Ha Jin on the Transcendent and Universal Power of Artistic Practice
“In literature I have found a landscape or galaxy that is vaster and more enduring than a country or a state.”
One evening in the summer of 1988, Frank Bidart and I were having dinner at a Thai restaurant in Newton Center, Massachusetts. He was the poet-in-residence at Brandeis, where I was a third-year graduate student. I had just shown him my poetry manuscript, which later became my book Between Silences. He was excited about the poems, and we had been working on them. Over dinner we talked about poetry writing. He said, “Look, I’m almost fifty, but the best of me hasn’t come out yet. I’m sure I will write better poetry.” I didn’t know how to respond to that, because back in China most modern and contemporary poets had reached their peaks before middle age. Frank’s later poetic development has verified his claim—indeed he has produced more significant work afterward.
On the same occasion he also said, “If I hadn’t written poetry, I would’ve been dead long ago.” Again, I had no idea how to take that. At the time it sounded to me more like an expression of a personal sentiment. I did not understand what he meant, and again bit my tongue.
I had some kind of hunger that only writing could satisfy, yet the act of writing was no more than a way to spend my life.
I was a beginning writer and had a great deal of misgivings about writing and about my future, which I envisioned as teaching American literature at a Chinese university while translating some literary books from English. But intuitively I felt that prospect might change. I was unsure whether I’d be able to come out of China for academic exchanges once I went back. I had seen that a whole generation of Chinese scholars and scientists educated in the States had wasted their lives, isolated and fossilized in China, so I feared I might repeat their lives despite my resolve to return. Later, the Tiananmen tragedy took place and I couldn’t go back to China anymore. But I never stopped writing because it was something I could do. Deep down I had some kind of hunger that only writing could satisfy, yet the act of writing was no more than a way to spend my life. I didn’t know what else I could do to alleviate the deep hunger.
This hunger made me respond to Kafka’s “Hunger Artist” with intense poignancy. The nameless artist in the story fasts because he can’t find any food he can eat. As a result, fasting becomes his way of existence and also his art. There is no celebration of this art, the performance of which actually originates from his sickness. Eventually, even the breaking of the fasting record doesn’t mean anything to him anymore. Therefore, I couldn’t see anything extraordinary or glorious in such a performance, though I understood the hunger and could commiserate with the hunger artist. For me, writing was a performance of that kind, morbid and solitary, since I couldn’t do other things.
My understanding of writing was expanded by reading Chekhov. In March 1886, Chekhov received a letter from Dmitry Grigorovich, an elder novelist, out of the blue. In the letter the older man urges Chekhov to cherish his talent, stop writing tiny pieces for newspapers and undertake more serious literary work. He is convinced that Chekhov would be at the very front of his generation of Russian writers, so Chekhov must concentrate and quit working under the pressure of deadlines. Toward the end of the letter, Grigorovich says, “I do not know what your financial situation is. If it is poor, it would be better for you to starve, as we did in our day.” The twenty-six-year-old Chekhov was moved almost to tears, and in his reply, told Grigorovich that he had scores of literary friends in Moscow, none of whom would bother to read his stories. Some even urged him “not to exchange the real business for scribbling.” Chekhov was already a physician then; that must be “the real business” his friends referred to. He went on in the reply, “If I were to…read to them a single passage of your letter, they would laugh in my face.”
Chekhov promised Grigorovich that he would work with more patience and a greater ambition. He said he wasn’t afraid of hunger, “ready to starve,” since he had gone through starvation before, but at the moment he couldn’t do that yet, because he had family members to support. This is typical of Chekhov—humanity always comes first for him. Nonetheless, the great period of Chekhov began a few years later, during which he produced those glorious longer stories (the small masterpieces) and the magnificent plays.
The exchange between Grigorovich and Chekhov enlightened me and made me see the connection between writing and hunger, as if hunger was integral to literary creation. But then I realized that in the United States, hunger couldn’t be an actual problem for a writer. As long as one worked some and was in decent health, one would not starve. I could work and wouldn’t become a starving artist, even with a family to support. Materially speaking, writers in our time and in America are in a better situation than in the time of Chekhov and Kafka, when writers might have ended up starving physically for their art. This realization helped mitigate my guilt if I spent too much time writing, since I was certain that my family wouldn’t starve as long as I kept a job.
