Xuemo and Jon Fosse: A Literary Dialogue Across Desert and Fjord | “Xuemo in Dialogue with International Scholars” (Episode 7)

Xuemo and Jon Fosse: A Literary Dialogue Across Desert and Fjord | “Xuemo in Dialogue with International Scholars” (Episode 7)

At 8:00 p.m. on May 3, 2026, an in-depth literary dialogue spanning Eurasia and connecting the deserts of western China with the fjords of western Norway was held at the Xuemo Academy in Wuwei, Gansu Province, the hometown of the renowned writer Xuemo.

Organized by the World Literature Union and the Xuemo Foundation, the event combined an in-person gathering with a live Zoom session. Scholars from China, Norway, Canada, Germany, the United States, the United Kingdom, and elsewhere joined nearly 500 readers for a cross-cultural exploration of homeland, solitude, existence, and the essence of literature.

A Meeting of the Poetics of Place: Spiritual Resonances Between Desert and Fjord

At the heart of the dialogue were two writers deeply rooted in their native landscapes: Xuemo, a contemporary Chinese writer and cultural scholar, and Jon Fosse, the Norwegian writer and winner of the 2023 Nobel Prize in Literature.

The keynote speaker, Professor Shouhui Zhao of the University of Bergen, drew on his extensive background in linguistics and cross-cultural studies to deliver a presentation titled “Between Desert and Fjord: A Cross-Reading of the Spiritual Landscapes Behind Jon Fosse’s and Xuemo’s Writing of Native Places.”

Professor Zhao observed that despite their profoundly different geographical and cultural backgrounds, the works of Xuemo and Fosse display remarkable affinities. Both depart from dominant linguistic standards. Xuemo draws extensively on the Liangzhou dialect, while Fosse writes in Nynorsk rather than the more widely used Bokmål. Their linguistic choices represent both resistance to dominant cultural discourse and a commitment to cultural authenticity.

The settings of their works, the harsh yet spiritually charged deserts of western China in Xuemo’s fiction and the somber, tranquil Norwegian fjords in Fosse’s writing, are more than backdrops. The landscapes themselves become active protagonists: landscapes of the soul that externalize the dilemmas of human existence and provide a means of exploring life’s meaning.

Their narrative strategies differ sharply. Through minimalism, repetition, and silence, Fosse evokes existential anxiety and interpersonal alienation. Xuemo, by contrast, employs rugged, clamorous, and sensuously charged dialect dialogue, rich in immediacy, to portray the struggle to survive and transcend a harsh reality. Their approaches differ, yet both arrive at profound truths about human loneliness and resilience.

A Shared Fidelity to the Creative Impulse: Language Grown from the Land

In his remarks, Xuemo spoke movingly about his approach to writing. He emphasized that he does not merely “use” dialect. Rather, the language grows naturally from the soil of western China, just as his characters and stories do.

He cited the opening of Desert Rites:

The rabbit-hawks come in late summer, around the time of Bailu, or White Dew, when the desert sand yellows, the grass grows tall, and the rabbits are plump. After a restive summer, they swoop down from the Qilian Mountains and wheel toward the Tengger Desert in Gansu.

Xuemo explained that if these lines were rewritten entirely in standard Chinese, they would lose the distinctive atmosphere and rhythm of the land. To him, every blade of grass, every tree, every grain of sand, and every shifting play of light in the desert possesses life and breath. Writing is a dialogue with the soul of the land.

He added that if he were one day to find himself among the fjords of Northern Europe, he would immerse himself in that landscape and write a work imbued with its unique atmosphere.

Reflecting on the value of literature, Xuemo argued that in an age when technology may increasingly alienate people from one another, literature and art remain among the most important bridges for overcoming human estrangement and creating empathy. When countless isolated individuals encounter the same work, their hearts can become connected, forming a warm and meaningful whole.

Scholarly Perspectives: Epics of Survival in Folk Song and the Wisdom of Emptiness amid Clamor

During the scholarly discussion, Professor Helen Wu of the University of Toronto focused on the presence of western Chinese folk songs in Xuemo’s work. She observed that, unlike the American frontier spirit, with its emphasis on expansion and individual heroism, the Chinese West portrayed by Xuemo embodies a struggle for survival rooted in deep layers of cultural memory.

Xuemo explained that in an era when books were scarce, folk songs served as living vessels for centuries of collective poetry, memory, and emotion. Incorporating them into his fiction is not merely a literary choice but also an effort to preserve cultural memories in danger of disappearing. The melodies and emotions of folk songs speak directly to the human heart with a power that literary embellishment cannot replicate.

Yanjin Chen, the event’s moderator and author of The Xuemo Code, described Xuemo’s literary creation as an artistic process in which the author dissolves his own ego. This enables him to enter different landscapes and reveal their historical memories, stories, ways of life, and spiritual essence.

Each of Xuemo’s works, she noted, possesses a distinctive character. Some differ so greatly that they might appear to have been written by entirely different authors. In this sense, the more than 80 works that Xuemo has produced are not simply literary creations. Each is an artistic expression of the concerns that shaped a particular period of his life.

Riccardo Moratto, an internationally recognized scholar and professor at Tongji University’s School of Foreign Languages, asked which was closer to the Buddhist concept of emptiness: Fosse’s silence or Xuemo’s clamor.

Xuemo responded with a subtle analogy. Entering meditative absorption through silence brings one closer to emptiness, but sound, such as a song, disappears the moment it is produced. Its nature is therefore equally impermanent and fluid, and it too reveals emptiness. Silence and clamor are like reciting a mantra and singing a song. The methods differ, but both may lead to an understanding of the fundamental nature of life.

His response reflected an Eastern dialectical understanding of stillness and movement, absence and presence.

A Reader’s Question: Crossing the Deserts of Life

An online reader asked how one should confront the recurring pattern of emerging from one difficulty, or “desert,” only to enter another.

Xuemo responded with warmth and insight. There is no need to “escape,” he said. Instead, one should approach every encounter with gratitude and regard each experience as a unique landscape and source of nourishment in life. Embrace it with love and choose with wisdom. In this way, every step becomes steady and every place can become home.

Epilogue: Preserving Ideas and the Warmth of Human Connection

At the conclusion of the event, Xuemo remarked that in the age of artificial intelligence, scholars such as Professor Zhao, who undertake rigorous, systematic, and original research, are especially valuable.

He expressed his hope that the day’s sincere dialogue, which brought scholars and readers together to discuss matters beyond money and material wealth, could be preserved and published as a book, allowing the light of its ideas to continue illuminating the lives of others.

Originating in a rural academy in Gansu Province and reaching participants around the world, the event was more than a comparative literary discussion. It was a moment of spiritual resonance across cultures, demonstrating that even from the humblest soil, literature can grow with the power to reach the shared spiritual shores of humanity.