Interview with Becky Ances

Today I’m thrilled to chat with true seven year laowai Becky Ances. Resident of China since 2009, she keeps a blog, Writer. Traveler. Tea Drinker. and has a separate blog focuing on badminton, Badminton Becky.

ProfilePic

I’ve read her blog for several years, and she was kind enough to answer some questions about how she came to China, how she feels it’s changed and her the love of her life, badminton:

Where are you from and why did you come to China?

I’m from New Hampshire in America and I came to China in 2009. I originally came for only 6-months but I haven’t left since!

What was your first school like? Where did you live and what are your impressions today compared to back then?

My first school was a public university in the boonies. It was located in a small city a few hours south of Shanghai. There were very few foreigners and nothing in English outside the school. Not even a McDonalds or anything when I first arrived. For the first few months I could only eat at the cafeteria where I could just point at food because there wasn’t even picture menu at any of the restaurants. I realized pretty quickly that I would need to learn basic Chinese just to feed myself!

My impressions of China were, of course, different back then, but I don’t know how much of it is changes in China versus changes in me. Everything was so chaotic, confusing and different when I first arrived. I remember arriving in Shanghai and just being blown away at the small shops, the restaurant owners cutting meat on big butcher blocks on the street corner, the people zipping around on bikes and cars driving crazy, etc. Now when I go to Shanghai I can’t believe how modern and international it is. To me, Shanghai is basically “the west” where I can buy English books and shop at Old Navy. Traffic seems orderly compared to smaller cities and the people cutting meat on the street corners are still there but now I just see them as a delicious, cheap meal, not anything strange or exotic. But new foreigners arriving in Shanghai now are always shocked by how “foreign” it all is.

[pullquote align=”full” cite=”” link=”” color=”” class=”” size=””]Long term foreigners often fall into the trap of “nostalgia-izing” the past.[/pullquote]

Long term foreigners often fall into the trap of “nostalgia-izing” the past. In a “you think that’s strange, well when I first got here…..” It doesn’t matter if you arrived in the 80’s, 90’s or the 2000’s. And people that are arriving today will say the same thing five years later. China changes pretty quick. But I think foreigners who live here and explore the culture change even quicker. So we have a warped sense of “change.”

Are you still teaching English?

Yep. I’m one of those rare foreigners who actually loves my job. I have only taught at IMG_0400universities because I like the teaching fluent speakers and having real conversations with them. I’m not the kind of teacher that uses the textbook.

I also confess I love my working hours: 14 hours a week. I also get four, yes four months paid holiday, another perk I love. University teachers get paid less than other teachers, but my salary is more than enough to live and travel on, so I am happy with it. I have always valued my free time over money.

Some foreigners rank themselves in a hierarchy, with ESL teachers at the bottom. How do you feel about this? Do you feel that ESL teachers are often deserving of ridicule due to the ease of employment and the shady characters it attracts?

I do, haha. And I say that as someone who often has her own reputation varnished because of this stigma. Of course that is not to say every foreign teacher is a miserable dumb sod who drinks every night and bangs everything with a short skirt. The foreign teachers I am friends with are capable, interesting people with their own passions and hobbies and lives. But I’ll admit that even I fall into this stereotypical thinking and try not to make friends with a lot of foreign teachers because they are often negative, unwilling to assimilate into Chinese culture and basically a drudge to be around .

If you meet a foreigner who has lived in China for 5 years and still can’t speak Chinese, it’s probably an English teacher (or a business man who works in Shanghai, haha.)

What was your job prior to coming to China? How did it compare to ESL?

The job right before was working at a small book publisher. Before that I was reporter for my local paper and before that I was a magazine editor. All my jobs were somehow related to writing, which is my passion but doesn’t really pay the bills. I’ve always been more of a “job” person, not a “career” person because to me traveling and writing are the most important things, not a huge paycheck or a fancy title.

[pullquote]I have always valued my free time over money.[/pullquote]

None of my jobs were related to ESL, and honestly, I used to be quit shy. I decided to use teaching as a chance to help improve my public speaking because it was a skill I wasn’t very good at before. I’ll admit that I never expected to be good at teaching or enjoy it. But I’ve found I really like introducing new ideas to my student and hearing what they have to say about things. Since it’s been 7 years my earliest students have gone on to get married, have children etc. It’s awesome to see them grow and change from cute little students into mature, capable adults. It’s an added benefit of teaching I never expected.

What cities have you lived in and what about them do you like?

I lived in a small boonie city called Lin’an for 5 years and Xiamen for two. Lin’an was where I cut my teeth on China, and of course I have really good memories of my time there. I liked how it wasn’t an international city, nor a polished place. To do anything you needed to speak Chinese and if you wanted friends, you needed to befriend Chinese people. Basically, it was a sink or swim situation.

But Xiamen is ahhhhh-mazing. It’s one of those cities you visit and you think how awesome it would be to live there, but then I DO live here. It’s a sub-tropical climate with lakes dotting the city, palm trees swaying in the breeze. In the middle of the city are mountains and gardens and hundreds of hiking trails. You can climb a mountain in the morning and swim in the ocean in the afternoon. Or, just laze all day away sitting at a café, drinking tea. It’s an amazing environment and the people are just as friendly and interesting as the environment. Also, it’s one of the rare cities in China that has blue skies and “clean” air. (For China.)

You have traveled quite a bit in China. Could you tell me about any particularly favorite places?

