3 Ways Living In China Has Made Me A Better Writer

1.        New ideas

China is a land of great diversity and contrasts. From its lush mountain forests (Giant Pandas anyone?) to its densely packed cities teeming with people and culture. China is a rural country that is urbanizing fast. Living amongst all this has given me a lifetime’s supply of inspiration. My second poetry collection, ‘Made in China’ is littered with jarring images of factory workers and farmers battling to survive in this modern-day urban colossus. And then there are my novels. Living in cities like Beijing, Xi’an, Nanjing, and Chengdu has given me a feast of things to write about. They have been the inspiration behind many of the hyper-realized mega cities that feature in my novels for one thing. Imagine dystopia? I don’t need to. I experience it on my daily commute churning through smog-choked streets jammed with traffic. So, when I chose ‘Made in China’ for my last poetry collection, I wasn’t just talking about the country’s vast manufacturing sector. I was also referring to myself. For I was ‘made in China’ too.

If you like what I have to say about writing, feel free to check out my poetry collection on life in modern China:

Made in China

2.        Given me more travel opportunities

Okay, I’ll let you in on a little secret. If you can stay in China for a few years (and China spits out foreigners at a hefty rate) and put up with the incessant traffic jams and the occasional dust storm and the tsunami of smog. And if you can tolerate all the spitting (it’s practically an Olympic sport here) and public urination (in all honesty I let my wee lad get away with this now) then you can make a pretty penny here. A whole pile of them in fact. And what do I do with this stack of dough? I travel, that’s what. All over China and South-East Asia, and then onwards to Nepal, Europe, and the USA and Canada (up for a safari on the prairie anyone?). And with that comes more ideas for my writing. The sublime landscapes of North America and the lush green rainforests of Thailand and Vietnam form the backdrop and inspiration behind much of my fiction. Indeed, I set my novel ‘Bigfoot Girl’ in a fictional smalltown near Seattle precisely because I wanted to revisit the lush temperate rainforests of the Pacific North-West that I’d visited a few years earlier. If I was still living in the UK, what would I have to write about? Where would I go? Spain? Portugal? Beautiful I’m sure but it doesn’t compare to trekking along the Great Wall of China or putting my fingers in the bullet holes of the old citadel in Hue, Vietnam. These are what elevate me towards greater literary paths, not drinking myself silly in some clapped-out Irish bar in Benidorm.

If you like what I have to say about writing, why not check out my podcast 'What! The Heys' where I take weekly deep dives in the worlds of writing and literature:

 https://www.buzzsprout.com/1021147

     3.        Made me a more versatile writer

Need a quiet corner in a quiet room to compose your novel? Then China probably isn’t the place for you. Your view out of the window (you might be lucky to even have that) is likely obscured by a battalion of apartment buildings that are themselves doused in a thick grey soup of smog. But that’s okay, at least you have your room, right? Wrong. The rooms are probably too small for one thing and even if you could fit in a table and chairs, it’s likely that your three-hour writing spell will be disturbed by the lorries clattering down the road, or else by the staccato crackle of industrial machinery one or two floors above you. Yes, that’s right. There’s always some work that needs doing in China. At all times of the day too – I once experienced it at midnight! And with the people literally piled on top of each other in China that means that you get regular doses of it. So, how do I find time to write, then? By embracing the distractions as part of the pot-pourri of life and getting on with it, that’s how. I either put all the clangings and the bangings and the whistles and the roars to one side, or I don’t write. Period. I write whenever and wherever I can. In fact, I’m writing this right now on a rickety old bus that shakes like a pneumatic drill every time it passes over one of the (many) potholes in Chengdu. But more than that, I take the industrial-sized disruption, and I let it infuse my writing. Put me off? No, it inspires me, makes me wantto write in the first place. Without China I’d be nothing. So, thank you China. Thanks a bunch. You’ve made me a far better writer than if I’d stayed put in the UK.

If you want to check out my novel - Jack Strong and the Red Giant - about a 12 year old boy's adventures on a spaceship check out the link below:

Jack Strong and the Red Giant