Free Lunch With the FT: 52 Classic Interviews by Lionel Barber

me as a model writer,’ he jokes.
    His books have never been banned – but neither does he expect official recognition or awards. ‘I am comfortable with this position. A writer should not have a cosy relationship with the government.’
    The tacit toleration of Yu Hua’s books probably reflects his ‘rear view’ perspective and his focus on the monstrosities of Maoism. China’s current regime acknowledges mistakes from that period, although it has so far rejected a ‘reassessment’ of the Tiananmen Square massacre.
    Yu Hua believes those chapters have closed, drawing a curtain on all-consuming ideology. ‘It is a good change. People may no longer believe in high missions and they are thinking of money all the time,’ he says. ‘These indeed may cause many problems in society. But no matter how problematic, it is better than using one ideology. Trying to make one billion people think the same, as in the Cultural Revolution, is the most dreadful thing.’
    While the era of choreographed campaigns has passed, Yu Hua sees risks to stability in the localized protests that are now bursting through the fissures of China’s widening social gaps. ‘Almost all the political movements in China were started by Mao Zedong alone, and he alonecould then regain control of everything; whereas today’s small-scale upheavals are everywhere and they are not initiated by the government. When they come together to become a tide, nobody can control it.’
    On a personal and professional level, this evolution removes the ideological targets that Yu Hua hit so unerringly in his previous works, challenging him to capture the more complex currents of contemporary China. ‘Writing about the past is much easier than writing about the present. The present in China is constantly changing, and increasingly quickly,’ he says. ‘A European would need to live 400 years to experience such a sea change.’
    Yu Hua has sought to chart this sea change in a new book due out in the summer. The two-part novel, still awaiting a title, records what he sees as the defining social shift in China – from the ‘self-denial’ of the past to the ‘self-indulgence’ and sensationalism of the present. ‘Today’s China is full of sensations. If you open the paper you will read about the most peculiar stories that could ever happen,’ he says. He cites a story about a rich Chinese man taking his dog to a sauna and then placing the dog on a separate bed for a massage. Such a scene is a long way from the struggles of his earlier works. In those times, a dog would have been a bizarre luxury, or lunch.
    The tone of the new novel will be dark. ‘It is full of sarcasm and even more cynical than my previous novels, because I think that tone suits our age.’ Despite this, or possibly because of it, he sees no problems getting it published. He has yet to show it to publishers, but has already received an offer for an initial print run of 300,000 copies – a reflection of the following he has built as a writer and as a narrator of China’s unfolding history.
    Amid the tumult of that history, it is a struggle to keep roots and memories intact. That is something that Yu Hua feels strongly about, personally. And as we move to the next dish – the head and legs of a lobster, with rice – it transpires that food is one way he seeks to preserve his own past.
    ‘When I was a kid I was crazy about a local dish – rice cake with shredded pork. It is something you rarely had the chance to eat then. It no longer tastes that delicious to me today, but even so, I have to eat it at least once a month. Otherwise I would feel uncomfortable,’ he says.‘I eat this to make up for the past, because I ate too little at the time. I was constantly hungry as a kid.’
    His experience of hunger rumbles through many of the most moving scenes in his books. When, in
Chronicle of a Blood Merchant
, Xu Sanguan is reunited with his first-born son banished because of doubts over his