Beijing’s wordsmiths

While the city boasts a bustling literary scene this month thanks to the ongoing Bookworm and Capital literary festivals with visiting international authors, journalists and thinkers, Metro Beijing spoke with some of the local writers in town, established and new. What they offer is a picture of how Beijing's wordsmiths are making their way into a successful writing career.

Café frequenter

Vincent Qi, 30, is an independent writer and lecturer on self-improvement aimed at male readers in their 20s. Qi, who has a degree in psychology from a university in the UK, started his writing career last June, and has about 8,000 followers on Weibo, his blog Nvyuzhe and social networking site Douban.

To focus on his writing, Qi, a Henan Province native, has stopped using his cellphone and cancelled the Internet service at his apartment near Sanlitun. Working about eight hours a day, six days a week, Qi said his writing and life have been mixed together.

Getting up around 6:30 am for some exercise, he goes directly to his favorite café around 7:30. The Sweetmap Café, north of Yashow Clothing Market, is cozy and quiet - just the right atmosphere for writing, Qi noted.

Dividing his time between writing, reading and replying to readers' e-mails, Qi has drawn up a strict itinerary on working days. As he reads a lot in English and often writes in English first and then translates into Chinese, the quiet coffee shop frequented by long-time customers is the perfect place for him.

"I usually spend the morning in the coffee shop by myself, without socializing with anyone around me, and just focus on writing both my blog and the teaching materials for my lectures," he said. To write something seriously, he needs a quiet, calm place.

Qi writes about 10,000 to 20,000 words a week, and a quality article of 1,000 words takes him two to three hours to write.

After a nap of about an hour at noon, Qi dedicates his afternoon to replying to e-mails from his readers and joining discussions on some online forums related to his writing and teaching. To unwind, he steps out of the coffee shop to stroll around, or takes a moment to observe passersby.

"I'm the type of person whose thinking is easily stimulated by moving objects. When I am walking I might be struck by some ideas and I jot them down in a notebook. After I get to the coffee shop, I then type them out," he explained.

Though fiction writers encounter writer's block from time to time, that's not a problem for Qi because he works in nonfiction. His knowledge and inspiration come from the books he reads.

"I read books on subjects such as philosophy, mythology and anthropology. But the most important books are about Zen and Buddhism," he said, adding that he practices Zen meditation as part of his daily routine.

If he could dream up his own place to write, it would be a more cozy and spacious home.

When asked if there is a cohesive writer's community for independent authors in Beijing, Qi said it is almost nonexistent. Qi said he still needs to work hard everyday to have his work published, read and talked about.

Bed-bound dreamer

Xia Jia, 29, is a part-time science fiction writer and PhD candidate of comparative literature and world literature at Peking University. Her collection of short stories, Demons in the Glass, was published last year by the Sichuan Science and Technology Press.

Taking writing as a hobby rather than a way of making a living, Xia is not imposing strict deadlines or expectations on her writing right now.

"I'm a procrastinator and kind of lazy, so I do not make writing deadlines," said Xia. During the Chinese New Year, she wrote six short stories centered around the festival's rituals with sci-fi elements, including the family get-together on the New Year's Eve. "I wrote the stories because I was too bored at my home [in Xi'an, Shaanxi Province]."