I’m lucky that my job gives me 4 months paid holiday every year, so I’ve been all over. Last summer I went to Gansu and Xinjiang and despite getting heat stroke a few times, it was beautiful and memorable. I climbed the dunes of the Gobi desert, saw the sunset on the famous rainbow rocks of Danxia and drank tea with a bunch of Uyghurs in a 100-year-old tea house. It was an amazing place.

I’ve climbed a lot of mountains in China, but Yellow Mountain is my favorite. I happened to go during a cold snap when temperatures were -22 C (-8 F) and a lot of people canceled their trip. The mountain was quiet and I walked for long stretches of time without seeing anyone and the silence and the stillness was unforgettable.

My favorite province is Yunnan. I’ve been there several times and even lived in Kunming for a month one summer and I really like the cultures and nature of Yunnan. They have a lot of ethnic minority groups in Yunnan so the people look different and traditions, cultures and food have a lot of variety. Also, Yunnan has a bit more untamed natural scenic places than other provinces, especially the overcrowded east coast.

As an American in China, do you ever second-guess your actions because you think people view you as representative of America? If so, could you give us an example?

Not exactly second guess myself, but I do feel a responsibility. I know that I represent America even though I have no right to. Most Americans don’t even have a passport so the fact that I live abroad makes me different from the majority of my countrymen, so I’m not an accurate representation. But as the only American a lot of people will meet, they take my ideas and my behavior and ascribe it to all Americans.

Like, I don’t like spicy food. Not even a little. And because of that I’ve heard my students say “American’s don’t like spicy food.” I try to correct them (“No. I don’t like spicy food, other Americans are different.”) but it’s kinda an uphill battle and not worth the fight. The funniest inaccuracy was when one student told me “Americans are really good at speaking other languages,” and I asked her why she thought that (seeing as how we are famous for NOT speaking other languages) and she said her first foreign teacher spoke 3 languages. So I know whatever I do, I leave an impression, but I don’t think about it too much. I hope that I’m just a decent person and if they decide I represent all things American there’s kinda nothing I can do about that.

You came to China in 2009, which pretty much makes you a seven-year laowai. What changes have you seen?

It’s really hard to say. I think China has opened up a lot, gotten more international and the young people are getting savvier and savvier every year. (When I started I had no openly gay students. Now I have several every year, though it remains a taboo subject with older people.) I seen technology improve, like cell phone saturation and apps like Wechat now take care of every aspect of my life, while restrictions on the world’s internet has gotten tighter. On a mpore personal level of culture and how people act it’s hard to be sure what changes are actually China’s doing and what changes are because of me and my deeper understanding of the culture and language.

 Has anything changed for the worse? Some people think China is becoming increasingly Maoist under Xi Jinping. Have you seen any of this firsthand?

 Yeah, internet restrictions have gotten a lot worse and VPN crack-downs have become more frequent and successful. That’s one of the biggest frustrations. Also, visa requirements have gotten worse. If you don’t change jobs you don’t need to meet the new requirements, but I changed schools two years ago and I had to go through a ton of extra rigmarole for the same exact job.

Besides that the only real affect I’ve seen is a lack of gifts from the school. At my old school for instance every holiday they would always give us a little something. Like, moon cakes for Mid-autumn festival, or zong-zi for Dragon Boat Day. But that had to stop when Xi Jingping started his anti-corruption campaign. Since I work for a government school those gifts were classified as “bribes” and they had to stop giving them, haha. Other than that I haven’t personally noticed anything else.

When I went to China in 2008, the internet filter was somewhat lax. Tor worked, for example, and Facebook wasn’t blocked. Jump ahead to now…do you think the lack of Western social media is such a bad thing?

I could go on a rant about western medias portrayal of China and how inaccurate it is in general, but I won’t. ;) While I’m not a fan of western media in respects to China, I am a fan of open information and availability. So I do think lack of access is a big deal.

The good thing is I’m friends with a few dozen students on Facebook because VPN’s aren’t a big secret and as internet restrictions get tighter and tighter people need workarounds just to get to basic websites. So more people now are regularly jumping the Great Wall than when I first got here but it’s because they need to. Although western search engines are still not used that often by my Chinese friends or students. So, even if they use a VPN, they use a filtered search engine like Baidu.

What do your Chinese friends think of the Great Firewall and censorship in general? Are they able to understand what’s going despite the censorship?

 Most of my Chinese friends have VPN’s and facebook and all that. Students are a bit different. They might have VPN but they don’t quite have the level of social awareness my friends do. Like, when Google was finally banned a few years ago they all knew it was banned. It was big news not totally censored in China, but they didn’t know why. So even if they have access to banned sites, they don’t always know where to go or what to look for information they might not know. (You don’t know what you don’t know, right?) Some are savvy enough to really dig deep, but most don’t.

Has the perception of foreigners changed? Or, does it depend on where you live, i.e. a small town versus a city?

100% depends on the place you live. In my former boonie city Lin’an I was always the center of attention wherever I went because there were so few foreigners. In many cases it was a good thing, I’d get free stuff, VIP tables, stuff taken care of for me, etc. But many times it was a bad thing. Like dating. A lot of Chinese guys thought they couldn’t even talk to me because “foreign women only like rich and powerful guys” or “Foreign women only date western men” or “foreigners only speak English.” Stuff like that.

