德国哥廷根大学汉学助教Ingrid Kluetz就一些文学和电影电视问题提问，简单回答之： 

1) In your novel "Lost in Beijing" you describe the life of writers and their obstacles. It arises the question, if leaving China and pursuing a career in a western country is a good decision. Is that an issue you have ever related to yourself?

It really depends on who and what he is. It seems in the 1980s leaving China and pursuing a career in a western country was good for a writer to express himself freely. But this has proved to be not a general rule in the past two decades. It is good for only a very few minority of people who can write in one of the major Western languages like the author who wrote the Wild Swans(by Jung Chang) and A Single Tear(by Professor Wu NIngkun). The point is that writing is usually felt best when you write in your own mother tongue. It’s even difficult for me whose English is fluent to feel better writing in English. The other obstacle is people realized that the “free world” is also a market oriented world. As Chinese literature itself is not very much in demand for the reading market, it is difficult to make a living by writing on China. As we can make a living not by writing in China, it makes no sense going abroad.

As one who majored in English and knows better about the Western world, I think I had avoided that dilemma by not deciding to make a literary living abroad. And through the character Hu Yi, I conveyed that sense. Hu is in some degree based on myself.

2) Your novel dealt with rather serious/idealistic topics. Some people say, the latest generation of writers/directors /fil- makers lack depth. Do you agree?

   I totally agree with this saying. But at the same time I feel deeply for these “shallow ” people. What can they do but to be “shallow”? They are put in a nonplus- on the one hand is the pressure of PC to which they have to always comply and obey; on the other is the market. They struggle between the two Gods. You need to be both PC and money-oriented. So I think they are tragically brave to have survived both.

3) What do you think are the expectations of the audience concerning movies?

   I don’t know exactly. For me, I don’t watch 99% of the movie/TV drama products as I’m almost totally disappointed with them.

4) What topics occupy you right now and that you want to integrate into your artistic work?

    I’ve just writen a novella Sadam, SARS, Sex, with the SARS period as the background.I think I did a very good job. But the work was denied publication by all Chinese magazines and publishers as SRAS is a forbidden topic to write about., which means the novella is not PC when it was conceived. On the other hand, it is also denied publication by Eichborn Verlag who had published my works in Germany, the reason being Chinese literature does not sell well on the market recently and the novella might loose money for Eichborn.

5) What regulations have Chinese writers/directors to obey? Is there a "union" they have to belong to?

      There are a lot of regulations issued from time to time. There is an official writers’ association so far as I know, which enjoys a semi- ministerial level status (the head of which is something like a vice minister),but I’m too humble to be qualified for a membership. In this sense I’m “free”.

6) How much does the censorship influence the work of the writers/directors? In Germany for example, is not passing the censorship good publicity.

      It is very important. If a work is judged not PC, it can not be published at all. As a result you can’t make a living out of your artistic creation, you have to change to do something else or perish.

7) How strong is the influence of censorship concerning tv programms/movies? Is there more or less freedom compared to literature?

     I told you in the first question, it depends on what you do. You can do a PC job as you like and make a lot of money and the entertainment industry is a very profitable industry.

      For relevent sources, you can also click the following link to check my lecture delivered at

Charles University, Prague:fareast.ff.cuni.cz/lectures/HeiMa/hun.htm