Mian Mian: Don’t kill yourself, let’s have a drink.
Mian Mian writer, born in Shanghai and now live in Kathmandu. In addition to writing, her creative ventures have included contemporary art, electronic music, and film. Her novel and short stories collections been translated into fifteen languages and has been published worldwide. She is the author of the novels Candy, Panda Sex, and Vanishing Act. Her film Short Capitalism was admitted into the film section of Art Basel Hong Kong 2017.
In the late 1990s when China’s Internet was booming, Mian Mian’s short stories collection “Every Good Kid deserves Candy” was published. The title of book and the author’s unconventional remarks showed extremely the true nature of a writer. She was artistic and rebellious, which was attracting many young people at the time. Mian Mian expresses her understanding of fiction by describing the night in Shanghai. Her works beautifully and cruelly reveal how globalization affects the lives and identities of the younger generation.
Where are you right now, why are you there, and how long have you been living there?
I am now near the Boudhanath stupa in Kathmandu, and the balcony of my apartment faces the Shechen monastery. In August last year, I moved to Kathmandu from Castel di Tora, a medieval village near Rome, Italy. I lived there for three consecutive years. I rented this house for five years. I spent half of the first two years in Shanghai. There are several reasons for coming to Kathmandu. The first reason is to listen to Dzongsar Rinpoche’s lecture “Nepal and Buddhism” from August 26 to 28, 2022. Before coming, I had a phone call with Tadi Yan, a musician in Shanghai, to discuss that do we just go to the lectures and then go back to Europe, or do we just move back to Asia. Tadi was in Zurich at that time. He said in Shanghai dialect: Move away, there is not that much inspirations for us in Europe anymore. One night, in the middle of packing my luggage, I suddenly discovered that Kathmandu was a city without traffic lights. I remember lying in bed and taking a deep breath for a while. Now I feel like one of the best decisions I made in my life was to move here and live the life I wanted to live. Kathmandu is a city where you can see various realities and concepts coexisting side by side at the same time. It is complex, with the splendor of the noon square and the darkness of the alleys. The Boudhanath stupa district where I live is like an airport from birth to death and death to birth, is filled with an atmosphere of celebration day and night, with the sounds of airplanes, crows, sparrows, pigeons, bats, dogs, monkeys, and chanting sounds of various tones and styles. This is a Perfect place for me to think about my past, present and future, while perhaps also making some contribution to a city that has not been completely taken over by capital consumption, of which I have some experience.
In general, how do you spend your day?
Morning time is crucial to me. Lately since I’ve started cutting back on my morning coffee, I’m actually still a little spacey and unfocused. Usually I do all the important things in the morning, such as replying to friends’WeChat messages. I think this is a very important thing. We are not monsters. We will greet each other and reply to messages. I will also watch Dzongsar Rinpoche’s teaching in the morning. Dzongsar Rinpoche’s teaching is like a high-quality vacuum cleaner that can clean up various dualistic concepts that we have created especially due to culture and education. I’ll also be writing something in the morning, like answering your questions at this time. At the same time, I will eat something small and drink a little coffee. I skipped breakfast for many years and drank a lot of coffee. My habit was very bad and affected my Qi and energy. After my coffee I start my morning prayers, and in the middle I have breakfast. These days I eat porridge that I make myself, which consists of crushed brown rice, red dates and pine nuts. In the afternoon I will make myself a bowl of spicy noodles or go out for lunch. Then I would do Kora (clockwise winding tower), wander around and continue the chant mantra. Sometimes I have dinner outside. After dinner, I am basically ready to go to sleep, and I will continue the chant mantra before falling asleep. I used to listen to a lot of news after dinner, and I would even fall asleep listening to the news, because I had never listened to the news in the past few decades. In the past few years, listening to the news was like a small boat floating on the sea. I tried to review my past life. Later, Dzongsar Rinpoche had someone send me a message asking me not to listen to so much news. Now I have changed, and I am not that panic anymore.
Your parents are both intellectuals. In the 1990s, at the age of seventeen, you began to live outside the home for many years. Why was that decision made that year? Is it related to Beauvoir?