But in Xiamen it’s different. We are a small city with a relatively small foreign population (I heard about 10,000 including foreign students) but Xiamen people are so much friendlier, or, I don’t know, more open to foreigners. There is a little staring and secret picture taking, but not on the level it was in Lin’an or even Hangzhou. They are generally just less “impressed” with foreigners here and I like that and I can just be friends with them without being fawned all over.

Since you have taken the HSK, could you tell us what levels you’ve taken? How did you prepare?

I took HSK 5 three years ago and almost passed. ;) I had no reason to take it, just as a “challenge” to myself. The few months before I took it I had a tutor help me study and did practice tests. Nothing revolutionary or especially exciting in the world of study. My teacher said that according to my practice tests I should have passed easily. I just get really nervous with tests (you should see my miserable SAT scores, haha.)

Do you feel that the HSK is a good measure of one’s Mandarin ability?

Hell to the NO! Anyone who has studied for HSK while living in China quickly realizes the vocabulary and the writing styles are not fit for everyday life in China. Also, the levels, compared to other countries language tests, is easier. Level 4 is considered “fluent” (enough to enroll in college with Chinese students studying entirely in Chinese) but you would know that is barely fluent enough to get through your daily life, much less study in Chinese. I’m fluent, but low level fluent and I think I would have a good shot at passing HSK 6 right now (the highest level). So I think it doesn’t accurately reflect your actual ability.

What China books do you enjoy? Why?

I read a lot of books about China and like the standard ones. Anything by Peter Hessler, Wild Swans is still one of my favorites as is the Empress Cixi book (both by Jung Chang). I like to read memoirs about people’s times in China, and I read one interesting book about an American mom bringing her adopted daughter back to China for a few months to learn more about the culture. (But I forget the name, haha.)

Are there any China blogs you can’t miss?

I’m a big fan of Jocelyn’s “Speaking of China.” I date Chinese guys and while there is a small community of us western women that date Chinese men, Jocelyn, and her blog, is the grand mommy of us all. Also, I’ve known Jocelyn personally for a few years and she’s really nice. Other blogs I like is “Living a Dream in China” by Sara Jasksola and others written by western women like me who have made their home in china. Another one I think is hilarious is wuluwu.me. It’s just an animated gif with a sentence related to China, but it cracks me up.

What attracted you to badminton?

Ah! My favorite topic! Hahaha. I wish I had some dramatic story, but the truth is kinda Becky Cup 021mundane. I started because my friends played and I had the night free. But I kept going and going, and as summer came, and the temperatures rose, I kept going. I’m not a sports girl at all (I hate sweating actually) and badminton halls are not only un-air conditioned but they don’t even have fans or any open windows because you can’t have a breeze disturb the shuttles movement. So it got hotter and hotter to a point where my hair was so wet with sweat it looked like I had just taken a shower. But I STILL went. That’s when I realized I loved the sport.

I got a coach because I really had no idea how to play the game (Americans think badminton is a backyard activity kids enjoy playing, but it’s not at all. That’s like saying shooting hoops in your driveway is the same as playing on a basketball team.) With my awesome coaches help I improved really quickly and became pretty obsessed with it. I now play five times a week. I’d play more but the other two days I’m busy and can’t, haha.

I play for playing sake but there have been a ton of different “accidental benefits” of playing the sport. It’s also a window into a large part of Chinese culture I was not familiar with. China is the world leader in badminton for a really long time. China has the most top players and world championships etc. So of course, it’s a big part of culture and a lot of people play.

Through playing badminton I’ve really widened my social circles and started to explore this large part of modern Chinese culture. Also, as my badminton play improves so does my Chinese language skills. My original group of friends speaks English, but besides that no one else does. My coach, and my new group, can’t speak English at all. So I’m forced to speak Chinese all the time, which has turned out to be a good thing.

Do you play purely for enjoyment or do you play to win?

Play to WIN!! Badminton is perfect for my competitive streak. Luckily, my coach picked up on it quickly and is training me to win, not just to play.

Actually, for the first few weeks of practice I was really nervous and intimidated by my coach. He is one of the top players in Xiamen city and I was a virtual newbie. I thought teaching me was super boring. But I a few weeks in I managed to trick him with a good shot that he couldn’t return. The next shot he gave me was way too advanced and fast for me, which he knew. That’s when I knew he was the best coach for me. He should have just let me had a good shot and that was that. But his pride was hurt and he wanted to kind of “keep me in my place” and prove how much better he is. Some people might hate that, but that’s exactly the type of person I need to help me. He’s as competitive as me, so I really trust him to help me not just play well, but win.

To show how obsessed I am, I’ll tell you what I did for my 40th birthday this weekend. I hosted my own badminton tournament called “The Becky Cup.” I made my own logo (a dragon with a badminton racket because I’m born year of the dragon), got medals made, shirts made, hired a professional photographer and somehow managed to get about 30 people to play! It had a few organizational hitches, and I realized I shouldn’t be the host AND a player, but it was soooooo much fun.

Do you think you might leave China one day or is it your home for the foreseeable future?

I used to be one of those 5-year/10-year plans kind of people, but I’m not anymore. Now I take things one year at a time. Basically I’ll stay in China as long as I keep enjoying it. I know that I can make a living anywhere teaching English so I’ll just kinda go with my feelings of when I am tired of living here.

And honestly, this whole badminton thing has opened up a whole new aspect of life in China for me. Living in China has lost the luster of “Chinese new-ness.” But it’s the top country in the world for badminton, and as it is something I really am dedicating myself to, there’s no reason for me to go to any other country.

