An Interview with Lijia Zhang on her debut novel Lotus.

Lijia Zhang initially rose to prominence with the story of her rebellious journey from disillusioned rocket factory girl to international journalist. Her 2008 memoir Socialism is Great! A Worker’s Memoir of the New China documents her escape from a mind-numbing job testing pressure gauges at a Nanjing munitions factory into the world of English Literature. Her debut novel Lotus, inspired by her grandmother’s deathbed confession of being sold to a brothel, delves deep into the sex industry in contemporary Shenzhen, following a young migrant woman, Lotus, who is eager to escape her life as a prostitute.

Lijia Zhang will be talking about her novel and her work at two events in London – at The Asia House on the 15^th May and at China Exchange on the 18^th May. She will also be talking about her work on Start The Week, BBC Radio 4, on May 15th at 9am.

Over the next week we will be posting an interview with Lijia Zhang with the kind permission of the author and the blog zhendegender . The interview took place in December 2016, just weeks before the publication of Lotus. In part 1, Lijia Zhang describes her reasons for telling this unparalleled story, how she learned to relate to Chinese sex workers, and how her own struggle for self-improvement informed her character, Lotus.

IDENTITY, BREAST IMPLANTS, AND WANTING MORE FROM LIFE: LIJIA ZHANG ON HER DEBUT NOVEL LOTUS (INTERVIEW: PART I)

Why did you feel that you had to tell this story about contemporary China?

I tried to find out about grandmother’s life after her deathbed confession of being a concubine, but my mother knew very little about her life. So I have always been curious about these women. Then on a trip to Shenzhen I went to a hairdresser near my hotel and asked for a haircut. There were several women there but they said they did not know how to cut hair. I looked at the floor. There wasn’t any hair on the floor. I realised these women were prostitutes.

Prostitution is an interesting window to see social changes and it touches upon some serious social issues, such as migration and women’s rights.

Why write a novel, not a non-fiction book, about prostitution in China?

I wanted to become a journalist, and I did. I wanted to have a story published in the New York Times, and I did. I had always wanted to write a novel. So I thought I would try my hand.

I started Lotus when I was in my final year of my MA at Goldsmiths. The storyline has changed little, but the style changed a great deal. For example, I experimented with the point of view. I started by writing all the dialogue in pidgin English, with direct translations of Chinese, like “Toilet is where?”

I tried writing it from the perspective of Lotus, and later from the perspective of Bing, her child's father, but that meant I could not tackle social issues like women’s rights, migration, the aftermath of Tiananmen. So I decided to write it in third person, alternating between different points of view, and eventually it became Lotus.

How do your personal experiences inform the characters and events in your novel?

It took a lot of work to do all the research about these women. It took months and months of research over many years. I met so many people with so many stories.

I volunteered for an NGO dedicated to help female sex workers, where my main task was distributing condoms. On day two of my time as a volunteer, I met a really colourful character. I accompanied a staff member as she went to visit a sex worker. This woman was sitting outside, which is unusual because most women would hide inside. They wear revealing clothes but they don’t want to draw attention to themselves on the street. This woman was doing embroidery on the street – she was embroidering a church onto fabric. She took us inside, and the woman I was with commented on her breasts. I was amazed how much they talked about breasts. She spoke to prostitutes in their own language, to be on their level. She was a former prostitute and knew she had to engage them using the same language. They really trusted her.

The women inside the shop commented on her breasts in return, so she explained that she herself had had surgery. They said “I’m thinking of getting implants, can I see?” So they went into the back room and everyone looked at her breasts. The breast implants had not settled well. It was a cheap procedure, and one of her nipples went sideways. She had been told that massaging them would help so she was always massaging her chest.

Her fellow villagers call Lotus “the toad who dreams of eating swans meat”, meaning someone who dreams too big. How does your own struggle for self-improvement come through in Lotus?

Lotus wants more from her life. People often laugh at those who think or behave differently. These women send money home to their families. This is really important for them. It improves their position in the family and gives them face. They must be seen to be successful. They want to show their best side to people in the village.

