A man apart

From his hair to his words, a visiting African writer inspires with his individuality, Mei Jia reports.

Upon meeting Nigerian poet and playwright Wole Soyinka, the first African to win the Nobel Prize for Literature, Chinese writer Yan Lianke is amazed by his peer's upright and treetop-shaped hairstyle. The 78-year-old laureate paid his first visit to China recently, where he found strong enthusiasm for his works from Chinese writers.

Yan praised Soyinka for being extraordinary from his hair to his works. When literary critic Chen Xiaoming also related the African's hairstyle to his writing, Soyinka joked that he felt a new theory of literary criticism is coming.

But the real story of his hair is a bitter one. Soyinka's experience of maintaining his hair in the United Kingdom has been an energizing force behind the fights of his lifetime, for national independence and for personal freedom. These themes also enrich his literary creations, inspiring Chinese writers and readers since the days his works were first translated in the early 1980s.

Soyinka says it all started when he went to a barber's in Leeds, UK, when he was studying English literature there in the 1950s.

"The barber had no experience of cutting African hair — there were not too many African faces there then," he says.

"He did my hair in a way he wanted, but not how I wanted. I was not happy, telling him he should pay me actually for giving him the rare experience," he says.

Soyinka hasn't set foot in a barber's shop since, and his hair is "nature's work", he says.

During his visit, Soyinka spoke on "Africa in Globalism's Cross-currents" at Peking University and "50 Years in Pursuit of African Renaissance" at Chinese Academy of Social Sciences. One of his masterpieces, The Lion and the Jewel, debuted in a public theater in Beijing.

Under Peking University's artistic director Joseph Graves and visiting professor Femi Osofisan, the Chinese version of the play shone with zealous performers, English dialogue and accompanying African drum beats.