MCLC: writer Xu Zechen

[Denton, Kirk]

MCLC LIST
From: kirk (denton.2 at osu.edu)
Subject: writer Xu Zechen
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Source: China Daily (6/26/12):
http://usa.chinadaily.com.cn/culture/2012-06/26/content_15523073.htm

The voice of a generation
By Yang Guang (China Daily)

Xu Zechen [徐则臣] discovers his niche as a writer, distancing himself from
the shadows of his predecessors and successors. Yang Guang finds out more
in Beijing.

Post-1970 writers have long been considered a shadow generation, falling
behind both the literary quality of their predecessors born in the 1950s
and 1960s, and the market influence of their post-1980 successors. Praised
by literary magazine Master as "the glory of the post-1970 writers", Xu
Zechen says his embarrassingly sandwiched cloud has a silver lining.
"Being the antagonists of the literary scene renders us more patience to
toil in silence," the 34-year-old says. His silent toiling has given voice
to the equally silent social classes struggling on the boundaries of the
country's urban landscape.

The main characters of his novel, Running Through Zhongguancun, which
propelled him into a recognized writer, are pirate DVD peddlers and fake
certificate makers in Zhongguancun.

Zhongguancun, the electronics area known as the country's "Silicon
Valley", has become a literary landmark due to his "wandering in Beijing"
story series.

Running Through Zhongguancun, his 2006 novella about the love story of
pirate DVD peddler Dun Huang, will soon be available in English.

Despite the pedigree of having obtained a master's degree from Peking
University and working as an editor with China's longest running literary
magazine People's Literature, Xu says his rural background connects
himself with the underprivileged in his stories.

Growing up in the countryside of Donghai, Jiangsu province, he spent his
childhood pasturing cattle, planting rice and running around in the fields.

He began reading seriously only after attending middle school, where he
rented books from bookstores and borrowed from classmates.

Xu recalls reading over and over again Qian Zhongshu's Fortress Besieged
and Thomas Hardy's Tess of the D'Urbervilles.

His first ambition was to become a lawyer but his dream was shattered
because he didn't perform well in the college entrance examination. When
he ended up studying Chinese in a small town college, he felt "tragically
frustrated".

"I read voraciously in the library day in, day out, but still I didn't
know what I really wanted to do," he recalls.

The idea of being a writer struck him one afternoon in the summer vacation
of 1997, when he finished reading Zhang Wei's novel Family Clan. (Family
Clan was later included as the first volume of Zhang's 10-volume Mao Dun
Literature Prize-winning novel You Are on the Highland.)

"I was excited to realize that it was so wonderful being a writer," he
says. "A good writer can convey all you have to say, in a more exact and
beautiful way."

Xu started writing and publishing, while staying in college to teach after
graduation. He weaved the small town into the literary world he created in
the "Flower Street" story series.

Built with blue stones on the bank of a canal, Flower Street is a
fictional street where the series of idyllic stories took place, similar
to William Faulkner's Yoknapatawpha County and Garcia Marquez's Macondo.

In 2002, Xu quit his job and went to Beijing to further his studies. "I
made the decision because the idea of leaving and exploring the world had
been sizzling in my mind all those years," he says.

He got to know a group of pirate DVD peddlers and fake certificate makers,
running their business furtively in Zhongguancun, so he started writing
about them and their peers from across the country, rooting themselves in
the concrete jungle of the capital.

Xu says the more he wrote, the more he found meaning in his work.

He sees Beijing as an example of urban centers confronted with the
problems of urbanization, modernization and globalization.

"My writing has become a means for me to probe into these issues, in which
I have great interest," he says.
For Xu, Zhongguancun bears the characteristics of a perfect specimen,
inhabited by people from all walks of life. "It's no exaggeration to say
that once we understand about Zhongguancun, we understand about Beijing
and the rest of the country," he says.

Xu says the dramatic social reality unfolding each day in China provides
writers with exciting issues to ruminate.

"As a faithful and humble writer, I draw satisfaction from recording what
my generation feels about our era."

He is currently working on a novel portraying the confusion and anxiety
confronting a group of post-1970 people, and their pursuit of security and
inner peace.

Contact the writer at yangguang at chinadaily.com.cn.