Shuang Xuetao on Memory as a Movie

In your story for this week’s issue, “Paris Friend,” an aspiring writer living in Beijing, Li Mo, makes a friend on the Internet named Li Lu, who claims to be studying literature in Paris. When Li Mo enlists an acquaintance to track her down and eventually travels there to meet her, he encounters a world in which gangsters and gamblers brush up against doctoral students. What inspired you to explore this milieu of Chinese migrants in Paris?

Over the past ten years, I’ve been meeting more and more people who studied abroad—perhaps because of having moved from my home town, Shenyang, to Beijing. Back in Shenyang, many of my friends still live close to my old home. Recently, I went back to Shenyang to see my mother. While I was there, I met up with a middle-school classmate for a game of soccer. He still kicks the ball exactly the way he did twenty-eight years ago.

Many people in Beijing aren’t Beijingers, and even when they are they may not have always lived there. One of my Beijing friends was in Paris for eight years but claims that he’s never had a Beijing accent, not even before he left—he hates the way Beijingers talk. I decided to write a story about his time in Paris and had a number of conversations with him. He makes Paris sound quite close to Beijing, as if you could drive there over a weekend. I should make it clear that my friend isn’t a gambler. It’s just that I’ve been wanting to write about gambling for a while. I have the feeling that, in an era when all meaning is being swallowed up, gambling might someday become humankind’s favorite activity.

In the story, Li Mo discusses how Paris was “an ancient city of art, a place that championed égalité while hoarding power.” What does Paris represent for him, and for you? Have you been, and, if so, what was your impression of the city?

I’ve been to Paris twice. On the first trip, one of my friends lost a camera at Charles de Gaulle Airport, and the whole group ended up sitting in a police station all night. There’d been disturbances in some Parisian neighborhoods, and rifle-toting police officers kept striding by confidently. They never found the camera, of course. You don’t need a gun to look for a camera.

The second time was when Yueran (my wife, also a writer) was in Paris for a residency, and I came to spend a week with her. She was my tour guide and teacher. All I had to do was follow her around and make sure not to get lost. Paris, for me, means chairs that look out onto the street so people can sit facing the sidewalk. In China, we prefer to hide our faces while we eat, whereas the French like facing outward as they drink. There’s an expression in China that literally means “face staring at face”; that is, an awkward situation in which everyone is just looking at one another, uncertain what to say or do next. As I walked around Paris, that saying kept coming to mind.

Your previous story for the magazine, “Heart,” focussed on the relationship between a father and a son, whereas in this one mother-son relationships take center stage: there’s Li Mo and his mother, who disappears from the family when he’s a child, and also Xiaoguo (the friend tasked with finding Li Lu) and his mother, an ailing Peking-opera singer. What do you think is unique about mother-son relationships, and what made you want to explore this connection here?

I often analyze my mother’s words and actions, and sometimes I phone her to verify a childhood memory, which she always recalls with astounding clarity—yet I’ve rarely written about mothers and sons, and I can’t really say why. I’ve tried a few times but quickly got stuck or turned to a different subject after a couple of paragraphs.

At the end of last year, when I needed surgery after injuring my knee playing soccer, my mother came to Beijing to take care of me. This was the most time we’d spent together in eight or nine years. I realized that we were more similar than I’d previously thought. There were many times when I’d drop a hint that only she understood. At the same time, this caused barriers between us: communicating mainly in hints can create a lot of misunderstandings. It’s better to be direct, but my mother and I are used to not speaking plainly to each other, and it feels as if doing so would push us further apart.

After she went back to Shenyang, I thought I might be able to write a story about a mother and son. The Peking-opera performer represents a type of mother I’m familiar with: these mothers are unconstrained, not because their emotions don’t run as deep but because this is their only option. They have trained themselves to behave in this way.

Xiaoguo studies film and makes a movie inspired by Marguerite Duras, and he and Li Mo visit a bookstore named after Jean-Pierre Melville’s “Le Cercle Rouge.” At one point, Li Mo also discusses how, “as long as you’re alive, you’ll enter other people’s consciousnesses, turning into a film clip, or at least some stills.” What is the importance of cinema in this story?

I enjoy watching films and have taken part in some productions. Movies are very much about the material world, but they also require a spiritual dimension. When shooting a film, there are times when it’s hard to say if something is real or fake. When someone falls down, or when someone falls in love with another person, is that acting, or are these things actually happening? That’s what I love about movies—they’re the closest that reality can come to dreams.

Movies are currently in decline because they take things too seriously. The contemporary world doesn’t like anything too solemn or earnest. Even the most irreverent film demands that you watch it at the cinema, which is itself an overserious thing to do. When shooting a film, as soon as a scene is captured, it immediately turns into a memory, a record—just as recalling an event can feel like screening a movie in our minds. I believe that people who don’t enjoy watching films may also dislike recollection. When the majority of people no longer enjoy movies, that will mean they’ve turned against memory on a grand scale.

This story takes place during the early Internet age, when one could still chat with someone on a messaging platform without ever meeting them, or even seeing a photograph of them. What does this era represent for you?

The early Internet age was a far more pleasant era—a time when you couldn’t send videos or make instant voice calls. Almost as if this technology had been ushered in by people who enjoyed writing letters, albeit letters that would receive immediate responses. The entire online world was connected through words. Thinking back, for this brief moment, the written word was at the height of its influence.

At the end of the story, Li Mo makes a shocking discovery about Li Lu. Without ruining it for the reader, did you know that this was how the story was going to end as you were writing it? Do you think Li Mo ends up staying in Paris?

I discovered the ending bit by bit in the course of writing this story. When I got there, I thought, Ah, so that’s how it is. This is often my writing process, a conversation with myself in which secrets are gradually revealed. Li Mo won’t stay in Paris, he’ll definitely return to Beijing. Perhaps he’ll write a story about Xiaoguo, while continuing to frequently log on to MSN Messenger. ♦

Shuang Xuetao’s responses were translated, from the Chinese, by Jeremy Tiang.