Novel Chinatown Interview (Part 1/8)

Yilin Zhong in London on 9/9/2017

Novel Chinatown
Documentary Interview (Part 1/8)

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 1 video length: 11’48’’

https://youtu.be/KvciZDc_cWU

Interviewer: (In Chinese) Shall we talk about the name, you name this novel ‘Chinatown’, do you think this is the real scene of Chinatown in your heart?

Yilin Zhong: The reason I named this book as Chinatown, I have said it in the postscript, that initially I couldn’t find what the main subject or theme of this book is, and that’s why although I had met those people two years ago before I started writing it, in the past two years, I couldn’t have written it, only because I couldn’t find a line, or the story line, or whatever you call the theme, to write about it. And the reason I wrote about it was (two years later) I met Amazon’s vice executive director in China (coming) for the London Book Fair, we had dinner at Leicester Square, just one street next to Chinatown.

During the dinner, I was talking about this topic, and then it seems that he couldn’t understand what I was talking about, those characters -- at that time they’re not characters, just my friends -- it seems that he couldn’t understand my friends, he couldn’t understand why they’re living here, illegally, and even being a prostitute just for surviving, rather than just going back home, where they have their parents, they have their family, they have the proper job, everything decent. Why would they survive here, rather than in China where they could have lived properly well. I felt if I wanted to explain the whole thing to him, that would be quite a huge topic to talk about, so I had to stop at the dinner eventually, and then when I came back home, I started to think: OK, it seems that in the mainstream society, there’s a lot of misunderstandings, or they couldn’t understand at all, for those kind of illegal group of people, which I didn’t realize at that time, I mean, before that dinner.

Then after that dinner, I realized it is an issue, it is a problem that I may need to explain to them. How do I explain to those people? The best way is just I write down their fictions or whatever, I write down their stories as fiction, then people may understand: Oh, I see, that’s why they’d rather living here in London or in oversea, not in their homeland, having this kind of very sad life, but they are still keen to live in this way, rather than living in their hometown happily, in mainstreams society’s views.

So, for that reason, I started to think of structuring this book, this novel. At the beginning, it was just random, there’s about twenty or thirty characters, or people from reality I have known, initially there were about thirty people. So I made a list of all each of (those) people in the reality, I knew, I met, and I knew all of them and their stories, maybe just ABCDEFG, but they all have their different stories, different respective views of life, and everything. They all have different backgrounds. So from those thirty characters, now I have to cut them off, for example, combine A and B together, or I just delete C, and then I may enlarge D by filling other stories into his story... By doing that, finally, I think after that, my list was shortened to about fifteen characters, and finally when you read this book, there’s about twelve or thirteen characters as the main story and the main characters, apart from the supporting roles, there are a few supporting roles as well.

So finally there’s fifteen characters, then for those fifteen characters and their stories, I began to think, OK, so how could I combine them all together? As one book, one story, rather than fifteen short stories. They are all separated, they are not knowing each other for sure, but I need to make them know each other, in some kind of way. Anyway I just need to find the link, to link all those fifteen characters, fictional or realistic, or whatever, I just want to link them altogether, like the necklace. There are fifteen pearls, and I need to link them together with a single line.

So what’s the line? What’s the story line? I was thinking about. I was thinking about it for two or three days, three days later, my friend, Amazon China’s Executive, he finished the London Book Fair already, and he’s going to leave, so he gave me a call when he was at Heathrow airport. He said: ‘How about your writing? I remember you told me last time, you want to write a book about it?’ I said: ‘Yes I’m still struggling to think, you know, I still couldn’t find that line.’ And he said: ‘Why don’t you just start to write? Maybe the line will appear itself?’

I said: ‘No no no, wait, I think I need to think about it carefully, before I write it. I need to figure out how do I connect all those characters together, then I could start to write.’ Then he said: ‘OK, I am looking forward to reading it.’

