"the chicago tribune". >> thank you. [applause] go afternoon, everybody. is ts on? okay. so ive ea ea tyloyo lit festoday andto be on stage here with a terrific writer, journalist and man who also happens to be a good friend of mine,gu iai'spo a wrer a jrnalist who has been doing national and international reporting, let's say since 1990, i think it's fair to say? >> yeah. >> he is now writing besides the book that we're gng to talk out day, h's n wng

foe"az h writ forthe w yo times," christian science monitor. he's also written for printers row journal which some of you may be aware of thats pa of a membership program that we have at "the chicago tribune." selrkis a tlaf 's word with the author of the corpse walker, and wen tranated that here, and i think the other is "god is red." >> yeah. >>hich is about christianity inhina, today's ina. 'rreoodab "little red guard." and "little red guard" is a moir by wen. it's been reviewed very positively in not only "the chicago tibune", but in the n rkn norme iee,at en reew is coming out in "the washington post." do i have that right? >> yeah. >> so, um, thanks for coming and, again, it's a privilege to

be here with wen and hear him talk about this bk that has been greeted th such acclaim. el,. haou thyory mfoi. [applause] >> i'd like to start off by talking about the kindof coming off of the introduction, um, done a lot of journasm i you care. a rte tla nct'v don some translating and written and done books for that, but your first book you chose to be a memoir rather than a piece of repoage. whs thadecione? ink tass o timanpece as some of you are my friends here today know that i came to chicago in 1990 acting likmost immigrants who first arrived in this country, and you try to ursla a y toju lan o

ers. d th f ten years i was here, i work as a journalist. you feel very comfortable interviewing other people about their life stories and about their life in chicago, and i tried veryard to be a go er. hato overcome my chinese accept, i -- accept, i tried to imitate npr. [laughter] i didn't want even go to china town because it was related t much to my past. you kn, all thes effts t tr s a nif h an after about 15 years i felt like i'd been very successfully career wise or life, i have a houshe in ccago it kehme iom ag fveu . but enhere is a certain stage where you feel like you are assimilated, but on the other hand, the past keeps coming back to me. and i'm sure a lot of peopleho

have gone troug the s ri whaim inat the first part of your life, i came here when i was 25. and the past started to come back, i started to wrestle with e questions about my grandmher who raised me when i s littleoy a amy ntyond fer especially. i had a difficult relationship with my father for yrs. there was a certain tension. i felt like he was too old-fashioned,nd i always wanted to be somebo cole erfrim strove very hard to do that. and then when you reach a certain age, you get -- you're looking back, you say, wow, there is that genet factor that i can't really be somebody else different. even i started to tk like hi yolfthropl w look like father.

so at this point, you know, and then i felt very strongly that i had to write something about it. and also i've noticed that while writing the memoir is thatou have a story, and you want to i ghouhire t a b sometimes like stating your mind, letting it ferment for a while. sometimes you have to main putnd s fr. reach the crtai itk rs iee inouhis, these stories for a long time, and sometimes i talk with other journalists. they would talk about birthdays. oh, when i was young, i had a birthday, we us ahardoil g. eyedto, yoouit someing about it. but you always wait, wait until two years a i felt like i was ready. and i was laid off from a corporate job that i worked for. i said, i'll have the one year to work about it, to work onhe

itasryd inth structure. and once i found the structure, it took me a month and a half, it just poured out. and then i kept revising it. and that was the reason -- it was a lot of of uncomfortable montke tk a itreo ar other people tell their stories, you know, you feel detached, jot down and write go stories. when it came to my own, it was very hard because when i decide to write about it, it's a lot of reon wmyndmesou m er at a l te memories stard come out. and for about two to three weeks, i couldn't sleep until sometimes before i went to bed, i would say, oh, i need to go to thou wto i i stt ok d paam, e xtngnew it w 5:00 in the morning or 6:00 in the

morning. it was very painful. but once everything came out, i tried to find a structure. once that was done, it's vy apc. stur a itreua rs t children in communist china when the time wen was growi up, the time of chairman mao. they were the students who were considered the defenders of the revolution a the denders of mao' priiple kof enein tovton atdf inculcated the ideology into the young. but the conct or the structure, let's say, that runs throughout the book is about wen's grandmother and h fear dathndersiceat e bu i te old ways with the old traditions rather than cremated which was what the communist authorities had demanded all people do during that time. and so the conceit the thanhedhehed ben

