Bridging the cultural divide

We need to bring more of China's literature to British readers, but publishers need to understand Chinese fiction better

Chinese writers and literary critics feel misunderstood, that much is clear. Why is more Chinese literature not being translated and – perhaps even more importantly – widely read? After all, Isabel Allende and Umberto Eco are hugely popular in translation.

I am a translator, currently in China researching contemporary literature. I have been talking to writers and academics about their favourite works and what, for them, makes good literature. The kind of answers they give me are illuminating, in particular because of the position from which they make these judgments.

In the 1950s and 60s, creative writing in China was obliged to serve politics. Han Dong, in his recent novel Banished!, observes mordantly that this was a "system [which] was tightly meshed together, a seamless whole. A dog that winds up biting its own tail." Today the debate is still heavily politicised, albeit it in a different way. The "reform and opening-up" of the 1980s has led to "marketisation" in every aspect of Chinese life; books now have to make money. So the Chinese Communist party, which is entirely in favour of marketisation, likes books which shed a positive light on urbanisation and the growth of a consumerist society. At the same time, a nod also has to be made to its own leadership. The forthcoming publication of the "300 Most Influential Books of the 30 years of the Reform and Opening-up of China" was press-released as follows:

These 300 books … fully reflect the deep changes that Chinese society and the Chinese people have gone through over the past 30 years under the leadership of the Chinese Communist party … The books will provide healthy guidance to thought and morality, [and] have positive, uplifting content …

(Translated and quoted here).

True, as all my Chinese colleagues tell me, no one takes this stuff seriously, but it shows how writers have to acknowledge the prevailing ideology, whether or not they choose to confront it directly. There are economic pressures too: writers of politically acceptable books can win lucrative prizes. And the need to earn a decent living is real.

Back to the question, how do Chinese writers and critics evaluate creative writing today? Here is a framework of analysis which has been given to me by half a dozen critics/writers: at one end of the spectrum is "officially-approved" literature, (the "positive" and "uplifting" sort); at the other, "good", end of the spectrum is minjian (people/folk writing). This means writing about the lives and characters of ordinary people, while rejecting any ideological standpoint. (Note that "people" here means something quite different from "the people", as in the slogan "Serve the People").

If this analysis sounds alien, then how about this contemporary example from the US offered to me by a Chinese woman writer friend? She observed the furore that surrounded the publication of the Da Vinci Code – and said that denunciations of the book from church pulpits reminded her irresistibly of the mass criticisms of the Cultural Revolution, suggesting that ideological differences notwithstanding, America and China share an ideological "climate".

Another element in the equation is the pressure to write for the mass market. Arguments rage as to whether the market has a baleful influence on creative writing. Most think it does, though they admit that literary giants such as Mo Yan and Jia Pingwa manage to write splendid, influential books which are also best-sellers.

Finally, censorship: there is much less of it than is generally believed, but it is still a real preoccupation. Some writers admit to self-censorship, for instance Yan Lianke whose novel, Dream of Ding Village, about the Aids epidemic among peasants who sell their blood, is due out in translation next year. Yan has said that he "attempted to forestall a ban by doing the censors" work for them. Out went the novel's most ambitious features: the blood pipeline, the global trade angle and direct criticism of national politics. His novel was banned anyway.

However, China being China, the situation is more grey than black-and-white. Ha Jin wrote in the American Scholar in August 2008 that: "Among [recently] banned titles was Zhang [Yihe]'s book Past Stories of Peking Opera Stars, which describes the vicissitudes of eight master opera singers, especially their sufferings and ruination after 1949." Coincidentally, as I read those words, I was sitting in a house in Shanghai with a copy of that very book which my landlord, a respectable accountant, had just lent me. In other words, banned books are sometimes readily available.

A preoccupation with officially-approved or "people"-based literature, censorship and marketisation, makes the Chinese literary world sound introspective, but this is not entirely true. Chinese writers have been much influenced by authors such as Luis Borges and Gabriel Garcia Marquez, Milan Kundera and Orhan Pamuk. Unfortunately, the process does not yet seem to work the other way round.

Given the pessimism of some of the above comments, one has to ask if it is possible to bridge the cultural divide and bring more Chinese literature to a British readership. Of course, I believe it is, otherwise I would not be a translator.

But there is also a need for British publishers to understand Chinese fiction better. That boring old label "banned in China" actually means only one thing: that the book ticked one of the censor's no-no boxes. Sex and violence will not sell a book if it is badly written, as many are. Some publishers say they want a personable, articulate author, preferably one who can speak English. There are only a few writers who provide that winning combination and there are many who write great stuff but are not young, glamorous or English-speaking.

To be fair to publishers, there is a huge language barrier: they are dependent on Chinese-speaking readers and translators if they cannot read the texts themselves. (Though if I hear one more publisher whinge that they "cannot find the translators", I shall probably scream.) There is now, however, a website providing much-needed information for publishers, translators and Chinese writers: Paper Republic.

Of course, some publishers are both brave and imaginative: Penguin was prepared to break the mould with Wolf Totem, a novel about Mongolian herders and their relationship with wolves.

To finish, here are a few of my personal favourites, chosen simply to show a little of the rich variety of reading which is out there.

Banished! by Han Dong, a lyrical, sometimes painful account of a boy growing up during the cultural revolution. Hawaii University Press, 2009.

Lust, Caution, And Other Stories, by Eileen Chang (Chinese name, Zhang Ailing). Penguin Modern Classics, 2007. There are also other volumes of her brilliant short stories and novellas available in translation.

Happy, by Jia Pingwa. This novel is narrated entirely in the first person, by a Charlie Chaplin-esque migrant worker in Xi'an, who is alternately funny, pompous, touching and foul-mouthed – but never boring. Not in translation, but an excerpt appears in Guardian Books.

Collecting, an essay by Zhu Wen, which also appears in Guardian Books. Written after a short visit to the UK (his first), his essay is not just witty and acerbic, it is humblingly observant.