Risa Wataya, an award-winning Japanese novelist, recently shared her delight with life in Beijing with local literature fans as she spoke about being intrigued by everyday discoveries and differences between the Japanese and Chinese languages.
Wataya, who became the youngest winner of Japan's prestigious Akutagawa Prize in 2004 at age 19, told more than 100 people at an event hosted by the Japanese Embassy in Beijing in late March that she likes that the capital city has been "promoting modernization at full speed but retains a nostalgic atmosphere."
Even before her relocation from Tokyo last December due to her family's work assignment, Wataya said she was interested in the Chinese language and studied it, initially prompted by her curiosity about differences she had found between Japanese and Chinese lyrics of a famous song by Taiwan singer Teresa Teng.
For example, Wataya said simplified Chinese characters used in China "give an impression that each represents a yoga posture," while she thinks the mostly traditional Chinese characters used in Japan appear "relatively sturdy."
The author also said she finds intriguing how the Chinese word for T-shirt is written with the alphabet T and a Chinese character containing the graphical component for "blood," evoking an image of stark white T-shirts spattered with blood.
During the Lunar New Year holidays in late January, Wataya said she was surprised to see many Chinese people eating ice cream outdoors despite the freezing cold weather. "I wanted to try as well, but was not brave enough to do so," she said.
The novelist said she imagines "many human dramas" taking place in the capital when viewing its many high-rise buildings, with the city attracting motivated migrants from different parts of China.
Despite her relatively short stay in Beijing through April, Wataya said she hopes to write a novel in Japanese someday to "convey good points of Beijing to Japanese people."
Her works have been translated in Chinese, with "Tenohira no Miyako," a story set in her hometown Kyoto, hitting bookshelves in China last December following its 2016 release in Japan.