d wen's mother and how that played out for wen. so when you talk about the structure, you'rtalking about using that, your gndmother's abdean t insdeath andir thhe,th r? ig >>o you want to talk a little bit ant how you came upon -- about how you came upon that? >> great. when i fst start thinking about writing the book, there was so many stories that were floating around. ani coul'tiut w t i pr stu th suddenly thought my grandma's coffin, because for years and years i thought i'd forgotten about it, but it just kept coming up. it was when my grandma, when she an tshushs vehe sena healthy, but there was a chinese saying, saying that 73 and 84

are the two thresholds, that a lot of people die dung these two years. she justuddeyd my fat wa ara of sh wanted a coffin, and she wanted to have a barrel. and my father was a communist party member. of course, he was very torn because if this had been this country, iwouldn be very difficult. but inen a burial in major cities is banned because of practical reasons, of course, you don't have enough space. and the other one is for ideological reasons. during the 1970s all the bainbohet,the adnse cnsided not revolutionary enough. so that, that whole coffin caused so much tension, and my father spend the next 17 years preparg for the coffin. andwe tolamas

pa. hehi us, iaid maybe i should use this coffin to start out and then string evything about china around this how we prepared this coffin and give people an idea of what '8nd nwas like in the 's, ou ttrture it came very easily. so throughout the whole thing i use the coffin as a metaphor for what's, what was china then and what is china now. onlkabinhe o use a very sle ysfi t black, sinister thing, and everybody, you have to be hided away from the public, and my family used to put it in my bedroom, would cover it up with a different tablclot o wit nsp pe dn s everything build. if you got caught and then they would, my father could have lost his job, and all the punishment.

but nowadays coffinuddly comea vuio sol caco,th esrd sohymes with the word fortune and promotions. so sometimes everybody in china today in their relentless pursuit of money, marial weth rhtowein ugl calc. th cnde becomes this very auspicious thing. i heard that sometimes if you give a gift somebody, government official be, you just give them a little miniature coffin. they put it on your, they put it on their des [lgh ainofhtu >>o if y he a meeting with mayor emanuel, don't follo that. [laughter] >> that's why we were joking when the original title of my ok w cald fi kr. thtld t

thechine readers when they read "the coffin keeper" is such an auspicious thing if you give someone a copy. but myublisher said, well, it's kind of a little diffent here. chma f erayro isco ohe coffin keeper." [laughter] so we decided to change it to "the little red guard," even though people could miscon true its -- misconstrue its political book. even though it's about my family all the way through to the present. so that's how the structure came about. >> i'm going to digress and talk about the corpse walker, and if syiscai k iq fascinating book and a fascinating story. it's called the corpse walker, and wen translated it here. what is a corpse walker? >> a corpse walker is another

alctyato titionalracte, inna pe evat you, you are worn in aville -- born in a village or brn in a city, and no matter how far away you wander around the world, when you die, you have to be back in the vlage, you have to be buried ju lik my dm th l hehe eas g,eyed diffent city, th wer there for years and years. but when they die, when you die, you have to come back becae there's a chinese saying that all falle leaves have to return to their roots. thsiplheeya intheyshe ul sit parts of t country and they would die suddenly, and for the rich people, wealthy people, if you could afford it, you'd hire these people because the was no car rpla spthbok. selt people, they

would go and hire these kung fu masters. they would go to the certain place where the person died. and then it nlly t ainti sey d cte heer to t nose so they won't prevent decay, and then one person will carry the dead bdy and then cover it up with a black robe. the other person would be the fo terto cythe person all the way back to the village. because otherwise they said you will be wandering ghost. you could never be reunited with your family in the rest of the life. so this is what the whole book talkg a tratbourin t transition period when the communists took over china in 1949 during the transition period when the old and new, the new society and the old

