BEIJING, May 17 — Zhang Yueran is part of a growing wave of Chinese writers finding new audiences abroad. The author of seven novels dissecting the inner lives of Chinese women,...
! Plus, enjoy an additional FREE RM10 when you sign up using code VERSAMM10 with a min. cash-in of RM100 today. T&Cs apply. BEIJING, May 17 — Zhang Yueran is part of a growing wave of Chinese writers finding new audiences abroad.
The author of seven novels dissecting the inner lives of Chinese women, her latest,- translated into English by longtime collaborator Jeremy Tiang and published in the US last year - probes contemporary Chinese gender and class dynamics. Speaking with Reuters at her Beijing home, Zhang, who teaches literature and creative writing at Renmin University, discusses her artistic inspirations, connecting with foreign readers and new opportunities for women’s literary voices in China.
What is your primary motivation for writing, and where does your creative inspiration come from? I’ve been writing since I was very young. Back then, it felt like a way to prove that I was different from others - a way to find evidence of my unique existence in this world. Regarding inspiration, much of it comes from life.
I eventually realized that reality is what truly touches you - the stories of people around you or your own family. It’s not necessarily the most exciting stories that matter; it’s the characters who truly connect with us and resonate with our inner souls that make it into my fiction. What prompted you to explore the frictions between nannies and the elite? I’ve always been interested in the “nanny” not just as a profession, but as an identity.
In China, many nannies live with families for years - sometimes a decade - witnessing a child grow up. They are stable members of the household, yet they don’t truly belong to it. They are both inside the family and outside as observers, which provides a fantastic narrative perspective. In “Women, Seated,” the situation is a massive shift in power within the family.
When the chaos starts, the nanny moves to the centre stage and takes over the house. It becomes a test of her humanity as different people arrive with various desires; it’s a process for her to truly see herself. Why choose to tell this story through the eyes of the women left behind in the mansion rather than the men? Simply put, I’m not interested in the power struggles of men.
That is the territory of news reports and other non-literary writing. It has already been covered. A reader once told me an interesting metaphor about “Women, Seated”: these women are like planets orbiting the men. This isn’t about passivity; it’s that their desires are inevitably constrained by the men.
They often step up to try and rescue the “trapped” men or the family, but the most important part of that process is their own journey toward freedom and liberation. It’s about whether they can step out of the men’s orbits and become their own stars rather than just satellites. Do you feel your work is finally being appreciated for its aesthetics and psychological depth rather than just a window into Chinese society?
Yes, I’ve felt a major shift in recent years. Years ago, when I met foreign readers at places like The Bookworm cafe in Beijing, they treated Chinese literature like a guidebook or a literary version ofNow, perhaps because information is so readily available, we don’t need literature just to learn about a culture. Readers now ask about the imagery in the book or the choices the characters make - questions that have nothing to do with nationality.
When a foreign reader says they feel very close to a character and can fully relate to them, that is the greatest reward for a writer. I don’t want them to “understand China” through me; I want them to find something in the writing that speaks to their own lives. How involved were you in the English translation, and were you worried about cultural nuances being lost in translation? Losses are inevitable, but you have to trust the translator.
My translator, Jeremy Tiang, is excellent. We’ve worked together for years. During the process, I told him that if he felt something didn’t translate well, we could adjust the text to better suit the target language. His style actually influenced the revised Chinese version of the book, making it much leaner.
An example is the imagery of the “goose” and the “swan. ” In Chinese, there is a clear hierarchy between the two words: the nanny is the “goose” and the elite mother is the “swan. ” The child in the book is young enough that he can’t distinguish between them linguistically or visually - he sees the nanny as the same “bird. ” This creates a rich, poignant metaphor about class and motherhood.
In English, “goose” and “swan” are just two different words without that inherent linguistic hierarchy. So, that layer of the child’s innocent confusion and the social commentary behind it is largely lost to an Anglophone reader. What has changed in the global publishing landscape to make room for diverse young Chinese novelists like you, Yan Ge and Shuang Xuetao? The previous model, where books were recommended primarily by Sinologists to people specifically studying Chinese culture, has largely faded.
That model never really cultivated a general readership. Now, there is a new opportunity for direct connection with readers. I see independent bookstore owners, book club hosts and literary influencers on Instagram who are genuinely interested in Chinese-language literature recommending these books to their followers.
However, it still requires massive effort from translators. People like Jeremy Tiang often do the early work - translating samples and pitching to publishers - as a labour of love. We need people at every stage - translators, editors, and publishers - who truly love the work to make it flourish.was a huge influence on this book. It’s about a butler and his relationship with his master, questioning if his labour was in vain.
It made me wonder: what if the butler were a woman? A woman caring for a child develops emotional bonds with the house and people that are very different from a male butler’s focus. In China, we grew up in a literary environment dominated almost entirely by male voices. When you looked at “canonical” Chinese literature, it felt like there was only Eileen Chang or Xiao Hong - just a few islands in a sea of men.
Because of this, we turned to Western female writers like Alice Munro, Margaret Atwood and Elena Ferrante to fill what I call an “aesthetic void. ” They provided the tools to explore female interiority that wasn’t always available in the domestic tradition we were taught. Reading them was like finding the missing pieces of our own creative identities. I’m trying to find a lineage that has often been suppressed in China.
In the late 1990s and early 2000s, there was a vibrant wave of “autofiction” where women wrote boldly about their own lives and bodies. But that movement was heavily suppressed and criticised. The consequence wasn’t just censorship; it was a psychological shift. Many female writers who came afterwards became afraid to tell their own stories.
They feared that if they wrote about the “private” or the “female experience,” they would be labelled as “vulgar,” “sensationalist,” or “erotic. ” They felt they had to write “like men” - about grand history or abstract ideas - to be taken seriously as intellectuals. I believe we must repair these broken lineages in our literary history.
Whether it’s memoirs like Qi Bangyuan’s “The Great River” or the voices of Wei Hui and Mian Mian, these narratives of women’s lives are essential. Without the female perspective, our history is incomplete.
Women Seated Beijing Literature Chinese Women Writers Jeremy Tiang Renmin University
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