Chinese novelist Chan Koonchung

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Chan Koonchung is a bestselling novelist who was born in Shanghai, grew up in Hong Kong and later lived in Taipei. He writes in Chinese yet none of his work is published in China. Even the pirated online version of his most famous book The Fat Years was deleted by the Chinese authorities. Why, then, would he move to Beijing and make his home there? This is one of the questions Julian May puts to Chan when he meets him for this edition of In the Studio, in the room where he writes, on the 27th floor of a tower block with a balcony overlooking the Chinese capital. The answer is simple - because contemporary Chinese society is his subject. He is driven to write about the people, their lives and the system that governs these. The Fat Years is a work of dystopian science fiction which investigates the unquestioning happiness of the Chinese and the apparent disappearance of a month - no one seems to remember it - when the country entered a golden age of prosperity, just as the rest of the world faced the financial crisis of 2008. Chan describes the book he is working on during Julian May's visit as 'speculative literary fiction'. He has not decided on a title, but knows it will contain the name Beijing. There are three main characters - one of whom is a ghost - little else seems fixed. In his studio, lined from floor to ceiling with books, Chan Koongchung describes the laborious way he works, using three computers - an old Chinese character system PC, a newer online device for checking facts and one other. He gets up every morning, shuts out the bright Beijing sun, or the smog, and writes. He is happy in his vocation, and hopeful, but without any certainty that what he creates will ever see the light of day in the country that is his subject and inspiration. (Image: Chinese novelist Chan Koonchung, with kind permission)