Asteria Mao

Dr. Ruixue ZHANG

World Literature in English (1001)

24 November 2023

My Writing Journey

Leung Ping-Kwan's work “Writing Between English and Chinese” inspires me with the
following thoughts. I feel quite resonated with him when I write between Chinese and English
myself. I think it is particularly a distinct issue for students in a school like ours to deal with this
problem. And this is not confined to writing, but also spoken discourse. We are used to this code-
switching in everyday communication, which towards some people is snobbish and even
annoying. “Who do you think you are?” is the most asked question, and I think this is a worth
considering question. The language we speak, or the words we use, reflect, and even define who
we are, or at least what we think we are.
But the contradiction is, I reckon, in my previous writing life, I could not use it to define
myself. Because simply, I am not writing on my behalf, no matter in Chinese or in English. Thus,
there seems no reason for me to be proud of my writing, even though my teachers in primary,
middle or high school said I was good at writing. But somehow, they are not “good” by a
universal standard. In primary school, once I wrote a short paragraph about the princess tree on
the school playground. It was a paragraph that I racked my brain and strived to meet the required
word number, definitely a painful writing experience. But my teacher said the sentence and word
choice are concise but cogent. When I was in middle school, I finally had something to write
about and gradually loved to write. I love those things that are trivial, and believe firmly of the
golden rule: “In everybody’s mind but in nobody’s writing”(人人心中有，人人笔下无). My
teacher said each time in the comments that he liked the way I investigate things, but never, even
once, read my article publicly in front of my classmates. At that time, I thought this could be the
highest praise of one’s writing skills, but what he read was only those that were positive and
encouraging. High school was even more like this, before I adopted the three-paragraph mode,
my writing never got marks over 45 out of 60. At certain points, I finally realized, that “writing”
(写作) is not identical to “writing compositions” (写作文). When I write a composition, I write
for others’ good comments, for good grades, or for a specific purpose, just like now I am writing
for my Journal Writing assignment. But after 15 years of writing, except when I am writing my
diary, I never write just for writing.
This is strange. When I write, I expect me to be myself. But somehow in the previous
years of writing, I am someone else. I am a student, a submissive, a machine who was expected
to write in certain ways. I, personally, agree with the viewpoint that there is no standard for good
writing, but clearly one for bad. But for many years in my experience, the standard for bad
writing becomes those writing that are personal. When we wrote for Gaokao, the teacher told us
not to write any example of our individual experiences, because nobody knows who you are, and
no one cares what happened to you. This statement shocked me for a long time. Until recently,
when I was chatting with my best friend, I suddenly realised what kind of horrible effect this idea
has had on us. We were in a discussion about what circumstances would make her angry with me.
She passed a lot of options, stating even if I stole her boyfriend, she would anyway, forgive me.
And finally came to this moving yet still, shocking conclusion: She would be mad at me only
when I had a different political belief from her, or I killed her mom.
 When I reply to her with “I nearly laugh to death.”, I literally mean it. I surely understand
it is her trying to tell me that she will be BBF with me in any extreme situation. But still, it is
hilarious. Since when one’s belief in politics are equally important with one kills your mom?
This reminds me of the English Patient, that “the personal will forever be at war with the public.
If we can rationalise this, we can rationalise everything (Ondaatje 254).” If this could not be
rationalized, then why do we juxtapose a personal illegal event with a public moral issue? Or
should a different political belief be regarded as morally wrong? Why political beliefs could not
remain personal?
If writing should remain personal, then it comes back to the problem I raised at the very
beginning. Writing is about identity. It carries certain functions of meta-communication—your
writing suggests who you are, what you are against and what you are for. Lately, I have been
writing another essay for Ben’s class which involves the colonial history of Hong Kang. I had a
vague idea in my mind that I was not allowed to refer to Hong Kong as a colony in that it is
“politically not right”. Thus, I browsed and then found a state media published article named:
“Whether Hong Kong is a Colony or not is a Serious Issue”.
 I read it through to see how serious this issue is, then realised if I want to be “politically
right” in my essay, it will take me several lines to explain this situation. So finally, I chose to
write: “Leung is a Hong Kong writer who grew up during the colonialized history.” I secretly
pray that my friend will not read this essay of mine, otherwise, she will accuse me of not sticking
to the one-China principle.
I still don’t understand why my personal essay matters so much about whether to refer to
Hong Kong as a colony, but I gradually understand the power of words as emphasized in
Ondaatje and Roy’s works. Whoever owns the power owns the right to change opinion into fact.
It’s true. And they will wish you to be with them, or you must be with them. This is one of the
most confusing things I feel about this kind of identity politics. You cannot claim you possess
certain identities unless you behave like one. If you don’t behave the same as we do, you are not
one of us. If you are not one of us, under no circumstances would you resonate with us or you
have the right to judge us. Personal writing should be liberated from this logic. They are just
opinions, and individual feelings towards certain phenomena, not a snap of Thanos that could
devastate the universe. They have power, but slowly and gently, nourishing you with the voice of
a soul.
It may sound a bit opportunist to state that individual writing could contain things that
happened in the public sphere. It is true that words and literature have power, so we can use them
as weapons to defend ourselves. What I want is just a tiny spot of place, where I can stay
personal in my own writing. To let it be trivial, emotive, and sentimental, a place of my own. To
let it be meaningless to all of you, but meaningful maybe only to me.
 Works Cited
Ondaatje, Michael. The English Patient. Vintage, 1993.
靖海侯.“香港是否殖民地, 是一个大是大非问题.”www.baidu.com. 人民资讯, June 6,
2022. https://baijiahao.baidu.com/s?id=1736056312897594493&wfr=spider&for=pc,
Accessed 24 December 2023.