It’s incredible to think that we heard about Beauvoir and “The Second Sex” and her love affair with Sartre in high school in the 1990s. But I only turned a few pages, and I never understood these books. Now I don’t envy the love between she and Sartre. Of course, open love can definitely be established. It just requires two people to agree and believe that liberation comes from love. This is actually very difficult and requires lots of wisdom. I stopped going to school. The simple reason was that I started writing when I was too young and my homework was not good enough to keep reading. My father was much open-minded. He thought it doesn’t matter, as long as I was happy. But in fact, life after this was still very unhappy and very dangerous. My daughter’s name is Prudence. The name came to her father by itself at that time. Prudence itself is like the name of an old woman, which means cautious. Prudence is also the name of a song from Beatles.
Are you born with a love for written expression? When you were young, you tried many careers but ultimately chose writing, why?
I don’t know if it’s love, but I definitely found a passion in reading and writing that I had never experienced before. I stopped going to school when I was very young. At the same time, when I was less than 18 years old, I was told by a professional literary magazine editor that I was an extremely talented author, but my works failed to pass the review from the beginning, so I started doing various temporary jobs that could provide me with income when I was very young. This kind of life lasted for decades. I often joked that I changed hundreds of jobs. I have never been the kind of person who works hard for money, but in fact my life has always revolved around money. Just like I have always thought that I am a star, but I don’t cater to the mainstream. Anyway, my situation is quite special, don’t try to interpret my life, just read my works.
We have found some opinions that you have expressed in the media. If there are any deviations, please correct them: “I just want to express that I am not interested in communication. I guess my readers must not be in the library because I am wandering on the street.” I grew up going back and forth. I think my style should be low-key, sensitive, smooth, and powerful. I can’t be middle class, and I can’t be white-collar. I like to live in a low place. My book is for those who love me, there will never be fewer people who love me, and there will never be more people who love me.” These views were from twenty years ago, are there any updates now?
When I was young, I was very good at pretending to be cool. These words I said intuitively actually happened in reality after that. Those are not my current point of views. I think my readers can be everywhere. In order to have such ability, I have experienced the ultimate “fiction and reality”.
You were born in Shanghai, and your works talk about urban life. You will not write about rural themes because it has nothing to do with your life. Is there such a creative logic: works are based on the writer’s personal life. If a writer holds a mainstream value, his works are destined to be very mainstream? What is the correlation between the writer’s personal life and the temperament of his works? Dose someone become a great writer without experiencing vicissitudes of life?
Nowadays, it is difficult to judge a writer as “mainstream” or “non-mainstream”. Although that is actually a very important criterion, I still tell myself that the writer’s writing motivation is crucial, even though only he himself knows it. Why write this work. Dose someone become a great writer without experiencing the vicissitudes of secular life? I think it’s possible. Because writing is about the inner world, a writer who has lived a peaceful life on the surface may have experienced unimaginable fear and love in his mind, and these are the keys to becoming a writer, those ultimate inner lives and innate wisdom.
Film director Xavier Dolan expressed his opinion this year: He no longer wants to make movies. He wants to be freed from the complicated film industry. He wants to be more relaxed, such as making TV series. From this point of view, writing is the easiest to start, and it has a high degree of independence. Do you enjoy this form of creation? Now, do you have any plans to try other creative forms? Dolan’s complete statement on his INS: https://www.instagram.com/p/CuaTw4fu1kl/
Xavier Dolan is a director I like very much, and I believe there will be many people looking forward to seeing his new work, but it can be a movie or not, and the TV series is more like literature, and the movie is indeed a product of industry, but the big screen in the dark space is so exciting. Xavier Dolan is actually not a kid from an ordinary family. If he doesn’t even want to make movies, it means that this matter is really serious. It’s getting harder and harder. Compared with making a movie, writing is of course much more controllable. In fact, the two things cannot be compared. Making a movie is the result of cooperation, which is very interesting. No matter the horror of making a movie can temporarily cover up the horror of life, so there are people who return to the set again and again. However, writing is absolutely a personal matter, and the problems of practice are the problems of writing. Which one do you think is more difficult?
Is there an artistic creator who you feel like you’ve met so late? Their experiences or works so shocked you that they influenced your writing.
