Les lettres chinoises

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Les lettres chinoises is the second novel by the Chinese-Canadian writer Ying Chen . It is a letter novel . The title of the novel can be translated as "Chinese letters" and is an allusion to Montesquieu's Persian letters . The Chinese character on the front of the book means poem .

The book was first published in 1993 by Leméac Verlag. In 1999 a revised version of the book was published, also by Leméac Verlag. The article refers to the second version of the novel. The differences between the versions are briefly described in the last section of this article.

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Ying Chen's novel Les lettres chinoises is about a long-distance relationship between Yuan and his fiancée Sassa. Yuan decides to leave his hometown Shanghai and go to Montreal . Sassa, however, remains behind in Shanghai. Yuan and Sassa start writing letters to keep in touch. In the letters they tell their experiences of the strong feelings for one another and their longing.

Yuan reports on his first experiences in a foreign country and on his impressions of the culture and modernity of the West. Sassa, who tries in vain to visit her fiancé Yuan in Montréal, is prevented from doing so by the authorities because they have lost her travel documents. After applying for her new travel documents, her health prevents her from visiting her fiancé.

At the same time, Sassa maintains contact with her friend Da Li, who has also emigrated to Montréal. She tells her about her experiences and her unhappy love for an engaged Chinese man who also lives there. Sassa is there to advise her during this time. At the end of the novel, Yuan gets a call from his father, who tells him that Sassa is in the hospital. Yuan then asks his fiancée if he should come back. Sassa says no to his question and they then write their last letters until she finally says goodbye to him.

characters

Les lettres chinoises tells the story of 3 people:

  • Yuan , a young Chinese man who decides to leave his home in Shanghai and immigrate to Montréal.
  • Sassa , Yuan's fiancée, remains in China and hopes to visit Yuan in Montreal soon. At first she was unable to visit her fiancé in Montréal because she had problems with the issue of her passport and then fell ill. By the end of the book, despite their love and attachment to one another, they no longer manage to travel to Montreal. Their intimate relationship becomes clear to the reader from the numerous letters.
  • Da Li , a good friend of Yuan and Sassa, also decides to emigrate to Montréal. There she falls in love with a Chinese man who is already engaged. However, his future wife lives in China. Despite the circumstances, she enters into a relationship with him, although she is sure that the bond will be temporary. Da Li has a close relationship with Sassa, who is always by her side.

subjects

Different topics are addressed in the letter.

  • Sassa's letters to Yuan deal with subjects such as exile , discovery, freedom , longing and love .
  • In the letters from Yuan to Sassa, subjects such as exile, fear , culture shock , dreams and uprooting are addressed for the reader .

In the first letter of the novel, central themes such as belonging, discovery and identification are in the foreground. Yuan describes his first impressions as an immigrant in a foreign country. Only in the situation of exile, uprooting and yearning does Yuan discover his strong affiliation with his home country China. The contrast between Chinese tradition and modernity is also at the center of the novel. The theme of the impossible love between Sassa and Yuan is also one of the main themes.

The distance

The engaged couple are separated by a geographical and temporal distance. The time difference between Shanghai and Montréal is 12 hours. Because of this time difference, Yuan and Sassa live in different rhythms; when it is day at Yuan, it is night at Sassa and vice versa. The letters are not dated; this could be due to the difficulty in converting the Gregorian calendar to the Chinese calendar . The distance between the betrothed in space and time leads to an ever increasing emotional distance between Sassa and Yuan.

The mobility and immobility

Other subjects in Les lettres chinoises are mobility and immobility. Irene Oore assigns the figure Sassa to immobility and the figure Da Li to mobility. Sassa remains in Shanghai at first because of the bureaucratic problems, and later on her illness prevents her from leaving the country; it is therefore immobile. In addition, she is not very positive or enthusiastic about emigration. She writes in a letter: “Il n'est pas plus facile de quitter son pays que d'y rester.” Da Li's mobility is evident on the one hand in the many changes of location and on the other in her own statement. At the age of 14, Da Li moved from Shanghai to Beijing for a few months , later from Shanghai to Montréal, and in one of her last letters she announced her departure from Montréal to Paris. In a letter to her friend Sassa, Da Li writes:

