In his early years, Yan Chungou worked for several print media outlets in Hong Kong. He later served as the editor-in-chief of Tiandi Books. His diverse published works include novels, essays, and screenplays. Among his accolades, he has won the Champion of the Senior Fiction Group of the 8th Hong Kong Youth Literature Award, the Champion of the Boyi Novel Writing Competition, and the Merit Award of the Film Script Selection of the Information Bureau of the Executive Yuan of Taiwan.
How Yan Chungou’s love of literature and writing began
Yan Chungou reminisced: “I have had the opportunity to read lots of books since I was a child. My mother worked in a hospital in the countryside. The hospital was built by overseas Chinese and equipped with a special library so that inpatients, doctors, and nurses could access the books.
“The library hired a special librarian to oversee it, and the administrator purchased many worldwide classics. Since my mother was an employee in the hospital, she borrowed many books. There were at least one or two hundred world classics available. At this time, my interest in reading and literature began.
“The middle school I attended south of Fujian is Yangzheng Middle School, a famous school in Fujian. The school library has more than 100 years of history and a rich collection of books. Before the Cultural Revolution, we were free to read, so we read many books up to that time, which laid a foundation for future writing.
“We used to worship Mao Zedong, but by the end of the Cultural Revolution, we had doubts about Mao. In the later period of the Cultural Revolution, we saw a lot of books on politics and ideology, reality struck, and our entire understanding and thinking began to change.”
40 years in Hong Kong: A new life beyond his wildest dreams
In his book My Love and Pain in Hong Kong, Yan Chungou recalls liking literature since childhood. He participated in politics during the Cultural Revolution and was also interested in ideology and culture at that time. However, he had the opportunity to immerse himself in a wide range of books and periodicals and was able to devote his life to the editing work he loved.
He could also write and publish books freely, which he not only enjoyed, but his accomplishments went far beyond his expectations of himself. All of this was achieved in Hong Kong. Therefore, he has developed the feeling: “Without Hong Kong, there would be no life for me.”
“At that time, the salary in the newspaper office was very low. I was paid only 600 Yuan (US$82.83) when I first entered the field to do proofreading.
“Because I worked in a newspaper office, I had a lot of free time between assignments, and I read a lot of newspapers when I didn’t have any work. At that time, I read a lot of Taiwanese newspapers and Hong Kong newspaper supplements. I got off work in the middle of the night and woke up at 10 a.m. the next morning. I had nothing to do until the afternoon, so I could go to the library to borrow books and come back. While proofreading, the time was for me to study independently.”
Yan Chungou never went to school in Hong Kong, so he is self-taught and loves literature, diligence, self-discipline, and talent.
Keep on writing even when people reject your work
Yan Chungou’s primary career has been in the field of editing. He said: “In fact, creation is all innate, and I am interested in that.”
He still remembers that when he first arrived in Hong Kong, the cultural environment was still very good, and many newspapers ran supplements and published many purely literary works. He emphasized: “Many literary magazines wrote literary works purely for you, not ordinary essays; you could write novels. At that time, I wrote when I had time, and when it was finished, I submitted it. However, after submission, people kept rejecting and returning the works that piled up and filled cardboard boxes.”
A new life is born from a new outlook and a new viewpoint
Yan Chungao believes that life in Hong Kong has had a crucial impact on his profession.”In Hong Kong, the first influence is personality, that is, your view of society, your view of life, and your view of history; many of these personal views form the outlook on your life and values. This is a kind of rebirth: all the old things are thrown away, and new things are born.”
Once upon a time, Hong Kong was considered a “cultural desert.” Yan Chungou believes that the people of Hong Kong are more self-deprecating. However, after many years of the Cultural Revolution: “There is a cultural desert, but not in Hong Kong.
“During the martial law period in Taiwan (1949 to 1987), the cultural openness there was not as good as that in Hong Kong, and people came into contact with some theories and works of modern literature. Many of them were from Hong Kong.
“Hong Kong, on the contrary, is the freest place where people who aspire to a literary life can develop themselves. The problem is that Hong Kong itself is a commercial society, and the status of the literati in this society is not very high.”
On the surface, it seems that you are not of high standing as a literati in Hong Kong, but this is not true. Looking at social and cultural standards, even in the 1970s, Hong Kong people were no worse than mainlanders, and neither were they worse off than the Taiwanese.
Reflections on Hong Kong
These days, local creativity must avoid sensitive content, which inevitably affects the depth of thought. Looking around Hong Kong today, with the implementation of the Hong Kong version of the National Security Law and Article 23, freedom of speech in Hong Kong can be said to have ended. Apple Daily, Public News, and Radio Television Hong Kong have all disappeared individually.
Having witnessed the golden years of Hong Kong culture, what is Yan Chungou’s sense of literary creativity in Hong Kong?
Yan Chungou: “There should be some who will persist. There is a process, from the level of prosperity of this place to the decline of its culture, but it is impossible to say that Hong Kong has come to the point where no one writes at all; that’s not true. Exploring human nature and cultural and ideological things is okay, but you don’t touch on sensitive politics.
“It is equivalent to when I lived on the mainland before. However, there were so many political confinements that it is impossible to say there were no high-quality works in the past few decades.
“There may be creative inspirations all the time, but the ideology will be poorer. Because you don’t have the freedom to think about problems, you stop when you think of these things, and you stop when you think of those things that don’t work, and the space for creation is within that political boundary. Then, if you think about problems in this circle, the depth of your thinking will be poor.”
Writers having to flee Hong Kong lose their sense of connection
Many Hong Kong writers have had to leave Hong Kong in recent years. Yan Chungou feels: “The danger of going away is that because you leave that land, the feeling of connection will not be so strong; and if you don’t live with people in that new place, your observation of life will be a little estranged. If you have been in Vancouver for more than ten or twenty years, you may be able to reflect on the life of the overseas Chinese community in Canada, but that said, I would still write back to Hong Kong while there is already a gap with Hong Kong.”
Yan Chungou said: “In the future, I may have the opportunity to write about my previous life in Hong Kong, some activities in some cultural circles, some social conditions at that time, and some people who have feelings about me. Those are not necessarily seen as current events but as a record of life.” He feels that although “fast food” literature will receive more attention in today’s society, pure literature has eternal value.
‘My Love and Pain in Hong Kong’
My Love and Pain in Hong Kong is mainly a collection of articles published by Yan Chungou on Facebook and a few Apple Daily editorials since the “anti-extradition to China” movement. Yan Chungao has a long history of writing current reviews. Since arriving in Hong Kong in the 1970s, he has written political commentaries for Li Yi. “I wrote about it for about a year, and then my interest shifted to literature.
“After I retired, I switched to writing the Cultural Revolution novel The Bloody Years, published by the Chinese University. I stopped writing until I returned to Vancouver, and then it was the ‘anti-extradition’” and I started writing again.”
Yan Chungou mainly shares his views on politics and current affairs in his book. He was fortunate to have met many good and influential seniors. In the last part of the book, he shares with readers how the previous generation behaved and treated others. “I hope everyone can learn a little bit.”
Please go here for Part 1
Translated by Chua BC
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