waenug wdidn't had. to hire a corpse walker to walk her home, but we prepared several ways in case she died she died in the summer -- if she died in theummer, m dad would welder h ucaite was a seven-hour train ride. we'd have to take her home. if it being in the winter time, we would have a truck driver try to take her home. it took years and years to build canygpeowork so weoulin ane d erme but then those who have not read the book, i won't tell something. d then throughout the whole process it took a huge toll on our family life. ipof mth nowshedeon ss awa i was supposed to carry around the -- my grand ma

still, she's still buried near my hometown, b not her native town because the chges going on i ins liunn ch iki e so fast, and all the cemeteries are being totally demolished. so that's the d part of china today. >> so that tension that that caused and grand ma's wish -- reabnd cll ai the boshow that's set within the tension of a family going through the changes in china at the time. and so that conflict betwn the old-fashioned rules and the old-fashiod ways and what -- and the modern wayshe t mo w ien p too d i just wanted to ask you, did you, did you see that when you started writing it? didyou see that, how that vehicle could work to talk abt china as well r fy,

tsoinate u oue in i awt it before i started. because when i started the book, i realized that i wanted t make a family book. and we have seen a lot of the books right now, for example, faesbo the political drama during the cultural revolution. but her family and probably lots of others who had written about how the parents, they were persecuted during the cultural whily ict heeprent only cultural revolution. but most of the people, like my family, they were -- we were just ordinary families. we went to the meetings, and then we shouted the revolutionary slogans. but our famies were not directly imcted i tsehiull voonal, the changes in china after mao and during the mao era to use as the

background to talk about a universal theme of our relationship witour participts. pas.use when i -- wh ou ng p20rsi' ene,alits o ie we seem to face the same questions. you have the guilt about your mother, you know, i sometimes would tell stories about my mother, and people always laugh because they say, oh, it's just likey mother. and like myther was here tinganen is ho oh, mom, how do you like it? my mom went in and said, it's okay. you just need -you know. people would say, your mother sounds like my jewish mother. [lauter] anenhythtaonip wh a mhe tensn when you wer young, your father was just this horrible figure, and you reach a certain age, you just think your father is so old-fashioned, and you hve the nsion wh i

, when i was growing up. and then you wonder how you resolve it when you reach a certain age. so i try to focus on this so i can get more of aunivsa elin to tbos aay to help people understand china. because the chinese not always a, the cultural revolution is not everybody's parent that got beaten up. because most oinary people, you live the life, theiny thin, yodo ona gs thur a ns ts y survive. no matter what the revolution is trying to do or what mao tried to eradicate, the family or th traditions, they are always there. you can never eradicate it ther wkutine like rent ogana wre gg to -- [inaudible] society, and turn around, and the kids, they just life continues as always. >> so that relationship with your father, there is, there are a couple of points in the book

where you are that kind of mark yoge nd 21, rit?heyo >> right. >> and i think one of them is your father was cautioning that during the political changes when there was, there were glimpses of openness from the counist ahoes,ou an tk trslion was something like the first bullet hi the head of the flock or something like that. >> right. >> so talk a little bit about that, how you changed you view ofyour father during t >> ng of theook. , al, wheurg the writing of the book my views toward my fathe including my grandmother and mother, changed dramatically. that's something i really didn't expect. it's like a therapy sessn. en wk thereyo hav seewdby thoked iust

totally saw things differently. like originally i saw, when i was trying to write the book, i just saw my father as a very tragic figure because he was a rn ci v a cultal official, and because he offended his boss, he was not nnected with any political campaign, but the communist part officials, they aed opleo scoyoas osmeaowcoyo prmyork, my dad just said the party official act like a dictator. and because of that on day my grandma became sic and he went back to take care of my grandmother, and then they he pda aus te seh luarrk that was big, considered a very sack ri lishes during the revolutionary years. and then he was fired.