To wrap it up, is there anything else you’d like to talk about?

 You’re not bored of me yet?! I think I’ve said enough, hahaha.

Becky Cup 063

A huge thanks to Becky for doing this interview. Do yourself a favor and check out her blog or follow her adventures with badminton.

Be sure to follow her on Facebook!

Interview with Tim Gurung

Books by the great TIM I GURUNGToday I’m interviewing Tim Gurung. A former Gurkha, Tim Gurung is the author of eight books. His latest is The Atonement: A Celebration of Women. I recently had the privilege to chat with Tim about his life, writing and his charity, ISSLCARE.

Tell me a bit about where you’re from, how you came to Hong Kong.

I am originally from Nepal, I came to Hong Kong as a 17 years old Gurkha soldier in 1980 and I have been living here since then.

What made you want to stay in Hong Kong?

After voluntarily retiring from the British Gurkhas in 1993, I got a job at an international firm in Hong Kong that required me to travel all over China and my future was firmly set for Hong Kong.

I personally think that Hong Kong is one of such places in this world where if you really want to work hard, enough opportunities will be given, and I happened to be one of the luckiest ones as a testament of that saying. My entire adult life has been spent in Hong Kong, it is my home and I have no plan to leave it anytime soon.

Do you visit Nepal often? Have you seen major changes since you were little, and if so, what?

Sorry, I haven’t been to Nepal for the last twenty years and I am sure that a lot has changed since then. But from what I have heard or read, especially in the actual development of people, society and the nation itself, sadly it said to be much more worsened and not much improvement. And that is quite predictable too.

You write to support your charity ISSLCARE. What benefits for Nepal have you seen firsthand, as a result of ISSLCARE?

ISSLCARE is still in a very early stage, it has ambitious goal but it still has a long way to go. It helps provide scholarship to poor families so more children can go to school, we support the children until he/she reaches on grade ten, and we are currently supporting 27 children through 8 schools.

My ultimate goal at ISSLCARE is to help spread the campaign in such an extent that one day it will be able to cover the whole nation and we will be able to help many children. Writing is my passion, helping others is my compassion and I do both from the bottom of my heart.

You publish your books yourself. Have you considered the traditional publishing route?

I am a very simple, honest and independent type of guy, I want to do things on my own way and I am really passionate about my works. I decided to go with self-publishing for that reason alone and I am to talk straight from my heart, I really hate dealing with people, especially to those condescending ones. I am also only writing for my charity, I don’t write for money or fame and I don’t have to sell millions. [pullquote align=”right” cite=”” link=”” color=”” class=”” size=””]I don’t write for money or fame and I don’t have to sell millions. [/pullquote]

Most importantly, I can afford it, I don’t have to beg anyone and do whatever I want to do with my writing. I have no plans whatsoever of finding agents or approaching big publishers, I am happy with what I am doing and I will keep doing it until I like it. It is the process not the final result that fascinates me and I am extremely happy with my current situation.

What advantages does self-publishing give you that traditional publishing doesn’t?

As a self-published author, we have full control along the whole process of publishing from manuscript, cover, what to put inside, printing, and distribution and to the launch date. We also have full control on marketing and do make necessary planning as we like. Of course, self-published writers have our own problems as well as limitations and we cannot move the market as the big boys do. But if your goal is simple and reasonable like mine, I think, it is the best way to move forward and that is precisely what I am doing and enjoying it.

Out of the books you’ve published, are any of them more personal to you than the others?

As the old saying goes, books are like our babies and I have no reason to see them differently. However, I am not sure why but I admit, I can hardly read my own books after they are published and I don’t have a favorite. Having said that, if I really have to point out, I would say a few – OLD MEN DON’T CRY is a book I wrote for Hong Kong, THE CURSED NATION was written for Nepal, and A TREE CALLED TENALPA was based on migration and discrimination that had been an integral part of my own life.

Which book was the most difficult to write?

Definitely OLD MEN DON’T CRY – it was not only a historical book which required a lot of researching works but it was also a very sad story to write and I wanted to pour all the pains and sorrows of my own life as well into it. It was also a very long book and it covers the entire life journey of the protagonist from his childhood to old age. I also had to memorize many events that had affected Hong Kong and I tried to present Hong Kong as one of the main characters of the book. Since it was also written for one main purpose, my humble gift to Hong Kong, it had a lot of emotions attached to it and I had to express them in the proper way as well.

Do you feel that writing a difficult book ultimately proves more worthwhile on an artistic level?

Yes, definitely. The harder you try for a book, the more satisfying it will be at the end and I think it applies to each and every aspect of our life. I read somewhere on the paper people were lamenting about lack of epic novels about Hong Kong and I decided to write one. My book OLD MEN DON’T CRY is for Hong Kong. Unlike other books written about Hong Kong, which are mostly either about tycoon, money and high life, and mostly written from a western point of view from top to bottom of the society, my book is about ordinary people like you and me and deal with our daily problems of the society. This book gives a completely different perspective of life in Hong Kong, it deals with our traditions and I have used real places and streets to give more authenticity to the story. I sincerely do hope that one day it will become one of the important books of Hong Kong and many people will be able to read and associate themselves with it. If I can achieve that, that will be greatest moment of my life.

Why did you start writing?

