Love's Ambition

At this year's Macau Literary Festival, there was an event featuring a conversation with Irish writer Claire Keegan.

Keegan is a novelist I've long admired, having read her short story collections Antarctica and Walk the Blue Fields multiple times.

Without any preparation, I began speaking about a story called Big Qiao, Little Qiao . It was only at that moment I realized it bore a certain connection to one of Keegan's stories. Yiyun Li once said she uses fiction to engage in dialogue with works by writers she admires. For instance, she loved William Trevor's Three People , so she wrote Gold Boy, Emerald Girl . Three People is a rather mysterious and dark tale about an old man, his daughter, and a young man who admires her—three individuals forming a stable triangle. For various reasons (I consider it unethical to spoil the brilliant secrets hidden within that story), the old man's existence becomes the prerequisite for maintaining the relationship between the two young people. Should the old man die one day, the man and woman would be unable to face each other. In Gold Boy, Emerald Girl , Yiyun Li also depicts a triangular relationship: an elderly woman, her son, and a girl who enters their lives. However, set in 1990s China with different character personalities and dilemmas, the story exudes a completely distinct atmosphere and texture. Had she not mentioned it herself, no one would have thought of Three People while reading Gold Boy, Emerald Girl . But knowing this connection, one sees the two stories as mirror images of each other—fascinating indeed.

Keegan once wrote a short story called Sisters . It tells of two sisters born in the Irish countryside. The younger sister marries into the city and lives a luxurious middle-class life, while the elder stays behind to care for their aging parents, delaying marriage and remaining alone for years. After their parents' death, she inherits the farmland. Every summer, the younger sister returns with her children to stay for a while. But this year is different. She arrives and lingers indefinitely, showing no intention of leaving. The elder sister endures it, serving her and the children daily until the final moment when she erupts, exposing the truth: there are no satin curtains, no dishwasher—everything was fabricated. The younger sister has been abandoned by her husband and has returned to seize the elder sister's land. But the elder sister declares, "Everything here was earned through thirty years of my life, and I will never let anyone take it away." At the story's end, the elder sister stands before a mirror, combing the younger sister's hair as she did in childhood. The younger sister has the golden locks the elder always envied. Suddenly, the elder picks up scissors and—snip—cuts off her sister's hair. The younger sister screams in terror. The story ends there. The motif of girls cutting hair out of jealousy isn't Keegan's invention; Fitzgerald wrote Bernice Bobs Her Hair , where a pretty girl's hair is similarly viciously sheared. Whether Sisters is in dialogue with Bernice Bobs Her Hair remains unknown, but it doesn't diminish Sisters as an outstanding story. I adore that lonely, patient, and stubborn elder sister, defending the little she has—her sole anchor in this world."Sisters" is included in the short story collection Antarctica , which I read around 2011. Although I revisited it, I had long forgotten it. I consider myself a volatile reader (this realization came from drinking—I flush when I drink, reeking of alcohol, but within hours, it dissipates completely, as if I never drank at all)—I can't remember any lines from books, making it nearly impossible to quote them when writing. After about a year, I forget most of the plot of a novel, retaining only scattered details. Three years later, if asked about a certain book, I’d be embarrassed to say I’ve read it because—well, there’s no trace left.

This does have its advantages, though. I never have to worry about the so-called "anxiety of influence." Given enough time, there’s no masterpiece by any great writer that I can’t forget.

In the February 2017 issue of Harvest , Zhang Yueran’s novella Da Qiao Xiao Qiao was published.

