CLOSE-UP
YANG YI
Bridging an East Asia divide
By TOMOKO OTAKE
Staff writer
Sunday, Feb. 3, 2008
http://search.japantimes.co.jp/cgi-bin/fl20080203x2.html
Unpretentious, hard-working and humble, writer Yang Yi bears more
than a passing similarity to the eponymous lead character in her
novel "Wang-chan," titled after the nickname of a Chinese woman who
moved to Japan as the bride of a Japanese factory worker and then
tried to carve out a career as a marriage broker for other Chinese
women seeking to marry Japanese men living out in the sticks.

Yang Yi laughs during her recent interview with The Japan Times.
YOSHIAKI MIURA PHOTO
In "Wang-chan," 43-year-old Yang's first attempt at a Japanese-
language novel, first published late last year in a literary
magazine, the rural cultures and customs of China and Japan are
colorfully contrasted — along with rich and bittersweet interactions
between the central character and others, including her dying
Japanese mother-in-law and a sex-starved Japanese man in search of a
Chinese wife.
The native of Harbin in northeastern China (former Manchuria) caused
a sensation in Japan when, in October last year, she won the literary
magazine Bungakukai's prestigious biannual award for new writers. She
created even more ripples last month when she became one of the seven
nominees for the Akutagawa Award, one of Japan's most glittering
literary accolades.
Although she actually missed out on that top honor, Yang, who teaches
Chinese as a day job, was a much talked-about candidate, being the
first-ever Chinese to be considered for the highly publicized award.
Nonetheless, Yang remains humble about her literary feat, saying she
will never become a celebrity novelist. "I am more like a craftsman,"
she said when asked about her aspirations as a writer.
Last month, Yang published her first book, titled "Wang-chan," which
comprises that story and "Roshojo (Old Virgin)," another story that
is a tragi-comic account of an unmarried Chinese psychology
researcher who fantasizes about a romantic relationship with a
handsome Japanese professor.
Yang, who is divorced from a Japanese husband and now lives with her
teenage son and daughter in Tokyo's Chuo Ward, recently sat down for
an interview with The Japan Times to recount some episodes in her
adaptation to life in Japan and how she picked up the language at
supermarkets. She also shared her impressions of the enormous changes
in people's values in China these days, along with her take on the
often thorny matter of Japan-China relations.
How did you react to being nominated for the Akutagawa Award — and
then to the news that you didn't win it?
I was exhilarated and it was a nice surprise. I had no idea I would
be considered for the Akutagawa Award; I thought it had nothing to do
with me. When I learned I didn't get the prize, I was neither sad nor
disappointed, because I didn't expect to get it from the beginning
and I was really happy just to be a candidate.
Tell us a little about your background.
I was born in Harbin and grew up there, except for three years during
the Cultural Revolution (1966-76), when we spent time in a small
farming village to the north. That was because of kaho (the "Down to
the Countryside Movement," in which [Communist Party of China
Chairman] Mao Zedong [1893-1976] ordered urban intellectuals to live
in villages and be re-educated by farmers). My parents were both
teachers — my mother was a schoolteacher and my father was a college
literature professor — and a certain percentage of teachers in each
school were affected.
I had four sisters and brothers, but my oldest sister died after she
was expelled alone, at age 16, to a village on China's border with
Russia after graduating from high school. She died in a traffic
accident there.
How did you come to Japan?
I had relatives in Japan and became interested in the country through
photos and other things they sent to our family. I also had a dream
to go abroad. Back then, China was not open to other societies, so we
had no knowledge of foreign countries.
You came to Japan in 1987 as a student at age 22. Where did you study?
Well, I quit a Chinese university, where I had majored in accounting,
before coming here. First, I went to a Japanese-language school in
Kabukicho in Tokyo's Shinjuku district (laughs). Next, I was enrolled
at Tokai University as an auditor, then I moved to Ochanomizu
University.
Why accounting? Were you interested in that?
No (laughs). I chose accounting because I thought it would be useful
for my future.
After graduating from Ochanomizu University, I believe you started
working at a Chinese-language newspaper.
Yes, that was a little bit later, because after graduating from
university, I became pregnant with my daughter. When she turned 3
months old, I put her in day care and started to work at a Chinese-
language newspaper here. Then I worked at a few other newspapers for
Chinese residents in Japan. At the first one I was doing
administrative work, but I wanted to do reporting, so I went to
another newspaper, where I worked as a reporter/editor.
What was it like coming to Japan from China 20 years ago?
There were very few Chinese students, so it was very difficult —
first to get a visa. When I applied, I had very little information
about Japan, but when I got it I felt I needed to go right away.
What were your impressions of Japan at that time, when the bubble
economy was in full swing?
Before coming here, I really knew little about Japan and its customs.