As I have been working really hard since 17, I never wanted to work for money after I turned fifty and instead I wanted to do something meaningful in the latter half of my life. Although I have spent my entire adult life in Hong Kong, I have never forgotten about my root back in Nepal and I always wanted to do something for my homeland. As I have already said above, writing was my passion and helping others was my compassion, why not I combine them together and uses them as a solution of my ongoing dilemma. Therefore, I decided to establish a charity and use my writing to help finance it. So, here I am and doing my utmost best to fulfill both all at the same time.

Which books/authors do you admire? Any in particular that have inspired you?

I am mostly inspired and fascinated by Nobel laureates, I have even tried to read at least a book from them and the pursuit is still going on. But to be honest with you, some of the books I read were just terrible. Maybe I chose the wrong book, I don’t know. The most books I read from one author was three and it was from Salman Rushdie. In other cases, I can only read one book from any authors and I wasn’t impressed by many authors either.

What are you working on at the moment?

Since I was fully preoccupied with book promotion for the entire 2015, I didn’t even write a single page for the entire year and I have to write 5 books all at once this year to clear it all out of my head. I am extremely busy writing for this year and hardly have time to do other things including book promotion. Hopefully I can finish them by end of the year and I have a big project for 2017. I am writing a true Gurkhas book, visiting Singapore, Brunei, Malaysia, Burma, India, Nepal, UK and Europe for research works and the book should be ready to be published in 2018. Then, I think, I will take a rest.

If I were going to write my first book tomorrow, what advice would you give me?

Start promoting your book at least a year before you start writing it, know your subject and readers well, hire professional editor and cover designer, and write it as a side job until you have become a well-known author. And if you don’t love or have passion for it, don’t write it.

In closing, is there anything else you’d like to say?

Writing is a very long, slow and assiduous journey, static shows only 10% authors make a decent living out of writing and the other 90% write for vanity. Books are not like other commodities like food, cloth and furniture, people don’t have to buy it as a daily necessity, and they mostly read books from famous authors. It is a novelty that people can live without and it needs a lot of hard work, perseverance and marketing to become a famous author. Self-publishing phenomenon also made dogs and cats authors and it is not that easy to stand out of that big crowd too. One must have a passion, heart and patience.

timigurung-07
Thank you very much, Tim, for giving me some of your time. You can find more about Tim Gurung and his books on the following sites.

http://www.timigurung.com

https://www.facebook.com/tim2gurung/

http://www.amazon.com/Tim-GURUNG/e/B00SQOI2MU

https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/13270239.Tim_I_Gurung

https://twitter.com/TimGurung

Thank you so much and all the best!
TIM I GURUNG/AUTHOR AT ISSLCARE – http://www.timigurung.com

Interview with Susan Blumberg-Kason on life in China, reverse culture shock and much more

About a year ago I first heard about a book called Good Chinese Wife: A Love Affair with China Gone Wrong, by Susan Blumberg-Kason. I saw Facebook posts about it, checked out the author’s blog and after reading the description on Amazon, I added it to my Wish List.

My Wish List is more like my To Be Read pile. It’s huge. Several months later as I was going through it, deciding which books to buy, I bought Good Chinese Wife.

All I knew about it was the description, so I was pleasantly surprised to see that she got married in Hubei province too; my wife is from Hubei. I saw a lot of familiar details in Good Chinese Wife, both from living in China and readjusting to life in the States, and Susan writes unflinchingly about her experiences.

Susan has a relationship with China that spans nearly two decades, and she was kind enough to answer some questions about her first trip to China, her recent visit, her relationship with her ex-husband and much more.

Could you describe your first trip to China?

Sure! I was seventeen and had just graduated high school. As chance would have it, one of my mother’s best friends was my English teacher that year. Mary had lived in Shanghai in 1980-81 and had been trying to bring a group of American students to China ever since she returned to the Chicago area. She finally got approval in 1988, which was the year I graduated high school.

Pictured: Susan (middle) in Nanjing on her first trip to China in 1988.
Pictured: Susan (right) in Nanjing on her first trip to China in 1988.

We left in mid-June for sixteen days in Beijing, Nanjing, Suzhou, Wuxi, and Shanghai. We were supposed to go to Hong Kong, too, but that would have made the trip prohibitively expensive. It was already $2000, which was a ton of money back then and thus made it difficult to find enough students to make the trip work. We ended up having nine adults and six students. Fortunately, I had saved $2000 from babysitting over seven years.

What impressions did you have about China prior to going there? Anything proven right? Proven wrong?

I had studied China during my sophomore year of high school and it seemed pretty utopic. Mao was still viewed as having done more good than harm. We learned that men and women were equal, people all made the same salary, and the environment was decent because there were few cars and most people rode bicycles everywhere. Back then, the only airline to fly from the US to China was CAAC. It didn’t have the best reputation, so we flew Canadian Pacific (now Air Canada) via Toronto and Vancouver to Beijing. I can still picture peering down at the green fields and dusty runways as we landed in Beijing. Apart from an old Soviet hotel there, we stayed in college and university dormitories in the other cities and were able to meet quite a few students. They were curious about the US, but seemed very happy in China. We ballroom-danced with the students and talked in the dorms’ common rooms. It seemed like men and women were equal and that people were fine with making the same salary. No one spoke badly about Mao or the Party. This was a year before Tiananmen and people seemed pretty content.

China was everything I had imagined and more. I went home and thought people there enjoyed life more than we did in the US.

