| 2013-05-18 16:56:40 |
BEIJING, May 18 (Xinhua) — After six years in the United States, and having secured a “green card” for permanent residency, Chinese novelist and former TV starlet Wang Yang has decided to move back to China.
“America is good, but it will not give me what I need,” she says.
Wang will soon start work with a TV drama crew in Beijing on an adaptation of her latest novel “Yang Jia,” or “Marrying Across the Ocean,” depicting a Chinese woman’s love story in America.
While Wang personally wrestled with whether to settle away from China, her protagonist also goes through a similar decision-making process. Crucially, unlike many previous stories with similar topics that venerate foreign cultures when depicting Chinese lives abroad, Wang’s novel has been credited with providing a more truthful, contemporary picture.
It has made a difference by putting experiences across Chinese and U.S. cultures on an equal footing, according to literary critic Mu Gong.
Wang and “Yang Jia” are therefore emblematic of a re-balancing of assumptions on the desirability for Chinese of expatriate life. Foreign residency is starting to lose some of its luster for Chinese, with greater opportunities in their increasingly invigorated home country.