J.G.Ballard and Philip K. Dick are names that still excite me, but all I watch are their interviews or movies, and I don’t read much of their books because I think a lot may be lost in Chinese translation. I wish I had read Japanese literature since I was a child, like “Snow Country” by Kawabata Yasunari. I like that very oriental language. Now, I recommend “A Cerebrity Is Sick in Bed” by Dzongsar Jamyang Khyentse Rinpoche. That book is perfect both in terms of language and content. I hope this book can influence my writing.
You have lived in so many countries. This nomadic state is what many people aspire to nowadays. Do you constantly explore new places, or are you keen on cycling through a few favorite places?
I go to most countries to promote my books. The places I stayed to live are England, Berlin, the Italian countryside, the south of France, and the border between the Netherlands and Belgium. In 2017, I decided to live in Europe. This was a very big decision. I hope to find a place suitable for me to live and continue to live a life that is closely related to creation. This is an Alice in Wonderland process, and it included three years of epidemic. No matter before or now, I am not like a tourist in any city. I always stayed in a certain area, a certain hotel, and meet friends on a certain street near the hotel. But it wasn’t until I actually lived in Europe that I realized that I was really a tourist before.
In different countries, you will think of yourself as an observer from a foreign country or as a citizen of the world. In other words, are you identity sensitive? Like how you feel when you live in the Italian countryside.
This is a very interesting question and I could talk about it for a long time. But in the end, it’s the relationship between people that is really the key. I have to be kind, polite and sincere at the same time. This is actually very difficult to do because I may be dealing with people whose backgrounds are completely different from mine, and I also have problems and habits myself. An interesting experience is that we were really nice to the foreign friends we met in Shanghai in those years because we liked their culture. They did very well in Shanghai, because Shanghai was really the most convenient and energetic city in the world at that time. But when they are in their own country, they are maybe actually different from when they are in Shanghai. This is an interesting experience. In fact, this is not about how good or bad we are. In fact, what I want to say is that the so-called Western system and logic make it difficult to continue to expand my energy of life and creation. But to make it clear, we still need to use literature, because in fact everything is an experiment. After the pandemic ended, when I went out for the first time, I tried not to look like a monster, but when I told my friend Steve Fagin from New York about this afterwards, he said: Well, if you were asked to portray Hamlet, what would you do? How to describe it? Considering you talked about trying not to be a monster, as Mian Mian, how would you portray Hamlet? A man, a prince, a woman?
When a person likes classic literature or classic music or the works of directors like Christian Petzold, it generally means good taste. A person’s preferences can slowly cultivate a person’s aesthetics. Do you think there is such a methodology? If taste and aesthetics are a level-clearing game, is the last level the philosophy and belief?
This question is also very good. My point is, everything about you must come from your blood. Your questions, your pain, and even your showing off must come from your fiery blood. Beauty means nothing if it doesn’t bring change to your blood. Philosophy and belief cannot solve your real problems because you are your own master.
You into Buddhism, what’s bothering you now?
There are still some minor physical and emotional problems, but overall I’m not too bothered. For example, you asked me how I spend my day, my answer may give readers the illusion that I recite a lot of mantras and live peacefully. In fact, this is not the case. I try not to make new friends or hang out with anyone, because essentially I no longer believe in friendship and want to save time, but at the same time I still believe in love, and it is actually impossible not to be “wasted of time”. I will still be affected by many small things. I will still be very emotional and gossipy. Occasionally I will watch live broadcasts selling goods in the middle of the night and be shocked, but overall I will not be too bothered. I hope everyone will find a method you believe in and study death. If you solve this problem, you will solve all the problems. But we’d better be open, authentic, and try to be as non-binary as possible. The practice of “this fits my concept and this doesn’t fit my concept” that contemporary artists are accustomed to really needs to be abandoned.
You have a daughter, is she obedient? What do you expect from her? Has she shown a love for something?
It’s not easy being my daughter. But my daughter is lucky and I am lucky. She is very beautiful, she was in a band when she was very young, and now she works in financial industry. She likes Wong Kar Wai very much. On the last day of the US election, when the whole world was paying attention to the results, she asked me if I had seen In the Mood of Love , and she said she liked the movie very much.
