I re-read a few chapters from Theodore Zeldin’s 2015 book The Hidden Pleasures of Life this summer and was reminded of why I started to write fiction eight years ago. Looking back, apart from living up to a childhood dream, it was also my very own protest at the time against a social shift towards the political dichotomy that started to plague Hong Kong, the city of immigrants that I had migrated to in 2007, from Shanghai.
I decided to give up a career in Hong Kong’s financial industry and take up writing seriously because I was extremely unhappy during those years. The “Mainland versus Hong Kong” conflicts were seen in the local news frequently throughout the 2010s, often targeting individuals and underdogs. But what had hurt more was the feeling of misunderstanding and reduction in the personal sphere. I was young and single at the time, sensitive, and harboring natural inhibition. I felt that I was put into a box that I didn’t belong to, through the treatment and micro-aggressions from some of my close contacts. When even good-willed people would unknowingly glance at me in a large group when they mentioned “China” as if this would remain in their eyes as my primary identity, I felt helplessly chained to the country I had left behind (for the same reasons older generations had come to Hong Kong, and younger generations were prepared to leave), and to the “passport” I supposedly had. And for a long time, I would rather not speak since I did not want to speak defensively, and I worried that defensive speech would only reinforce categories and stereotypes by playing on other people’s terms. Moreover, I worried that if I engaged in the conversation too much, I would compromise the life I wanted to live.
The dilemma of feeling marginalized often puts people between a rock and a hard place: keep your silence and continue to live without the benefit of the doubt that you deserve, or come forward with the potential trade off of politicizing and reducing your individuality. Those who have battled with it know how difficult it is to strike that fine balance.
Zeldin asked the question in his book: “We are all obliged to have a portrait of ourselves in a passport or identity card in which our government describes what it thinks is important about us. Why is it not possible for us to create our own passports, saying what we want others to understand or appreciate about us?…Of course we may mislead or lie, or be misunderstood. But why cannot our self-portrait passport be accepted as our own original work of art, which says something about our illusions and our dreams and what is not normally obvious?” In 2020, identity politics have become more profound. For some, even having a “good passport” in the traditional passport pecking order can’t save us anymore. People have suffered simply for their physical appearances, their ancestral links or their current locations.
Writing can be a way to create our own unique passports. It is a protest against political narratives and systematic ill-constructions undermining our personal struggles, interests and contributions. Writing frees ourselves from the small circles that we sometimes stay in through habits or circumstances, and allows us to speak with those in time and space with our own handmade travel documents. Imagination nurtures fluidity in life. And sometimes, only through imagination, are we able to confront our hidden fears and desires, and hear the voices before they are shaped by the custom of our languages, from our hearts. It was refreshing to be reminded, eight years later, after an MFA and four years living abroad, of where I started, now that I am back in Hong Kong.
However, it was through these eight years that I came to believe more and more that writing should also look at life directly, however paradoxical it might sound. It does require discipline as it is often tempting to turn our heads, and settle for a daydream. A fiction writer could take up the perspective of any individual on the planet to stay away from the identity politics of our times, and live in scenarios that bring the most comfort, yet it wouldn’t be a story if it didn’t cast light on the current and unresolved conflicts of our human nature. At least, this is the courage I have hoped to nurture a little every day at my writing desk for the past few years. In the same vein, it wouldn’t be my novel if I didn’t write about growing up in China, my history with Hong Kong or my experience as part of the Chinese diaspora. The freedom of fiction would allow us eventually to map the journey we individually undertake in search of our own worth and happiness, as well as reflect our original, impossible-to-hide restraints.
Flora Qian is the author of South of the Yangtze. She lives in New York with her husband and daughter.