I was so worried about what I would encounter that I brought
everything with me, even my futon set, because I wondered if they had
futon in Japan (laughs). I had no knowledge about Japan whatsoever. I
was like one of those people who show up at Beijing Station from the
countryside for the first time and are wandering around, carrying
many big bags with them.
So were you like an onobori-san (first-time visitor to a big city)?
Yes. When I think about it now, it's really embarrassing.
I was living near a Tokai University campus in suburban Hatano City
in Kanagawa Prefecture. In March (when the school year ends in
Japan), I learned that Japanese students throw everything out, from
TVs to fridges! Back then, average Chinese families didn't have a TV
or a fridge, so I was really shocked. So later, when I moved to the
Kitasenju area in northern Tokyo, I didn't buy anything, because I
thought I could pick up all the dumped stuff. After I moved to Tokyo,
at 8 or 9 p.m., I would roam around my neighborhood looking for
dumped goods, but I couldn't find anything (laughs). So I experienced
many inconveniences for a while. . . . But looking back, those were
really fun times.

Yang Yi on holiday in Kanagawa Prefecture's mountainous Tanzawa area
in May 1991 (top)

; at her graduation ceremony from the prestigious, all-female
Ochanomizu University in Tokyo in March 1995 (above);

and in Fukuoka with her two children in 1997. PHOTOS COURTESY OF YANG YI
Did you speak Japanese when you first came here?
No. But it was so much fun. At my Japanese-language school, I learned
new things every day, so after school I really wanted to practice my
Japanese. I would grab any Japanese person as a conversation partner.
I would go up to ojisan (middle-aged men) working at bicycle-parking
sites, and I would talk to them, even when I had nothing important to
say. So the ojisan were pleased and chatted with me a lot. On my way
home, at the supermarket I would try to strike up a conversation —
even though you really don't need to talk at supermarkets. I would
grab someone and say, "Give me a discount!" But Japanese people don't
bargain (laughs). It's embarrassing when I think about it now, but
back then I was audacious.
So did you learn Japanese through everyday conversations like that?
Yeah, I spoke to everyone casually. Chinese people are brazen at
times, you know! (Laughs.) I took an Odakyu Line train every day, but
Japanese passengers are very quiet. In the rare cases when I heard
somebody talking on the train, I would lean over and try to listen to
what they were talking about. In the beginning, I couldn't understand
anything. But gradually, I began to hear a few words, such as kino
(yesterday), and when I could understand even a few words in their
conversation I was elated. It made me excited throughout the whole
day. I'm that simple (laughs).
Had you written novels in Chinese before?
I wrote many short fiction stories when I was working at a newspaper.
What was your first story about?
I don't remember; it was part of my job. I had to write so many of
them, and I was writing under different names every time, so I don't
even remember which are mine (laughs).
Were you told by the newspaper to change your pen names?
Well, Chinese-language newspapers (in Japan) are very different from
Japanese ones because they have a very low budget. They can't hire
many reporters, so reporters would also work as editors, and
contributions from outside writers are also limited.
At that weekly newspaper I was in charge of editing five pages per
week, so I had to make one page a day. I had difficulty filling the
space, especially when there were few contributions from the outside
— and most of those were of low quality. So I thought it would be
quicker to write something myself rather than spend ages fixing up
such articles. But because I didn't want people to think that the
same writer was writing every week, I wrote under many different
names so it would look as if we had lots of writers! (Laughs.) Back
then, I wrote not only fiction but also essays, poems and even
stories about fashion trends. I made up the trends myself because I
really didn't know what the latest fashion was.
Did you work long hours back then?
No. Because I had young children, I worked fixed hours, and did no
overtime.
When did you start writing in Japanese?
This is my first work in Japanese (pointing to "Wang-chan"), from two
or three years ago.
How long did it take you to write it?
Not so long. I wrote it in about two weeks. But I had probably been
thinking a lot about it for a long time before actually writing it,
though I don't remember the process now.
Where did you get the idea for the plot?
I wasn't really thinking so much about the plot. I mean, I have
always loved writing; I have struggled a lot in my life; but I also
had lots of fun in the process. When I was working as a reporter and
editor, my coworkers always said that it must be really hard to put
together five pages, but it was no burden for me, because I really
enjoyed that job. I like teaching as well, especially to advanced
learners, but with beginners, the lessons are more or less the same
every time, and I find it boring, though I know this is a rude thing
to say.
So I thought about my life and I thought I didn't want to end up just
doing this routine. I then thought that I would really like to write
— but I wondered how I could make a living from writing. If I
continued to write in Chinese, I felt that would not be so different
from the times I was working at the newspapers. Even if I wrote for
publications in China, I felt that my values and common sense had
become different from today's values in China. So I thought it would
be difficult for me to be accepted.
