My encounter with 2012 is very much my encounter with China. The rest of the year will probably be the same as the year before and, I guess, as the year to come. I live a peaceful life with my wife and daughter in Stockholm, the capital of Sweden.
Two months in China is something else, a new and exciting experience.
In the western world we talk about China all the time. Newspapers are filled with stories of the economic wonder of your great country. More and more Swedes travel here as tourists. Our minister of education recently suggested that Chinese should be the second foreign language in school after English. When one of our museums in Stockholm had an exhibition of the terracotta army of Xian they had more visitors than ever before.
So, the interest for your country is big. For me, it’s personal.
On the 8th of March 1996 my wife and I got our beloved daughter Linnea Jinji. She was brought to us in a hotel in Nanchang in the province of Jiangxi. She was then four and a half months old and one out of nine girls that were adopted to different families in Sweden.
Of this journey I wrote my first book, Linnea from Yujiang.
Two years later I entered a competition: Write a novel for children and win 50.000 Swedish crowns.
As most people I thought it would be easy to write for children.
Much to my surprise I did not win. Instead I got my manuscript in return.
Annoyed over this I rewrote parts of it and sent it to a different publisher. It reached the hands of a guy who was about to adopt and had read and liked my first book. He took a glance at the manuscript and called me up.
- I like the beginning, he said. If you think you can rewrite everything after page 15 I’d be happy to look at it again.
- Sure, I replied and rewrote everything after page 15.
The publisher called me up again.
- This new stuff you’ve written is great, much better than the first 15 pages. You think you can rewrite those too?
This taught me two things.
First: Writing for children is harder than writing for adults.
Second: Praise is always better than criticism.
Since this I’ve written close to 40 books for children of all ages. I had almost given up on writing for adults when one of my publishers switched jobs and asked me to write a novel.
I wrote three under a pseudonym. I got great reviews until I revealed my true identity. The reaction was the expected:
- A children’s author?! And all this time we thought it was someone interesting.
The hardest thing about writing is trying to remember how fun it can and has to be. When writing is easy life’s good and there is nothing I fear. When writing’s hard I’m scared of everything and have no sense of humour.
Last year was devastating. I wrote and wrote, all bad.
My encounter with 2012 this far is better. I finished my second suspense novel and I’m slowly getting back on track. I’m rediscovering the joy of writing.
When writing for children you often get the question Why? How come you write for children? Are you childish? Do you miss being a child? Are you not good enough to write for adults?
I think the answer is the condensed form. You can’t use too many words, you have to be straight forward. A child is a fairly unexperienced reader. They usually read slower than adults and are as a result of this more attentive. They don’t skip words. Therefor every word has to have meaning.
If you beat around the bush too much they will get tired and stop reading. Contrary to adults children are not snobs. They don’t pretend to like stuff as we do.
Another reason for writing for children is my belief that we ask ourselves the big questions early on in life. Why do we live? What happens after death? Where was I before I got born? After the age of twelve we tend to be more practical in our view of the world. Are we out of bread? Okay, I’ll go to the store and buy some more.
Now, back to the topic: My encounter with 2012, my encounter with China.
Being a father of a Chinese girl China will always, in a way, be my second country. I have been here twice before. I’ve seen the Great Wall, visited the Ming graves, walked through the Forbidden City and been guided around the Summer Palace. I’ve seen the kites on the Bund and the skyline of Pudong.
Still, I don’t speak Chinese and I know very little of your fantastic country, your history, your culture.
My hope is to learn more about the daily life in China and get to know a few Chinese. It’s my experience you usually learn more about a country talking to the fellow man on the street than by visiting the sights.
The other day I heard a radio program about China. A Swedish woman in who had lived in Shanghai talked about differences in our cultures. Among other things she said that you had to be pushy when getting on the subway. If you waited in line the same way we do in Sweden you wouldn’t get on. She said Chinese people could appear harsh, but once you got to know them you had friends for life. Chinese people, she said, were extremely loyal and generous.
I get suspicious when you talk about national character, claiming this or that being typical of people from a certain country. But when it comes to Chinese hospitality I know first hand it’s true. And I’m not only talking about the oppurtunity I’m experiencing right now.
Five years ago, when my family and I went back to the orphanage where Linnea spent her first months, we met a Chinese woman working at a hotel in Yingtan. At the time she was the only one there who spoke English. Not only did Liu, as her name is, take days off from work to show us around and help us immensely, she also invited us to her home for dinner.
I want our daughter to be proud of here origin. Having grown up in Sweden she is Swedish on the inside but Chinese on the outside. I believe double identity is a great asset, but I’m not ignorant to the fact that it can be a challenge when you want to fit in. She has beautiful black hair, most of her friends are blonde.
My daughter is my biggest joy in life. I’m extremely grateful having been given the privilege to raise her. To think that my wife and I got her and noone else … it seems almost predestined.
Right now Linnea studies Chinese in school and I would very much want her to spend more time in her native country later on.
As long as my wife and I can come with her.