Nevertheless, I didn’t feel comfortable about the notion of writing as art. This was due to the fact that I had grown up in the revolutionary period of contemporary China, where pragmatism—the daily struggle for survival—had possessed people both physically and mentally. Art must be something useful, at least serving the people and society, and often also as a way of self-advancement. For a long time I wouldn’t use words like “art” and “artists.” During my eight years of teaching poetry writing at Emory University, I never used those words, and instead, would call a writer a “poet” or “fiction writer” and their art “work” or “poetry” or “fiction.” Indeed, I never stopped writing, but it felt more like a physical need, and there seemed no metaphysical dimension to speak of. It was just something with which I could while away my life.
Yet about a decade ago, I began to use words like “art” and “artist.” In some interviews given in Chinese, I surprised myself by claiming that I was an artist, not just a writer who produced books. Even though I noticed the change in myself, I couldn’t clarify the reason for the change. Not until I realized there was some spiritual dimension in writing which I hadn’t deliberated before. I noticed that among Chinese exiles and immigrants in North America, many had converted to Christianity or Buddhism. I admired them for their act of religious fulfillment, but I never felt the need. I often wondered why.
The major cause of anxiety and trauma among immigrants and exiles is the damage to their internal reference frames. This frame is a kind of mental grid, whose components include values, culture, religion, language, community, etc. Transplanted to a new land, one’s internal reference frame is automatically altered or damaged or at times destroyed. As a result, one is disoriented and stressed. In some extreme cases, suicidal. This kind of damage is the source of fear and despair.
Many Chinese immigrants and exiles who grew up in mainland China were ingrained with the values advocated by the communist regime. In that country, religions have been banned and mostly wiped out, so the only dominant values are rooted in materialism and patriotism. As a consequence, people, still possessed by religious longings, tend to deify the country. Worse, they can hardly differentiate the country from the state (the Chinese language has the same word for both, guojia, which further confuses the two in people’s minds).
I have been writing not only to satisfy the hunger within but also to help sustain my sanity and make my existence meaningful.
Therefore, the country has become God. Due to the linguistic confusion of the country and the state, many people simply identify the country with the ruling power, which is the party that controls the state. They equalize the party with the country, which must be absolute and sacred so that their religious longings can be satisfied. Most people back in China have ignored the fact that a country is a secular construct and often makes mistakes. Once the exiles and immigrants have landed elsewhere, their love for their native country can no longer sustain them mentally and spiritually, and the indoctrinated values cannot apply anymore. The very act of their departure already constitutes a kind of betrayal to their native land, so they have to seek another value system to repair their damaged internal reference frames, replacing the old obsolete values with new ones.
Therefore, many of them have found that religion is a vaster system with a longer history, which can provide more universal and permanent values. In brief, religion can easily trump communism and nationalism. This explains why so many immigrants and exiles have embraced religion passionately. Indeed, religion—Christianity or Buddhism or Islam—can make them more steadfast in confronting the powers that be back in their native land. Religion helps them occupy a higher and firmer moral ground.
With my understanding of their psychological needs for religious conversion, I was still amazed that I had never been eager to do that, even though I have of course had religious longings. I often wondered: why am I different from those exiles and immigrants who have embraced a religion? Why wouldn’t I join a church or a temple or a Koran class? Gradually, I figured out the reason—I have been writing and have gradually built a new value system in my internal reference frame, namely literature or literary art. In literature I have found a landscape or galaxy that is vaster and more enduring than a country or a state. In the literary constellation there are stars that can easily outshine most politicians and historical figures.
Such a space is also divine and infinite, similar to a religion in its scope and depth. Therefore, writing has kept me steady, physically, mentally and spiritually. Fortunately, I have by chance entered the space of literature where I can find my own bearings. That explains why I am not that eager to adopt a religion. I can devote myself to the pursuit of the literary art, which can also transcend the constraints of patriotism and ideologies. In other words, I have been writing not only to satisfy the hunger within but also to help sustain my sanity and make my existence meaningful. This is the spiritual and existential dimension I was unaware of at the beginning of my writing practice.
After more than three decades, I finally came to understand why Frank Bidart claimed that had he not been writing poetry, he would have died long ago. He was speaking of the existential underpinnings he needed as an artist. That is also what I have needed. But not until lately have I realized that writing is also my salvation.
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From Driven to Write: 45 Writers on the Motives and Mysteries of Their Craft, edited by Ellen Pinsky and Michael Slevin. Copyright © 2025. Available from Routledge.