Novel Chinatown Interview (Part 2/8)

(Novel Chinatown book cover)

Novel Chinatown

Documentary Interview (Part 2/8)

Time: 16th February 2017

Venue: London

Interviewer: UCL Documentary Film student Shi Yi Han

Interviewee: Yilin Zhong (Author of book Chinatown)

Topic: Chinatown, the novel

Part 2 video length: 11’48’’

https://youtu.be/KvciZDc_cWU

Yilin Zhong: (continued) So Chinatown is the best example of that (literary theory). Now that’s the first impression Chinatown gave to me when I was just a student, and I was a tourist as well, at the first week I came over to London, that’s the scene I have seen. So apart from I felt, oh, everything here is from China, that’s so good! So I can have Chinese food, and I could meet Chinese people even in London, that’s quite exciting. But apart from that, nothing more. Nothing much more. Because I only left China for about one week, there’s not much difference I would tell, at that point.

However, one year later, when I was trying to finish my degree, writing my dissertation, I went back London trying to find a property, or find a room to live, so I can finish my study in London, and then I met those illegal people by chance, just completely coincidence: I became one of them, they became my housemate and I lived with them. Everyday. Day and night, we talk, we’re friends, we ate together, we slept all in the same house, we used the kitchen and bathroom in the same house, so twenty-four hours I was with them. I never imagined I would live with them, as I said in this novel, I wrote everything in detail, how I met those people, and how I ended up living with them. I never thought it would happen, however it just happened.

At that point I still never thought I would write a fiction about them one day, until in 2005, two years later, as I said, I had a dinner with my friend, and suddenly it inspired me, that, it tells me I need to say something for them. Because clearly, everyone in the main society, they don’t understand them. They never understand they are living here, with us, because they are not existing. They are not existing in our society, they are not existing in our mainstream at all, media, social, everything, in any kind of respect, they are not existing at all. But they are here. So I need to write about them. I need to make people be aware that they are here, they are alive, they are living with us, they are part of us, they are part of our society even though they will never be accepted and recognized by our society.

Now, get into my book. Is this Chinatown fiction, fictional? Yes. Is this Chinatown fictitious? Yes. But, are those characters all fictional? Partly, not really. They are all very very genuine people I have met, and I have experienced, and that’s why I could have collected so many stories of them. That’s why I could know them in depth, because I had personal contact with them.

The only thing is, how could I make all those people in the reality become fictional characters, that’s writer’s job. That’s what I have done in the whole process. However as I said, to create this book, I need to find a link between all those different characters, and that link is Chinatown. So in that sense, yes, the Chinatown in this book was invented by me, it was created by me, it was a pure fiction. However in another way, this so-called fictional Chinatown, is the real Chinatown. It is the real Chinatown in our society, in our reality, rather than the fictional fake Chinatown, the official Chinatown in London.

Interviewer: Can I say something. Because I feel the Chinatown you write about is just a part of the, er... not the physical Chinatown, just a literary Chinatown, this is just a part of it. Chinatown does not only have illegal people, they also has different lots of lives.

Yilin Zhong: (laughed) I understand. So in reality, Chinatown not only have the illegal people, but also have the legal people, for example, the Chinese students, and those Chinese employees working in British companies. Yes, that’s 50:50 let’s say, I don’t know the population exactly, I don’t know these numbers, but definitely, there are part of legal people living in the UK, and part of illegal Chinese people living in the UK, and the Chinatown I was writing about, was complete illegal people. Apart from me, I’m the only legal person there, OK, so I am the only one existing in this world, and all the rest fifteen or thirteen characters are not existing at all, they are all fictional in our reality. That’s quite tricky. That’s another thing I want to press here.

