Slice 1: Birth of Yuan Yang

In the late-1990s and around the turn-of-the-millennium, there existed a disturbing and persistent valence that Hong Kong young people had no desire or need to express themselves creatively in English. It still sounds implausible. But, back then, for emergent writers from Hong Kong, before they could legitimately establish themselves as writers, they had to confront inevitably (now to borrow impossibly from Kafka) the expectations of impossibility for creative writing in English and the expectations of impossibility of experiencing creatively from the start.

From her point of view as the chair professor of English at the University of Hong Kong, Shirley Geok-lin Lim remarks that the main source of this profound impossibility imposed upon Hong Kong students was systemic and rooted in the stereotypes of Hong Kong people that had been sustained in colonial education.¹ During her tenure at the University of Hong Kong, Lim, amidst an institutional transformation, within the Department of English, of offering credit-bearing modules year rather than predominantly long lecture-based courses, introduced a full-year 12-credit creative writing double module into the undergraduate English Studies programme for senior undergraduate students in the academic year 1999-2000.² It is from her experience of teaching this course that Lim saw up close the dimensions of how Hong Kong young strove to express themselves creatively in English-language writing.

It might be inaccurate to suggest that this course was the first of its kind in Hong Kong. Officially, yes; yet, in a way no. In the early 1950s, British poet and literary scholar Edmund Blunden, who then served as the Head and Chair of English at the University of Hong Kong, organized casual poetry writing workshops for undergraduate students. Later, as we see, it was Shirley Lim who helped further to institutionalize this practice into HKU and, potently, Hong Kong’s higher education.

The first cohort of Lim’s creative writing consisted of thirteen students; among them twelve were English-major final year students at the University of Hong Kong, plus a visiting student from McGill University in Canada. It is fair to say that during this course the students were guided by Lim in their journey of self-discovery in terms of their voices, creative capacity and craftmanship, inasmuch as Lim was also guided in 1999-2000 by these students in her wonderful discoveries that emerged: vibrant and brilliant English-language creative expressions and literary endeavours in and through Hong Kong. From Lim’s perspective, also on a slant of those times, we hear from her that these students’ “writing may be more awkward, but it possesses fascinating cultural specificity and represents rich social relationships” (2001a, 184). She goes so far as to compare their creative writing outputs with John Milton’s Lycidas in this way: both Milton in Lycidas and these students in the first cohort of Lim’s creative writing course in Hong Kong share in common, she conflates, the “dreams of writing in English” (184).

Such moves, in reciprocal experience of learning and teaching, and in perpetual discovery and self-discovery, was a result of both Lim’s and her students’ efforts in exploring within themselves inwardly the impossibility of not writing.³ Sometimes such urgency, we know, as writers, can be so profound that a writer can feel the impossibility of performing any other task, or indeed any other thing, until satisfied with the drive to write. To expose oneself to this urgency or “the impossibility of not writing” requires courage and determination to take risk. From here, of course, one does not consider writing to of a pragmatic context of communications, but an artistic expression of something personal, sometimes intimate and delicate, but not necessarily private or idiosyncratic (though there is nothing wrong being so). Creative writers share the passion with Gertrude Stein, for instance, who in The Making of Americans, boldly claims, “I write for myself and for strangers” and insists, “[t]his is the only way that I can do it” (1995, 289). Likewise, the writers in Hong Kong anticipated that their work would reach a larger community⁴ of readers, one hopefully consisting of “strangers,” those poised to read their work, both in the city and throughout the world.

