Jiang Fangzhou emerged at the tender age of nine as a prodigy of literature and by 23 she had become the youngest deputy chief editor of New Weekly magazine, a comprehensive news magazine focusing on the latest lifestyle and cultural topics in China.
She will visit Macau as one of the key guest writers at The Script Road – Macau Literary Festival, and she spoke with CLOSER recently about her amazing journey so far.
Born in 1989, Jiang embarked on her literary pursuits at age seven and her claim to fame is her talented youth, authoring nine books. Open the Skylight was her first prose work published when she was nine. It was later adapted for a comic book. The work is now recommended by local education authorities as essential reading for school students.
Jiang developed an early passion for writing, thanks to her mother, online writer Shang Ailan. Shang was keen to develop her daughter’s writing potential and insisted that she write a 600-word diary entry on a daily basis.
“Embracing a life of writing means you have to let go of your vanity and lead a simple and austere life. If you feel unable to follow the practice, then it’s better to give up the idea of being a literary writer,” Jiang says.
Jiang wrote almost every day of her youth, except in the six months leading up to the entrance examination for university when she had to suspend her writing journey in favour of her studies.
“I spent most of my after-school time writing, since I became a newspaper columnist at the age of 12,” she notes. “Writing was much more important than schoolwork.”
Before she graduated from high school, Jiang had already accumulated a collection of stories and kept publishing one book each year. Thus she was considered one of the most prolific writers throughout her school years.
As a child, she also read a lot. She believes that inspiration will naturally come from what you take in. Her favourite author is German-Swiss poet, novelist, and painter Hermann Hesse.
Her reputation as a great writer at an early age brought Jiang both advantages and challenges. She has had to make a lot of sacrifices to gain her fame but she has no regrets at all.
“I spent twice the amount of time and effort doing the same work as others. Writing is a habit that you should not have to force. You write as long as you desire to express yourself. Follow your will and passion will follow,” Jiang says.
After almost two years of editorial experience, Jiang believes that honest, objective and accurate observations are the key to fostering solid loyal readership for her magazine, rather than simply catering to lower tastes.
“Pleasing the eyeballs of young readers has become a prominent problem in our society,” Jiang observes. “We tend to decode their mentality and attempt to bring them more cutting edge ideas. But virtues of the classics are always the golden rules.”