You first went right before Tiananmen Square. When you returned after the protests, did you feel like China was a drastically changed place?

The next time I visited China was two years after Tiananmen. The atmosphere there was gloomier. I stayed in Nanjing with the tour guide from my first trip and still remember how difficult it was to call them from Hong Kong. I couldn’t use just any phone, but had to find a professor on my Hong Kong campus that had a phone that would connect to China. And when I called my tour guide in Nanjing, I had to dial an operator in China first, who didn’t speak any English. I had a year and a half of Mandarin by then and knew numbers and could understand when the operator repeated the numbers back to me.

Once in Nanjing, I stayed with Mr. Chen, his wife, and daughter in their small apartment. They also brought me to the countryside and to a smaller town to visit relatives over the New Year. On my first day, they took me to the public security bureau. If their neighbors saw a foreigner in their building and I wasn’t registered with public security, my friends could have gotten into trouble.

The students I met in Nanjing were all very nice and friendly, but there wasn’t that idealism and hope I’d seen in the students from 1988. In the 1990s when I went to China, most of the young people I met asked me to help them get out. In 1991, my dad and I spent an afternoon in Shanghai going to the US Consulate to talk to the visa officers about a friend’s cousin whose visa was denied. My parents also helped a young man in my first husband’s hometown to study in Chicago.

A couple months ago, you returned to the mainland for the first time in almost twenty years. What were your feelings leading up to the trip?

I had stayed away from Hong Kong for fourteen years after I left in 1998 and for a long time thought I would never go back because I wanted to keep my impressions in tact from my years of living there.

I had the same thoughts about China. I had spent quite a bit time there from 1988 to 1998 and I knew it had changed beyond recognition in many places. I wanted to remember the old times and thought that would all be erased if I went back. I can be very stubborn and sentimental sometimes! But when I learned about the World Congress on Art Deco that was to be held in Shanghai this past November, I thought that would be a perfect way to return! I would be surrounded by old buildings and would be learning about the past.

Twenty years later things have come full circle. Susan in Shanghai. November, 2015
Twenty years later things have come full circle. Susan in Shanghai. November, 2015

I went with my mom and her friend Mary, my high school English teacher who took me to China the first time back in 1988.

It goes without saying that there were changes. Did it stand out to you, how much has changed?

Shanghai has changed beyond recognition in many places, but because I spent 90% of my week there with the World Congress on Art Deco, I was fortunate to see some of the old buildings I knew from my earlier trips there. We stayed at the Peace Hotel, which was beautiful. I had been there twenty years ago, but it was a dump back then. So that change was something very positive.

Pudong was still under construction when I was last in Shanghai twenty years ago, and it’s nice to look at across the river, but I didn’t go to that area this time except when I traveled by taxi from the airport. Nanjing Road was ritzier this time around and it was fun to be a part of the crowds. Shanghai was always more developed than other Chinese cities back in the late 80s and the 90s, so I don’t think I really got to see the real changes in China since I didn’t go anywhere else on the mainland this time apart from Shanghai.

On my last trip, I went back to Wuhan University, where I used to work. The experience was bittersweet. On one hand, I felt at home. On the other, all my students have graduated. No one knows me, and I know I have left that life behind forever. Did you have a similar feeling, either on your return trip to China or your trips to Hong Kong?

I’m sure if I went back to Wuhan, I would feel the same way! I can’t imagine how much that has changed and I know that people I once knew at the Wuhan Conservatory of Music would probably be gone and no one would remember me there now.

Hong Kong is different because I’m in touch with most of the local friends I made 20-25 years ago. And I have lots of expat friends there, so whenever I go back I usually see 15-20 friends over a span of 3-4 days. And in Shanghai, I met up with a friend I knew in Hong Kong two decades ago. We hadn’t seen each other since 1995 or 1996. The wildest part of my Shanghai trip was sitting at a dinner one evening and talking to a woman at my table about our time in Hong Kong and China. It turned out we were friends 25 years ago and didn’t know it until we exchanged cards!

Changing the topic, when I read Good Chinese Wife, I didn’t know anything about it other than the basic plot. I hadn’t read a single review. I was pleasantly surprised to see that you also got married in a small Hubei town. Do you think you might return to Hidden River one day?

I never thought I would before I returned to China this fall. It seemed like that was from another lifetime. But this trip went really well, and I get along very well with my ex-husband and his new wife. So it wouldn’t be out of the question for me to go to Hidden River sometime with my son Jake. He hasn’t been to China yet, but is planning on it either this summer or in a few years when he’s in college. So that’s not out of the question. I would like to show Jake Hong Kong, too!

Do you think living in a small Chinese town has advantages over living in a big city? For instance, the foreign teacher recruiter at my first school sold us Wuhan as a “real Chinese city”. Do you agree that the less developed areas represent some kind of tourist-backpacker Shangri-La that is “real China”?

Definitely! I think you get to see a part of China that’s not prevalent in the mega-cities. In Hidden River, people stopped me on the street to talk or stared at me while I purchased fruit or something small like stamps or camera batteries. That happened in the large cities, too, but there was more curiosity in the smaller ones. I didn’t always like that, but it was something that always happened in the smaller cities and towns. I think it’s kind of the same with Hong Kong. Visitors can stay in Central, which is the main financial district, and never venture beyond the familiar. But are they really seeing the real Hong Kong? I don’t think so!

