Ｃｈｉｎｅｓｅ Ｎｏｖｅｌｉｓｔ Ｗｒｉｔｅｓ ａｂｏｕｔ Ｊａｐａｎ Ｏｒｐｈａｎｓ

Yu Qiang is a government official more than a professional writer. However， in the past 20 years， he has published four novels， three of which focus on a sensitive subject matter: the relations between China and Japan. With the novels， Yu has built a people-to-people goodwill bridge between the two neighboring nations.

First Novel

A graduate of international politics from Beijing University， Yu Qiang was both director of the foreign affairs office and director of tourism bureau of Ma’anshan City in eastern China’s Anhui Province. One day in 1984， a woman named Gu Lianyun came to his office. Her story startled Yu. She said that she was deserted by her Japanese parents in Dalian， a port city in northeast China’s Liaoning Province when she was only four years old. A local Chinese family took her in. Her step-mother later brought her back to a village in Henan Province in central China. Due to her identity as a Japanese descendent， she had suffered in tumultuous political movements. She and her husband were unemployed due to her family background.

Yu Qiang was most sympathetic and knew Gu Lianyun and her husband were actually victimized by Japanese militarism. Yu helped the couple find new jobs and helped their children go to school or find jobs. Yu also visited the family on the eve of the Spring Festival in 1985 with gifts. It was snowing heavily that day. The family was touched by the visit of Yu Qiang. Gu Lianyun wept and she told her life story to Yu Qiang.

For the first time， Yu Qiang was exposed to the war， its disasters and consequences. He realized that those who went through the war were forever traumatized. He wondered if he could write a story that could let people get to know history and touch their conscience with tear and blood of the victims.

He spent two years of his spare time writing Anemophilous Flower， his first novel. It is about Japanese war orphans in China and it was published in both Chinese and Japanese. It touched the hidden emotions of Japanese readers in all walks of life. Letters flooded in from Japan. Siba Ryotaro， a prominent Japanese author， wrote Yu Qiang to express his admiration. The phenomenal Chinese novel also caused a stir among Japanese media and literary critics. A review in Mainichi Shimbun， a leading national newspaper in Japan， commented that “A wide range of reports has covered the Japanese war orphans， their reunions with Japanese families and their lives in Japan， but this book is the first that describes how Chinese people examine the issue.”

Roots Lost Found

Thanks to the novel， Yu Qiang made a lot of Japanese friends. Gu Lianyun reunited with her Japanese family and settled down in Japan. Her story spread among Japanese descendents in China and some of them have come to Yu Qiang for help.

Doctor Zhong Guoying worked in a hospital in Ma’anshan. One day she came to Yu for help. She said she had a Japanese father and she had a Japanese name. Thanks to the Japanese friends， Zhong Guoying found her father.

Wang Ming’s father was killed in Shanghai in a Japanese bombing during the war time when Wang was 17 years old. She later married a Japanese technician working at a mine in Ma’anshan. They had a son named Song Zongzhi. Her Japanese husband was conscripted when the war broke out in full strength. She did not see him until Japan was defeated and he was about to go back to Japan. He swore his love to her， but he never wrote to her after he went back to Japan. Yu Qiang tried in vain to find Wang’s Japanese husband. Based on Wang’s life experience， Yu Qiang wrote a novel of 300，000 words， focused on the hardship and misfortune the war brought to Chinese women. The tearjerker was also published in both Chinese and Japanese.

After reading Yu Qiang’s second novel， Zhu Jiaping of Jiading， Shanghai wrote to the author that his life story appeared more tragic than that of Song Zongzhi in the novel. Yu conversed with Zhu many times. With the help of Yu， Zhu at last found his Japanese father after fifty years. It turned out that the Japanese father changed his name after he went back to Japan and that he was now a city councilor and wealthy businessman. He first denied that he had a son in China and then， faced with evidence， he reluctantly admitted that Zhu Jiaping was his son and promised to bring Zhu and his family to Japan. He reneged on his commitment when he was asked to sign the immigration documents. Zhu never heard from his Japanese father again. Yu Qiang wrote a novel entitled Sakura (Japanese word for cherry blossom) based on Zhu Jiaping’s life story and his Japanese father.

Poetry Shared by Two Peoples

If Yu Qiang’s three novels are about war between China and Japan and its long-lasting consequences， he wrote another novel about the literary nexus between China and Japan. The novel was published in 1992. And Yu Qiang is more than a writer. He is an activist. He came to work in Shanghai in 1995. His new job has been promoting the cultural relations between China and Japan.

Ma’anshan on the Yangtze River was where the famous Tang poet Li Bai died.Li Bai， arguably China’s greatest poet， is much admired in Japan. So when Yu Qiang worked in Ma’anshan， he organized a China-Japan Poetry Composing Get-together. In 1996， Yu relocated the get-together to Shanghai. The annual event has become part of Shanghai Tourism Festival and International Tea Culture Festival. Many cultural big names in Shanghai have appeared at the get-together. Yu Qiang has led several delegations of Chinese poets to attend similar poetry get-togethers in Japan.