Strange Flowers tells the 《異花》一書講述了九位在澳大利 personal stories of nine writers 亞和中國之間工作的作家和藝術 and artists working between 家的個人故事，對這兩個創造性 Australia and China, offering 的文化提供了多重視覺，帶我們 diverse perspectives on two 走進現代中國的城鎮，走進澳大 creative cultures. It takes 利亞人的畫室，以及富有創造活 us into the cities and towns 力者的家，清楚地闡明了在語言、 of modern China, into the 文化和一代代人之間架設橋梁所 Str Australian studios and homes 需的日常翻譯活動及變化。 of creative people, and sheds light on the daily acts of 請隨悉尼藝術家美羅蒂·威利斯騎自 translation and transformation 行車，到奧運會召開之前高潮迭起的 needed to bridge languages, 北京 ；請參加邁克爾·袁的當代驢子 Zhao Chuan 趙川 藝術學院，到 798 藝術區周圍的大 cultures and generations. Ivor Indyk 艾佛·英迪克 街小巷走一遭 ；請進入語言不同的人 Benjamin Law 羅旭能 所生活的那種親密而又高難的空間， Alice Pung Strange 方佳佳 與艾佛·英迪克主編和作家阿堅分享 australia–china encounters in writing and art Explore the intensity of pre-Olympics Beijing James Stuart 詹姆斯·斯圖亞特 by bike with Sydney artist Melody Willis; 一杯啤酒。方佳佳回到揭陽老家，記 澳大利亞和中國在藝術寫作中的交匯融合 Melody Willis 美羅蒂·威利斯 take to the streets of the 798 art district with 述了現代中國的代溝，羅旭能則刻意 Yao 李堯 Michael Yuen’s cross-cultural Donkey Institute 尋找“酷兒”文化和中國互聯網。詹 F l ower s Ouyang 歐陽昱 of Contemporary Art; or have a beer with 姆斯·斯圖亞特通過文學的鏡頭，再 editor Ivor Indyk and novelist Ah in the Michael Yuen 邁克爾·袁 度體驗了汶川地震及其劫後餘生的情 intimate but difficult space between people who Flowers live in different languages. Alice Pung writes 景。李堯畢其生把澳大利亞文學書籍 of the generation gap in modern China, and 翻譯成中文，談到了其中的甘苦和挑 journeys back to her ancestral homeland in Jie 戰。趙川通過他的寫作、戲劇表演和 , while Benjamin Law goes in search of 攝影，勾勒了澳大利亞對他影響的軌 queer culture and the Chinese internet. James 跡。歐陽昱講述了如何借助中西之間 Stuart relives the Szechuan earthquake and 循環交錯的影響，在陌生國土撒下創 its aftermath through the lens of literature; 造的種子，最後開出異花的過程。 Li Yao speaks of the pleasures and challenges of a lifetime spent translating Australian books into Chinese; Zhao Chuan traces the Australian influence that runs through his writing, theatre- making and photography; and Ouyang Yu speaks of how, through cycles of influence that oscillate between China and the West, strange flowers bloom when creative seeds are planted in foreign soil. ISBN 978-1-74305-012-5

Edited by 9 781743 050125 ASIALINK Ronnie Scott Strange Flowers

Australia–China encounters in writing and art 澳大利亞和中國在藝術寫作中的交匯融合

edited by ronnie scott

Wakefield Press 1 The Parade West Kent Town South Australia 5067 www.wakefieldpress.com.au in association with Asialink www.asialink.unimelb.edu.au First published 2011 Copyright © Asialink, 2011 All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted by any person or entity, including internet search engines or retailers, in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying (except under the statutory exceptions provisions of the Australian Copyright Act 1968), recording, scanning or by any information storage and retrieval system without the prior written permission of Asialink. Cover image by Melody Willis Designed and typeset by Elwyn Murray. Printed and bound by Hyde Park Press, Adelaide. National Library of Australia Cataloguing-in-Publication entry Title: Strange flowers: Australia–China encounters in writing and art / edited by Ronnie Scott. ISBN: 978 1 74305 012 5 (pbk.). Subjects: Comparative literature—Australian and Chinese. Comparative literature—Chinese and Australian. Art, Comparative. Chinese—Australia—Social life and customs. Australians—China—Social life and customs. Intercultural communication—Australia. Intercultural communication—China. Other Authors/Contributors: Scott, Ronnie. Dewey Number: 809

This book is supported by the Commonwealth through the Australia–China Council of the Department of Foreign Affairs andT rade.