Yuan Yang comes into the picture as a publication platform for these emergent English-language writers from Hong Kong: to showcase their best works as a collection to a readership of strangers. Building this platform from scratch, the thirteen students of Lim’s class assigned themselves different roles according to their experiences and interests, and organized an editorial board, with Lim as the advisory editor. In other words, the platform was entirely student-led and student-run for local dissemination. Lim merits how the editorial board was filled with “chiefly Hong Kong people” (2000, 6). This is a milestone, unprecedented in this city, which, as clichés have it, is sometimes considered a “crossroads between east and west” or an “international financial hub.” Their poems and short stories (the two main genres experimented by these students) were published alongside works by Hong Kong’s literary voices in English at that time (year 2000), including Leung Ping-kwan (also known in Chinese penname as Yasi也斯), Louise Ho (the period’s unofficial poet laureate of Hong Kong), Alex Kuo, Agnes Lam, Sussy Komala (also known as Xu Xi) and Timothy Kaiser, as well as works by some promising international writers such as Mitsuye Yamada, M. L. Liebler, Leong Liew Geok and Shirley Lim, herself. Lim later offers the back-story: she says, she “exploit[ed her] network” and “invited submissions from international poets” (2001a, 182). Student-editors remained authorial and authorities on final decisions of the selected works for publication and took charge of correspondence with writers.

One should appreciate the vision and ambition of this first editorial board of Yuan Yang. Instead of being a chapbook for this one-go occasion, Yuan Yang was initially launched on May 8, 2000 as the debut issue of a journal in anticipation of more issues to follow, with the bold and breath-taking “Volume 1” brightly printed adjacent to its flamingo pink title. Lim later reflected on the risk which she and these student-editors had taken, when she wrote the Introduction to Volume 2 in the year that followed:

I am perhaps more pleased and proud to be associated with Yuan Yang in its second issue than at its birth. The inaugural issue was a superb effort in the face of time and financial constraints and in the presence of young and amateur writers and editors. But the second issue has the added value of survival against similar odds together with relief that Yuan Yang has survived into its second year, the infant rate of mortality for literary magazines being notorious high. (2001b, ix)

We should not underestimate such obstacles as “time and financial constraints” that Lim briefly mentions here. One key factor that ultimately determines the survival of a literary journal (and we are clearly not talking about such luxurious terms as “profit” or “revenue”) has always been its reputation and reception, which, assuming both merit of both the work and ongoing editorial direction, depend, in turn, on distribution and circulation. Although these editors and writers in the journal all dreamed of reaching a wider audience, owing to various limitations, the first two issues of Yuan Yang were predominantly distributed within a relatively small circle of local bookstores, universities, and secondary schools in Hong Kong.

In her Introduction to the first issue of Yuan Yang, Lim makes a self-conscious simile, connecting Yuan Yang to the city: “the journal, like Hong Kong, is welcoming to visitors and guests” (2000, 6). The key word in Lim’s statement is the adjective “welcoming” – she is referring to the fact that the journal without hesitation accepts and publishes works from writers based outside of Hong Kong. I intend to take this emphasis on hospitality further and relate it to the journal’s potential readership. If, as Lim proposes, Yuan Yang is like Hong Kong, then flipping through an issue of this journal would offer us such excitement as if we just entered, say, “chachanteng”, which in colloquial Chinese literally means “tea restaurant”.⁵

In a chachanteng, Western cuisines are served in Hong Kong style: such as Hong Kong Borscht soup, Hong Kong Swiss chicken wings, or Hong Kong French toast. Doesn’t this sound like Yuan Yang, as an English-language literary journal of pieces very particular of Hong Kong? Chachenteng in Hong Kong is as important to local people as coffeeshops are to Londoners and salons to Parisians. There is at least one such restaurant in every neighbourhood. People come here to have lunch or grab a drink. For a visitor or a guest, there is such pleasure of experiencing authentic local culture and cuisine in a chachenteng. In fact, one can order a cup of yuanyang (or a glass of iced yuanyang) in a chachenteng. Such a drink, the namesake of the journal, should appear on the menu of any chachenteng. Even if it doesn’t, a waitress or waiter will understand what you mean when you order, “a yuanyang please.”

