"Style Practice"

Shan He, poet, living in Singapore. Mainly write and publish in Chinese. Published books include This Moment and Works in Mediocrity

Listen on SimpleCast or Spotify, episode in Chinese. 閱讀中文版.

Lingxiao Can you introduce yourself?

Shan He I’m Shan He (何杉). I’ve been migrated from mainland to Singapore for 25 years. I’ve been like migrating birds back and then. In university time I was writing, poetry; I was in poetry community, and I was the president of it. Since I was out of door of school, like suddenly my desire for writing has vanished. After all years – in fact twenty years – I’ve never wrote a line. And it was until my father got sick, I picked up writing again. Then I found a publisher, they were willing to help with it, that’s how I got my first book. Coincidently, there was another publisher in Taiwan, they proposed publishing my book for free, as their first publishing to the public. And now I work as a teacher and study as a Ph.D., which is soon to be completed. I reckon myself as a standard stranding Chinese, who has left their motherland to Singapore. The mother-tongue here is not really our native language. I’ve recently been realizing it in a stranding Chinese writing program. Last night when I rethought about writing, I’ve strongly felt that language indeed has been the last, and the only connection to my born country.

Lingxiao What is your Ph.D. program?

Shan He I’m in a program in NTU. I’m working at the same time, not a full time Ph.D. My track is on education – application of educational theatre in Singapore Chinese education. In mainland there might be two to three institutions doing it, there’s another one in Singapore except for me. A few more in Taiwan. Ph.D. is fully for my personal interest. I’ve just submitted my final version of thesis, it should be good for international review after some validations.

Lingxiao Since your graduation from college, how long was it until you picked up writing?

Shan He I graduated in 1995 and re-started writing in 2016. That is a full double of decades.

Lingxiao What do you think of your parents’ impact in your writing…there’ve been things. I was reading at somewhere else you saying taking care of your parents for their health, including those in hospitals. What is the impact?

Shan He Yes, there’s an important impact. I think for every writer, we are hard to explain ostensibly why do we picked up writing at a moment. But there has to be a specific, concrete event, at least for me. Since my father developed dementia I‘ve been back to China, to hospitals. I received the call. I booked a same night flight to Shanghai and sat in the emergency hall. I think we both know what it is like in China’s hospital emergency hall, that is a place for death to come and go. You can lose several lives in a single night. So at that time, I felt deepening. Before that, I hardly every faced death directly and had little idea of it. Then I watched it passing you unwordly. I was shock.

Lingxiao What is the reason from a hinder-sight that you stopped writing after school?

Shan He In a blink it has been about seven years since I restarted writing. I conclude it to an internal drive. When you have a powerful drive enough it’ll push you. I can’t consolidate what it is, but I can identify it. After college, it’s simple that when a young man enters society, he has too many material issues to deal with. For instance he’ll have new colleagues in school or at work, he’ll deal with trivial, he might be energetic at the age and he needs to seek a partner, he might build up his position in the early career state and extract work experience. It is hard to keep a mental space for writing. Reason for that, from my perspective, you’ll need highly focused attention. You can’t write simply because you pursuit pretty words. Even for that you’ll need focus. I think it’s very making sense that you stopped writing for twenty years. When I restarted it, I indeed found more space and leisure in daily for me to think and hone on a topic. Now I’m producing one bi-weekly on average, as a pretty accurate measure.

Lingxiao Sounds like you have a writing plan?

Shan He I don’t have a plan. I’ve talked about that on other interviews. I need to wait for a calling. And a calling, a topic emerged. I need to wait for it to speak what form does it want to be expressed. And during the waiting I have no idea.

Lingxiao Does it have to be personally and empirically related? Do you pay attention to topics less personal, more group related, or to say culturally?

Shan He I think I’m in change. If I recall correctly, the last year, a bus rolled over the hill and fell to the valley, caused 27 deaths (it was a pandemic transferring bus). When I read it I felt forcibly writing something for it, and I wrote for the 27 people. After the Ukraine-Russia war breakout, and it is still an on-going, I also wrote a series. And in 2021 winter, my mother had a surgery in Shanghai, it was the worst time in pandemic, I had to find a flight. But I was forced to lock in hotel on landing for 14 days, going nowhere. Then I had video call with my mom. Even though the place was close to home, I could only read news, work out in the hotel room and write. I was reading news everyday. In Henan a 14 year old teenager was deceived and led to a wheat field and killed by the other three. He was buried there so his mom could not find her son, until the next year wheat started growing, they finally found the body. I found news like these shattered me.