You’ve spent time in Hong Kong and the mainland. What stereotypes (if any) have you seen Hong Kong people express about mainlanders? Would you say they overall have a positive view of the mainland? Do they see their identity as distinct from the mainland?

I think people in Hong Kong are more upset with their government when it makes laws that whittle away at the Basic Law than with mainlanders.

Susan in Hong Kong. 1996
Susan in Hong Kong. 1996

When I lived in Hong Kong and studied political science, it seemed like most Hong Kong people didn’t really pay attention to politics. That has all changed since the Handover and people are now very much in tune with political affairs there. The Occupy movement is a good example. That would never have happened when I lived in Hong Kong. So I think because they speak out so much now, they might come across as critical of mainlanders. But I still think it’s mostly focused on the governments in Hong Kong and in China. There are some cases where Hong Kong people have focused their frustration against mainlanders. This is directed against daytrippers, or crowds of mainland shoppers that go into Hong Kong for a day to shop. But I think the real frustration is with the government that allows daytripping. (It has subsided in recent months and I didn’t see a ton of it when I was in Hong Kong in October and November.) Some people in Hong Kong post videos of mainlanders behaving badly in Hong Kong, but those cases are still pretty rare. When I go out with local friends in Hong Kong, they rarely, if ever, talk about mainlanders when we discuss local issues.

In Good Chinese Wife, your ex-husband complains that life in America is too boring compared to life in China. When you returned, did you feel that your life as missing a certain excitement that comes with living abroad? How did you cope?

It took ten years to get over my reverse culture shock! I had to be strong for Cai because he had such a difficult time with culture shock in the US, but it was hard on me, too. I think moving to a place like San Francisco helped because we could still live in a Chinese community, buy Chinese produce, and somewhat easily make friends who were from China or who had lived there or in Hong Kong.

Once I moved back to Chicago, I sought the same things: a home near a Chinese community, a place where my son could learn Mandarin, and Chinese movies and other cultural events. I’m trying to write a new memoir about raising my kids with Chinese culture. I think it’s important for my son Jake to know about his Chinese background. I have two small kids with my new husband and want them to know about their older brother’s culture, too.

Your ex-husband did not treat you kindly at times. Yet you stayed in the relationship. Why do you think people try to make abusive relationships work?

Abusive relationships are tricky because they are not horrible all the time. There’s a cycle of good treatment and bad treatment, so the person on the other end never knows when one or the other will happen. And there’s always a hope that if we just act a certain way, the treatment will turn good all the time and the bad treatment will go away. It never gets better, but that’s difficult to see when you’re in the middle of it. When children are involved, I think people feel they have to try to make it work for the sake of the children. I did that for a couple of years, but ultimately felt that Jake would be better off with one strong parent than with two parents who didn’t get along.

 

Have you had any contact with Cai’s parents since the divorce?

Not much. We’ve had a few Skype calls and I’ve sent them photo albums of Jake. I gave them my parents’ address in Chicago once many years ago so they could write to Jake and just stick the address on the envelope, but they only did that once. When Cai visits every 2-3 years, he takes videos of Jake and lots of photos to show his parents. It’s not ideal, but Jake will probably go to see them in the next few years.

 

You and Cai divorced when your son was little. Did you ever have a moment where you felt like you’d made a mistake and that you should give Cai another chance?

At first I did all the time. That was during the first six months after we split up. As contentious as our marriage was, as soon as I left him, he went back to being the nice, agreeable person I met twenty years ago. So it was hard to reconcile that with the person I was married to. But I’ve never felt that I’ve made a mistake. Cai and I are very happy in our new marriages and we can be better parents to Jake this way. Jake is now seventeen and is well-adjusted, happy, confident, and is a good student. I wouldn’t have been able to give him a calm home environment if I had stayed in that marriage.

Do you feel you’re a better person for having gone through that?

Yes. It’s made me a much stronger person and has given me courage to speak up when people around me are mistreated. I’m taking on my school district to get them to open up to other cultures. I also stood up against bullying at my son’s old middle school some years ago. In most of these cases, I’m speaking up for people who feel they cannot stand up. In some cultures, it’s not the custom to speak up. But that doesn’t mean people don’t want to be acknowledged and appreciated. And when kids are involved, they need adults to stand up for them. I think my experiences in China and Hong Kong have given me the strength and courage to do that.

In closing, is there anything you’d like to talk about that I didn’t cover above?

I think that’s it! Thank you so much for interviewing me. Your questions are different from many of the others I’ve answered in previous interviews, so it’s been great fun!


 

Big thanks to Susan for doing this interview. To learn more about Susan, check out her blog. You can also follow her on Twitter.

Her amazing memoir, Good Chinese Wife: A Love Affair with China Gone Wrong, is available at Amazon. You can read my full review here.

 

 

 

Interview with Ray Hecht on writing and his new book, “South China Morning Blues”

Let’s face it, if you’ve lived in China, then you know the question: why did you come to China? For some, the answer is a tall tale. For others, like me, the answer is pretty lame: via a university email list.

For author Ray Hecht, the answer is a psychedelic experience at Burning Man.

Author of Loser Parade411, The Ghost of the Lotus Mountain Brothel (which I reviewed here), and Pearl River Drama, his most recent book is South China Morning Blues. available now at the publisher’s website and for pre-order on Amazon.

I asked Ray his thoughts on writing, his inspiration for South China Morning Blues and much more:

Can you recall a single instance that inspired you to be a writer or is it something that you’ve always had an attraction to?

