No time to be funny

Dream of Ding Village, a novel by Yan about AIDS in Central China. [Photo provided to China Daily]

Born in a remote village in Henan province, Yan helped the family grow crops and herd cattle when he was young. He dropped out of high school.

Yan says that if he had not become a writer, he would have been a construction contractor because he had mastered the skills to build walls before joining the army at 20.

During the three-year famine from 1959 to 1961, many people starved to death in Henan province.

The memory of his early hard life gives Yan a lot of inspiration, urging him to think about the situation of his people in the process of social development, represent the reality in China, and describe how people live and suffer, and to reflect their restless souls.

Yan says he can never forget the three-year famine but he seldom found any important writer wasting ink about it. In 2001, Yan received anonymous mail about the "AIDS village" in Henan.

Yan says he then pretended to be the assistant of an anthropologist from Peking University and entered the village to tell people how to prevent and treat HIV and how to live once infected.

"I never wrote any diary, took any photo or interviewed people about the disease. I just went to villagers' homes, sat down and ate together with them. They would tell you everything," he says.

Based on this experience, Yan wrote the novel Dream of Ding Village.

Yan emphasizes that he did not go there to record anything like a journalist, or to gain experience for his writing.

"I think writers should not work like journalists or deliberately go to experience a hard life to write. Writers should use their imaginations to write what they feel. I don't write for anyone. I write just for myself, my heart," he says.

These days Yan is reading Fyodor Dostoevsky's fiction, which fascinates him.

"The greatest thing about his fiction is that he accurately describes the confusion and restlessness people face in life," he says.

"It seems that Chinese people are happy. Reading An Isolated Village, you will find it's full of absurd jokes. We seem to get used to these things. These days, when the smog is thick, it's like we have nothing to talk about but the smog. I know every person in Beijing is anxious but feels helpless－a feeling which you can find in Dostoevsky's fiction."

Related:

Top 10 most well-read cities in China

Laying ghosts to rest