Profile | How the absurdist theatre of a Canadian trading company office sparked a Chinese humorist’s writing career
- Qi Yimin’s job with a trading firm in Montreal gave him the idea for his first book. ‘People from all over worked there. The environment was surreal,’ he says
- The Beijing-based writer talks about earning a PhD from Peking University, reading a book a day, penning more than 40 of his own and the urge to leave a legacy
My father was from Liaoning province (in northeast China) and my mother was from Shandong (in the east). They went to Beijing in 1955. They were both early members of the Communist Party who had participated in the revolution.
After (the founding of the People’s Republic of China in) 1949, they worked in the People’s Government in the northeast for a number of years. That’s where my elder brother, Qi Yixin, was born. In 1955, they were sent to work in the capital and I was born there, in Xicheng district, on the west side of the old city, in 1962, the first true Beijinger in my family.
Country child
My childhood was relatively normal. Even though the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution started in 1966 it didn’t affect me much as I was still in kindergarten. All I can remember are a few revolutionary songs and dances we had to perform.
Politics only came to play a role in my life when (in 1969, eight years after the Sino-Soviet split) there was an undeclared border conflict between China and the Soviet Union that lasted for several months.
As my parents worked for the state, we were moved from Beijing to a village in Wenan county, in Hebei province, which was an arduous five- or six-hour journey from our home, although it would be much quicker today. I lived in the May Seventh Cadre School and ended up spending three years of my childhood in the countryside.
Page turner
We went back to Beijing in 1972. There weren’t many books around in those days, just a few old Russian novels. When I enrolled in middle school, however, there were some Chinese classics to read.
