swordbirdclub
Date:
2008-05-05
Time: 02:55:26
|
Telegraph Magazine (UK)
Most novelists only dream of landing a global
publishing deal at the first attempt. Nancy
Yi Fan is 13, Chinese and writes in her
second language. Lucie Young meets a literary
prodigy and her very ambitious parents.
Americans like to think they have the market
cornered in how to raise child geniuses.
Educational programmes such as Baby Einstein,
Learning Before Birth and the Mozart Effect
are all popular with new parents. But the
Chinese are equally driven, judging by the
success of Nancy Yi Fan. Nancy, 13, is one of
the
youngest authors to have a novel published in
America an accomplishment that is all the
more extraordinary as English is not her
first language. She was born in China and
Mandarin is her native tongue.
Nancy, whose first book, Swordbird, comes out
in the UK next month, is the latest in a line
of Chinese prodigies to conquer the West that
has included the 13-year-old chess champion
Pu Xiangzhi and the violinist Tang Yun, who
at 13 starred in Chen Kaige's 2002 film
Together with You.
Over a homecooked dinner of dumplings, tofu,
egg and peppers in their hanky-sized
apartment in Gainesville, Florida (where the
Fans moved from China six months ago), Harvey
Fan, 43, explains that it is no accident that
his daughter is such a precocious talent. His
plans for her greatness began even before she
was born. 'Americans really care about their
children, but in Beijing they go more crazy,'
he says, as the Fans perch around the kitchen
table on what appears to be plastic garden
furniture.
By law, Chinese parents can have only one
child (unless they produce twins) and they do
everything in their power to ensure that
their child develops to its fullest
potential. 'I didn't buy a sofa,' Harvey
says, looking at the plastic chairs in the
spartan living-room. 'Luxury is not for me. I
don't need to lie on a sofa. As long as we
have enough money, it is for Nancy to buy
books.' Turning to look at his wife, Lora, he
continues, 'She is never complaining. My
sister criticises me and says, "Why you not
buy your wife beautiful clothes? You not so
decent. You just wear cheap shirts and
T-shirts. Why?" '
Nancy shows no evidence of being a spoilt
child. She has little in her bedroom apart
from her computer, a collection of moss and
four-leaf clovers she gathered from the
school playing fields, and a bookcase that
holds about 50 books (half in Chinese, half
in English). What she does have in abundance
is confidence.
Sitting on a mattress on the floor, with her
hair in a ponytail and glasses that make her
look like a cross between Harry Potter's
Chinese twin and Velma from Scooby-Doo, Nancy
explains how she took two years to write
Swordbird, and then did what every writer
dreams of she secured a publisher without
even having an agent. 'I'd read a few books
about how to get published and it was so
complicated,' she says, rolling her eyes. She
didn't want to waste money on postage,
sending out lots of copies of her manuscript
to book editors, so instead she simply
e-mailed Swordbird to half a dozen of the
most important sounding people at the leading
publishing houses.
Jane Friedman, the CEO and president of
HarperCollins, who frequently appears near
the top of lists of America's most powerful
women, receives dozens of emails every day
from hopeful authors, but this one caught her
eye. 'It was addressed to President Friedman
and said it was from a 12-year-old Chinese
girl, but it seemed very grown up,' Friedman
says. 'I had my doubts that it was real.'
Nevertheless she emailed Nancy immediately to
let her know she was interested in her book.
Within a month, Nancy had a deal.
Swordbird, like most classical children's
fiction, involves a crusade of good against
evil. In this case, the main protagonists are
blue jays, robins and cardinal-birds that eat
pies, play the piano, perform plays, dance,
sail boats and tip-claw around the trees of
the Stone-Run Forest. These small creatures
are also expert swordsmen and defend
themselves with an impressive array of blades
against an evil hawk, Turnatt, who enslaves
innocent birds in Fortress Glooming and tries
to pit everyone against each other.
Birds are Nancy's passion. In a tiny cage in
the living-room are perched Ambergold, Cyan
and Tiger, her budgerigars. 'I got my first
bird when I was in China. I called him
Alphabet because I was learning the English
alphabet at the time.' Keeping birds as pets
is common in China but mostly among the
elderly. 'They keep canaries, singing birds
or nightingales in bamboo cages. It takes the
place of golf or a newspaper,' she says.