and then for threerse dnav. d rn stas laborer. by the time i was born, he was a warehouse manager. i alway felt like he was so cautious. i tried to be -- i was little red guard, i was very progressive, i was a firm evfomsm b, u , asar mr. lsuewa ppde, buthe time i tried to go to the extreme, he would always bring me back to say, no, don't go too much, you have to hard. politics always very frivolous, very fickle. and i never undstoo whae antiar lrwh artobois l jst realized his whole generation we call it spiritually castrated because those people, they were the on who suffered so muchbecause sometimes you st said something wrong, or youould d upnil ot bse e a ories about people that went to the

bathroom, and then they accidentally use a newspaper to wipe their bottom, andthen on the back of the newspaper was chairman mao's portrait. ane on uilghrnd, r ea u k yinha constant vibe. that's why i could -- environment. that's why i could understand why my father was like that. for years it was a very contra at wk, h was a like, myathe mmt ybe saleig ts. d th at home he would teach me a different set of principles, very confusion. say you have to be faithful to your grandma, and you have to work hard no matter what the policarcumance. ur kedile ys ef. ayslten. ani felt like he was such a weak and incompetent worker, or as a father. but during the writing process the more i started to read into itkeotuff hed

actually is guiding me. you know, as i grow older, sometimes the decision i make i actually thought, yeah, there is something about my father, he's always there. and then the stuff he said, i sathe understanding more better ansohytha -- was very, um, tough with me, harsh with me when i was a kid because i was raised by my grandmother. she was seldom home because she ed tbe avoon afi n, ooner work, and i was wholly inhe care of my grandmother. it was very bad the take care of their children rather than go to work. so she did that. and when i was 9 years old, she somee d bmd back,nd rpeunen sometimes when i thought about the way she treated me, i felt veryitter about it.

but in later years she tried to make up with me but it was very hard because the formative years she wasn't ther and i have this thin andhen mote aer ibo mh ge usad realized that since my grandmother had such a stronghold over me and over my father, too, my father probably never -- she never had a proper relationship with her son. geck,e verard toac dn- iner th bitterness. and i felt like, you know, i start to understand my mother more and more. and the same with my grandmother. she raised me, and then she was my surrogate mother. but then yarxehe latishipith myather, her relationship with my father and my mother, and you get a more complex picture. and i just realized my grandmother, she probably -- she lost her husband when she was emna sonleyshe isedy er

father. my father probably was never able to love my mother as much because his mother had such a strong influence over him. and also imagine -- and then when i was born, and she had ch ctrolve m anprly bseer ne tte helan di ge my mom too much to have. that was the -- so i was analyzing the those three things, and i started to have, at the end of the boo i felt have a more different rcepon thre teyof ac iek. >> and the kind of psychological and emotional tensions among the characte in the bo, u know, grandmother, father and onil bin society. there's this underlying kind of tension between the old ways and the new ways, of course. but the degree to which

superstition and old traditions inde rkaersist duringati yow, wal here in the 1970s and some of the things that are still being accepted as truths in the village which are clearly folklore or superstition, a ur grandmother and your mother we a oinhaea ,nd ok back on that where do you s that? you were fighting those superstitions yourself but later you kind of sought refuge in them a little b. right. yo kno ener k ob m pehow u hu bon things that's very annoying but also very fascinating about china is with every weddings, with funerals, and there's all kinds of different rituals. prce -- taoist praices.

for example, during my father's funeral, and as the eldest son what you do is when --ou cannot c too loud because you on bofhdeoal caify cur ars, th'll be sad for the rest of their afterlife. and then the day of the funeral, so i have to go there, and they have a big vessel, and it contains all t ass ople anu hitmaeron, en you smash the urn in this way, it means like his next life can be the body of thisife died or shattered, so he cane ofe.rnto aeryc t wyo onour way to the funeral house, you have to keep spreading these paper, fake paper money because

gh. are trying to describe the yon-they block your dad's way into heaven or the other world. sometimethey're kind of a reflection of the current world. everywhere in china now you have to bribe somebody. you have to bri the gsts so thathenve tit shl gh evit weddings. and then the day and when the groom comes to pick up the bride, they have to bow to the parents, and then they have to brints li pdsf rke ,auoue taking the daughter away. it's like taking a piece of flesh from the mother, and you bring that. and you bring some cigarettes or liquor, even though my dad -- they never smoked cigarettes, buit s yeril t chh dr.ure n noll t der rituals. and then you have to go up there

