Xiaolu Guo

BBC Learning English
 People and Places
Xiaolu Guo

Amber: Hello! Today, we meet a young and highly-successful

Chinese writer and film-

maker¹, Xiaolu Guo. She talks about learning English, and

about how she had fun trying to find the right kind of

English for a character in her best-selling novel, A

Concise² Chinese-English Dictionary for Lovers.

Xiaolu’s own life is a fascinating story. She grew up in a

small ‘fishing village’ in rural China. (‘Rural’ means

to do with the countryside.) Then, she went to study film

in the huge city of Beijing. She describes this as a big ‘

clash³’ (a shock, or conflict). It was a very different

experience from what she was used
to as a young girl.

We’ll listen a couple of times to Xiaolu describing her

early life. The first time, try to catch what made her time

in Beijing a new and different experience.

Xiaolu Guo

I stayed in this fishing village until I was 18 and it’s a

really rural village in the South East China Sea – it’s a

fishing island. So that kind of life is a completely

physical way of living. Every day is about (survival). So

when I came to the film school in Beijing – it’s a very

big art academy, and I studied there, I studied French

cinema, European cinema, for 10 years. It starts from a big

clash because I couldn’t even speak Mandarin⁴ because in my

village we speak local dialect. So in Beijing, I spoke⁵

Mandarin and I started to write poetry and make films.

Every day, we discuss something but very far away from our

life, for example, we would talk about Jean-Paul Sartre or

American 1930s cinema, but I think I managed to write

novels, fictional⁶ stories, to represent that clash between

a little person and that environment.

Amber: So Xiaolu says that living in Beijing was a shock

for her because she couldn’t even speak the language,

Mandarin, and that she and her fellow students would talk

about subjects that were far removed, or ‘far away from’

their lives – subjects like the French existentialist

writer Jean-Paul Sartre, or American
1930s cinema!

Listen again and notice Xiaolu explains how her life gave

her a subject to write about in her novels! She says her

stories could ‘represent’ the clash she was experiencing

as ‘a little person’ in a strange, new place, or

‘environment’.

Xiaolu Guo

I stayed in this fishing village until I was 18 and it’s a

really rural village in the South East China Sea – it’s a

fishing island. So that kind of life is a completely

physical way of living. Every day is about (survival). So

when I came to the film school in Beijing – it’s a very

big art academy, and I studied there, I studied French

cinema, European cinema, for 10 years. It starts from a big

clash because I couldn’t even speak Mandarin because in my

village we speak local dialect. So in Beijing, I spoke

Mandarin and I started to write poetry and make films.

Every day, we discuss something but very far away from our

life, for example, we would talk about Jean-Paul Sartre or

American 1930s cinema, but I think I managed to write

novels, fictional stories, to represent that clash between

a little person and that environment.

Amber: But it didn’t stop there. Xiaolu left China five

years ago and moved to London.

She didn’t know very much English. But, only last year,

her first novel in English, A Concise Chinese-English

Dictionary for Lovers, was short listed for a major

literary⁷ prize, the Orange Prize for Fiction!
She explains that she wanted to write the book in a kind of

broken English to show that the character was learning to

understand a strange, new place. But, she says it was

really fun to write. Can you work out why?

Xiaolu Guo

I want to use this kind of foreigner’s, strange English to

represent that character come from another nation, (she

tries) to plug herself in and to communicate with this big

room … It was a difficult novel to write but it was also

the most fun of what I have ever written in my life, I

think, linguistically⁹. I had great fun with the linguistic⁸

side which I was using my second language, which I only

started to speak during my writing. So in a way, it’s a

kind of easy
process I should say, because it took 3 years to finish

that novel. In my third year, my English
 
more or less resembled the character in my book - she could

speak nearly, nearly fluent English. And in the end of the

book, she speaks English after 3 years of living in

England. So that was kind of in tune¹⁰ with my own personal

life.

Amber: Xiaolu says she had great fun with the linguistic

side of her first novel in English because the character’s

story was ‘in tune with my own personal life’ – if

something is in tune with something else, it means is very

similar. So as Xiaolu’s English improved, so did the

English spoken by her character!
Well, we hope you find Xiaolu’s story inspiring – perhaps

YOU could write a best-selling novel in English! Why not

try?

1 maker   

n.制造者，制造商

参考例句：

• He is a trouble maker，You must be distant with him.他是个捣蛋鬼，你不要跟他在一起。
• A cabinet maker must be a master craftsman.家具木工必须是技艺高超的手艺人。

2 concise   

adj.简洁的，简明的

参考例句：

• The explanation in this dictionary is concise and to the point.这部词典里的释义简明扼要。
• I gave a concise answer about this.我对于此事给了一个简要的答复。

3 clash   

vi.冲突，不协调，砰地相撞；n.冲突，不协调

参考例句：

• There is a clash between two classes at 2 p.m. on Thursday.星期四下午两点有两堂课是冲突的。
• The pot came down on the stone floor with a clash.锅“当”地一声掉到石地上。

4 Mandarin   

n.中国官话，国语，满清官吏；adj.华丽辞藻的

参考例句：

• Just over one billion people speak Mandarin as their native tongue.大约有十亿以上的人口以华语为母语。
• Mandarin will be the new official language of the European Union.普通话会变成欧盟新的官方语言。

5 spoke   

n.（车轮的）辐条；轮辐；破坏某人的计划；阻挠某人的行动 v.讲，谈（speak的过去式）；说；演说；从某种观点来说

参考例句：

• They sourced the spoke nuts from our company.他们的轮辐螺帽是从我们公司获得的。
• The spokes of a wheel are the bars that connect the outer ring to the centre.辐条是轮子上连接外圈与中心的条棒。

6 fictional   

adj.小说的，虚构的

参考例句：

• The names of the shops are entirely fictional.那些商店的名字完全是虚构的。
• The two authors represent the opposite poles of fictional genius.这两位作者代表了天才小说家两个极端。

7 literary   

adj.文学（上）的

参考例句：

• Literary works of this kind are well received by the masses.这样的文学作品很受群众欢迎。
• The book was favourably noticed in literary magazines.这本书在文学杂志上得到好评。

8 linguistic   

adj.语言的，语言学的

参考例句：

• She is pursuing her linguistic researches.她在从事语言学的研究。
• The ability to write is a supreme test of linguistic competence.写作能力是对语言能力的最高形式的测试。

9 linguistically   

adv. 语言的, 语言学的

参考例句：

• But this group is linguistically, culturally, and even genetically diverse. 但这个人群在语言上，文化上，甚至在遗传上都是多样化的。
• Like the EU, Belgium is linguistically and culturally divided. 与欧盟一样，比利时是个多语言、多文化的地区。

10 tune   

n.调子；和谐，协调；v.调音，调节，调整

参考例句：

• He'd written a tune,and played it to us on the piano.他写了一段曲子，并在钢琴上弹给我们听。
• The boy beat out a tune on a tin can.那男孩在易拉罐上敲出一首曲子。