Nancy spent her first seven years in Liaoning
in north-east China, and Beijing. Lora and
Harvey had already lost twins and didn't want
to lose another child, so when Lora became
pregnant for the second time she stayed in
hospital for nearly a year. Harvey had a
karaoke machine and recorded love songs to
play to their unborn baby. 'I remember Moon
River and Love Story,' Lora giggles. 'My
husband said, "Eat all sorts of things so
your child will be clever." '
'I said, if you take a lot of minerals, your
child will develop a lot faster,' Harvey
adds. 'I bought very expensive cherries and
lychees. I spent to my limit. I also went out
to the villages and bought donkey meat and
snake meat. The old generation have a
superstition that it is good for the child.'
Before Nancy could walk, Harvey carried her
to museums to show her art. He exposed her to
different sounds and bought a computer so she
could tap on it, even when she didn't know
what she was doing. Everyone in his family
chipped in. Harvey's 80-year-old father did
chores around their house and one day placed
an English book under Nancy's sleeping head,
perhaps hoping she might learn by osmosis.
'It was a prediction,' Harvey grins.
When Nancy was seven, the Fans moved to
America where Harvey had won a visiting
scholarship to several universities,
including Harvard. During this four-year
spell in the US they returned to China for
two years when their visa expired the Fans
made intensive use of the library system.
Nancy, who has been twisted up like a pretzel
at the table, animatedly jumps in to tell the
story. 'My parents rode bicycles and went to
the libraries with backpacks. Sometimes we
would bring a little shopping cart, which I
left near the door. It didn't make any noise,
so they didn't say anything, but the
librarians' eyes grew very big when they saw
it,' she says with a giggle.
In her first year at school in the US,
Nancy's reading ability shot from
kindergarten level to a year above her
classmates. (Nowadays, she boasts, 'I can
read a Harry Potter in a day if I have not
much other things to do.') Her first short
stories were so outstanding that her teacher
summoned Harvey to check he wasn't writing
them for her. Her parents beam with delight
at the very idea.
In the evenings and at weekends, Harvey gave
his daughter additional homework. He taught
her to keep a diary and set her tasks such as
using a particular quote in a story. 'She is
under my control at home,' he says proudly.
'At home she can't read any books except
classics and the Newbery Medal book list [an
annual award in America for the best
children's books chosen by librarians].'
On the wall above Nancy's desk is a schedule
outlining how she will spend every hour of
the evening: 4.30-6.30 homework; 6.30-7.30
meal/rest; 7.30-9.30 Quest. Quest is the name
of her second novel, which she says she has
nearly finished. It is set 100 years before
the time of Swordbird and 'tells how Wind
Voice became Swordbird,' a giant dove-like
bird of peace with magical powers.
Every night at 10pm, after Nancy finishes her
assignments, the family goes jogging. It must
be quite a sight. There are barely any
pavements in most American towns and
Gainesville is no exception. Most people seem
to live in apartment complexes arranged
around a communal car-park, and the local
streets are huge four- and six-lane highways
cutting through the heart of town.
Harvey feels that in China parents neglect
sports to their detriment. It is not a
priority in Chinese schools; the emphasis is
solely on study. Harvey says this is partly
because the playgrounds are small and
crowded, so there is not much room for sport.
He prefers the Western model; Nancy took
dance classes and did skating and swimming.
'I think she is taller than us because of the
swimming,' he says.
The Fans have moved almost 10 times in
Nancy's life. Asked if moving makes it hard
to keep up with friends, she says soberly,
'My best friends are books. Books are
everything. They are my teachers, my friends.
They are always there for you, even when we
move and go to a temporary home.'
Her favourite hobby is to lie in bed at night
and picture the characters from the books
that she has read that day and see if she can
make the stories come out differently. 'Then
when I fall asleep I dream about the
stories,' she says. 'If the story is good, it
is very hard to change what happens.'
