Writers from China's diaspora
After leaving China in the aftermath of the Tiananmen Square massacre, Yan Geling says she has grown just as embittered about her adopted country, the US, in its attempt to be the 'world's policeman' in Iraq.
'I was disillusioned with the communists after they shot the students at the square,' Yan says. 'But now I'm disgusted with this country, as well. I thought the US was such a free land. I don't know where else I should go to now. I was just naturalised.'
Yan has explored this dilemma in her writing. Lost Daughter of Happiness (2001) - the first of her novels translated into English - follows a Chinese prostitute who was sent to San Francisco in the 1860s after the gold rush era. Set against US hostility towards the Chinese, after the Chinese exclusion law came into effect, the forbidden love between 11-year-old Caucasian Chris and enigmatic Chinese sex slave Fusang grows into a racial feud.
'Christianity has fostered the supremacy of westerners and prompted them to adopt a 'world saviour' attitude,' Yan says. 'The missionary ideal to rescue the Chinese prostitute was the greatest misunderstanding and tragedy between the west and the east. Does Fusang want to be rescued?'
With her nomadic and kaleidoscopic life, Yan is never short of stories to write. Born in Shanghai in 1958, brought up in Chengdu - where she joined a People's Liberation Army dance troupe to perform in military stations across the mainland and on the Tibetan prairie - Yan became a war correspondent during the Sino-Vietnamese war, before moving to the US after 1989.