Conversation: He Dong
By Michelle Huang
This interview was originally published in sinθ #10 “THRIVE 盛”. Get it now on BLURB.
“无限,” He Dong reads, then pauses. The intonation isn’t quite right. She starts again. “无限.”
We sit on office chairs in her daughter’s house in Oxford, England, steam rising gently from our mugs of tea as He, a Chinese poet living in Norway, reads me several of her recent poems. The purple streak in her grey hair shines rebelliously in the warm lighting, framing her kindly face. She reads slowly and steadily, each word laden with intent; it’s a cold and quiet night outside, but her poems fill the otherwise empty space.
“光下的露水, 五彩斑斓, 是又不是什么.“ The words are familiar in sound but not in form. She conjures an image of dew drops, sparkling under the sun for a brief instant, fluid in their existence. I have to admit when she asks that I can only understand her works on a surface level, but can’t grasp their deeper meaning. He Dong is good-natured in response, patiently taking the time to break them down for me. The poem she read, she explains, is about the endless nature of time.
Although He begins by speaking in measured English, she soon switches over to Chinese and her words come out much more confidently, even as she takes the time to deliberate between ideas. This is how the rest of our conversation flows, as I ask questions in English and she answers largely in Chinese, slipping between languages mid-sentence as it suits the nature of our conversation.
Born in Beijing in 1960, He Dong grew up during the Cultural Revolution before leaving to pursue her post-graduate studies in Norway. She stayed after graduation and settled down in Oslo, where she now makes her living as a writer and an acupuncturist. Her only collection of short stories, Ask the Sun (1997), is inspired by the experiences, traumatic and otherwise, that shaped her tender years. When asked, she speaks about the period with a firm conviction. Writing is a painful experience, she tells me, in part because many have questioned her choice to revisit those years, to dig up the past that’s been buried. Her older brother, like so many in her generation, refuses to confront such painful memories. But it is a necessary task, she insists. Everyone at the time played a part in the Cultural Revolution, and that must be acknowledged.
For me, a first-generation Chinese-American born in the United States, the horrors of the Cultural Revolution are nothing more than a distant memory consigned to the history books. I’ve heard fragments of stories here and there; my mother once mentioned that my grandfather was briefly sent away for re-education. My family was lucky. Other families suffered much greater tragedies under the Revolution. Speaking with He, I realise that this is the first time I’ve conversed openly with anyone about the subject.
He Dong was only six when the Communist Party forced her family to move out of their apartment, accusing her parents, who were university professors, of being capitalists. They moved to 死人楼, which in English translates literally to ‘dead people tower.’ It was so named because a suicide occurred nearly every week. It was the beginning of the Cultural Revolution, the worst period of the ten years, and the occupants of the tower — mostly professors, and expatriates who had returned from studying abroad — were marked as enemies. The horrors were too much for a young child to comprehend. He Dong recalls running to the scene whenever she heard that someone had committed suicide: “I didn’t know. I didn’t understand what it really meant — death.” Her memories are echoed in a scene from a short story in Ask the Sun. The narrator, a young boy, observes the bodies of two neighbors who jumped to their deaths with a detached curiosity and bewilderment. Afterwards, the children continue playing at war and recite Communist propaganda unquestioningly, unaware of the real war that rages around them.
One of the Party’s most effective means of control was humiliation, so unbearable that many took their lives to escape it. As one method, teachers would regularly bring their young students to 大字报. These were a unique feature of the Revolution; the Party encouraged individuals to hang up posters on the streets, writing criticisms — often false — against people denounced as party traitors. The names would be read aloud, and the children of accused traitors would break down in tears. He’s father’s name appeared on the list during one of these trips. She tells me that the memory of it has remained with her to this day. “I didn’t cry. I don’t know why I didn’t. I got shocked. Maybe there was no time to cry… I don’t know. But I never forgot that day.”
With enough exposure, though, it’s possible to become accustomed to anything. The horrors He recounts, both during our conversation and in her short stories, are all the more striking for their mundanity. How easy it was, to become desensitized to the death and the fear. But some of her characters are also fiercely defiant, and so, in a way, is she. Ask the Sun wasn’t published in China, where scar literature about the Cultural Revolution is heavily censored. For a brief period in the late 1970s, shortly after Mao’s death, works dealing with the lasting cultural trauma from the Revolution flourished, but disappeared after the political climate chilled in 1979. Nevertheless, some writers have defied the censorship by publishing abroad and He’s stories join them in keeping the conversation alive. She believes strongly in literature’s power to make a difference, and thus the importance of exposing this history in her works. “Very often, when it comes to the word, it is very strong. It can become a concept,” He Dong explains. “When it comes to some revolutionary words, that you repeat for a thousand times, people really [accept] that. So that is, I think, why the literature should really expose them.”
He’s views extend to a deeper societal critique. The political, she argues, is never purely political, but rather stems from culture, and the Cultural Revolution is especially linked to Chinese culture’s patriarchal tendencies. She cites a Chinese proverb, ‘家不可以一日无主，国不可以一日无君’ — the household cannot last a day without a patriarch, the nation cannot last a day without an emperor. Throughout history, Chinese women have been oppressed on all fronts, He exclaims. She stands firm in this, as in many of her convictions, a staunch feminist. Unfortunately not all share her convictions, as she tells me, “And still, now, a lot of Chinese women think that we really should be weak! We really should just sit at home! Such garbage! Really, such garbage.” She certainly lives up to her convictions, as she tells me that she has raised her daughter to be a feminist. I can testify that Yinni — who is a good friend of mine at university — is one, but He’s influence has not stopped there. I have often marvelled at how much more ‘Chinese’ my friend seems, despite having been born and raised in Norway. I ask He about her thoughts on raising a diasporic child. She isn’t familiar with the term, so I attempt to explain it and she replies, jokingly, “You mean a banana?”