Yes, in reality, the Chinatown should have all those legal and illegal people altogether, however as I said, the link, or the theme of my book, of this fiction, is illegal people. Maybe yes, I’m writing a Chinatown about those illegal immigrants, but there are some part of this Chinatown maybe I was missing, is about the legal people. But as I said, because the theme of this book, of this story, of this fiction was those illegal people, that’s why I didn’t put the other people in. Maybe they will have other stories, all those legal people who work in the British companies, or they’re students, mainstream Chinese, or every successful for example, the entrepreneur of this country, that’s quite a lot of Chinese as well. The story is not about them. Because we can all see them. The thing I was trying to write is under the city, underground, those people we could not find out, we could not see, and that’s the theme about this book. That’s why, yes maybe I just wrote part of the Chinatown.

Interviewer: So my curiosity is why you titled this story of the fifteen characters with the name of ‘Chinatown’, instead of like, the invisible people in Chinatown, but use more general word of Chinatown? This is my question,

Yilin Zhong: That’s a good question, because usually, before I wrote this book, OK, let’s say, usually when you mention Chinatown, in London or in America or anywhere, worldwide, usually when you mention this word, how many percentage of people would be thinking of ‘there are some illegal people there’? I would say probably 90% people would never be aware of there is some illegal population inside this society.

Interviewer: I know a lot of people living in London, they are aware of them, but they have little touch with them. They are aware of that.

Yilin Zhong: OK, but when I say a ‘Chinatown’ word to you, would you think of them? If I say: ‘Let’s go to Chinatown, what would you think?’

Interviewer: Shopping, restaurant, eating, meeting.

Yilin Zhong: Yep. Is there any any little thing about those illegal people?

Interviewer: We don’t go to Chinatown at night because it’s very dangerous.

Yilin Zhong: Yes, that’s the film, that’s the American Hollywood film would tell you, but when I mention a ‘Chinatown’ word to you, or to anyone, would any of them, I would say probably less than 10% will be thinking of illegal people. Everybody will be thinking about everything on the surface, everything we could have seen, all these legal people, all these Chinese restaurants, all these people on the street, they are legal. We’re assuming they are legal. Maybe they are not, we don’t know. We never check their identity.

Let’s say, if I go to America, or if I go to Paris, and I said, OK let’s go to Chinatown, would you think of anything of illegal people? No, I don’t think so.

What I mean is, maybe because of the Hollywood film ‘Chinatown’, or maybe because of the media reports about Chinatown, and everything, when you Google the Chinatown word online, I don’t think you will see anything illegal there. Everything comes out from the media, from people’s mouth, from people’s thinking or imagination of Chinatown, everything, I assume or I believe, most of them will be thinking of those legal Chinese, however the illegal side, they may be aware of it ,but the only chance they would think or read about these illegal immigrants news, is when there is some tragedy happens, for example, in 2000 or 2005, I cannot remember, in the Dover harbor, there’s a very sad tragedy, a lot of Chinese people died, and they are all illegal. They went there by paying lots of money, tens of thousands of dollars or pounds, just to get into this country, but they tragically died.

We only can read this kind of news when there’s something, bad thing, really really sad things happened, and it will be reviewed, however that was just very very little amount, very small portion of those illegal immigrants’ life, because the one you have seen is the one they have died. And there are thousands and hundreds of them, they actually succeed; they came over to this country, and they live here, but nobody could ever see them.

That’s the thing I want to write about, because they are so, mysterious, or very interesting.

Interviewer: Maybe that’s interesting, but those kind of people, do you think they want to be exposed in the general, in the mass communication? In front of the audience.

Yilin Zhong: I don’t think any of them would like to be exposed in any kind of way in public, unless they got their identity. But even if they got their identity, I mean, for example, the permanent residence, or green card, or whatever, even they got it, they don’t want to admit they were getting into this country initially by this way. Nobody wants to. That’s why it has to be a fiction. It cannot be a documentary, it will be so difficult for filming a documentary about them. You couldn’t find them at all, and (even if you find them,) they may refuse it.

So, that’s the thing. That’s what literature do. We do write about things are not existing, or they’re supposed not to be exposed. That’s what we do.

But by working out that, it requires a lot of work, and it requires a lot of chances as well. It’s not many people have the chance to get in touch with them, and I was there, it just happened.

 (End of part 2/8)

Written by Yilin Zhong

To be continued.