Asialink would like to thank Australian author Neilma Sydney for her generous support of this project. contents

Engagement of Minds That Breeds “Strange Flowers” Ouyang Yu 9

异心啮合“異花”開 歐陽昱 17

TheW inter After the Olympics Alice Pung 25

奧運會後的冬天 方佳佳 33

Impossible is Nothing Melody Willis 39

Artworks Melody Willis 45

沒有不可能 美羅蒂·威利斯 57

Being in the Scene Ivor Indyk 63

置身現場而後快 艾佛·英迪克 69 The Donkey Institute of Contemporary Art Michael Yuen 75

當代驢子藝術學院 邁克爾·袁 87

One Drop of Water Li Yao 93

滴水之恩 李堯 99

Sinogay.com Benjamin Law 105

Sinogay.com 羅旭能 113

Aftershocks: Four Months in Chengdu James Stuart 119

餘震:成都四個月 詹姆斯·斯圖亞特 127

Seeking Relationships Zhao Chuan 133

找寻关係 趙川 139

james stuart | 2010

異花 9 Ouyang Yu came to Australia at the age of 35 and, by 55, has published 55 books of poetry, fiction, non-fiction, literary translation and criticism in English and Chinese languages, including his award-winning novel, The Eastern Slope Chronicle (2002), his collection of poetry in English, The Kingsbury Tales (2008), his collection of Chinese poetry, Slow Motion (2009), his book of creative non-fiction, On the Smell of an Oily Rag: Speaking English, Thinking Chinese and Living Australian (2008), his second novel, TheE nglish Class (2010), his book of

ouyang yu ouyang literary criticism, Chinese in Australian Fiction: 1888–1988 (2008), and his translation in Chinese, The Fatal Shore (forthcoming in 2011). 2 1

” strange flowers strange eijing, interviewing Arthur Rimbaud Arthur

2010, I was in B eijing a few years ago, was showing showing was ago, fewa eijing years that breeds breeds that B

Strange Strange s Flower s of mind “ arch o my amusement and amazement, Wang, Wang, o my amusement and amazement, M T

d- ngagement Engagement i In m hinese writers artists, Chinese writers a number of Australian a journalist friend of mine Wang, and academics. before of Australia and also a long-time resident to returning thriving art most 798, one of China’s me around bumped into this gallerycommunities, when we born-in-the- svelte and savvy a sleek, director, for a all sat down and we Harbin, 1980s girl from coffee. I want to go back to the East, to the first, also the eternal, wisdom. 10 engagement of minds that breeds “strange flowers” tongue in cheek, introduced me to her as “one of the most well-known Australian-Chinese artists”, who had held numerous exhibitions around the world. Remembering Dao , a character described by a student as an “imposter” in my first novel, The Eastern Slope Chronicle (2004), I couldn’t help laughing out loud, to the bewilderment of them both, as fiction intersected with reality in that particular moment. In a way, Wang was not far from the truth when he made that facetious remark. For one thing, I am Australian by nationality if not by birth and for another, I am an artist, by heart if not by art or, to be more exact, by words if not by pictures. For more than thirty years I have been engaged in six genres of literary endeavour— poetry, fiction, creative non-fiction, literary translation, literary criticism and literary magazine editing, in both English and Chinese languages. I could throw in the bit about literary self-publishing but that is further than I can go even in the way of an “imposter”. Nineteen years ago, though, before I was able to come to Australia, it was a number of Australians I met in Shanghai who influenced me in a way that no one else had, chief among them Nicholas Jose and Rodney Hall, who both taught me in my MA classes, and Alex Miller, whom I assisted in his research there on his third novel, The Ancestor Game. My acquaintance with these writers acted as stimulation to my desire for a spiritual transformation that seemed only available overseas. Earlier, in 1986, I had visited Canada as chief interpreter for a Chinese delegation and, in a conversation with a Canadian friend, I had exchanged one of my most secret thoughts: that I would like to leave China to go anywhere, including Australia if need be, a place of convicts I assumed that few would want to go to. Subsequently, as if by magic, I was accepted into the MA program on Australian literature at East China Normal University in Shanghai and relocated there from Wuhan. In retrospect, the convergence of the aforementioned three writers around my place in those days seemed to be quite fortuitous and for a significant purpose, that of bringing me out to Australia and creating a writer in me, and I hope I have done my hard yakka all these many years to deserve their goodwill. In humbler terms, it’s like a seed taken all the way from Terra