and hang up the red curtain meaning, like, your life wil be for auspicious. and then the night before they eep, you have to, you put a lot ofansndas rn tedningike when you gave birth, and you won't just have boys or girls all the way through, you have a variety of boys and girls. all these different rituals and traditions i alwaind tre [ltee. d ngd' ra i actually acted very badly. it was just, it was so ridiculous because the night before we have to, i have to wear this white linen and led a pe ie hbod y adct d hao and cry so loudly, people think that you really love your dad so much. imagine you're 20 years old, you great from a university, you think you can do anything, you are so full of yourself, and

then you are ying is wa inouhe hbod ybcose y. t pt zest a -- resist a lot. oh, you go to china, everybody you ask about that it's very common. but then when i was doing years re telm, itartedf to -- age, i started to understand why we have those rituals. and somemes it's actually not doing for the dead, but for the ving. i found i guess becau we're living we feel so helpless, and soinndmaou f i yo er i wrote inhe printers row about my father when the book came out, and i felt very relieved, and be i said maybe this will be, do someustice to my father because for years i, ri -hoho h t b yprly -during his funeral, and then they asked me to say

something about him, i just thought he had such a trivial life, i just didn't felt like there wa anything worth ying. boanhef tgehere, an jus d yy mr g charme au would never forget my shame. always say, oh, so and so, the person had never been to college, but he delivered such a great eulogy and made everybody cry. and somebody who never, never beenol, sng s hd'or song. does that sound like all mothers? and it just killed me. but i felt, you know, the guilt my mother put in me, and then after the book came out and i decided to do something that mars rewld ner havdone baohi a visit my parents, their tombs. and i went there, and i actually burn the book because,as a way toay triuteo my d

us srd, buhe b beus father will be able to read it. for the details, you can read the printers row article, but i'm just giving you this idea. and then -- >> you have to subscribe though. [laughter] andut f rl, itasy et want to smile be. i felt very riculous. you would take a whole trip back just to burn the book and say something to my mother. but on the other hand, i found it very soothing. i flt, beusereas foha 'to,lt d yrethese rituals, i guess i did it, i felt like, oh, finally, i was able to pay my dad off and was able to do something. so tt's whe tnsfoatio i goa er ustng t erioll es rls m is we have the same thing in this country when we do certain things. it's not for the dead, but also

for our ourselves. -- for ourselves. >> but the exten to which during this me weniting out shildod t nt inthllane ac i the family feel that their lives are not in their control. so whether the fates, you know, whether it's the ancestors from the past who are controllin [adiulpped - sicybo nei able to control your own destiny, and then your fate is in the hands of other people. en you went to the u.k., you talk about how difficult that was and how ki of amingt thppni a ce avlato you. >> correct. >> so how difficult was that for a 20 --ere you 20 at the time? >> 20, yes. to make that transition? >> when i was 20 year old, china opened upauft

cstd tento utsi world -- because it was a very, how do i say it, very hard thing for us to suddenly you grow up in china in thissolated world and suddenly dienom wyove ly in. foarand years when we were growing up, our per tsengs of the west -- perceptions of the west -- especially the united states and england -- went through two stages. the first thing i remember was a etoard in my d' orheas e k whtu thtwa present pictures. i remember there was one picture about the streets lining up on the new york, in new york street people back, they were waiting for the food because they were unemployed. ananr, wa pistpill tmi to r tee t price, but he wouldn't feed ordinary people. and then when we were growing up, i talked to some people many

times that my mom would always say thathen you have a penny, eak it in ha. you end ha she r fher pe me. so i guess -- so that's what, and my first story, english story was i can memorize the whole story. it'salled "john smith and his wife, mary, they work for the alne t twi isy ldt tdi h gheyb al. so john is, there is a son. his son asks, daddy, why n't we have money to buy al? scare chl, titts ve uout of a job. still a lot of the stories were written about the great depression. that's how we saw, you poor people in america were starving, and we have to go and save it. there were sties about h american delegation cameo yoered americans some

beautiful peking duck. and then the mesh guests were so grateful -- american guests were so grateful, they gave us dark ead. dark bread in china, you don'-- y keror opod d t wer ks amic guests, and then he turned around the dumped the bread in the garbage can to show how wonderful it was to live in a socialist country. and then suddenly when china mo, me trshyweworld vit was "godfather." [laughter] you know, it's mafia society, but then tre was also the glamour to it. and then so it was, we've gone through two extres. and then nt theu.k. t,nareized wow, there was so much green stuff in there, and people are really very decadent.

