`I miss my country, but I don't feel an exile. This can be a positive experience in my life." These were the words of a Chinese dissident writer, Xue Di, at an international literary gathering in Galway last week.
He was certainly savouring it as he sat on a grassy knoll beneath the ramparts of Inis Mor's Dun Eochalla. Below, the limestone patchwork running out to a tranquil sea belied the ferocity of the Atlantic with which most islanders are more familiar. Before him, the shimmering bay that was once a freshwater lake, the shadow of the Twelve Bens and the coastline of Connemara.
"When I see this landscape, so beautiful, I can understand why Ireland has produced so many writers," he observes. He is well aware that many of the finest have been, or are, emigrants like himself. His contact with Irish literature has been confined to Yeats, and latterly Seamus Heaney, for the simple reason that translations of English-language texts into Chinese are limited.
In his case, his exile is not by design. Forced to leave Beijing after the Tiananmen Square massacre of 1989, the poet is currently based in the US. He was appointed Fellow at Brown University's Freedom to Write programme in Providence, Rhode Island, among several other residences.
He has received many accolades in the West for his work, including the Hellman/Hammett award, sponsored by Human Rights Watch, which he won twice.
Xue Di has returned only once to China since that time. "I wanted to see my parents and friends, but I still risk prison. I would love to go back, but as a writer I need the freedom to speak and write and that is not possible. Yes, China is changing economically, but politically it is still very difficult."
He says he is "very satisfied" with life in the US, and has a sister in New York. He has secured a writing fellowship for another two years. "I really can see lots of advantages now. When you are far away from your culture, you really are focused on it.
"You value it, appreciate it, you do not take it for granted. The nostalgia is difficult, but cutting off is a good thing for someone like me. One needs that distance to analyse it."
He is well aware of the constraints faced on a small apparently "democratic" island like this one, social and economic limitations that can be far more pervasive than "official" control.
"Yes, and China is such a huge country that there can, and should, be refuge from that, and someone like me should be able to live there." He is not overly optimistic, however.
"I am enjoying the opportunity of being able to experience a different culture," he says; and in his blue jeans, jumper and shoulder-length hair, he could be a student on a US campus.
Xue Di is already a well-travelled US resident. His work, which has appeared in 20 Chinese anthologies, has been translated into many languages.
His reading at the Aran Islands International Poetry and Prose Festival from his book, Heart into Soil (Burning Deck Press and Lost Roads, 1998), was delivered in his native tongue at NUI Galway, and read in English by a US colleague.
He planned to see as much of Ireland as he could after the programme, as did several of the other participants in the biennial festival, which booked such writers as Edna O'Brien, Frank McCourt, John Montague, Roddy Doyle, Michael Ondaatje, Cathal O Searcaigh, Mary O'Malley, Rita Dove and Joyce Carol Oates.
Daniel Doyle, the main mover behind the event, admits the title is misleading when only one day is held out on the islands and the rest of the programme is at the university. No doubt NUI Galway also preferred the mainland location, given the opportunity to rent out student accommodation.
The festival intends to fund a writer-in-residence on the Aran Islands for four weeks every year, and details of the first incumbent will be announced in January. It is expected the fellowship will be taken up in April 2000, the aim being to work with islanders, both adults and children.