異花 engagement of minds that breeds “strange flowers” ouyang yu 11

Australis Incognito to the Middle Kingdom that duly budded and flowered. What happened ten years later is that the off-shoot of that seed, in this case me, went back to China towards the end of the twentieth century on an Asialink grant for a four-month writer’s residence at Peking University, an experience that proved so fruitful that ten books in total came out in quick succession, including Chinese translations of The Shock of the New, The Female Eunuch and The Whole Woman; a book of creative non-fiction, On the Smell of an Oily Rag: Speaking English, Thinking Chinese and Living Australian; and a self-published novel in Chinese, The AngryW u Zili. I hope I do not sound like a boastful name-dropper, but the point here is that this engagement that started with Miller, Jose and Hall in the late 1980s was in turn reproduced and reciprocated in the late 1990s by Ouyang, and the point, too, is that the Australian engagement, artistic or literary, with China has all along fostered a growth of new talents across the board. I see this in a number of artists, such as Guan Wei, Ah Xian, Shen Jiawei, Hong and Hu Ming, who have all over the years created art works that reverberate in the Australian art scene. I see this, too, in a number of Australia-educated Chinese scholars, such as Hu Wenzhong, Yuanshen and Wang Guofu, who had returned to China in the early 1980s to run Australian Studies Centres and set up courses in Australian literature that helped educate a large number of Australia-literate students right up to the PhD level. More recently, I see this happening with Australian writers who travelled or lived in China such as Peter Bakowski, Andrew Burke and Christopher Kelen. Right from the end of the Cultural Revolution in 1976, when China gradually opened up, Chinese writers and artists have been moving overseas in massive numbers. Weiwei went to the USA in 1981, Chen Danqing (to USA) in 1982, Ha (to USA) in 1984, Dai Sijie (to France) in 1984, Cai Guoqiang (to Japan) in 1985, Yang (to New Zealand) in 1986, Ma Jian (to ) in 1986, Gao Xingjian (to France) in 1987, Gu (to New Zealand) in 1987, Gu Wenda (to USA) in 1987, Qiu Xiaolong (to USA) in 1988, Duo Duo (to UK) in 1989, Guan Wei and Ah Xian (to Australia) in 1989, Zhao Chuan3 (to Australia) in 1989, Hu Ming (to New Zealand) in

strange flowers 12 engagement of minds that breeds “strange flowers”

1989, Sang Ye (to Australia) in 1989, Shen Shaomin (to Australia) in 1989, Bing (to USA) in 1990 and Ouyang Yu (to Australia) in 1991.4 One distinguishing feature of this generation of artists is their ability to keep up the avant-garde spirit in an increasingly commercialised world. Even though Ai Weiwei, one of the most iconoclastic and avant-garde living artists in China, felt like “an animal caged for decades” that had found “an extreme degree of freedom”5 when he went to the United States in 1981, he returned to China twelve years later, finding “the restriction” in New York even less endurable than that in China and therefore feeling bored.6 Subsequently, he was able to produce works like Dropping a Han Dynasty Urn (1995), a total rejection of the capitalist worship and pursuit of money, and A Study of Perspective (1997), in which he gave the finger toT iananmen and the White House alike. If the avant-garde spirit fuels creative impulses, migration itself drives the urge for cultural and linguistic translation; translation that is hinged on ideas of cultural conflicts, non-understandabilities and non-transferabilities. This can be seen in artists like Xu Bing with his Book from the Sky (1987–1991) and also The Glassy Surface of a Lake (2004), which creates the shape of a lake with aluminum letters forming a passage from Henry David Thoreau’s Walden. Similarly, the pleasure of direct translation lies at the core of some of my recent poetry writings that explore the theme of non-translatabilities and bilingual immediacy. Take shi and fei, a language poem written the Chinese- English way, as follows:

shi and fei

If there are any Chinese characters that are untranslatable into English, it’s these two characters as a pair, most often together, shi fei, or shifei, as in Chinese, like husband and wife no longer in love sleeping together, or friend and enemy lying dead together after a fatal struggle. The reason why Shakespeare’s “to be or not to be” defies translation into Chinese is that nothing, of these three

異花 ouyang yu 13

translation examples, shengcun haishi siqu (existence or death), yao haishi yao (wanting to live or wanting to die) and cunzai haishi miewang (existence or destruction), comes close to the word “be” in its surface and deep meanings.