I can’t recall a specific incident, it’s something that developed slowly. I originally wanted to be an artist before I wanted to be a writer. I felt like writing would be a good thing superfluously in my teens, and tried some stories. It was in college – late years in college in my twenties – I decided to study film screenwriting. I remember at 23 for some reason I vowed to write a novel a year. I didn’t follow up on that particular pace, but I have been writing seriously ever since.

Do you work on a specific schedule, where you write every day?

I mainly like to write in the middle of the night, but life doesn’t always let me. Usually I do first drafts after midnight. Then, next day at noon to the afternoon I might slowly do rewrites. It would probably be a good idea to get a consistent schedule, wouldn’t it!

Do you have a preferred writing program? (Word, text editor, etc.?)

Microsoft Word of course. I’ve even been studying some of the more intricate ways to edit and use the software to the best of my ability. Got a lot of typing shortcuts memorized. If it’s not too obvious to say, isn’t Word basically a must in this day and age?

You’ve mentioned that your love for ‘Trainspotting’ and ‘Snow Crash’. Could you tell us more about why you like these novels?

I love the danger and the outlaw attitude and the intelligence and the punk rock aesthetics and just how damn sexy it is. The novels are quite different, although they are both written in present-tense first-person narration. They are also both novels that exploded their respective writers on the scene.

‘Trainspotting’ by Irvine Welsh is magnificent literary achievement. The phonetic dialectic in writing, the grittiness of the drug culture, the power of each separate narrator’s unique voice. And yet, it is a free-flowing art work that explores all over without sticking to the rigidity of a narrow plot. Plus, it can even be darkly funny.

‘Snow Crash’ by Neal Stephenson is incredibly smart, a complex cyberpunk postmodern science fiction epic, and yet it doesn’t take itself too seriously and is often hilarious. I wish I was smart enough to write science fiction, but I’m not. I do highly admire Stephenson’s ability to be brilliant and at the same time be that cool.

What do your friends and family back in America think of you being a writer? Are they supportive? Do you ever find that some people just don’t understand what being a writer actually is?

I’ve been very surprised how supportive most of my old friends have been. Although, due to the nature of my writing topics I tend to keep family at arm’s length. Hopefully though, I impress everyone back home and most are proud of me.

However, I tend to think most people don’t understand what being a writer is at all. Rather, they imagine that being a writer is this thing to be. Especially people who want to be writers. Nobody seems to imagine what it is to write. Writing is a thing to do. Lots of people want to be writers; most people do not at all want to do any of the writing. That’s the part people always get so particularly wrong.

What was the impetus for writing South China Morning Blues?

To put it bluntly, I feel compelled to spend endless lonely hours writing. I needed subject matter to write about. I ended up in China, studied a bit, observed here and there, and the stories had to be told. That’s the short version.

While reading your book I saw a lot of familiar people and situations. Was it much the same for you, in that you were drawing from personal experience?

Some of it was personal. Much of it was hearsay. A whole lot never happened to anyone I know (that I know of) but things I only learned of online.

I’ll go ahead and reveal this right now: The drug stuff was based on personal experience. The sex stuff was not.

Were there any big scenes / characters cut at the editing stage?

Not too much. Perhaps there should have been. I rewrote and rewrote and polished, and perhaps this is bad writing advice, but I don’t like to cut out too much.

The presence of Chinese zodiacs. Did you know about that when you started or did it happen naturally?

I knew the basics of the Chinese animals, even when in America – though never a believer – I knew I was dog year and so on. When I set out to write this novel, I further researched. The acknowledgments gives a shout out to the book I mainly used.

Can’t say it happened naturally; it was a conscious choice from the beginning to structure the characters that way in the foundation and then see which way their stories would go…

In the book we see people struggle with identity and ambition. Danny says, “Back home, my old college classmates are surpassing me”, a feeling I can relate to. Do you think the ambition that many foreigners in China have — opening the business, becoming the great writer, etc. — is a way for them to keep up with their contemporaries?

Sure. But not only for expats, many people often feel anxious that the people from their past are surpassing them. With expats in particular, the contrast between one’s own weird life and those left in the home country can be stark. It’s a positive thing to healthily compete and start a business or forge a craft. At least expats in China tend to be interesting people (even if weird) and that can make for good goals. Being motivated by old cohorts surpassing, whatever works.

Going with the previous question, do you think there is something about China that attracts these kinds of people?

Good question. There is something about the expat phenomenon that attracts odd people. Odd in good ways and bad. Adventurous, or the dreaded loser stereotype, I don’t know. But there’s something there.

And why China of all places? I suppose it’s a big place, and it’s blowing up right now in world history. I’ve always liked that the economic growth puts it in this sort of limbo between undeveloped and developed, full of cheap outdoor restaurants and expensive shopping malls, and somehow that can suit certain people.

To close it out, do you have any advice for new writers who are reading this?

Going back to perceptions of the writer versus writing, I can only say to write. You’d think it would be obvious. Don’t fantasize about being this mythical creature called the writer. Be a person who writes. Then, when the writing gets good, whatever your niche may be, go out there and network and best of luck to you in getting published.

That is all.


Big thanks to Ray Hecht for doing this interview. To learn more about Ray, visit his website. You can also follow him on Facebook and Twitter.

South China Morning Blues is available now on the Blacksmith Books website and for pre-order on Amazon.