Lingxiao In the mails you’ve mentioned you think often about classics and modernism. I may ask that in a different angle. Do you have dissatisfaction of Chinese writers?

Shan He I barely read Chinese-written contemporary poetry.

Lingxiao From when? Does “contemporary” have a specific bound here?

Shan He I think no specific bound. Let’s do this division for contemporary poetry. The earliest were the Crescent Moon group (新月派). My father was a professor of Chinese Literature so I’ve had the context. I’ve read them very young and have concluded they were all crap. In high school we read the avant-garde (先鋒派) and the Misty (朦朧派) like Ai Qing and the Shouters. Like Bei Dao (北島), Shu Ting (舒婷), Gu Cheng (顧城), I’ve all read about. Bei Dao still writes but I don’t find he writes anything new. Then the so-called post-modernism poets, I’ve found nothing to learn neither. When we move closer to date, the only one who piques my sort of interest is Lan Lan (藍藍), she’s somehow good. Blue-collar poets (打工詩人), I’ve read some, but doubt that writing’s sustainable? This is essential. If the topics go repetitive, you’ll need only handful of them. So I’ve really exhausted my list.

Lingxiao If we switch a language, would you find things differently?

Shan He My English is not terrific but I found myself learning a lot from English poetry. Mentioning what and who I like, my idol poet is Emily Dickinson. I’ve had her books beside my bed. And Tranströmer from Sweden; I don’t read Swedish of course but I have a translated by Li Li (李笠), I think this one is well translated. Mark Stand, I can read him in English directly. His language is not special, has not much closeness, and he doesn’t use any big words. I liked him, and even was obsessed for a while. I had the indulge to write with a touch of a few lines from him. But the most impactful poet, I think, is Paul Celan. Then for English poetry, Anne Sexton, with those Confessional poets, they are all good. Recently I’m reading them translated by Yiliang Li (李以亮). He introduced some Polish poets, and he translates well.

Lingxiao Why does English poetry give you refreshment?

Shan He There’re two sides. First, all Chinese poetry we can read, those are published in public, are all castrated. This produces serious problem. I have poetry commentary friends in China – so when you look at popular poets like Di Zang (臧棣) and Pingyang Lei (雷平洋), their works cannot deepen into anyone’s actual living condition…if you daydream with language experiment, there’s nothing to read. I don’t think you can shatter anyone because of the lack of depth – you are not caring about human. They can’t talk about those essence condition that we be at the world. Or to say they are limited to political environment or social reality and have to hide them in a drawer.

In Wechat channels I have also read a range of Chinese contemporary poets, there’s not much language breakthrough. Classics need a rhythm. I didn’t see it in their works. If you want to abandon rhythm, and you write in contemporary Chinese, it still has to present sort of aesthetics. Although no one has stated the rules for modern poetry, but at least you need to speak fluently. When we think of Tang-Song poetry, contemporary poets are using the same system as they did. You can’t change that. So for the same basis, either it’s ancient or modern language, there’s consistency in basic grammar, in the rhythm and in the phonics. The problem for contemporary poets is they cannot handle the fluent of Chinese.

Secondly, why can’t we write verses anymore? It’s a joke to replicate verse nowadays. I think that’s also an easy one – you can’t apply the words and speech structures today to classic verses, vice versa. You can’t apply a classic image to contemporary. We had idylls, folks and borderland motifs in Tang Dynasty poetry. If you write them in contemporary Chinese again something about “snow falls as mat scales at Mt Yan”, it’s unnecessary because the ancient ports have exhausted it. I think this forms a puzzle.

Lingxiao So in the first point you mentioned there’s a tendency of censorship for visible Chinese writers. There are people living oversea, have you seen anything new? Or why there hasn’t been?

Shan He I might not be knowledgeable to know many oversea writers. What I’ve seen are in the U.S., like Accent Society (重音社) in New York. And maybe Shangyang Fang (方商羊).

Lingxiao He mainly writes in English.

Shan He Right. The younger generation of writers oversea has completely turned to English writing. For they handle the language better, and they mainly finished their education in an English context, so they write in that language. And I can think of the novelist Yiyun Li (李翊云). I’ve barely seen anyone write in Chinese.

Lingxiao Why do you think they turn to English writing? And I want to comment on that. I found much less friction from expectation when you write in English in the U.S. compared to writing in Chinese. No one really cares you write with a grocery language. But it is a matter when you say “writing” in Chinese, people think it’s a distant goal.

Shan He Right, you say writing in English is natural, as everyone can. But I want to add that the situation is still different in the U.S. and in Singapore. It is awkward here. We have over 80% Chinese on paper, and there’s a large Chinese reader society, but few of them can write in fluent Chinese. We have a small circle of literature audiences too, restricting your writing’s reach.