By the time I wrote Da Qiao Xiao Qiao , I had completely forgotten Sisters . The only thing I remembered was a detail about cutting hair, an overlapping impression that emerged after reading Fitzgerald. But Fitzgerald and Keegan had already tangled together in my mind—I couldn’t recall who wrote it first. The origin of Da Qiao Xiao Qiao was a friend, R, whom I met on Douban. She was pursuing a Ph.D. in economics in Sweden and came to Boston as an exchange student for a year. We met in Boston during winter. She was reserved and shy, yet radiated a kind of profound intelligence. She recommended Marilynne Robinson’s Housekeeping to me and took me on a walk through Harvard University after a snowfall, pointing out the small theater where she usually watched European art films (that day, a forgotten masterpiece by some renowned director was showing, but I was more interested in buying a ski jacket and a mug at a nearby shop). Later, when she returned to China, we met again. She told me about some of her research topics—for example, how after Columbus discovered the Americas, he brought potatoes to Europe, and the introduction of potatoes significantly impacted Europe’s overall population growth and urbanization. Then, offhandedly, she mentioned a story she had just heard from a scholar researching family planning: a pair of sisters—the elder, legally born, eventually succumbed to family pressure and committed suicide years later, while the younger, born outside the law, seemed unaffected and lived on healthily. Through her introduction, I met this scholar, who gave me two books on family planning that couldn’t be published publicly. I asked again about the story of those sisters. I wanted to know what the younger sister was like now—she had been admitted to university and was studying in Hunan. Is she happy now? I asked. The scholar shrugged and said, Oh, that kid? A bit carefree.I didn't write anything down, not even a single note. My volatile personality led me to quickly forget about it too. Until the spring of 2016, when I fell ill and had plenty of free time at home, I suddenly remembered those two sisters. I realized I had been thinking about the younger sister all along. By then, she should have already graduated from university and entered society. I wanted to know how she was doing now, whether she had stepped into the sunlight. Of course, there was no evidence to suggest she had been living in the shadows—that was just my imagination. In my mind, she had grown stronger in both body and will amidst city life, but also lost parts of herself through constant compromises. She fought against urban living, losing much and shedding plenty of blood, yet she had to survive—because she was herself, and she was also her entire family.

The days during my illness felt endlessly long, so I let myself write freely. Before I knew it, I had written over forty thousand words. Once I recovered, I abandoned this novel that had been my companion through hardship, not even glancing at it again. After summer, life grew busy, and I moved on to other writings. It wasn’t until the end of the year that I took it out once more.

There’s a scene in the novel where the older and younger sisters stand by a river and witness a child flying a kite drown. The older sister believes she saw a water monster and tries to drag the younger sister away. But the younger sister refuses to move, standing frozen in place. After the crowd disperses, she climbs a tree, retrieves the dead child’s kite, and takes it home. Many years later, the older sister tells the younger sister’s boyfriend, This is my sister—she never says what she wants. But what does the younger sister want? She wants to replace her sister, to become the only legitimate child of their parents. She has always stood in the shadows, and like all plants deprived of sunlight, twisted vines have grown in her heart.

If Claire Keegan’s Sisters explores the older sister’s inner world, then Big Qiao, Little Qiao delves into the younger sister’s. But a story set in rural Ireland and one set in China are obviously not the same. I don’t have a sister, nor do any of my friends. In our childhood, having sisters was considered wrong—like two flowers blooming on a single calla lily stem, no one would find it beautiful, only deformed. In the novel, the younger sister’s heart is a battleground between good and evil. Calling it good and evil might be too crude—more precisely, it’s a struggle between familial loyalty and self-preservation. The scarcity of resources in her childhood made her fiercely protective of the little she had gained. But in the end, she realizes she may not have truly won anything at all. She can’t hold onto anything, can’t grasp anything firmly.Looking back, Da Qiao Xiao Qiao also forms a kind of mirror image with Sisters . Just as the younger sister’s return in Sisters disrupts the elder sister’s life, in Da Qiao Xiao Qiao , the elder sister’s appearance shatters the tranquility maintained by the younger sister, posing a certain threat. And eerily enough, the elder sister in this story also has beautiful, haughty long hair that flutters on summer nights, carrying the scent of shampoo. Thank goodness the younger sister never ends up cutting her sister’s hair. Because she doesn’t need to. The cruel reality will shear away that long hair—no action required from her. All she has to do is watch. Yet watching her sister disappear is akin to conspiring with an invisible murderer. This is where China differs from Ireland. Beyond the subjugation of women, there exists an even greater subjugation here—one tied to class, to lives cursed by the law. The same sisterly tale, unfolding on this land, could never conclude with merely snipping a lock of hair.

The title Da Qiao Xiao Qiao was chosen later, inspired by a band of the same name whose songs I adore. In one of their tracks, they sing: What’s forgotten doesn’t vanish; it hides behind the trees. So many things we assume are forgotten never truly disappear. We always meet again—behind some great tree in spring.