My friend and I went to visit one woman’s hometown with her. On the day we travelled there, she wore very nice clothes and when we arrived in the village, she took off her trainers and changed them for a pair of leather high-heeled shoes.. On the bus there, she introduced herself, and us, to other people from her village: “hey, I am the second from the Mao family, do you remember me? This is my friend, an international writer and this is a doctor.”

It is the same for other professions, too. I met a man who was a garbage collector in the city. He usually wore very dirty clothes all the time. But when he went to his home village he wore a very smart coat, with a fur trim around the neck. He looked so smart. It is very important to appear successful to the people in the village.

They cannot really tell people the truth about their life in the city. It can be quite lonely. Telling the truth is the worst thing that they could do.

When Lotus chooses her own path for the first time, she decides to open a school instead of settling down with the father of her unborn baby. Is her choice to become a single mother a realistic one in contemporary China? What does the future look like for a woman in her position?

It is realistic. Single mothers exist and they live their lives. Many live in these villages that were once stand-alone places but have now been engulfed by the city. They are supported within that community. She may not have the correct papers for the baby but they will be ok. 

A woman like Lotus might marry the baby’s father just for the papers. Lotus is very smart and savvy. I don’t think she has decided yet. But she may not maintain the relationship with Bing, because she realised that she can’t be herself when she’s with him. He is very selfish really. He doesn’t really consider her needs. He was a more sinister character in previous versions. But Lotus has always been very strong, quite unlike the way Bing sees her.

My husband left me for a younger woman. That was horrible for me. I fell apart. But I used my break-up to understand Lotus’s struggle to deal with the crisis and to become independent.

PART 2 of this interview will be posted on the 17^th May.

A Secret Sisterhood

On the 1^st June Aurum Press will be publishing a must-read book about female literary friendships. Male literary friendships are the stuff of legend; think Byron and Shelley, Fitzgerald and Hemingway. But the world’s best-loved female authors are usually portrayed as isolated eccentrics. Emily Midorikawa and Emma Claire Sweeney seek to dispel this myth with a wealth of hidden yet startling collaborations.

A Secret Sisterhood looks at Jane Austen’s bond with a family servant, the amateur playwright Anne Sharpe; how Charlotte Bronte was inspired by the daring feminist Mary Taylor; the transatlantic relationship between George Eliot and the author of Uncle Tom’s Cabin, Harriet Beecher Stowe; and the underlying erotic charge that lit the friendship of Virginia Woolf and Katherine Mansfield – a pair too often dismissed as bitter foes.

Through letters and diaries which have never been published before, this fascinating book resurrects these hitherto forgotten stories of female friendships that were sometimes illicit, scandalous and volatile; sometimes supportive, radical or inspiring; but always, until now, tantalisingly consigned to the shadows.

A Secret Sisterhood evolved from the authors’ own friendship. Their blog, SomethingRhymed, charts female literary bonds and has been covered in the media and promoted by Margaret Atwood, Sheila Hancock and Kate Mosse, showing that the literary sisterhood is still alive today.

A Secret Sisterhood
The hidden friendships of Austen, Brontе, Eliot and Woolf

By Emily Midorikawa & Emma Claire Sweeney

Foreword by Margaret Atwood

Pub 1st June 2017 Aurum Press

Emma Claire Sweeney has lectured at City University, New York University in London, the Open University and the University of Cambridge. Her work has won Arts Council, Royal Literary Fund and Escalator Awards, and has been shortlisted for several others, including the Asham, Wasafiri and Fish. She writes for newspapers and magazines such as the Guardian, the Independent on Sunday, The Times, and Mslexia. Her debut novel Owl Song at Dawn was published by Legend Press in July 2016. The novel has been shortlisted for the BookHugger Book of the Year Award, and Emma has been named an Amazon Rising Star and a Hive Rising Writer.

Emily Midorikawa lectures at City University and at New York University’s London campus. She has taught at the University of Cambridge and the Open University, as well as writing for the Daily Telegraph, the Independent on Sunday, The Times, Aesthetica and Mslexia. Her memoir ‘The Memory Album’ appeared in Tangled Roots, an Arts Council-sponsored collection that celebrates the stories of mixed-race families. Emily is the winner of the Lucy Cavendish Fiction Prize 2015, and was longlisted for the Mslexia Novel Competition. She was a runner-up in the SI Leeds Literary Prize, judged by Margaret Busby, and the Yeovil Literary Prize, judged by Tracy Chevalier.

