Author: Xu Xi 許素細

Back to school because my lit, lit life leads me there, perhaps more often than I want.  Bookstores used to be why writers traveled, but given the rise of E-Books, online book tours can be more efficient “travel.” Many festivals and writing conferences wouldn’t happen without university support, and even academic conferences admit a writer…

So I’m on my way from Melbourne to Sydney, ruminating on the global-lit journey that has brought me back to these two major Australian cities after 32 years. Here are two reasons: You’ve met Robin in my blog before—we’re counting the places in the world we’ve had a drink together. The list grows longer with…

32 years away from the city of Melbourne and I return to find it in a different “Australia.” For one thing, all the restaurants downtown were Chinese, Japanese, Korean, Malaysian or otherwise distinctly “Asian.” Hidden somewhere down one street was a Greek restaurant, reminding me that 32 years ago, I had been startled to learn…

So this past week that lit, lit life took me first to Bangkok and then to Kyoto, two cities where I’m decidedly “foreign” even though I am mistaken for “local.” But first a pause to recall Han Suyin who died at the age of 96. Never heard of her? That’s the problem with “global characteristics”…

So Kwame Senu Neville Dawes landed on our shores—from one island to another, Jamaica to Hong Kong—except that this being that lit, lit life, he came via Nebraska. But of course, where else would a Ghanaian-Jamaican writer who ROCKS fly from if not Lincoln, Nebraska? He wowed our MFA writers (and members of the university community…

So there I was, my head in Colm Tóibín’s Ireland (more, later)  while chattering about Mo Yan’s China on BBC World TV. It was Friday, October 12, 2012 at 0615 hours in Central, Hong Kong. An ungodly hour (up at 0430 hours to reach their studios on time) to rise and shine for three minutes…

My aspiration in life is to loaf. These days, life seems to be much ado about aspiration, or so the brand-marketing-image-makers would have us believe. We aspire to fame (and living forever, as that song goes) and wealth, stardom for a second on YouTube, regardless. Me? I want, like Larry, an American character in The…

There was a time I traveled without checking in luggage. Business trips. Harrowing schedules. No time to wait at carousels when you could be speeding to your next meeting to harass a supplier or fawn over a client. Now that I’ve left that life behind in favor of this lit, lit one, I travel with…

Good morning. It’s a day for an air walk on that lit, lit sojourn. Coffee? Here’s the view above my tatami mat, one of Liu Zhen’s “Landscapes of the Mind,” a lacquer painting. Liu Zhen is a talented, and unusual, young (b. 1970) Shanghai-based artist. Unusual for his patience in one so young. Working with…