“We Are All Dispensable” - Confessions of an Elevator Operator

Yu Li: Confessions of an Elevator Operator is an uproarious tale of China’s surplus labor by Beijing author Jimmy Qi. Yu Li (whose name literally means “extra manpower”) is a migrant worker transported from rural China to the lift of one of Beijing’s classiest apartment blocks, stuffed with celebrities and important officials. The responsibility of transporting these powerful men and alluring women from floor to floor is almost more than a country boy can handle, especially with a “nuclear weapon” in his pants ready to go off at any moment.

Yu Li has just been published in English by Make Do Publishing, a new Hong Kong-based imprint. On the eve of the launch of Yu Li at the Bookworm this Thursday (October 22), Dan Edwards spoke to author Jimmy Qi about his work.

What inspired you to start writing?
Actually my first piece of writing hasn’t been published yet. It was based on my experiences working for a rich family business in Canada [Qi lived in Canada from 1989 to 1998]. It was a very funny working environment – more like a prison! [Laughs] It was really a unique and shocking experience. They had cameras watching us, and when you went to the toilet, after two minutes the door was locked. They had people working there from all over who had just landed in Canada and wanted a new life. When I quit the manager pulled out a knife. So when I started my second job, I just wanted to get that story down. That was my first novel.

How has the time you spent in Canada changed the way you look at your homeland?
Yu Li was inspired by my apartment block, which I think I looked at differently when I returned from Canada. It was very common in China for buildings to have an elevator operator, but when my colleagues visited from Canada and the United States, the first question they always asked was, “What’s an elevator operator doing here?” In your own environment you get used to these unique things. It was only when I lived outside China I knew why people asked this question.

Apart from those kinds of details did you see China differently after nine years in Canada?
It was more commercialized when I came back. You know this book was written in the late 1990s, when China had just switched from a very centralized kind of society, like the Soviet Union, to a more globalized economy. That was a huge shock. People couldn’t adjust. It was like driving your car on the right side, and all of a sudden you’re asked to drive on the left. Everything was turned on its head, like an earthquake. It took everyone some time to adjust to that new environment.

You’ve published nine books in China – is Yu Li is typical of your style?
Not really – I switch from one style to another, depending on what I want to write. Style is just a tool. The target is what you want to say. I read a lot, so when I start writing I always have many different novels in mind, and all the masters. I have my own collection of around 5,000 books, starting with Shakespeare and Confucius. Depending on what I want to say, I always have the working style of another author in mind, and I draw on that.

There seems to be a subtle critique of Chinese society running through the story of Yu Li, with his ridiculous training to be an elevator operator and his calm, Daoist sense of resignation at the end of the novel encouraged by his supervisor. Was the story intended as critique?
In general I don’t aim to be a political writer – that’s not my goal. Time passes, systems change, but great masters like Dickens never change, right? Literature should have that kind of artistic value. So Yu Li is more about the cultural conflict between the Chinese and Western – or the “international” – way of thinking.

In your essay in the new edition of Yu Li, you write, “We are all Yu Li… we are all dispensable.” Can you talk about what you mean by that?
We all have ups and downs. Yu means “extra,” Li means “manpower.” Look at George W. Bush – he’s a Yu Li today, right? He’s a leftover. That’s life. You have your powerful times and shining moments, but things rotate. Sometimes you’re on top, sometimes you’re not. Yu Li’s story tells a common tale of human behavior.

Yu Li was first published in Chinese in 2001. Was there anything that surprised you about the story looking back over it in the course of preparing the new English edition?
Yes, because I wrote this book ten years ago in only two days. When I read his translation I realized it’s a great story – it’s short but it really says a lot. Classic writings are those that create a prototype figure that is an expression of generic human behavior – you create a mirror in which everyone can see him or herself. You can re-read these books again and again and the feeling is always different, because the reader is always in a different place.

Jimmy Qi will launch the English edition of Yu Li – Confessions of an Elevator Operator at 7.30pm, this Thursday, October 22 at the Bookworm. RMB 30/20 (members).