【英语科技】郭小橹：从电影到写作

Meet the people shaping life and culture in Asia. More from The Moment

When Guo Xiaolu moved to the United Kingdom in 2002, she could barely speak English.

'No more than 10 sentences,' said the writer, now 39 years old and part of the literary magazine Granta's list of the 20 most promising British novelists. 'It was really painful to shift into my second life.'

Born in a fishing village in China's Zhejiang province, Ms. Guo studied filmmaking at the Beijing Film Academy and at the National Film and Television School in Beaconsfield, England. While she has made half a dozen independent movies, she is perhaps best known for novels such as 'A Concise Chinese-English Dictionary For Lovers' and '20 Fragments of A Ravenous Youth,' which explore the lives of culturally displaced urban Chinese.

She spoke to the Journal from her home in London about the losers of history, writing in broken English and how she's still trying to understand British culture. Edited excerpts follow.

How has your background in film influenced the way you write?

I've never really trained professionally as a writer. In fact, I've never studied literature in my life. From my bachelor's to my master's degree, I was a film historian, theorist and critic. This has given me quite a visual aspect of writing. What attracts me in every story is the landscape and historical period, and that has affected my writing a lot. The social and urban landscape is very vivid in my writing, and my novels are rather fragmentary. They're almost like a montage in cinema.

What led to you transitioning into novels?

The Beijing Film Academy, where I had studied, was constructed after European film schools and very French. I loved it because you could see the power of artistic ideals in cinema. But the school in U.K. was in a suburban English town, which is the opposite of Beijing, and the power of the BBC was so strong there…you were trained to potentially work with them. But I am Chinese-trained and thought of all the great French films, not the BBC. That was the time I found myself writing many novels.

Your books tend to have strange structures. 'A Concise Chinese-English Dictionary,' for instance, was written partly in broken English.

That was quite natural because I moved to the U.K. only about 12 years ago, and the first year, I wrote a diary in my own broken English. It wasn't clever structural thinking. I was quite old when I moved, and my way of thinking and speech had all been decided.

'20 Fragments' [which has photos interspersed throughout the book] was written that way because it is about contemporary, urban Chinese in very chaotic street scenes. One character is completely lost, and they may go out to find one thing but do something else or end up somewhere they don't want to go. I used photos because they're very moment-based and fragmentary.

Is there any internal conflict when it comes to writing about home in your second language?

My flesh and blood are made from Chinese elements but my aesthetic composition is really European literature. In school, we read Lu Xun and Qing Dynasty textbooks, but I think Marguerite Duras was more important than 'Dream of the Red Chamber' for me. I'm made of contemporary elements and am very into the moment.

My films however, are more personal than my books. I grew up in a little village with my grandparents, who were really pure peasants, barbarian peasants. I think these old peasants are really the losers of history, because they've lost their land and identity. Now, the proletariat has no place in society, they're just poor and dying. I left my hometown as a teenager, but these people still make up the characters in my films. I feel their sorrow quite deeply.

Has your aesthetic sense evolved since you left China?

'A Concise Chinese-English Dictionary' was a turning point in my writing. Before that, I composed novels like a kind of historical narrative or epic family saga. Now, it's more like a character's monologue. The most important thing is the intimate voice as the political landscape and ideological restrictions have subsided into the far distance.

You've previously said that you don't think British audiences care about your subject matter of Asia.

I had lived in Paris, Hamburg and Berlin and found that in Britain, it's very easy for migrants to become citizens as compared to those countries. But British society is a very hard society. They have very little land, and the class gap is so strong. The rich are very rich, and the working class still struggle. But on the other hand, it seems the foremost society that understands the democratic way of living, even given their colonial past. It's very strange and interesting. I am still trying to understand this culture.

Does this recent accolade from Granta change anything?

I'm only a literature writer who has a very boring life. This is not like in the '70s and '80s, where there was fame and celebrity in the intellectual world. Nowadays, everybody is kind of a flat object. You're just a desolate little writer. Even a Nobel Prize winner like Mo Yan doesn't enter mainstream society. The prize is great for publishers, but your life has very little change, really.