The idea for Swordbird came to her at the age
of 10 after one of these bookish dreams. She
had just read Gone with the Wind and Johnny
Tremain by Esther Forbes (a fictional story
about a young apprentice silversmith caught
up in the American revolution). 'I was
learning about the revolutionary wars in my
social studies class and that all got mixed
up in my dreams,' she recalls. When she woke
up, she realised she had dreamt the makings
of a novel about war, peace, friendship and
trust. 'For several days, I thought of all
the good stuff I had ever thought of and
poured it all into the story. I wrote and
wrote and wrote, whenever I had spare time.
It always occupied a place in my mind.
Nancy jots down ideas in ringbound notebooks
that she carries in her jeans pocket. 'I just
wildly write out my ideas on a notebook,
however stupid. The notebook is about
brainstorming gems for the story. Then I go
back to the computer and go through it. I
think the disadvantage of a computer is I am
tempted to change it.'
The first draft of Swordbird took two years
to complete. In the first version, she had
more than 100 characters. 'It got really
tangled up and confusing,' she says, so she
snipped the characters down to 40 and tried
to streamline the whole thing. She even took
up martial arts to help with the battle
scenes. 'I thought if I knew how to use a
sword, the battle scenes would be more
realistic.' The result is the birds fight
with everything from rapiers and sabres to
scimitars.
Nancy is keen to show off her new-found
fighting skills and impressively twirls a
huge sword in the living-room and strikes a
dramatic pose. Evidently, when she sets her
mind on doing something, she doesn't do it by
halves.
Kate Jackson, the editor-in-chief of the
children's division at HarperCollins, which
publishes such modern classics as Lemony
Snicket's A Series of Unfortunate Events and
Where the Wild Things Are, thinks Nancy's
writing is breathtaking. 'I've never seen the
like of it before,' she says. 'I didn't
realise when I first read it that it was
written by a 12-year-old. She is so
accomplished as a writer, goodness knows
where she will be when she is 25.'
Of course, Swordbird was by no means perfect
when it first arrived at the publishing
house. Like most first novels, it needed some
fine-tuning. Nancy's editor, Phoebe Yeh,
spent six months coaching her how to hone the
story and break it into chapters. The result
is a book that has, as Friedman says, 'an
old-fashioned sense of values, which is what
a lot of the great writers have'. Friedman
won't let on what HarperCollins paid for the
book, but it wasn't six figures, she says.
How well do they expect it to sell? 'Not
millions. That's only JK Rowling and Lemony
Snicket. We would be very happy if it did
50,000.'
A cynic might say that Nancy's book benefited
enormously from great timing. Other
publishers did turn it down. Some told Nancy
she was too young, others told her to
approach magazines first or get an agent.
Would HarperCollins have been so keen to
entertain such a young unknown author if the
company wasn't looking for titles to help it
break into the vast untapped Chinese market?
Friedman admits that when she received
Nancy's email, 'China was on my mind. We were
planning to enter the Chinese market so, yes,
the idea that she was Chinese was appealing.
Nancy's book will be published in China by
People's Literature Publishing House, our
"partner" in China there are no official
partnerships yet.'
Were the publishers worried at all about the
strain all this hothousing, writing and fame
might have on such a young mind? 'At the
beginning, I might have worried,' Jackson
says. 'But this is her passion, this is what
she loves. She seems very peaceful with it.
She is a very calm person, even with all the
things going on in her life. Now I've no
worries about it. She is old beyond her
years.'
Nancy seems unaffected by all the fuss. She
is a sweet, sensitive, highly articulate
teenage girl whose plans for the future are
to continue writing stories and to go to a
leading university such as Harvard. 'They
have a very nice atmosphere which I find very
pacifying,' she says. For now she is happily
putting the finishing touches to her second
novel and dabbling in fashion design. She is
wearing a T-shirt she designed featuring a
bird and a verse by the poet Emily Dickinson:
'Hope is the thing with feathers/That perches
in the soul/And sings the tune without the
words/And never stops at all.'
Asked if she has any tips for young writers,
she says simply that the best way to learn is
by reading the best books. 'Read them over
and over until you seem to memorise the
rhythm and the words. Then, when you write,
all the good parts will melt into your
style.' |
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