Then, in my environment in Japan, I realized that if I was to really
make a living out of writing, I would have to be accepted in
mainstream Japanese society. That's why I decided to write in
Japanese. If I am targeting Japanese readers, I must write stuff that
Japanese people would want to read. So I decided to create a story
that has both Japanese and Chinese characters. Where would Chinese
people interact most with Japanese? Probably if a Chinese gets
married to a Japanese. That's how I came up with this story.
Your descriptions of an "arranged-marriage tour" — in which a
Chinese woman, as a marriage broker, takes Japanese men looking for
brides to a Chinese village, are very vivid. Are such situations
happening in real life?
I think they are. Many people told me after I wrote the story, "I
didn't know you were doing that marriage-broker work!" Well, I have
never been engaged in such work, so the story is based on my
imagination and real-life inquiries from such brides to the
newspapers. I don't know what the situation is really like.
Did you never hear directly from such women?
I never heard direct episodes from them, but when I was working for
the newspapers we often received phone calls (asking for help) from
women, and when I asked them how they came to Japan, they would say,
"through an introduction." So I imagined what they might have gone
through.
Both "Wang-chan" and "Roshojo" feature a Chinese woman living in
Japan as a lead character. Do you have any observations on the social
position of Chinese women today?
Yes, that's exactly why I wrote these novels. The sense of morals and
the values that they (the Chinese characters) brought from China are
no longer accepted in China. Not only I, but many Chinese women in my
generation who came to Japan around the same time as I did, have
certain fixed ideas about morals and about how women should behave,
but they are shocked at the sense of morals Japanese people have.
After living here for a long time, they get used to how Japanese
feel. But when they go back to China, they see a Chinese society that
has completely changed. The problem is, they haven't lived the
changes themselves. So they are shocked again and feel lost.
Is such a sense of disconnection the inspiration for your works?
Well, how can I say it? . . . To me, the lead characters are — even
though they take the form of humans — the old Chinese morals. They
are old-fashioned by Japanese standards. But then, even if they go
back home, they are not accepted because Chinese society has changed
so much. These people are not bad, but they are lost in between.
The principal character in "Roshojo" is depicted a bit comically. I
almost found the character pitiful.
Yes. To me, that's exactly what the old Chinese values are — pitiful
(laughs).
Which other countries have you been to? How do you feel about women
in those countries?
I've made very short trips to places such as Singapore and South
Korea, places that are not that different. What struck me as
interesting was that, while Singapore is a country of many races, I
had thought it was a country mostly consisting of Chinese people. But
it was different. This is based on my experience of just using the
airport and taxis and other things, and I've never lived there. But
if you ask what language Singaporeans are best at — Chinese, English
or Malay — it is a mishmash of all these languages. If you asked
them, "Please do not use English or Malay, just speak Chinese,"
nobody could do it. I felt that people in Singapore have an
inferiority complex. In other words, they have no strong cultural
base, they don't know where they belong culturally, and that seems to
be their inferiority complex.\
PLOT SYNOP
Marriages in the making
"Wang-chan" is the story of an eponymous Chinese woman,
affectionately so named by the author because it was her Chinese
family name. In the story, though, Wang-chan is known by all the
other characters as "Kimura-san," following her marriage to a
Japanese assembly-line worker living in a village in Shikoku, whom
she met through a marriage broker.
Wang-chan came to Japan because she was desperate to leave her
womanizing ex-husband, who would show up again and again after their
divorce to finagle money out of her. No matter how many times she
moved to various cities in China to start her life again, her good-
for-nothing ex-husband would find her, turn up at her workplace and
take her hard-won money away by making her feel guilty about
abandoning their son, who has turned out to be exactly like his dad
and regards her only as a cash cow.
Now a Japanese national, Wang-chan is in a loveless marriage with the
ominously quiet husband in Shikoku, who, when he is not at work, does
nothing but lie around at home watching television. While she finds
interactions with her lonely mother-in-law comforting, she is scared
by her unemployed brother-in-law, who once gave her a lustful look.
To become economically independent, Wang-chan starts a marriage-
brokerage business aiming to hook up female Chinese villagers with
Japanese men living in the countryside. One time, she takes a group
of these men from desolate villages to a similarly depopulated
farming village in China. There, she introduces the men to local
women who, due to various circumstances, are dying to meet nice and
relatively affluent husbands.
Wang-chan tries hard to equate the various demands and expectations
of the women, their families and the Japanese men — one of whom,
old, dirty-minded Uno, is fond of leaving the group to visit "massage
parlors."
But then, as Wang-chan busies herself with this work, and also cares
for her dying mother-in-law, she finds herself gradually attracted to
one of her Japanese clients, who is the hard-working owner of a
vegetable store — but who has already picked his bride . . . (Tomoko
Otake)
