CULTURE: The Made in Hong Kong Literary Challenge

HONG KONG, Dec 20 (IPS) - Asian writers may not be manning the cultural barricades as their Hollywood counterparts from the Writers Guild do, but they face an equally daunting foe - the capricious and formidable monopoly of English-language publishing.

Recent buzz in literary and publishing circles has painted this hub, which straddles the East and West, as the coming of age literary centre of Asia. Hong Kong, long obsessed with celebrity gossip and the feng shui of success, is now stepping forward in a very different limelight. The city has an up and coming literary festival, its own literary magazine and recently inaugurated an international prize aimed at boosting the profile of Asian literature.

But despite these nascent stirrings writers here say the cluster of companies that control the global publishing business has been slow rediscovering Asian literary works after the demise of the colonial era. Their pursuit of instantaneous hits has shut many literary gems out of the global market, allowing only a small number of non-English books to enter the inner sanctum of English-language audiences.

Even as interest in original voices from Asia - a continent still perceived as full of exotic allure in the West - flares anew, Asian writers are struggling to get their works published and recognised outside of their home countries.

"The Anglo-American publishing industry has simply stopped publishing writers," says Hong Kong writer Xu Xi. "Editors are no longer trying to cultivate a literary culture. Instead they are looking for the ‘star’ book (not writer) that will make a profit."

The sad result of this commercial focus, she says, is the "Macdonaldisation of books". Xu Xi’s own works are difficult to fit into that mould. They depict the raw and edgy side of contemporary Hong Kong, in a somewhat deliberate defiance of western perceptions of the place as the archetype of the exotic Orient.

As her books are penned in English, Xu Xi is perhaps not the typical example of an Asian author writing in a native language. Yet her disillusionment with the state of the publishing industry reveals the existing gap between expectations and reality for many of these writers.

Erica Li, who has just rolled out an ambitious fantasy trilogy for children, called "The Mystery Valley", believes the disadvantages of writing in her native Chinese are as numerable as the rewards.

"It is very difficult for a Chinese book to get published in English unless it has got that negative and critical spin about Chinese life - be it the lack of freedom or suppressed love and feudal marriages," she says.

On the other hand, writing in Chinese has opened to her the possibility of being published in a market like mainland China that is increasingly demanding more variety and read quality. "Writing in Chinese helps avoid cultural misunderstandings that still happen between the East and West," she adds.

Her lavishly illustrated trilogy tells of a teenage quest, full of suspense, intrigue and spirituality, and has already had to fight comparisons with J.K. Rowling’s best-selling books about the boy wizard, Harry Potter.

"The book is very Chinese in a way because it incorporates elements of China’s ancient strategies of war, and takes the characters on a trip to the mysterious Shangri-la valley," Erica Li explains. "But I tried to free the story of constraints like particular place and time so that more readers can associate with it."

"It has become quite a mission for me to show that there is something worthwhile to read in Chinese,’’ she confesses.

It is easy to see why Hong Kong has emerged at the forefront of this effort to place Asian literary works back on the literature map.

Ten years after its return to Chinese rule, the former British colony retains its English-language heritage and cosmopolitan feel. Its wealth continues to draw aspiring artists and authors while its proximity to mainland China has become a magnet for an ever-growing crowd of literary agents and publishers.

Last year Hong Kong became home to a new international prize, recognising Asian novels unpublished in English, and to the re-launched Asia Literary Review. The fifth imprint of the magazine, this fall, featured a great variety of Asian writers from the Malaysian novelist Tan Twan Eng to Indonesian poet Laksmi Pamuntjak and Singapore’s Cyril Wong.

"English-language audiences are now demanding to read more original works from Asian writers than before," says Jo Lusby, the general manger for China of the British publisher Penguin. "They are no longer content with the westerners’ accounts of their travels through the East, they want to hear the voices of local people."

The era of such foreign tales of the East is hardly over. From Richard Mason’s 1950 story about Hong Kong’s world of Suzi Wong, where both the city and the Asian girl are exposed to the western gaze, to more recent works like American Peter Hessler’s "River Town", a journal of his life in an obscure town on the banks of the Yangtze River. Such books have been unrivalled best-selling successes in the West.

But Jo Lusby hopes that Penguin’s recent decision to purchase the translation rights for one of China’s leading bestsellers, "Wolf Totem", might just be that extra step needed to help foreign audiences discover the freshness and novelty of Asian literature.

In a lucky turn of events for Penguin, "Wolf Totem" won the inaugural Man Asian Literary Prize in November. The new Hong Kong-based literary prize, which is intended to draw international attention to Asian literature, is funded by the British investment firm Man Group, that also sponsors the prestigious Booker award.

Written by a retired academic under the pen name of Jiang Rong, the book is heavy on cultural reflections about the Chinese way of life and Chinese people’s interactions with nature and other ethnic groups.

In his home country, Jiang Rong has been compared to Jack London and the book has sold more than two million copies, creating a publishing phenomenon. But whether "Wolf Totem" can repeat this success outside of the Middle Kingdom remains a puzzle for many.

Not surprisingly, its release in English in early 2008 is being seen as a test for the future of serious Asian literature in the West.

Not everyone is pessimistic though. Hong Kong-based Taiwanese writer Huang Paolien believes globalisation is in fact unwittingly helping original Asian works to gain more international visibility.

"Ethnicity is becoming more valuable as a result of globalization,’’ she says. "When everybody from New York to Hong Kong is drinking Starbucks coffee, there comes a need to search for life that is different".

After many years of writing, in a career that spanned New York, London and Hong Kong, Paolien’s exquisitely written short stories and essays are still to make their English-language debut. But she remains patient about the time foreign audiences need to discover the difference between literary writing in mainland China and Taiwan.

"In Taiwan, we write more intimately and pay a lot of attention to the details and the elegance of prose," she says. "In mainland China, there is always a reference to the country’s long history and writers believe in telling stories rather than emphasising the beauty of literature".

Would she like to win the next Hong Kong Man literary prize? "The prize is like a firework, a sparkle that dies instantly. But a good story would be read for many years to come".

(END/2007)

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