From a Young “Fool’s” Self-Rescue to a Story with Global Resonance: A Cross-Cultural Reading of One Man’s West: A Coming-of-Age Diary | “Xuemo in Dialogue with International Scholars” (Episode 11)

From a Young “Fool’s” Self-Rescue to a Story with Global Resonance: A Cross-Cultural Reading of One Man’s West: A Coming-of-Age Diary | “Xuemo in Dialogue with International Scholars” (Episode 11)

On the evening of May 31, 2026, the World Literature Union and the Xuemo Foundation held the eleventh session of “Xuemo in Dialogue with International Scholars” on Zoom.

Professor Helen Wu of the University of Toronto delivered a presentation titled “The Arduous Journey from Self-Rescue to Self-Respect: Reflections on One Man’s West: A Coming-of-Age Diary” and discussed the book with writer and cultural scholar Xuemo.

Nearly 20 sinologists, translators, scholars, and young writers from China, Italy, Norway, Canada, Germany, the United Kingdom, the United States, and other countries joined the event. Their conversation considered the book as a record of personal growth, a work shaped by Chinese cultural traditions, and a story that might speak to readers outside China. Yanjin Chen, author of The Xuemo Code, served as academic moderator.

A Diary Revisited After Forty Years

Chen, who edited the book, introduced it as the only volume of Xuemo’s diaries published to date. People’s Literature Publishing House released it in September 2022. The book contains 91 selected entries written in 1981 and 1982, when Xuemo was 18 or 19 years old.

Its structure differs from that of a conventional diary. Each entry is accompanied by an introductory note and a retrospective commentary written more than 40 years later. The reader encounters the young man’s immediate experience alongside the older writer’s interpretation of it.

The book follows a farmer’s son growing up on the impoverished plains of western China as he struggles against an ordinary life, pursues his ambition to become a writer, and gradually changes the course of his future. Chen described it as both a record of youth and a practical book about how a person grows.

Helen Wu: Reading the Diary Across Cultures

Wu placed the book within a wider literary and cultural frame. Her reading focused on five aspects of the work.

1. A Different Kind of Diary

The combination of introductory note, diary entry, and later commentary distinguishes the book from a simple chronological record. Xuemo’s older voice repeatedly enters into conversation with his younger self, allowing readers to experience the urgency of youth while also seeing how those events appeared four decades later.

Wu suggested that the book might also be understood as “a fool’s diary.” She used “fool” not to mean someone lacking intelligence, but someone possessed by a single-minded devotion. The young Xuemo was consumed by books, writing, his students, and love. That intensity gave him the strength to resist mediocrity and remake his life.

2. Tempered into Steel

Wu identified three habits behind Xuemo’s development: self-examination, self-discipline, and self-strengthening.

Growing up in Liangzhou, Gansu Province, Xuemo saw many people around him become resigned to poverty. His own life was driven by a persistent fear of disappearing without leaving anything behind.

He used his diary to practice writing and rose early to read. Through years of sustained effort, he gradually broke free from the limits of his surroundings. His books have since been translated into nearly 30 languages and published in nearly 60 foreign-language editions. They have also received honors including the Independent Press Award and the NYC Big Book Award.

Wu described this process as a practice of mastering the mind. Rather than seeking to conquer the outside world or waiting for help, Xuemo turned inward and trained himself through hardship.

3. Two Meanings of the “West”

Wu contrasted Xuemo’s “West” with the American frontier tradition.

The American West is often associated with expansion, conquest, the cowboy, the gunslinger, and the self-made hero. Xuemo’s West is a place of solitary discipline, patient endurance, and inner steadiness.

Wu placed him alongside figures such as educator Zhang Guimei and Ma Yan, whose diary about growing up in rural Ningxia became known internationally. Each found a way forward despite the scarcity of opportunities in western China. Their stories, Wu argued, reflect a form of endurance different from the individual heroism associated with the American frontier.

4. The Unpublished Diaries

Citing the diaries of Franz Kafka and Lu Xun, Wu urged Xuemo to edit and publish the journals he kept after 1982. She argued that they would provide essential firsthand material for anyone studying the development of his thought and writing.

5. Translation and Research

Wu also called for One Man’s West to be translated into several languages, drawing on the international reception of Lu Xun’s diaries and The Diary of Ma Yan.

A good translator of such a work, she said, should also be a serious researcher. Translation could then become the starting point for sustained academic study rather than the final stage of publication.

For Wu, Xuemo’s diary is more than the story of one person’s rise from poverty. She called it a textbook of “spiritual realism,” presenting a form of wisdom grounded in Chinese tradition and distinct from Western individualism.

Why Did Poverty Lead to Change?

In his response, Xuemo addressed a central question raised by the book: Why does hardship awaken some people while leaving others resigned to their circumstances?

“From childhood, I knew that death could come at any time,” he said. “I kept asking myself what I could leave in the world before I disappeared.”

This awareness of impermanence led him to use his imagined future self as a guide for his present life. He wrote his first piece at the age of 13 and experienced a decisive period of literary productivity at 37. Between those points lay years of diary writing, self-discipline, and literary practice.

Xuemo described this as the transformation of Chen Kaihong, his birth name, into Xuemo, the writer he later became. He said that he had tried neither to take shortcuts nor to rely on outside assistance.

He still keeps a daily record. Dozens of journals written after 1982 remain unpublished but are awaiting organization and editing.

“These writings are not only the history of my growth,” he said. “They offer an example from which ordinary people can learn.”

Translators, Readers, and the Life of a Book Abroad

During the discussion, young scholars and writers turned to the international circulation of Xuemo’s work.

Jingyuan Liu, a master’s student at Shanghai International Studies University, discussed Into the Desert, the English-language selection translated and edited by Howard Goldblatt and Sylvia Li-Chun Lin.

According to Liu, the translators proposed the project themselves, accepted no payment, and were given full authority by Xuemo to select and adapt the material. Their reader-centered approach later helped prompt the publication of a revised Chinese edition.

Li Lou, a scholar at Humboldt University of Berlin, asked how intellectuals might free themselves from the limitations created by their own accumulated knowledge.

Xuemo replied with an image drawn from Eastern thought: “Let the mind be like a clear mirror, without grasping at appearances.” Knowledge, he suggested, becomes an obstacle when people mistake concepts for reality. The conversation therefore moved from literary study to the discipline of the mind.

Preserving the Sparks

The “Xuemo in Dialogue with International Scholars” series will continue with further discussions of literature across languages, cultures, and academic fields.

At the end of the forum, Xuemo said: “Every encounter produces a spark of thought. Preserving those sparks is our best resistance to impermanence.”