Migration leads to a breakage with one’s mother tongue as much as it creates the new. When Shen Shaomin first arrived in Australia post-1989 with very little English, he entered into a state of shiyu (language loss). In response, he created the work dui (Dialogue), in which he layered newspaper cuttings in English and Chinese, to create an effect of linguistic conflicts and mergings.7 In a similar vein, Gu Wenda, when he first left China, felt the loss of the language, too, and he commented on the situation thus: “When I left China I left the language; at the time, I almost lost confidence in the language. Eventually, I entered into the level of understanding of matter.”8 I too understand what it is to fight to create the new out of an acute sense of language loss. Here is an extract from an early poem:

in a season without languages in Australia I have lost my weight in undeveloped no-person’s land like a wild devil roaming I sow my language into the alien soil where it sends forth such strange flowers that no one recognises and all of a sudden I find my tongue held between two languages like a vice9

Engaging in literature, particularly poetry, I constantly think of failures and of people who have never somehow quite made it before their time. Roberto Bolaño, for example, or the Australian-Chinese artist known as Alan, whose failure in life—he committed suicide by shooting himself—became an artistic success in Alex Miller’s novel, The Ancestor Game, in which he acquires a second life.10 And I think of the years I spent in the country as an educated

strange flowers 14 engagement of minds that breeds “strange flowers” youth, too, ones that I thought I had wasted. It is not till people ask why I have been so prolific and so persistent that I realise that the years “wasted” and the hardship endured are perhaps responsible for the fire that still keeps me going. It is a fire lit so many years ago in China only to be kept briskly alive by the new addition of Australianness. Yesterday, when I accompanied Wang on his visit to Bendigo, I witnessed a young Australian man showing a group of Australian kids around the Dragon Museum, telling them stories of the dragons and how the early Chinese settled there. The kids were delighted with their new knowledge and eager to learn more, little aware that a poet was standing behind them, and little aware of what one of the poems written in Chinese on the wall meant. The beginning two lines are: “Buddha’s heart is gone as he rides the crane/ And the drifter returns, with clouds in his sleeves”. The very word “drifter”, or youzi, a common description of travelling Chinese, brought on an acute sense of loss on my part, reminding me of two poems I had written some time ago in Bendigo, one in Chinese and the other in English. I could remember neither, despite Wang’s insistence. Rediscovering the English one on my computer, I present part of it below:

Here, everyone I meet bears Chinese features One guy who told me where the court was had a face like Chinese clay mixed with Aussie pumpkin A young man at the restaurant invited my eyes into his To explore some sort of buried province whose language has yet to be Rediscovered11

異花 ouyang yu 15

1 ouyang Yu, Moon over Melbourne and Other Poems. Exeter, UK: Shearsman Press, 2005, p. 40. 2 Arthur Rimbaud, lanbo shi quanji (Complete Poetry by Rimbaud), trans. by Ge and Liang Dong. Hangzhou: Literature and Arts Publishing House, 1996, p. 184. The translation of the quote is mine. 3 Also known as Leslie Zhao. 4 There were, of course, many more who moved overseas at the time than I can include in this short space. 5 see “Ai Weiwei: wo haishi bu hezuo” (Ai Weiwei: I still do not cooperate): http://huang-xiang.net/blog/2010/01/13/ai- weiwei-i-still-uncooperative.html (accessed 14/4/10). 6 see “He Ai Weiwei liao le yixie niuyue de shi” (I chatted with Ai Weiwei about a few things in New York): http://hi.baidu. com/shaovo/blog/item/a49a99fb98d86362034f56b5.html. 7 see “Shen Shaomin fangtan: bu chongfu bieren, ye bu chongfu ziji” (An Interview with Shen Shaomin: I don’t repeat others nor do I repeat myself): http://www.xdsf.com/ bbs/thread-11945-1-1.html (accessed 16/4/10). 8 see “Chuangpo jinji de yishujia Gu Wenda: yong nuxing jingxue zuopin” (Gu Wenda, an artist who broke up the restrictions: using women”s menstrual blood as work): http:// wenhuaketing.blog.sohu.com/106226216.html (accessed 16/4/10). 9 ouyang Yu, Moon over Melbourne and Other Poems. Exeter, UK: Shearsman Press, 2005, pp. 39–40. 10 Alan’s surname was not disclosed to protect his identity. 11 s ee Ouyang Yu, “Bendigo Bent”, Peril, online magazine, No. 8, the November 2009 issue.

