind of competition.

'I am Chinese and China is very important to me in every way. That's what I know and understand and I will continue to write about it.'



Mrs Cinderella