Ma Jian A Chinese Writer in London In the novel I have just completed, a sparrow flies into a hospital room and lands on the body of a comatose patient. It makes its nest in the young man’s armpit, and although free to return to its ‘natural habitat, it chooses not to. As the years pass, the bird slowly loses its feathers and forgets how to fly. In the end all it can do is perch on the bed and imagine the world it had once known. When Isic down at my desk every day, | feel a similar sense of dislocation and enfeeblement, [live in London, in self-imposed exile, but my thoughts continually travel back to the country I've chosen to leave. 1 first left China in 1987. My life in Beijing had reached a dead ‘end. The authorities had singled me out for persecution, criticizing ‘me for my bohemian, ‘dissident lifestyle and accusing me of ‘spir- iual pollution’. I was under constant police observation, and it became impossible for me to write in peace. So, with the help of some friends, I secured a passpore and escaped across the border to Hong Kong. Shortly afterwards my first book, Stick Out Your Tongue, was attacked by the government, and a ban was placed on. ‘the future publication of my books in mainland China. For the next ren years I lived in Hong Kong. It felt like China, but without the police. Although the main language there is ‘Cantonese, enough people spoke Mandarin for me to feel at home. Thad a close circle of friends ~ artists and writers from the main= land who, like me, had sought refuge in Hong Kong. My best friend was a long-haired poet who drank too much. I would listen ‘to his drunken ravings as he lay on the beach outside my door, and at night P'd weave them into the novel Lwas writing about doomed love and reincarnation. When my writing reached an impasse, Pd jump on a train to China in search of idcas. (Although my books ‘were banned and my moveinents were still monitored, I was nowwished.) Lhad my toe in China, but was free to come and go as T Jaws. I felt a sense of freedom I'd never ‘no longer bound by its | enjoyed before. i ‘When Hong Kong reverted to Chinese rule in 1997, this free- dom seemed to suddenly vanish. I could feel the prison walls Closing in again. I knew I had to leave. After a beef stint teaching Chinege literature at a German university, | moved to London. I Soon discovered, however, that I had exchanged one Kind of prison for another, Although [ was free from any political persecution oF interference, [had suddenly lost both the source of my inspiration inte means to communicate it, I spoke barely a word of English, and nothing I savin the clean, orderly strets ouside my aedow could be incorporated into my books. I was a writer with: out a voice or a home. ‘Cat off from the world I knew, my only choice was to retreat into mp memories. [started writing Red Dust, an account of three seats Lspenc in the rnid-1980s travelling chrough the dusty hintct- lands of China. I had never considered writing about this journey before ~ I wrote fiction, not travel books or autobiography. But living in London gave me the distance I needed to see this journey ina new light. realized how important it had been to me, and t0 ‘my understanding of China. First, though, Tneeded a desk the flar1 was living in had only ‘a bed aad an upright piano. I picked up a piece of hardboard that {found lying in the street and perched it on a small fold-up table thor td stolen from a tip. I squeezed this makeshift desk inco the seater of my small bedroom, and pasted the wall above it with naps of China and old photographs that Pd raken during the jour, hho, Before I sat down to write, I played tapes of Deng Lijun = 4 Tenwanese singet who was popular twenty Years ago ~ and leafed ‘rough the random jortings in my old, dog-eared notebooks. "To write the book, I had to close my eyes and retrace the jour- ney step by step. Sometimes Pd lie in bed and repeat outloud the ‘Conversations I'd had with people I'd met on the road ~ farmers, ws, migrant workers, Buddhist monks. I had to write the bool. the present tense and forget that { was now living in London. Then L went to buy a pint of milk from the local comer shop on Harrow Road, in my mind I was still crossing the Gobi Desert MAJIAN + 301or clambering up Mount Taishan. By the end of this imaginar journey, Iwas far more exhausted than I'd been when my origin journey had reached its end. Td not only had to traval into past, but also try to make sense of it. When the book was fi finished, a year and a half later, I was so desperate to travel with ‘my fect rather than my mind that I jumped on a coach Edinburgh and trekked through the Scortish Highlands for ‘month. ‘When I returned to London, I set to work on a novel that Pi started in Hong Kong ~ the one about the comatose patient that ‘mentioned at the beginning. This proved to be a much more: cule task than Red Dust. All the material for Red Dust was locke: in my memories, so I didn’t need to travel further