Lingxiao You’ve mentioned classics in the point two. Can I replace the word? May I say classic is actually a sense of order and harmony. In contemporary writing, no matter it is art or literature, that is rare.

Shan He I think you picked an excellent word. Sense of order and harmony. In my opinion our classics tradition has been cut off. I agree much with saying there’s an order in classic poetry, because you are put under the rhythm and lattice. Either it’s ***Qijue or Wujue,*** it has to be under the structure. And even for Qu, it has innate fixed principles. And it’s the principles and limitations that leads to aesthetics and a melodic sense. But we have a problem with contemporary poetry that we have no rules. Then how do we write? Some people say anything goes – I’ll break a line wherever I want and no rhythm. While, in English poetry, they are there. I believe in workshops they’ll all start with writing rhythm, how to run the basics, is the rhyme at start, at the end, or in the middle? No matter how much freedom you have, even for the Confessionals, it has to be put under the rules. So my opinion is, for Chinese writers, our tradition in that has been cut off. It is a challenge to reconstruct the order and harmony for every contemporary poet.

Lingxiao I’d conclude that one side to language. It’s easy to match a rhythm in English, I found it’s almost impossible in Mandarin. The limitation of language. On the other side it’s not only about rhythm. From the earliest court poetry to Early Tang, following with High Tang, they possess certain motifs. Like in medieval drawings, the artists had to repeat certain topics and techniques, that is the restriction of classics. The pinion is from Stephen Owen. And in the art media I’ve contacted with, literature is especially leaning back from contemporary concepts. In contemporary arts, it is anything experimental, anything nobody has invented. I have a book written by a nordic artist, he explains “What is Art?”, in which he says contemporary art is to shoot any known and correct knowledge. I found that implying a tendency of populism. But in literature, writers are comparably more…traditional than artists.

Shan He I’m not sure what you meant in the last one. Can you elaborate what is being “more traditional”?

Lingxiao Just thinking that people will still set up rules and facts as the gold standard. In any other media, like visual art, it’s hard to state a standard. But in literature, people may have the impression of what literature “should be”.

Shan He I agree that visual art can be more evolving. I know a Chinese photographer in New York, he was from Wuhan and is staying in the U.S. I watched his pandemic New York photos. His works are selling in galleries on exhibition. I think it is a media with larger boundary and more freedom. Of course, it still has to talk about frame and lights. But language is much more restricted.

Lingxiao Is it invented or how do you think of it?

Shan He I think language is restrictive innately. I am baffling sometimes – no one has defined for contemporary poetry to break lines – but when to do, you’ll have to think how long it should be. How do I handle repetitive words in the sentence? How to textile it? For more aesthetic and less cliche? These are all language restrictions. People write certain styles, it comes from English. People write prose poetry, with long sections, it comes from English too. But what about ideas from Chinese? Looking for something innovative is hard.

Lingxiao Can you speak more specifically about the refreshment from English poetry?

Shan He It has completely different grammar. Many time it is just one sentence for a whole section. It knocks me off simply like that. If we put words in a section to a single sentence, just breaking into lines, I’ll have to question myself: what am I doing here? But it’s natural in English. I have Anne Sexton’s books at hand, if you read it, it starts and ends with many “I”-s. She’s called Confessional of course, just like Sylvia Plath. The most famous poem by Sylvia say: I did that again, I killed myself again, and my blood runs out (in her “Lady Lazarus”). When you do this in Chinese, too many “I”-s gets in the way. It’s redundant and repetitive.

It also comes from a foreign language’s conventions to a Chinese language user. In the details of rhythms and line-breaking you’ll find it’s so foreign. They speak in a different tongue about the same subjects. Another trivial example – we have many four-character idioms in Chinese. I hate that a lot. I hate all fixed, conventional four-character phrases. You have no where to go when you put it down. Your imaginations are to be captured. You are forwarding nowhere. All because its form and innate structure being so strong, your lines are celled and no escape. Then you turn to English, woah, you’ll find, there’s an alternative. It’s hard to switch back to Chinese, I may not be able to find a direct mapping.

Lingxiao I’ve been to a fiction workshop. There’s an old lady from Germany. She writes a memoir for her family but with so many details she could not recover, she has to fill with imaginations. So she call her work fictional. She writes in German and English the same time. She feels it more distant in English and it’s not a translative relationship with English. She’s in two different channels to re-tell the same story. For every piece I write, I do them in Chinese and English always. It’s not saying we can translate per word. That’s an interesting relationship. That is also what I want to experiment in the community that encourages alternatives outside Chinese. I believe it’s transitive. Of course, in the other way you find Chinese-only expressions when you write in English, you’ll feel about their convention more aware.

