Life> Reading

Of mothers and daughters

By Yang Guang (China Daily)
Updated: 2009-12-16 09:55

For almost her entire childhood, British-Chinese writer Hong Ying spent nights conversing with stains on the ceiling of her attic and hearing bats beating their wings against the wall in the darkness, convinced she would be a storyteller one day.

Hong Ying never hesitates to admit she's a maverick, and is sometimes proud of it. Ling Daijun

She shot to fame in 1997, with the fearlessly honest bestseller Daughter of the River (饥饿的女儿), a widely translated autobiography that recounts her wrenching coming of age.

But she prefers to be called a storyteller instead of a writer, because "good storytellers can be good writers, but not vice versa".

In November, she finally came up with the long-awaited sequel Good Children of the Flowers (好儿女花, currently in translation) that tells "the story of me and my mother, the love and darkness accumulated in my heart all these years".

She sees the sequel as a difficult self-redemption, and never hesitates to admit she's a maverick, and is sometimes proud of it.

Born to a sailor's family in Chongqing, on the southern bank of the Yangtze River, in 1962, "Little Six" endures great poverty and hunger and always feels she doesn't belong to the family.

Mother is strangely indifferent; her siblings treat her like an outsider. A history teacher at school awakens her emerging womanhood.

Nearing 18, she becomes determined to unravel the mystery. From "big sister", she learns of mother's first marriage to a triad man, her escape from him, her encounter with father, and the famine that shaped the lives of the family.

She finally learns the truth of her birth on her 18th birthday, and even as she grapples with it, her life is thrown asunder by other wrenching events and harrowing experiences.

She leaves home, swearing never to return.

"I was all rebellious and was determined to leave, at all costs," she says, "only years later did I realize that one is sure to get lost, if there's no home in one's heart."

She escapes into dancing, drinking, parties and casual sex, with writing being the only constant in her life for the next 10 years.

"Life was all topsy-turvy," she recalls. "It was like performing thrilling acrobatics on a precarious string separating life from art."

It was then that Chen Hongying (which means "red hero") chose to call herself Hong Ying, or "image of the rainbow", inspired by the following lines from the ancient Chinese Book of Songs: "There is a rainbow in the east, and no one dares to point to it. When a girl goes away (from her home), she separates from her parents and brothers."

Looking back, she says her years "on the road" were invaluable in expanding her horizons and liberating her body and soul.