«J'ai décidé de partir, Sassa. Je t'ai dit cette phrase il n'y a pas longtemps à Shanghai. Il me semble que cette phrase m'a suivie depuis ma naissance et elle restera en moi pour toujours. »

shape

Epistle novel

Les lettres chinoises is a letter novel . It consists of an exchange of letters between three different people: Yuan, Sassa and Da Li. The sequence or alternation of fictitious letters between the two protagonists Yuan and Sassa is particularly pronounced. The letter novel has special characteristics, on the one hand it allows the reader to participate more directly in what is happening, on the other hand the narrative first- person form and the special time structure allow more open and subtle self-portrayal than the personal narrative perspective.

construction

The book contains 56 letters. The first seven letters are written by the fiancée Yuan and Sassa. From letter 8 to letter 50, along with Yuan and Sassa, Da Li, a good friend of Sassa, also speaks up. The last letters, 51 to 57, are again written by Yuan and Sassa.

The most prolific writer is Sassa, she speaks out in 27 letters, 18 of which are addressed to her fiancé Yuan and 9 to her friend Da Li. Da Li replies to Sassa in 10 letters. Yuan writes a total of 20 letters, all of which, with the exception of one letter to his father, are addressed to Sassa.

The first letter in the novel is from Yuan to his fiancée Sassa. The very first letter illustrates that Yuan left his home in Shanghai and emigrated to Montréal: “Me voilà à l'aéroport de Vancouver.” The relationship between Yuan and Sassa also becomes clear in the first letter.

The letters appear in a chronological and logical order, each letter writer reads the other's letter and replies. However, it happens that 2 consecutive letters are from the same sender, mostly this is the case when Sassa writes two consecutive letters, but with different recipients.

The last letters between Sassa and Yuan are written very briefly and essentially deal with the great distance and the longing for one another that goes with it. The last letter is only three lines long and addressed to Yuan from Sassa. In this section, Sassa says goodbye to Yuan.

Differences between the versions

The first version of Les lettres chinoises contains 69 letters. In this first version there are four letter writers and four recipients. People include: Yuan, Sassa, Da Li and Yuan's father. In the second version, the number of letters was reduced to 57. In this version, Yuan, Sassa and Da Li are senders and recipients of letters, and Yuan's father is only the recipient.

Text output

  • CHEN, Ying, Les lettres chinoises , Montréal, Leméac, 1993

Secondary literature

  • Carmen Andrei, Ying Chen, Les lettres chinoises , in Parcours Québécois: Introduction à la littérature du Québec, ed. by Pierre Morel, Cartier 2007. ISBN 978-9975-79-141-0
  • Brigitte Aubonnet: Interview with Ying Chen. In: Encres Vagabondes (available online) .
  • Christine Lorre, Ying Chen's 'Poetic Rebellion'. Relocating the Dialogue, In Search of Narrative Renewal. In: Asian Canadian Writing Beyond Autoethnography , ed. by Eleanor Ty & Christl Verduyn. Waterloo, Ontario: Wilfrid Laurier Univ. Press, 2008, pp. 267-295.
  • Irène Oore: Les lettres chinoise. Un roman épistolaire. In: Voix plurielles. Volume 1, No. 1, 2004, ISSN  1925-0614 , (available online) .
  • Irène Oore: Les lettres chinoises de Ying Chen: le mobile et l'immobile (available online)

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ See Christine Lorre, Ying Chen's 'Poetic Rebellion'. Relocating the Dialogue, In Search of Narrative Renewal. In: Asian Canadian Writing Beyond Autoethnography , ed. by Eleanor Ty & Christl Verduyn. Waterloo, Ontario: Wilfrid Laurier Univ. Press, 2008, pp. 267-295, here p. 272.
  2. ↑ Carmen Andrei: Ying Chen, Les lettres chinoises , in: Parcours Québécois: Introduction à la littérature du Québec, ed. by Pierre Morel, Cartier 2007. ISBN 978-9975-79-141-0
  3. ^ Ying Chen: Les Lettres chinoises , p. 36.
  4. ^ Ying Chen: Les Lettres chinoises , p. 126.
  5. ↑ Irene Oore: Les lettres chinoises de Ying Chen: le mobile et l'immobile (available online)
  6. ^ Ying Chen: Les Lettres chinoises , p. 9.
  7. ↑ Irène Oore: Les lettres chinoise. Un roman épistolaire. In: Voix plurielles. Volume 1, No. 1,2004, ISSN  1925-0614 , (available online) .