Writer in residence Bei Ling - Exile, lost languages and censorship around the world
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The isolation that results from a being encased in a foreign language and environment is one that I glimpsed, as well as learned about, from talking to Bei Ling.
Although I possess only a basic level of Mandarin, Bei Ling seemed quite happy to engage in small talk in his mother tongue and I sensed that in a new environment, language was a blanket that one to cling to in times of uncomfortableness and distress.
Later, when I began interviewing Bei Ling, I requested that we conduct the interviews in English rather than Mandarin (due to my lacklustre Mandarin vocabulary) and he agreed, although slightly unwillingly.
While I grilled him on how translation had affected his work, how often he composed poetry and what his plans were for Tendency Press, his publishing company which prints volumes of poetry and literature outside of China (his latest work, a memoir of writer friend Susan Sontag, was published earlier this year in Taiwan), Bei Ling regarded me with a tense expression on his face.
In a previous meeting he had told me that, like in Susan Sontag’s eulogy for exiled writer Joseph Brodsky, in which she stated that after Brodsky was expelled from his home country, he no longer lived in Russia, but instead lived in the Russian language, Bei Ling confirmed that although being geographically isolated, he was living inside the language of his homeland.
"I have the feeling that I'm living in Chinese, not in China. Sometimes it's quite difficult if I spend two days really only talking English, it feels difficult. Like yesterday and the day before, that's two days, 24 hours - not 24 hours, but always talking - makes me feel that I'm leaving my own language. I always struggle with speaking Chinese and English, English and Chinese. Especially for writing. For reading, most of the time I use Chinese. But for talking, more and more English."
Although exile has placed limitations, or to be dramatic, somewhat imprisoned Bei Ling within a foreign language, for the Chinese poet, linguistic freedom has come in the form of being able to publish whatever poetry (outside mainland China) and prose - whether laced or drenched in criticism of the Chinese government - his heart so desires. His decision to leave China sacrificed the possibility of living with his family and old friends but as Jack Durack believes, is testament to the power of books in our society.
"There are books that I've read over the course of my life that have had more impact on me than anything else. And they've mostly been novels. And I think the power of a well-written novel is acknowledged in the attempts to stop writers from writing them - if they implicitly criticise governments."
Of his decision to live a life of exile and freedom in words, Bei Ling writes: "I am one for whom personal freedom is a precondition for survival."
Bei Ling was a writer in residence at UTS from May 7-28. He also participated at the Sydney Writers' Festival this year.