The title “Yuan Yang” itself, however, can sound like a riddle to non-Cantonese or non-Mandarin ears. What exactly does “Yuan Yang” connote? Where does it come from? Co-editors-in-chief Tina Wong and Sarah Lang open their Introduction to the inaugural issue with a very brief story of how they arrived at and settled for this title. I quote it in full here:

After sifting through many different possible titles for this journal, we decided to name it Yuan Yang. Originating in Hong Kong, a mixture of coffee and tea, Yuan Yang seems to speak of this city, its blend of old and new, progress and tradition, east and west and most of all, what we have in this journal. Just like the drink Yuan Yang, English writing, especially from young writers, in Hong Kong, is often overlooked. We hope this publication will provide the opportunity for us to note and share the treasures of Hong Kong’s daily life. (6)

The name of this beverage thus alludes to a product – whether it be a flavour, a texture, or a method – of blending and mixing two things together whose existence would have otherwise been deemed impossible. In her report on the launch of Yuan Yang, Katherine Forestier, a journalist of Hong Kong English language newspaper South China Morning Post, highlights the extraordinary possibilities that this journal, with the unique milieu from which it emerged, would potentially promise: “Only in Hong Kong is it possible for coffee and tea to be brewed together and regarded as a delectable drink” (2000). Forestier’s sentence also signals the risk which the journal was undertaking: would this drink, or specifically all that the word “Yuan Yang” can symbolize, be welcomed and well received elsewhere? or is its delectability apprehended primarily or only in Hong Kong?

One of the students’ works published in this inaugural Volume 1, W.H.Y. Wong Ho Yin’s poem “Yuan Yang,” is self-referential, both to this journal’s namesake and to the act of “writing a Hong Kong poem”:

Yuan Yang

A cup of hot yuan yang
Stands on my desk.
Strands of steam whirl around:
Sylphs dancing without rest

On a hot spring.
Its unique aroma,
Neither tea nor coffee,
But a mixture of both odours.

Each sip
Tells me more about home.
I memorise its taste
And start writing a Hong Kong poem.

Yuan Yang 1 (9)

The poem slowly unfolds itself, like the blooming of a flower, petal by petal. We see the curious Chinese loanword “yuan yang” as that which occupies the image of “a cup” on the first line. Yet it refuses to stay still there, neither in the first line nor in this container: not quite. The speaker sees the “strands of steam” as “sylphs dancing without rest / on a hot spring”, calling for attention. (Trust me, it does smell fabulous.) From this visual image to its “unique aroma”, the speaker makes a small pause before reaching extraordinarily amazing “each sip” on line 9. Though it is “neither tea nor coffee,” it requires a similar etiquette to taste the drink known in a non-English word as yuan yang: we don’t gulp it down, swallow it or suck it, but sip it little by little.

Yuanyang is uncountable. But we tend to quantify it in everyday language, just the way we do for coffee or tea, cup by cup. But here in Wong’s poem, yuan yang demands to be tasted slowly, lest we missed its layers of flavours. If we should refer to it with a measuring word or classifier, the way we do with nouns in Chinese, we should refrain from saying “a cup of yuan yang” but “a sip of yuan yang”, for this sip is already different from the one earlier and should not be the same as the one afterward. No one sip is the same, just like the pieces collected in each volume of Yuan Yang. Like “Yuan Yang” and “Hong Kong”, this line – “Each sip” – prosodically holds a spondee, a poetic foot that sometimes sounds foreign and always stands out in the English language as in “bang-bang”, “shape-shift”, or “watch out!”

Adjacent to Wong’s “Yuan Yang” is the first poem that opens this debut volume of the journal: another yuan yang poem without mentioning its Chinese name but hyphenating its two main components of the title, “Tea-Coffee” by Leung Ping-kwan, a renowned writer in Hong Kong, with his works published widely in both English and Chinese⁶:

Tea-Coffee

Tea fragrant and strong, made from
Five different blends, in cotton bags or legendary
Stockings – tender, all-encompassing, gathering –
Brewed in hot water and poured into a teapot, its taste
Varying subtly with the time in water steeped.
Can that fine are be maintained? Pour the tea

Into a cup of coffee, will the aroma of one
Interfere with, wash out the other? Or will the other
Keep its flavour: foodstalls by the roadside
Streetwise and worldly from its daily stoves
Mixed with a dash of daily gossips and good sense,
Hard-working, a little sloppy…. An indescribable taste.