Going High - texts by inspirational women

Remember our Going High event  on International Women’s Day this year? We collaborated with Chalk Circle Theatre Company to busk in Norwich’s city centre, using words and not music. The words were from texts by inspirational women. We’ve had a number of requests for the names of the texts and the authors, so here they are with links:

                   

Caitlin Moran - http://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/my-posthumous-advice-for-my-daughter-qkjgh7whg9l 

Diana Reeves – I am an Endangered Species -http://www.oldielyrics.com/lyrics/dianne_reeves/endangered_species.html

Audre Lord -  The Master's Tools Will Never Dismantle The Master's House -

Sister Outsider: Essays and Speeches. Ed. Berkeley, CA:  pub Crossing Press.

http://collectiveliberation.org/wp-content/uploads/2013/01/Lorde_The_Masters_Tools.pdf

Clarissa Pinkola Estes -  Extracts from Women Who Run With The Wolves, pub Rider; Classic Ed edition (7 Feb. 2008)

Michelle Obama – Extracts from her speech to the National Democratic Convention 2016

http://www.npr.org/2016/07/26/487431756/michelle-obamas-prepared-remarks-for-democratic-national-convention

Melissa Fu on winning the 2016 regional prize of the Words And Women’s prose competition

Melissa Fu

‘I am delighted to have won Words And Women’s 2016 Regional Prize with my piece of creative non-fiction, Suite for my Father. The Words And Women prose competition is especially dear to me because I saw a flyer in 2013 at a local bookstore for the inaugural competition and it felt so encouraging and welcoming that I decided to send in some writing.

Entering that first competition meant learning about Words And Women and their important work. It was on their blog too that I came across a post written by Leigh Chambers about the Angles writing group she’d started in Cambridge. I got in contact with Leigh and eventually joined the group. Angles has been an invaluable source of friendship and community for me. I have Words and Women to thank for connecting me to these amazing writers!

I was a highly-commended writer for Words and Women: One and that was my first writing success ever. It was such a boost to have come so close to being included in the anthology! I loved the ethos of the competition and entered again the next year. My first writing publication is a piece in Words and Women: Two.

Because Words And Women has been an integral part of my finding a place as a writer, I wanted to send them my very best work. Last fall, I sent them a story that is deeply meaningful to me as well as one in which I had carefully considered every word. Of all the pieces I have written over the past few years, this is the one of which I am the most proud. It was an absolute thrill to have it honoured as the 2016 regional winner.

As part of the prize, I had a session with Jill Dawson, best-selling novelist and founder of the Gold Dust mentoring scheme. Before the session, I sent Jill a longer piece and an overview for a book-length project. Jill’s feedback was fantastic! It was clear to me that she had read my work not only with a keen eye for structural and narrative possibilities, but also with a generous respect for the soul of the story I want to tell. What I found especially helpful was that she would pair a general suggestion about my writing with specific areas in the piece she had read, showing me where I might put her guidance to use right away. I could then take these ideas and apply them to other pieces of writing. Jill offered just the kind of perspective and boost I needed to give me the confidence to embark on my larger project. And, we met in a great teashop in Ely that was new to me - always a bonus!

Thank you Jill Dawson and thank you Words And Women!

Melissa Fu grew up in Northern New Mexico and lives in Cambridge. Her work appears in Words and Women:Two, Words and Women: Four, Bare Fiction, Envoi, Right Hand Pointing, and other publications. With backgrounds in physics and English, she spent many years working in education, both as a teacher and a consultant. In 2014 Melissa combined her loves of writing and teaching to start Spilling the Ink, a small business offering creative writing courses and coaching. 

Her winning story Suite for my Father can be found in Words and Women: Four, available from Unthank Books. 

Censoring Feminism, Writing Resistance

Demonstrators in NYC showed their support for Feminist Voices © Jun Chen

On 20^th February 2017, the main social media account of a prominent Chinese women’s organisation, Feminist Voices, was shut down for 30 days. The group had publicly shared their support for the women’s strikes in the USA planned for March 8^th, by posting a link on their Weibo* page. They were not calling for Chinese women to strike, they were simply showing their support for anti-Trump demonstrations occurring elsewhere.