You said in the interview that you are no longer interested in romance. What kind of relationship do you expect?
I shouldn’t directly say that I’m not interested in romance anymore. I have no expectations for romance anymore, because it’s always the same shit, isn’t it? But I also believe that romance is a very good opportunity for practice. We can find wisdom and a way out through extreme emotions, but you need a good teacher. At the same time, I really don’t want to waste time because of men’s problems, and I can’t stand the kind of longing which is stupid and can not be controlled.
Have you ever considered writing an autobiography?
I will never write an autobiography, nor will I allow others to write an autobiography, but I will write my spiritual experiences into my works. I will definitely continue to write books. It can be a novel or something else. In these works Here, “I” can be a prostitute or a goddess. The key is that I have to be able to show how I discove and realise myself.
Regardless of actual conditions, what would you most like to do?
Living in the Himalayas.
If you were the heroine and you played yourself Mian Mian in a movie, and you were the chairman of the Writers Association, do you think that movie would be a comedy, a career promotion story, a tragedy, or a romance?
That would be the best reality show ever.
If you were now provided with a stage venue, a performance venue like a drama or a talk show, that could be used for commercial projects, what would you think?
In the most beautiful theater, sell tickets and tell stories.
If you could give one piece of advice to twenty-year-old Mian Mian, what would you say to her now?
First, you must have a relatively stable business of your own, and you must always have a sum of money which called fucking you money; Secondly, you must study the “Heart Sutra” and “Diamond Sutra”, even if you can’t understand them temporarily.
Do you have a favorite slogan?
Everything is impermanence, so my slogan is: Don’t kill yourself, let’s have a drink.
Photo notes:
1. Kathmandu, I live five minutes away from the Harvard Stupa – Mian Mian
2. English version of “Sugar” (2003)
3. French version of “Panda Sex” (2009), Chinese version of “Panda Sex” (2009), novel collection “Your Night, My Day” (2009)
4. German version of “Panda Sex” (2009)
5. 19th anniversary edition of “Sugar” (2019) and “Missing Performance” (2019), cover design by Yang Li
6. French version of “The Missing Show” (2019)
7. Paris Match magazine’s report on “The Missing Performance” (2019.12)
8. In the VIP area where Paul Oakenfold performed at Rojam Club in Shanghai in 1999, the photographer was Greg Girard. This was the first rave party in China. I did it with a few friends. Next to me was Zhou Tiehai, and Lorenz Helbling, the owner of ShanghART Gallery, was also there at the time. When I returned to Shanghai a few months ago, we talked about these parties I was hosting. Lorenz said he went to these events because I hosted them, but every time Every time he went there, he would wonder why some stupid foreigners were here – it didn’t sound like his tone, but he really said that – Mian Mian
9. Book promotion period, Ginza, Tokyo (2003)
10, 11. These two photos were taken in Shanghai in 2007. At that time, I was trying to do a photography and fake news project for Vanity Fair in the context of China’s globalization. Now I think back on how much fun it would be if I continued to do it! This set of photos is modeled after a photo taken by Richard Avedon in Vanity Fair decades ago. I don’t remember the exact year. I customized the same clothes and brand for this set of photos. The two men in the photo are brothers, Joe Bonnier and Peder Bonnier. They lived in Shanghai at the time. Many years later I learned that the Bonnier family was a large publishing and art family. One of the photos later became the cover of “The Notorious Panda Sex”. ——Mian Mian
12. No. 18 on the Bund, while serving as art consultant (2012) Photography: Qing Touyi
13. With curator Nicolaus Schafhausen, Kunsthalle Wien (2015)
14. At the Basel Hong Kong Art Fair in 2017, my short film “Short Film Capitalism” was selected to be exhibited by ShanghART Gallery. That was the only screening of this film so far, and there were not many people. But watching it on the big screen This film is very shocking – Mian Mian
15. Photos of the inside pages of the English and French versions of “The Missing Show”, photographed by Simon Schwyzer
16. Castel di Tora, where I live in Italy, is a very small hilltop village with the smallest square in the world, retaining its medieval appearance – Mian Mian