. . . as far as Chinese literature is concerned, while we have too much “experience that is not human experience”—too abnormal to be understood as experience commonly shared by human society—we cannot write a “Chinese novel” that is worthy of this “Chinese experience.” Our fiction is just too “nineteenth century,” and is too much like a novel. I certainly cannot do it myself, but I am very eager for Chinese writers, especially young writers, to write novels of an alien Chinese experience — a novel that is not a novel, and one that will add a little fresh blood to the history of Chinese and even world literature.

attached to: Yan Lianke