moonheeret w t toe, s, , these are the biscuits you can go through and you can buy be. i said -- i counted at least 30 different count of cookies. and i said,o too n. ca we hve almond cookies, and i couldn't even get it all the time. [laughter] so that was an experience. another experience was complete culturalshoc meenwegrgup ysugll western families were very loose, not like the chinese were close-knit family. so when the children grow up, no matter how far away you go, you always come back. it's big fily. ere told thaameran rearerth. eyt e rds8 s they kk them out.

they come back and charge them represent. you know, that's what everybody -- you know, i remember my mother would be saying, oh, think about how hard thng haveo l athto beat yop stilhusck sos the impression. even i think a lot of people now in china, they think that american families much more -- chinese are the model families, we're very close. and the way we express ourselves more, e pant m ad evho waio i veea my mother throughout her whole life say i love you. but they do love you through other ways. we just feel like so faithful americans, they say, oh, i love you so much, and when they' 18 yearold, ic temt. d tcoacou paicip of theilen -- the parents of the children, they buy a house. they have to borrow money from the parents. so that's the impression i got. and when i was in the u.k., you suddenly realize i wen visit these famili, there were these

threye e, ag gsthin t country, americans i'm sure i've said the same thing about china, right? about not finishing of food and people are starving. and the longer i stayed, the longer you feel like there e esnial analso in way i feel like maybe western participants, you ve -- parents, you have more closer ties, and china sometimes with the family, with my dad and my grandmother, it's the tualtiac, u ens t ugh y care ouem, but you sacrifice for them. your participants, probably your dad, will be working in a different city, will never see you for 20 years. and then suddenly because he was earning money tosupport the fa. th'sri, nsedin itus dreyo , the different perceptions of families. that, to me, is once i stayed a

year in the u.k. and i started to get a more of a realistic picture than mos ple i in on o hand, it's after many years of brainwashing. you always say, oh, this is a decadent, capitalist society, and our socialist system you try to justify whatin ul apl 'shee benhe aheo i say, well, at least in china we didn't have a lot of beggars. once we become more and more open, china's just like the west, the gap in the rich and po. evenorse. n'sac mean restze t in those years it was just the contradictions when you were taught in china, what you would see, and it's very eye-opening experience. >> let me take that opportunity then to talkbout wes ne

heotont a hgog tcote t the current government in china and the difference there, the political scandals that are ongoing right now, and that's going to be coming ot ine fall. iel. 'sy phi o he ola ti, it'sbout the humor in the book. and this book has so many parts that are laugh-out-loud funny, and they're written in a very, it's writt in a very deadn wa thenesnd tta that he brings to light are uproar crouse. so kind of a, did you -- i don't want to say was that intended because i know it was, but do yorecognize why th's, um, thoulde s y a er sheth? au wtelling these stories, wereou surprised that your friends were saying, wow, that's really funny, you've got

to write that down? >> i think initlly we didn't think it was funny. you know, it was happening in china, wh cvehe w a of fdsani ard to tell stories. and there was some ridiculous aspects of china. but when we were there, you felt it was part of your life. i'm sre people here grew up in inut cta tst nesanygfuj en like my grand ma's coffin be. for years and years people said, welldid you ever think you have a disfunctional family, or your family, you're live anything a room with aig coffin in there. [laughter] i ver ou i thty mi ma jhaigie rpur the,nd it covered up. [laughter] you just take it for granted until many years later. i depress -- i guess the way i uld talkith some humor, afr 20 yesnd theyoure at urouo

especi y are here for a long time -- enables me to go and std back and then look at the whole, that period of life with a little bitof certai detament. and you can ma mon ofr, fa aalet e tgs out my parents. and then i feel very much at home. i guess a lot of people ifou talk about it with everybody will have ceain dysfunctional aspes in our family. we probably want to share with friends, or i guess i'm just now sharing with the whole america. that's what -- people, some of them ask me what's your dad think about it? cheint' c yabe ifie never air your dirty laundry to the outside world. because my mom used t be like any,