He Dong is thoughtful when our laughter dies down, and takes a moment to gather her words before replying. She explains that she was deeply conscious of the importance of language in Yinni’s upbringing. “If had I lost my ability to connect with her through Chinese, it would have been very sad.” To ensure that Yinni would not lose that aspect of her identity, she sent her daughter to attend preschool in China. This effort has certainly succeeded, as Yinni’s Chinese is nearly flawless, but it’s resulted in an unexpected benefit as well. She has helped translate He’s last two volumes of poetry, which were published in 2014 and 2018 after a nearly decade-long hiatus, during which time He was preoccupied with her doctorate studies and motherhood. The two volumes written before the hiatus were translated in collaboration with another Norwegian poet. These two were written during the same period as Ask the Sun’s publication, and deal primarily with questions of culture and identity. In contrast, her two most recent volumes are much more conceptual and engage with abstract ideas. “I think it’s very lucky,” she tells me, in reference to working with Yinni. “I’m not fluent enough in Norwegian to write poetry but I can read it perfectly, so I will think ‘Ah! She translated it incorrectly!’ It’s a very painful process.”
The painstaking process of translation can take several months, for He’s poems are crafted with a careful precision that is difficult to capture. She tells me that she revises each poem twenty to thirty times. She is just as deliberate in our conversation, explaining her ideas in different ways until she’s satisfied that she’s expressed them accurately. Her poems are incredibly minimalist, each concept expressed with little more than a handful of characters, and yet they contain multitudes. The titular poem of her third volume, Stjernelysregn 星光雨 (2014), paints an image of starlight streaming in through a window like rain. He Dong explains that the structure of the poem is a story told in reverse: the starlight traverses through thousands of years and accumulates thousands of stories before it reaches the viewer and tells of its journey, but the poem begins with the instant in which the starlight arrives. It is written with a simple elegance, yet her thought process belies its underlying depth. She asks me, “How do you transform starlight into a sound, and convey the leap from its sound to the stories and the memories of days past?” The finished poem attempts to answer that question.
Stjernelysregn explored themes of human life and suffering in relation to the universe and the stars. Skyggeløs 无影 (2018), continues to draw inspiration from the stars, but now as a metaphor for time. “Every night I [thought] about stars — maybe [it was] a little bit crazy,” she says, laughing. “I feel I got to really think about time. What it means, the before and after, and every second. A human life is so small and the Earth is so tremendous. It makes you suddenly wonder [about] the significance of your existence. By the time the star’s light reaches you, it’s probably already died. But still, you’ve received its message, you’ve received its light.” She feels that the poems in her book explore time on a deeper level and from different perspectives — by examining memory, for example. “We can’t go back in time and relive a memory. When it comes to times that have passed, if I don’t put myself in the past… if we don’t put ourselves into memories, into books, into buildings, then it’s like we never existed. It’s like those times never occurred,” she explains. “So the question is, what is the past? The past dwells inside humanity, inside time, and simultaneously time exists in my memory.” Moreover, she reflects on the difference between Western and Eastern perceptions of time; the West views it in a linear, chronological manner, whereas the East sees it as cyclical. Her poems reveal time in its cyclic nature, without beginning or end.
Although many of He’s poems delve into such abstract concepts, some are much more personal. One notable poem is《葬》(2018), which she wrote after her grandmother’s passing. He Dong tells me that it took her eight years to write the poem, a heartbreaking tribute that reveals the depth of her devotion to her grandmother. All of her works similarly draw upon personal experiences throughout her life. “The process of writing a poem is comprehensive. I’ve always said that you need some experience in order to be a writer,” she muses. “As you experience different things, through this process of slow accumulation [of memories], they will one day come out in your writing. Of course, you must have your own thinking throughout this process. You need a re-thinking. If not, the experiences will simply slip away.” For her, writing serves as a form of meditation and spiritual cleansing, but her poems also present an outstretched hand towards society. They invite dialogue and hope to establish a shared understanding. Perhaps this is why she is so deeply moved by praise for her work; she recounts that she often sheds a tear when someone calls her to tell her that they like her poetry.
To He, a significant difference between writing poetry and short stories is the amount of time that she can spend conceptualising a story — up to two months, or even half a year. Poetry, in contrast, relies on sporadic bursts of inspiration. She cites a Chinese proverb, ‘可遇不可求’. If inspiration comes, then it will come on its own, but it cannot be forced. “Sometimes I’ll spend all day looking out the window and not write a single word,” she admits, laughing. “But sometimes it’s like a bolt of lightning and you’ll receive three poems at once — not complete ones, maybe just the ideas or the pictures. Then you’ll slowly polish it, considering which direction to take it in, and what it reveals. You’ll really have to study the idea or the phrase, [to determine] whether it’s suitable or not.” Poetry differs also in the potential it presents for subverting language. He Dong enjoys pushing concepts past their limits, using metaphors to blur the distinctions between fixed ideas, in order to break down society’s rigid ways of thinking. Just like modern art, poetry raises questions, challenging us to understand why a writer thinks in the way that she does. She also likes to challenge conventional grammar; when her second volume of poetry 雾蝶 (2002) was being translated, she created the title by combining the Norwegian words for mist and butterfly to form new word, ‘tåkesommerfugl.’ Her editor initially resisted the concept but eventually came to accept it, and the limitless possibilities it proposes.
Her poems, too, speak of limitless possibilities. They are opaque by nature, intentionally left open to readers’ understanding. She rejects the notion that there is a single correct interpretation of her writing. “The purpose of poetry is to raise a question,” she says. “There is no right or wrong. As long as [readers] can reach a response, a story, or a discovery, then I’m very happy.”