than my desk: ‘write it. But fiction is a different matter. I wouldn’t enjoy writ fiction on a desert istand — [like to be in the thick of things. Eve day I need to see, hear, smell and touch things that fire my imagi- nation. I need to speak with the people that I write about, walk the same streets that they do. In London the characters Td created in Hong Kong became silent, black-and-white i could no longer hear them speak, or have a conversation with them. By then I had moved into a flat further down the Harrow Ro: ‘The area was much rougher, but the flat was twice as large, so now had a study to myself tried to create a ‘Little China” insid ‘my new room. I installed a satellite television and kept it tuned books that for years Pd had to store in boxes. I spent hours on telephone to family and friends in China, and latched on to a new Chinese acquaintances I made in London, inviting them to my flat as soon as I'd met them, as though we were long-lo friends. When an English friend of mine told me that a woman bi ‘met in Liverpool came from my hometown in China, I asked fo her aumber, phoned her up and begged her to come and visit next time she was in London. Whenever I passed a Chinese ‘on the street, I had to stop myself from running up to them, flin ing my arms around them and dragging them back home with n MAJIAN + 302(One advantage of living in London was that I was able ‘a clear picture of the political and social background of the boo ‘The comatose patient in the novel isa student who was injured in ‘the Tiananmen Massacre; his mother is a member of the outlawed Falun Gong sect. Since both the massacre and the sect are taboo subjects in China, it would have been very difficult ro esearch these topics in Beijing. In London I had access to books and internet sites that are banned in China, and was able to speak freely with politi- cal activists who wouldn't have dared talk to me in the mainland. ‘After a year of hard work, I'd provided the book with a politi- ‘cal context, but had failed to bring the characters to life. It was time for me to go back to China, I flew ro Beijing and rented from a friend a smal flat in 2 compound of red-brick buildings. It was the kind of flat that everyone in Beijing used to live in, until the concrete tower blocks started springing up everywhere a few years ago. As soon as I walked through the door, I knew that I'd found ‘the home for my main character. It was a dark, one-bedroom flat with bare concrete floors and just a bed, a sofa and a television. ‘The damp quilts on the bed had belonged to my friend's grand- ‘mother. The cupboard in the hallway was crammed with bottles of pills or illnesses that no one had contracted, The calendar hanging in the grimy bathroom was ten years old. When I opened the ‘window to let in some air, I could smell the oil frying in the restau- rants below and the sour pollution wafting from a nearby factory. Once I knew where my main character lived, everything else fell into place. walked through the dusty alleys of Beijing and felt exhilarased. There was a beauty to even the ugliest things: the cabbage leaves rotting in the gueters, the mounds of rubble outside demolition sites. Behind the stench from the public latrines, I could smell jas- ‘mine growing in a hidden courtyard. I stopped at a street corner and chatted with women who sold fried dough sticks. I lingered at 1a bus stop to listen to people complaining about the heat and the dast. Vare 1 finally jumped on a bus and heard a conductress shrickjAt the passengers in a coarse Beijing dialect, Twas so happy that I laughed out loud. Like the character in my book, J felt that T too was waking from a long coma. I wrote more in my first ‘month in Beijing than I had in a year in London. MAJIAN + 303But slowly my mood started to change again. I became ‘tated at being cut off from the rest ofthe world. I coulda’t ac: the BBC website, or search controversial subjects on Chine Google. When I sent an email that contained the word ‘ ‘my computer mysteriously crashed. The police visited a friend ‘mine and demanded that he give them my mobile phone numb Each morning, before I sat down to write, I'd lock the front do and draw the curtains. I felt I was committing a crime. So it with relief that I boarded my plane back ro London a few mo lates and returned to my flat off the Harrow Road. But in hardly a week had gone by before I was traipsing off to Londo Chinatown. I'd told myself that I needed to buy some sesame-se oil, but my real reason for going was just to see some Cl faces. ‘Today the communist government is a much more sophisti ‘organization than it was during the time of Chairman knows that to silence writers it disapproves of, it doesn't m ‘execute them or fling them in jail. All it has to do is slowly subtly increase the pressure until they have no choice but to away. The Party has discovered that there is no. better punish Chinese dissident writers than to force them into exile.