All stills from The Hedgehog (2024). Photographs courtesy of Zheng Zhi.

The writer Zheng Zhi’s first novel, Floating, was published in China in 2007, when he was nineteen years old. Since then, he has published three more—a fifth will come out this year—as well as numerous volumes of short fiction, all while writing prolifically for film and television. His literary career has placed him at the vanguard of what is now known as the Dongbei renaissance, a group of writers hailing from the northeastern provinces of Heilongjiang, Jilin, and Zheng’s native Liaoning, all of whose upbringings were marked by the recession that occurred there in the eighties and nineties. Given Zheng’s stature in his home country, it feels surprising that “The Hedgehog,” which appears in the Review’s new Spring issue, is his first work of fiction to be published in English. With help from the novelist Jeremy Tiang, who translated the story, we spoke to Zheng about the turns of fate and the funding issues that have, over the years, led him away from and back to serious writing, as well as about his childhood fear, which makes its way into the story, that his sanity would hold out for only so long.

—Owen Park

INTERVIEWER

“The Hedgehog” was first published anonymously with the title Xiānzhèng (Immortal syndrome), as part of a competition in the literary magazine Lǐ (Newriting). The story caused a bit of a stir among readers in the Chinese literary world as they struggled to guess the identity of its author. Up to that point, you’d been more successful in the realm of commercial fiction. What was it like to participate in this anonymous contest?

ZHENG ZHI

The entries were a mixture of open submissions and solicited manuscripts. One of the editors, Zhou Jianing, approached me to ask if I’d be interested, and of course I accepted the challenge, in part to force myself to try something new. Six months later, with the deadline fast approaching, Jianing checked in to see how I was doing—and as I’d completely forgotten that I’d agreed to do it, I ended up writing the whole story in the final three days. The word limit was twenty thousand characters, and my story was nineteen thousand. If not for this restriction, I’d probably have kept going and turned it into a novella or even a short novel. All the short-listed stories appeared in the magazine—I remember they were spread across three issues over three or four months—and also on the magazine’s WeChat page. Readers had the choice of buying the magazine or simply reading them online. As promised, the stories were credited only by a serial number—I was no. 11—and people were speculating about who each author might be. I was surprised by how many young writers got involved in these discussions, which became quite animated. The organizers did a good job keeping things confidential—or at least I didn’t know who any of the other authors were. The whole competition felt fair, and very exciting. I’d previously seen this sort of “anonymous” competition only in the world of variety shows, where singers wear masks and the audience has to guess who they are based on their voices. The way I see it, an author’s style is equivalent to a singer’s voice. Being identifiable is very important. Read More