Shan He Right. I think what you mentioned is interesting. So far I haven’t got the courage to really write in English. I can read though. But maybe someday, I’ll try. It may feel new, and with certain freedom.

Lingxiao What’s holding you back writing in English?

Shan He I really don’t know. I’ve never thought about that. The words run into my head are presented in Chinese first. Yet I can make another point here – I have a good friend, he reads a lot of English poetry, and he said to me once, hey, it’s common to see English mappings in your works. Maybe the English I’ve read have bee transformed to a linguistic feeling and embedded in my words. My expression has been English-assimilated.

Lingxiao I heard Haruki would write the first draft in English and redo the work in Japanese. So he’s got a different texture of Japanese. That’s another thing I want to experiment in workshops. That you can re-tell a same thing in a different language. I think that’s good experience.

Shan He I think that’ll be excellent. We are hard to say, I take that sentence and translate to English. It should be based on your original conceive – I’m not sure what word is accurate here – but we should be on the same page. Another thing, I believe you might think of this too – I hate a lot of “的地得” in Chinese ( they are suffixes for adjectives and adverbs) and it’s really hard to avoid. It’s not a thing in English! They have adjectives as is, they don’t need the suffix. I’ll jump to a random line here: Anne Sexton, she starts with – My daughter, at eleven (almost twelve), is like a garden. In Chinese, either you skip “my”, or simply as “daughter”. We can’t avoid the adjectives.

Lingxiao In my opinion translation is to seek a most natural expression. Or to say, a path with the least redundancy and the most accuracy.

Shan He My point is, I’m at a place where English and Chinese meet and permeates each other. English is dominant of course. I’m compelled to think in English in many situations. When switching between the codex, I’ve found it more and more challenging to use Chinese fluently and purely.

Lingxiao What do you mean by purity?

Shan He Purity is having a nicer, more formal, written, standardized language. In case you haven’t been to Singapore, you’ll know Singnese here, what is commonly used, mixed a lot of English words, with many Malay, something Hokkien, even with Hindi and Tamil. It’s a Rojakkal – Rojakkal is a blended local food. Many usages in Singnese are so strange, and it has a spaghetti grammar. I want to reserve myself. And also I teach Chinese. I still want my language retaining elegance. And only during writing I can be clear and accurate about control of the language.

Lingxiao My last question – what is the relationship between you and poetry? In the U.S. there are many platforms you may not see anywhere else. They have open calls and open mics. The communication is direct – you talk to others by your poetry. Have you written anyone a letter in poetry?

Shan He I may have written to one or two people with few. I’ve raised an excellent question. It relates to self-identity. I am Shan He, in any writing cases. I use my real name in working cases. So in my working cases, no one knows – except for one close friend – no one knows I’m writing. I split two lives strictly, making sure no one knows I’m writing poetry in a working scenario.

Lingxiao Why?

Shan He I don’t know…I can’t quite explain. I’ve mentioned in email to you that there’s an imposter syndrome. I constantly question that when people call you a poet. I can’t take that hat. The furtherest I can make is to say, I’m a writer. You’ve mentioned open mic in the U.S., I'm quite resistant to socializing. It’s a thing for young people…

Lingxiao Not really? Haha.

Shan He I know, I know it may not be in actual. But for me to attend such situation, to an open mic and whatsoever, it is difficult. I wrote a lot to myself. There’s a ghost knocking, it asks to be released. Back to what we talked about in emails, how to connect your experience with an abstract topic? From a retrospective, I wrote a lot staring with my father’s situation. All private. Then my wife got cancer and left me earlier last year. I wrote a lot for her after she’s gone. These are based on personal experienced, I’ve struggled to get them out. So I don’t want to reveal them in my working scenario. Only with another identity, I can publish them somewhat naturally. I also participate in the socials, I also read things in public to show my presence. But only with a virtual identity. “Shan He” is a non-exisiting, it is an identity i created. I can accept that safely. I am Shan He, you play his imposter today. And you asked about how do you split the identities…

Lingxiao My question was not that, but you mentioned that. It is a good one. I do think, there’s a cultural trait for Chinese writers…the good side is modesty, it may restrict our tongues as well.

Shan He It is true that I also feel something’s limiting my natural, authentic expression. But I can’t define what it is. I can’t say it’s cultural or self-awareness.

Lingxiao Right. Let’s be there today for now. Appreciate for your being. For friends caring about writing can follow us and join on Fediverse site, Instagram or mail list. Thank you very much.

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