"Dirty Snow that Refuses to Melt"
An Interview with Can Xue in Changsha, China
Laura McCandlish, China Center

While the Pulitzer Prize winning author Gao Xingjian's "Soul Mountain" has been heralded for its probing introspective journey through the heart of China's varied landscape and tumultuous history, there is a fiercely imaginative woman who has been spinning self-proclaimed tales of "soul literature" in China since the early 1980s. Formerly a tailor by trade, Can Xue (whose real name is Deng Xiao-hua) only began writing fiction seriously in 1983. Can Xue (translated as "the dirty snow that refuses to melt") prolifically writes avant-garde short stories, novellas, novels and critical commentaries on writers who have influenced her Gothic magic, such as Jorge Luis Borges, Franz Kafka, and Dante. Her first Chinese work was published in 1985 while the English translation of Dialogues in Paradise, Can Xue's first collection of lyrical stories appeared in 1989, followed by two novellas, "Old Floating Cloud," in 1991, and finally, "The Embroidered Shoes Collection" of stories in 1997.

I first stumbled upon "Dialogues in Paradise" just before departing to study with the Friends World Program of Long Island University at Zhejiang University in Hangzhou last fall. When I returned to China the following summer, I flew from Hangzhou to Hunan Province's Changsha to witness Can Xue's spark firsthand through an interview. Can Xue has lived in Changsha since her birth in 1953. By 1957, her father as head of the New Hunan Daily "anti-Party clique" was condemned as an ultra-rightist and both of her parents were sent to labor reform camps in the countryside. In the post-Great Leap Forward shortages by 1959, Can Xue's entire family of nine lived in a cramped dark cell, suffering famine to the verge of death. When the Cultural Revolution commenced in 1966, her education permanently ceased after just completing primary school.

As I flew into Changsha that early morning, I was reminded that Can Xue, who clings to her individual artistic vision, ironically lives close to the heart of China's great proletarian revolution, near Mao Zedon's birthplace in neighboring Shaoshan. From the air, I noted Changsha's plotted squares of gold, red clay, and green fields with the yellow dust that coats the land and clings to Can Xue's fiction as a hazy reminder of the recent past. In my hour-long cab ride to Can Xue's apartment on the west side of the Xianjang River, I breathed in the fading stinky sweat smell of Changsha, rotting slowly under the smog and dust but still exerting a vitality through the mesh of farmers and bike pedalers with some slight skyscrapers in the city center.

Can Xue's street was teeming with a kaleidoscope of vendors selling gaudy fabrics, shoes and grocery affairs, with the standard boxed family restaurants and bicycles and carts streaming in every direction amid the occasional cars and cabs. I recognized the spirited woman instantly from the sidewalk as she sheepishly smiled behind her thick-rimmed glasses. Though almost 50, she has a youthful spunk, beaming as she shook my hand and greeted me in fluent English, though she humored my intermediate Mandarin attempts.

Her apartment was modest but spaciously comfortable. We began the interview immediately, sitting down to tea with two men in the sitting room, one with a sleek pony-tail who serves as Can Xue's agent/editor/designer. Can Xue's husband, who took over their tailoring business so that she could write professionally, was dutifully preparing an elaborate lunch in the kitchen.

After discussing some translations and criticism of her work, she said "My literature is soul literature, interested in the human soul, not the outside superficial world. I'm not interested in the politically superficial layer." Can Xue's focus is on the psyche, which has revolutionary implications given China's previous artistic climate of socialist realism. She strongly aligns herself with Kafka and Borges, both whom have been included in the magical realist tradition. Can Xue admitted, "I'm not so concerned with national problems."

The University of Iowa's International Writing Program named Can Xue an honorary fellow and brought her to the U.S. in 1992 to speak at 50 colleges and universities, including Harvard and UC Berkeley. She also was able to spend time in New York with her translators.

She holds a high opinion of her unique place in Chinese literature, yet she maintains a balanced humility. She does feel some women writers are threatened by her style, though she is friendly with Wang Anyi, possibly the most popular woman writer in China now. Can Xue explained that her friend is popular "because she is safer in her writing, but I disagree with how she promotes traditional Chinese culture. It's not necessarily a good thing to please everyone." Rather than focus on the socio-political in her works, Can Xue prefers to write of the irrational, proclaiming that "no one else is writing like me in China."

Rejecting the real world, she expels all outside forces to write of the internal soul world. "I believe if you want to change the world, you have to change your soul first," Can Xue added enthusiastically. Expressing distaste for contemporary American literature, she added, "What I write dances from my heart. The writer fights with the self, but you can't control yourself to write."

When Can Xue writes, she imagines a person behind her representing the conscious-controlling reason whom she must combat. The government deemed her autobiographical piece, "Beautiful Day in the South," to be subversive, but Can Xue argued that is just beautifully crafted literature. "The current government is an extension of much of the authoritarianism of traditional Chinese culture recreated. The leaders are like those from ancient times, from 1,000 years before. It just keeps getting worse and worse."

Can Xue emphatically subscribes to the belief that "there is another world parallel to this blunt reality, and this dream world is much bigger and deeper. The soul world is much more important than this realistic world. Chinese people connect to the spirit of the self. Self-realization has been an important concept from ancient times until today." Can Xue blends aspects of Chinese culture with modern Western influences in her works. "My works are like a plant," she explained, "my ideas grow up in the West but I dig them up and replant in China's deep soil, a 5,000-year rich history. My works aren't like those from the West or from China, bur rather my own creation. Chinese culture is from my heart. I was born here, I live here. I don't need to learn what is from my heart."

Following the interview, Can Xue's pleasantly domestic husband streamed from the kitchen with a steaming collage of dishes he set before us for a Hunan-style luncheon. Changsha is a city of many writers, yet Can Xue glimmers in the relative muted dust. Her gentle spark charms contagiously. This charm continued to exert its force on me as I skipped back to Hangzhou, star-gazing under the spell of Can Xue.