strange flowers 歐陽昱 17

异心啮合

︵ 第 二中文詩集 部和 英文歐 ︽慢動作︾ 文學 陽 長批 昱 篇︽ 評， ︵ 英 其 語 中 班 包 ︾ 括 獲 ︵ 獎 長 篇 小 説︽ 東 坡 紀 事 ︾ ︵ “異花” 2008 1 ︶ ，以及翻譯著作︽致命的海灘︾ ︵ 35 開 嵗 抵 澳。 截 至 2009

︶ ，55 非小説創作作品 ︽油抹布的氣味︓說英語， 想中文， 過澳大利亞生活︾ ， 嵗， 已 經 發 表 中 英 文 著 作 2010

歐陽昱 譯 ︶ ， 文 學 批 評 論 著︽ 澳 大 利 亞 小 説 中 的 中 國 人 2011

我要重返東方，重返那第一的也是永恒的智慧。 年即出︶ 。 亞瑟·蘭波2 2002 55 部， 含 詩 歌， 小 説， 非 小 説， 文 學 翻 譯 2010 年 3 月中旬，我人在北京，採訪幾位澳大 ︶ ， 詩 集︽ 金 斯 勃 雷 故 事 集 ︾ ︵ 利亞藝術家、中國作家和學者。我的一位姓王 的記者朋友，囘北京的幾年前一直在澳大利亞 居住，此時正帶着我參觀中國最活躍的藝術社 區之一的 798，這時，我們踫到一位來自哈爾濱， 衣著入時，頭腦靈活，身材苗條的 80 后畫廊經 ： 1888 紀人。我們坐下來喝咖啡。王痞着臉向她介紹我， – 2008 說我是“最著名的澳華藝術家之一，”在全世界 1988 ︾ ︶，

各地舉行了不計其數的畫展，這讓我忍俊不禁， 同時也吃驚不小。我想起我第一部英文長篇小

strange flowers 18 异心啮合“異花”開

説《東坡紀事》（2004）中，有一個被學生稱作“冒名頂替的騙子”的莊 道這個人物，不覺放聲大笑起來，令他倆莫名其妙，一霎那，虛構與現實 相互交错，吻合起来。某种意義上講，王開玩笑說的那句話，相距真相也 不太遙遠。一來，就算我生下來不是澳大利亞人，但論國籍我是。二來， 即便我不是手的藝術家，我總是個心的藝術家吧。說得更準確點，哪怕我 不會畫畫，我會寫字呀，也算是個藝術家吧。三十多年來，我從事六种文 學工作 — 寫詩，寫小説，寫非虛構創作作品，搞文學翻譯，搞文學批評， 還搞文學雜誌編輯，同時用英漢兩种語言做這些事。還可以再加一點内容， 因我在文學方面還自費出過書，但從“冒名頂替的騙子”角度講，這可能 走得遠了點，就不去說它了。 不過，十九年前，我還沒能到澳大利亞來之前，曾在上海受到幾個澳 大利亞人的影響，為他人所難以比擬，其中主要有尼古拉斯·周思和羅德 尼·霍爾，兩人都在我的碩士班上講過課，還有阿列克斯·米勒，他當時 去中國為第三部長篇小説《祖先遊戲》作實地考察時，我給他當過助手我 和幾位作家結識之後，渴求精神轉變的願望陡增，這種轉變當時似乎只可 能在海外發生。在此前的 1986 年，我作爲中國代表團首席翻譯訪問過加 拿大。與一位加拿大朋友交談時，我與之交換過最隱秘的一個想法 ：我想 離開中國，到哪兒去都可以，有必要的話，也包括澳大利亞這個我估計不 會有多少人想去的流犯之地。接下來，好像變戲法一樣，我考上了上海華 東師範大學，攻讀澳大利亞文學碩士學位，從武漢輾轉來到上海。 回頭再看那時，當年上述三位作家在我上學的地方匯聚，似乎相當偶 然，也似乎有著某种重大目的，就是把我帶到澳大利亞，憑空把我“塑造” 成一個作家。但願這麽多年來我的苦打苦熬對得起他們的好心好意。謙 卑一點說，這就好像把一粒種子，從未知的南方大陸，一路帶到 Middle Kingdom（中國），到了一定的時候，它就發芽開花了。十年后發生的情況是， 這粒種子抽出了枝條，也就是我本人，在二十世紀末重返中國，拿着亞聯 的資助，在北京大學住了四個月的校。這次經歷碩果累累，很快出了十本書， 其中包括中文翻譯《新的衝擊》，《女太監》和《完整的女人》，非虛構英 文作品《油抹布的氣味 ： 說英語，想中文，過澳大利亞生活》，以及一本 自費出版的中文長篇小説《憤怒的吳自立》。

異花