He said that in 2005, and then finally when this book was written and published in China properly, it was 2015, that’s ten years later, exactly. But I think both he and I, we never realized that it would take such long name, ten years to produce a book. Even though I wrote it in 2005, this book, but it couldn’t be released or published in China, for some reason, I don’t know, maybe because I was just being too lazy to find a publisher, also another main reason is, Chinese publishers, they don’t think this is a serious problem, they don’t see the value of this fiction at all, -- as we English will do. I’m not talking about I am English, I just say, usually, in England, maybe they are more interested in this subject rather than Chinese. Because at that time, you know, the Chinese main society, those publishers, those ones who live on the top range of the society, they can never imagine what important it is about the illegal immigrants, what’s the matter to do with them? They don’t see any point of me writing it, even. Now maybe they will start to realize, yes, they are such kind of people living there, but they’re never being aware of it before.

So I would say, happily, that finally one day, I found the line, the link, the theme, the theme will connect all those fifteen fictional or non-fictional characters, that’s Chinatown. That’s Chinatown. So basically, I invented the Chinatown, in this book. The Chinatown was never existing in this book, but I invented it as Chinatown. And in this Chinatown, complete fictitious Chinatown, there are fifteen characters, from all sides of London, all part of this society, they live in this fictitious Chinatown.

However, there’s another world of Chinatown, which we all know, is like a tourist point, the Chinatown next to Leicester Square in central London. That’s an official name of Chinatown; that’s exactly Chinatown in our reality. However, there’s another Chinatown which is complete fictional, fictitious, that’s inside my book, and all my characters living in this non-existing, fictitious Chinatown, even though all their lives, and all their stories are true.

Interviewer: So you created a world for them, but this world is completely imagined by you. Why do you want to put them into this world, whose world you think it is? Is this the Chinatown scene in your heart?

Yilin Zhong: There’s no such thing called Chinatown...(unfinished sentence, interrupted)

Interviewer: Like you as a foreign student, after coming to London, do you think the Chinatown at Leicester Square is not your imagined community of China, therefore you imagined another Chinatown?

Yilin Zhong: No.
(In Chinese): How do I answer your question? I need to answer your question with repeating your words first, right?

Interviewer: Yes.

Yilin Zhong: OK. I came to the UK, London, in 2002, of course as all Chinese will do, probably the first tourist point we will go to is Chinatown, and Trafalgar Square, Leicester Square, all those points. When I firstly went to Chinatown in 2002, the first month or first week of me being in London, I went to Chinatown, and I saw all those Chinese restaurants, it’s a kind of tricky feeling, you know, it’s quite, er...how to say that, it’s quite tricky. Because clearly you know, this is not in China, but all these Chinese symbols are there, they have the Chinese restaurant, they have all the Chinese characters on the title, and the advertisement boards, and everyone walking on this street, some of them are tourists, some of them are English, and most of them are Chinese.

So you wouldn’t tell much difference, of course there are still some difference, of course, for example the architecture, the building style, everything is still British, but all those Chinese restaurants and all those passengers, those Chinese people walking along the street, you can tell it’s still part of China. You cannot see much difference between them, and when you actually get into a Chinese supermarket, or you get into a Chinese restaurant, and you sit down, having a meal, everything is the same. There’s not much difference between a Chinese restaurant in London, and a Chinese restaurant in China. Well, maybe there are some taste different, but there are still not much difference you could see. So it’s quite a kind of, er... how to say that, a kind of, you would find it fresh, you would find it excited, and you would find it something vivid, and recall your homesick. All those kind of mind telling.

But, it is Chinatown, but it’s not China; we all know that, everyone knows that. So, it is a real Chinatown, but it is not a real scene of China. It is exact a scene of China, but it is not a real scene in China. I hope you understand this paradox.

So even though this Chinatown is officially called Chinatown, it’s not really Chinatown, it’s not really China. It’s imagination of our, all our Chinese people or oversea(foreign) people, we imagined it as a China, as a Chinatown, as a part of China. So it’s complete an imaginary community, that’s what we know, it’s one of literary theories, the imagined community.

(End of part 1/8)

To be continued.

Written by Yilin Zhong