2002年远赴英国之时，郭小橹几乎还不会说英语。

Philippe Ciompi郭小橹在伦敦。这位现年39岁的作家说道：“会说的不超过10句。转入我的第二人生的过程非常痛苦。”而如今，她已是英国文学杂志《格兰塔》(Granta)评选出的最具前途的20名英国小说家之一。

郭小橹出生于浙江的一个渔村，而后在北京电影学院(Beijing Film Academy)和英国比肯斯菲尔德(Beaconsfield)的英国国立电影电视大学(National Film and Television School)学习电影制作。她已经拍了五六部独立影片，但她最为人所知的还是《中英情人简明字典》(A Concise Chinese-English Dictionary For Lovers)和《饕餮青春之二十片断》(20 Fragments of A Ravenous Youth)等小说，它们探讨了处于文化错位状态的中国都市人的生活。

她在伦敦的家中接受了《华尔街日报》(The Wall Street Journal)的采访，谈论了历史的失败者、用词不成句的英文写作的经历，以及她如何依然努力地去理解英国文化。下文为经过编辑的采访内容。

《华尔街日报》：你的电影背景对你的写作方式有什么影响吗？

郭小橹：我从未真正接受过写作训练。实际上，我也从来没有学过文学。从本科到硕士，我从事的都是电影史研究、电影理论以及影评工作。这给我的写作带来了很强的视觉元素。每个故事吸引我的是其中的社会风貌和历史时代特征，这一点对我的写作产生了很大影响。我作品中的社会风貌和都市风貌都非常鲜活，我的小说也是相当碎片化的，它们几乎就像电影中的蒙太奇手法。

《华尔街日报》：是什么促使你转向写作小说的？

郭小橹：我就读的北京电影学院是仿照欧洲的电影学院设立的，非常地法国化。我很热爱它，因为你可以在电影中看到艺术理想的力量。而我在英国就读的学校位于英格兰的一个郊区小镇，它和北京是截然相反的，而且BBC在那儿的影响非常之大，你受到的培训就是为了与BBC可能的合作而准备的。但是我是中国培养出来的，所想的全是优秀的法国电影，而不是BBC的影片。我就是在那时候写了很多小说的。

《华尔街日报》：你的作品往往具有奇特的结构。比如说《中英情人简明字典》，它有一部分就是用词不成句的英文写的。

郭小橹：那是很自然的事情，因为我是在大约12年前才来的英国。在这儿的第一年，我用自己词不成句的英文写日记，它并不是灵巧的有结构的思考。我来英国时年纪已经很大了，那时我的思维方式和言语方式都已经定型。

《饕餮青春之二十片断》（整本书穿插着一些照片）就是用那种方式写的，因为它描述的是身处极其嘈杂混乱的街头的中国现代都市人。其中一个人物完全迷失了，他们也许是出去寻找某个东西，结果却做了其他事情，又或是最终去了他们不想去的地方。我在书中用了一些照片，因为它们是基于瞬间的，是碎片化的。

《华尔街日报》：当你以第二语言描写自己的国家时，内心有没有出现冲突？

郭小橹：我的身体是中国元素构成的，但我的审美实际上是由欧洲文学元素构成的。在学校时，我们读的是鲁迅和清代的作品，但是我认为对我来说，玛格丽特•杜拉斯(Marguerite Duras)比《红楼梦》(Dream of the Red Chamber)更重要。我的思想由现代元素构成，我非常喜欢当下。

不过，我的电影要比我的书更私人化。我在一个小村庄长大，和我的祖父母一起生活，他们是完完全全的农民，目不识丁的农民。我觉得这些年老的农民的确是历史的失败者，因为他们丧失了土地和身份。现在，无产者在社会上没有容身之地，他们贫穷，垂死挣扎。我在十几岁时就离开家乡，但是这些人依然构成了我影片的人物。我能非常深切地感受到他们的悲伤。

《华尔街日报》：在你离开中国后，你的审美观有没有发生变化？

郭小橹：《中英情人简明字典》是我写作过程中的一个转折点。在那之前，我写的小说有点儿像历史叙事或史诗般的家族传奇，现在它更像是一个人物的独白。最重要的一点是叙事的语态是私密的，因为政治背景和意识形态上的限制都消失在了远方。

《华尔街日报》：以前你曾说过你认为英国观众并不关心亚洲题材。

郭小橹：我之前曾在巴黎、汉堡和柏林生活过，我发现与这些地方相比，外来者在英国获得公民身份非常容易。但是英国社会是非常严苛的，他们的土地非常稀缺，阶级差距相当大，富人极其富裕，劳工阶层依然生活艰难。但是，在另一方面，即使它曾经有过殖民历史，英国似乎依然是最早理解民主生活方式的社会。这个现象很奇特，也很有意思。我仍然在努力去了解这个文化。

《华尔街日报》：《格兰塔》杂志最近的赞誉有没有给你带来什么改变？

郭小橹：我只是一个生活非常枯燥的文学作家。在上世纪70年代和80年代，知识分子界还有声誉和名望一说，现在的情况则不同了，大家都有点儿像一个单调的物体。你只是一个孤独的小作家，就算是莫言那样的诺贝尔奖获得者也没有进入主流社会。获奖对出版社来说是大好事，但你的生活实际上几乎没有什么变化。