Yuan Yang 1 (8)

In this poem, the speaker muses on the traditional technique of brewing yuan yang. Stanza one ends with a question which serves less as an enquiry than an expression of pessimism that such a unique tradition of making this Hong Kong beverage might be lost and forgotten one day: “Can that fine art be maintained?” What follows then is an imperative verb phrase that extends into the second stanza as another question: “Pour the tea // into a cup of coffee, will the aroma of one / interfere with, wash out the other? Or will the other / keep its flavour[?]”

This second question, together with the “dancing sylphs” from Wong’s poem on the next page, vividly bring up the dancer and the dance in the final two lines of W.B. Yeats’s “Among School Children”:

O body swayed to music, O brightening glance,
How can we know the dancer from the dance? (Yeats 245)

How can we know the parts from the whole? How can we tell the tea and the coffee from their mixture? What will happen if we more closely than ever pour local Hong Kong elements along with – shall we say – the thick of English literary practice? What do we taste, and how?

Volume 2 also includes two poems by Dr Page Richards, who had then just joined as a professor at the University of Hong Kong and would soon become the Editor-in-Chief of Yuan Yang from Volume III onward and the Director of Creative Writing in the Department of English. When reading her poems, such as “Plaza del Sol” from Yuan Yang 2, against the backdrop of this journal’s history, I now perceive a prophetic image which then beautifully sketches the editorial vision that Richards has brought forth. The poem’s final lines portray a scene in which the speaker, while waiting for her plane to take off, muses upon the optic juxtaposition of her window reflection with that of the birds outside. This image, for me, opens the subsequent chapter of Yuan Yang’s history, to borrow a stunning simile from the same poem, “as the years taxi in rows / on the other side,” which I will elaborate in the next slice:

I, these palms, those birds,
hummingbirds, lightly separate,
we all reflect, the same, according to the sun. (34)

² This course has since then become a popular elective (it is sometimes split into two sessions as Creative Writing I and II in subsequent editions) in the School’s curriculum (along with an aside: it is important to make a small reminder here that before 2006, the School of English was known under a slightly different name as the Department of English, which has a very rich and interesting history of its own).

³ Lim refuses to refer to what happened to these students in her creative writing class in Hong Kong as “transformation” but, instead, claims “rapid development as English-language creative writers.” Importantly, this refusal against the word “transformation” implies that students’ passion in creative writing does not suddenly emerge due to this course. In fact, the students have long harboured such desires to write creatively in English; yet, owing to those longstanding stereotypes that Lim identifies (see footnote 1), “they never had the opportunity, confidence, encouragement, community support, and material means to do so” (2001a, 182-183).

⁴ I would like to dedicate a footnote here to the word “community” here. The sense of a community of readers for English-language writers in Hong Kong ws rather new back then at the turn of the millennium. In fact, Lim merits how these students in her first creative writing class in Hong Kong also “a community of like-minded and motivated English-language writers” (Lim 2001a, 183). It was this sense of community, with such practice as mutual support, collaboration, casual conversation and informal peer review, that prompted them to write more and write better.

⁵ It serves, like a coffeeshop in London or salon in Paris, what Jürgen Habermas refers, in the plural, as “public spheres” (1989), where people gather informally and talk about life. Sitting in a Chachanteng for an afternoon, one would listen to some opinions, stories, gossips and lively conversations.

⁶ At that time, he had been shortly appointed professorship at Lingnan University. He taught as a lecturer and then senior lecturer in the Department of Comparative Literature at the University of Hong Kong during the 1990s. Later, from 2007 onward, Leung has also served as a member of the international editorial board for Yuan Yang. Leung passed away in 2013.