When a literary encounter with the French produces a little magic in Beijing

When Di An and French writer Vincent Hein sit together to talk about their travels and writing, it's a magical time. They met at the fourth China-French Writers Conference in Beijing last week.

The writers come from different backgrounds, are of different genders and from different age groups, but their interaction is extremely harmonious.

A representative voice of China's younger generation, DiAn, 33, spent years in France to obtain a master's degree in sociology from the School for Advanced Studies in Social Sciences in Paris; Hein, 46, is based in Beijing and studies Chinese "to escape family traditions".

"I was young when I left for France.But without the experience I may not have become a writer," says Di An, the daughter of an established writer couple, Jiang Yun and Li Rui from Shanxi province. Her birth name is LiDi'an.

She believes that learning a foreign language is like learning a new logic, through which she finds a "strangeness in my mind" (the title of Turkish author Orhan Pamuk's renowned novel).

She notices that her way of thinking has changed, which spurs her to write.

"To me, learning French is a journey,writing is another, and translating still another," she says, adding that even small things like taking buses in a foreign country are different, and often offer inspiration for her writing.

"I (also) became extremely sensitive to my mother tongue," she says.

Di An is a successful and influential writer with novels like Ashes to Ashes, the Memory in the City of Dragon series and a literary magazine she runs. She also translates French art books into Chinese.

Commenting on Di An's popularity, established writer Li Er says that whenever Di An launches a new novel, it creates a sensation on the country's literary scene.

Speaking of how shenavigates the French and Chinese literary worlds, Di An says: "Traveling between languages is difficult, but interesting."

She adds that one of her hobbies is to browse through online forums looking for people who learn very minor foreign languages.

Li believes that young Chinese like to travel because they find it romantic, just like the French do.

Hein, too, finds the idea of traveling romantic.

When asked what he wanted to become when he grew up- a doctor, a lawyer or join the army -three professions popular in his family, Hein was thinking of traveling and literature.

"I read, especially books on travel, as an escape ... I see a new world through different windows, and I wish I could be at the far end of the world," says Hein.

When at 15, he told his father that he would like to be a writer, his father was upset.

"Are you thinking of the US and UK?" his father asked, least expecting China to be one of young Hein's targets.

"The first time I was here (in China) after high school, I knew it was right, though the country had just opened up. I just love it here," he says.

Hein then learned Chinese and worked for a publisher in France before taking up a job as a business representative at the French embassy in Beijing.

"Being a diplomat is my way of earning money for more travel," he says.

He says he feels "comfortable from the top of his head to the soles of his feet" in China, thanks to its charm and hospitality.

"When I read books introducing China to the world ahead of the 2008 Olympics, I saw pessimism in books by foreign writers, which was different from what I felt. So I began to write travelogues," says Hein.

His works include In the East of the Cloud (A l'est des nuages) and The Monkey Tree (Arbre a singes).

Meanwhile, renowned French-Chinese translator Sylvie Gentil shares her views on travel at the conference. She says that translation is like taking a journey between cultures and even history.

Speaking on how she tries to bridge the culture gap with her work, she says: "The French love reading Chinese books and other translated works, and the genre and themes they are reading are wide and still expanding. But I don't think that there is enough understanding among them about China, So, I am working on bringing out more books for them, containing contemporary information."

The first Chinese-French writers "encounter" was held in 2009. The theme of the encounter this year was "Literature and Life".

Other writers participating in the event were Laurence Cosse and Liu Zhenyun, and the topics they discussed included urban and rural writing, and even their childhoods.

Tie Ning, chairwoman of China Writers Association, one of the organizers of the conference, says: "Literary classics from both countries hold charm for both the peoples, because they dwell on shared emotions and are about life, about overcoming hardships and sharing the power of humanity."

meijia@chinadaily.com.cn

(China Daily 06/01/2016 page20)