Tash Aw on Malaysia’s Immigrant Dreams Shifting to China; Though he lives in London, Tash Aw has made a name for himself writing about Southeast Asia. The money is representative of something else, whether it’s self-respect or intimacy. Ironically, the more you pursue money, the less likely you are to achieve these things

June 12, 2013, 10:32 AM

Tash Aw on Malaysia’s Immigrant Dreams Shifting to China

By Kristiano Ang

Though he lives in London, Tash Aw has made a name for himself writing about Southeast Asia.The 41-year-old was born in Taiwan and spent most of his childhood in Malaysia. His debut novel, “The Harmony Silk Factory,” told the tale of a Chinese family in 1940s rural Malaya and was long-listed for the 2005 Man Booker Prize. His second novel, “Map of the Invisible World,” revolves about twin brothers who were adopted by families in Indonesia and Malaysia. For his most recent book, “Five Star Billionaire,” Mr. Aw turns his attention to a disparate group of Malaysian migrants—a washed-up pop star, the unwilling scion to a real-estate empire, a radical-turned-businesswoman, a spa manager and a dubious self-help author—seeking to get ahead in Shanghai. He spoke to the Journal about Southeast Asians chasing the Chinese dream, and why being an outsider makes for good literature. Edited excerpts follow.Why does your latest book focus on Malaysian migrants to China, when most of the attention is on migrant labor within China?

Mr. Aw: It was hearing Malaysian and Singaporean accents on the street when I was in China that first made me think of writing this novel. If people of my generation had wanted to leave Malaysia to find a better life, we’d have gone instantly to the big cities of the West. Now the choices have changed in a very dramatic fashion, and the modern Chinese dream has replaced the American dream for a lot of Southeast Asians, because the illusion is that you can get all the stuff that America used to represent a lot more quickly.

The main characters in the novel range from pop stars to spa managers. Why this broad range of occupations?

It was an attempt to show the range of people who were going to China from Southeast Asian countries. On the surface, the book is about contemporary China, but underneath, it is a love letter to the Malaysia of my generation. It was a kind of golden generation, because we were the first people who had the opportunity to be highly educated and go abroad. This is about what we’ve done with those aspirations.

You seem almost nostalgic about the Malaysia of your youth.

A lot of my work is actually a rebellion against that old fashioned British nostalgia that’s attached to pre-war Malaya. If there’s nostalgia, it’s a gritty kind that’s really mixed. There’s only one character that might be said to display sentimentality, but that’s only at the end of his voyage, when he’s trying to reconnect with what it means to come from a crap town in Malaysia. For the others, the nostalgia is without a lot of affection and mainly connected with a sense of anxiety, which is the way most people remember their childhood.

Why did you use a structure where the five characters are connected primarily through a somewhat omniscient narrator?

The narrator is delivering the truest version of events, though when we get to the end of the novel, he might ironically be in the worst position to be at peace with himself. This was my way of sharing about how Asian people and countries construct stories for and about themselves, which are really flawed but solidify and become official. They’re all modern, happy and successful, but even in a place like Singapore, there are people struggling to make ends meet. There’s a sense of artificiality in these narratives that feel hollow because we’re not confronting the truth, though we know what it is.

You are known for writing about Southeast Asia, though you live outside the region. What does this distance give you?

The idea of an outsider has always been my primary point of interest in literature. I’ve lived in London for most of my adult life and am very sensitive to the state of being an outsider. I don’t mean to pretend that I’ve had no contact with Asia, but living abroad, you feel completely divorced. That total lack of a frame of reference is helpful when you’re writing about characters that are outsiders, because it gives you authenticity.

At the end of your book, most of your characters are emotionally conflicted and materially unsuccessful. What are you trying to show?

They end up less materially well off but whether that makes them happier is a conclusion I’m not trying to reach. People always say they’re going abroad to have a better life, but they’re never going after money for money’s sake. The money is representative of something else, whether it’s self-respect or intimacy. Ironically, the more you pursue money, the less likely you are to achieve these things.

In Shanghai, you have large numbers of very successful and attractive 30-something year old women desperately trying to find a husband. They live in a city where everything materially seems possible, but the basic thing, finding a love match, seems impossible. I don’t have answers to the questions raised in the novel, but I felt I needed to highlight how we’ve reached this place.