Feminist activist Li Maizi, who spoke in London on 7th March © Li Maizi 

But China strictly prohibits political resistance and public demonstration of any kind. They received a message stating, ‘Hello, because content you recently posted violates national laws and regulations, your account will be banned for 30 days’. This prompted waves of support from women the world over, with images pouring in from overseas Chinese women who attended demonstrations, but nothing has changed the fate of Feminist Voices’ public platform.

Hearing this news, I checked on my own web presence. A piece I wrote for a major Chinese media platform had vanished with no explanation. Just days after its publication on 13^th February, the link my editor had sent, and that I’d shared with family and friends, stopped working.

I had interviewed a wonderful woman writer whose recently released debut novel deals with themes of migration, class, and gender inequality through the lens of sex workers in Shenzhen, southern China. I was not aware that the content of our interview might be regarded as even remotely incendiary.  I’d struggled over edits and pitched numerous publications. In the end, all that hard work got me was a blank screen and 404 error message.

Recently, I volunteered to help organise a public celebration of women to be held just days after International Women’s Day. We lined up novelists, poets, storytellers, actors, comedians, and activists who wanted stage time. We found a handful of organisations to provide free information. We decided to fundraise for an NGO supporting transgender teens in southern China. We arranged sponsors, a venue, and a poster. We invited guests.

Just six days before the event was due to take place, we got a message from an LGBT rights activist and founder of Beijing’s LGBT Center, who was due to take part in the panel discussion. Her lawyers had been contacted by police, and recommended we use caution, if we chose to proceed at all.

Her last attempt at speaking at an IWD event was met with suspicion, too. She got phone calls from the authorities telling her not to go to the 2016 Beijing Literary Festival event she was billed for. When she showed up, she was threatened by police at the door and decided not to risk arrest. A year earlier, five young feminist activists were detained for five-weeks without being sentenced, because they’d planned to hand out fliers about domestic violence on public transport.

She and other Chinese participants had the ovaries to forge ahead, hoping to ensure the event would happen if they could. They are well versed in the consequences of addressing sensitive issues in public. But as a bunch of foreigners, we couldn’t be sure of the repercussions for ourselves, our guests, or the cause we believed we were supporting. Ultimately, we had little choice but to cancel, while hoping that bowing out now provides us space to come back stronger another day.

The scariest thing about censorship is that it’s so covert. There is no reason given, no apparent logic behind censorship (only a vague sense of clamping down ahead of political events, such as the ‘Two Sessions’ annual congress in March). Feminist Voices were told they’d broken Chinese law, but not told how. My article had disappeared without a trace, the editor promising to ‘look into it’ before going silent. The authorities had not explicitly told us to cancel the event, we’d not been contacted directly (we didn’t event know which of the vast array of ‘authorities’ we should appeal to). The vague threat that we’d been ‘found out’ was enough to scare us into compliance.

The difference between the cancellation of our one-time event, or the disappearance of my one-time article, and the plight Feminist Voices represents for feminism across China, is obduracy. The majority of that handful of foreign women dabbling in women’s rights activism will leave China, sooner or later. They have the choice to leave censorship behind them. Chinese Feminists, in and outside China, however, will continue to face persecution for their beliefs and risk fates far worse than censorship if they push the envelope too far. Their futures can only lead towards assessing their role in the battle for gender equality against their personal safety.

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* Chinese state-owned microblog platform akin to Twitter, which is blocked in China

Read on

Hard times for feminists in China, supchina

(link: http://supchina.com/2017/03/08/hard-times-feminists-china/)

Chinese Feminist Group’s Social Media Account Suspended, NYTimes

(link: https://www.nytimes.com/2017/02/22/world/asia/china-feminist-weibo.html)

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The author is from Norwich, UK and is currently based in Beijing, China, where she teaches English Literature at a state university, and writes about gender and culture in contemporary Asia. Her writing has featured in various media outlets in China and the UK. Read more at www.zhendegender.com