why Yu Hua writes
Note: this was originally published on the old blog on wordpress.com on 25/1/2025.
One of the books I bought back in China this last trip was a collection of essays by Yu Hua. One of the essays is entitled Why I Write (《我为何写作》), dated 13 November 1997. Two paragraphs in this essay grabbed my attention. I’ll present them as I always used to, copying out the Chinese and then adding my translation.
The first was this:
"我就是那时候开始写作的。我在“牙齿店”干了五年，观看了数以万计的张开嘴巴，我感到无聊之极。当时，我经常站在临街的窗前看到在文化馆工作的人整日在大街上游手好闲地走来走去，心里十分羡慕。有一次我问一位在文化馆工作的人，问他为什么经常在大街上游玩。他告诉我：这就是他的工作。我心想这样的工作倒是很适合我。于是我决定写作，我希望有朝一日能够进入文化馆。当时进入文化馆只有三条路可走：一是学会作曲；二是学会绘画；三就是写作。对我来说，作曲和绘画太难了，而写作只要认识汉字就行，我只能写作了。
It was at that time I started to write. I’d been working in the “tooth shop” for five years, and had seen tens of thousands of open mouths. I was bored to death. Back then I would often stand at a window facing the street watching the staff of the Culture Centre walking up and down the street all day, idly coming and going. I was extremely envious. Once I asked a staff member of the Culture Centre why they were often out walking on the street. He told me that was his job. Back then there were only three ways to get in to the Culture Centre: One was to learn how to write songs; the second was to learn how to paint pictures; the third was to write. For me, writing songs and painting pictures were too difficult, but writing only needed you to know Chinese characters. All I could do was write."
Sounds awfully flippant for somebody who has gone on to be one of China’s biggest writers. Author of To Live, which Zhang Yimou turned into the film of the same name starring Ge You and Gong Li.
In the next paragraph he writes about how, after 15 years writing, he knows how writing can change a person:
"[……]会将一个刚强的人变得眼泪汪汪，会将一个果断的人变得犹豫不决，会将一个勇敢的人变得变得胆小怕事，最后是将一个活生生的人变成了一个作家。
[writing] can fill a staunch person’s eyes with tears, can make a resolute person hesitant and indecisive, can turn a brave person into a coward, and finally can turn a living person into a writer."
He explains that he’s not trying to denigrate writing, but to explain the importance of literature and writing to a person. He goes on to write:
"因为文学的力量就是在于软化人的心灵，写作的过程直接助长了这样的力量，它使作家变得越来越警觉和伤感的同时，也使他的心灵经常地感到柔弱无无援。他会发现自己深陷其中的世界与四周的现实，而且还会格格不入。
Because literature’s strength lies in softening people’s souls, and the writing process directly fosters this strength, at the same time as it makes the writer become more and more alert and sentimental, it also makes their soul often feel soft and helpless. They’ll discover the world they’re deeply in and the realities around them, and still feel out of their element."
I’m not 100% sure I’ve really got those last couple of sentences, but it is getting late.
It is quite a shock to go from reading this casual, flippant, “Oh yeah, I was bored pulling teeth and liked the look of the casual life at the Culture Centre, thought writing songs and painting were too hard, so I became a writer” to this intense examination of how writing changes the very core of your being.
For those who need the book's details:《余华散文》，余华者，北京：作家出版社，2023, these quotations taken from pages 217 and 218