From the Desert to the World: Xuemo and Stephen Roddy Discuss Western China, Ecology, and the Universality of Literature“Xuemo in Dialogue with International Scholars” (Episode 25)

From the Desert to the World: Xuemo and Stephen Roddy Discuss Western China, Ecology, and the Universality of Literature

“Xuemo in Dialogue with International Scholars” (Episode 25)

On September 6, the 25th session of “Xuemo in Dialogue with International Scholars,” organized by the World Literature Union and the Xuemo Foundation, was held online. Under the theme “From the Desert to the World: Xuemo and Stephen Roddy Discuss Western China, Ecology, and the Universality of Literature,” Xuemo entered into an in-depth conversation with Stephen Roddy, Professor of Asian Studies at the University of San Francisco. The discussion ranged across the Hexi Corridor, the experience of western China, ecological literature, and the ways in which writing rooted in a particular place can enter world literature. Yanjin Chen, author of The Code of Xuemo, moderated the talk. The event was attended by scholars from all over the world, young researchers, and readers.

The Hexi Corridor and a Writer’s Spiritual Homeland

Roddy, whose research focuses on East Asian literature and culture, began with the Hexi Corridor. The region contains the Gobi, desert landscapes, and the Qilian Mountains, and has long been a meeting ground for different cultures. Han Chinese culture, Tibetan Buddhist traditions, Hui and Mongolian cultures, and generations of merchants and travelers along the Silk Road have all left their traces there. In Roddy’s view, Xuemo’s writing grew from this distinctive cultural terrain.

Xuemo welcomed the observation. For him, the desert is a real geographical site and the space in which his life and writing took shape. Xuemo spent years amid the vast, silent and harsh landscape of China’s West, and in his work, the Gobi Desert, living creatures, folk legends, and the life experiences of ordinary people come alive. The desert is thus his spiritual homeland. The vitality in his fiction, its broad imaginative scale, and his consistent reflection on life and death are closely connected to this.

Ecology, the Wolf, and the Experience of the Land

Roddy paid particular attention to the ecological awareness in Xuemo’s writing. He observed that the Qilian Mountains, the Gobi, grasslands, and water sources are never merely scenery. Wolves, sheep, human beings, a well, and a stretch of pasture form an interdependent community of life. When water dries up and grasslands deteriorate, both people and animals lose the basis of survival. This ecological vision grows from lived experience of the land rather than from an idea imposed on literature, and it raises questions that extend far beyond one region.

Turning to the image of the wolf, Roddy compared Xuemo’s fiction with other contemporary Chinese works on the subject, including Wolf Totem. Xuemo explained that in Desert Hunters the wolf does not represent competition, expansion, or conquest. It is first of all an equal form of life within nature. Conflict emerges when human beings continually encroach upon the living space of other species. The deeper question is therefore how people examine their own desires in relation to nature and how they might rebuild a more harmonious relationship with other forms of life.

The conversation placed literature from western China within a broader world-literary context. In her concluding remarks, moderator Yanjin Chen noted that Professor Roddy’s questions, which approached Xuemo’s work from the perspectives of ecology, ethnography, and cultural context, opened up multiple, in-depth pathways for scholars around the world to interpret his writing. Xuemo’s responses revealed that his creative work is rooted in a unique lived experience and transcends the confines of literature alone, flowing into the vast ocean of a civilization of the heart and mind. In this sense, Xuemo is not merely a writer, but also a guardian and transmitter of Heart-mind Civilization.

Heart-Mind Nature, Cultural Ecology, and the Limits of Inner Change

In the latter half of the forum, Gaonan Xu, an associate professor at the School of Translation Studies at Shandong University, turned the discussion toward the contemporary value of traditional Chinese culture. She asked: In an age of material abundance and technological advancement, when anxiety and inner imbalance have become increasingly widespread, what can Eastern wisdom concerning the heart and mind offer people today, and where are its limits?

Xuemo replied that institutional problems must be addressed through institutions, while material problems have their own social mechanisms. Heart-mind Civilization begins with the individual. Its task is not to solve the external world by decree, but to foster the transformation of one’s own heart-mind. As individuals change, the cultural and spiritual ecology around them can gradually change as well. He added that no one lives entirely on their own: human behavior is shaped by the environment in which people live, so a person’s inner change also requires a cultural environment capable of supporting individual growth.

One Thousand Hamlets and the Freedom of the Reader

Jionghao Liu, a postdoctoral researcher jointly trained by the China International Communications Group and Beijing Foreign Studies University, then approached the discussion from literary reception. Xuemo has produced a substantial body of epitext around his works through lectures, interviews, and public talks. Liu asked whether an author’s continued interpretation of his own writing might gradually narrow the proverbial “one thousand Hamlets” into a more uniform reading. He also asked whether interpretations by overseas readers that differ from the author’s intention or are even negative should be corrected.

Xuemo’s answer was direct. Once a work is completed, he said, the writer becomes a reader. Different readers interpret different aspects of the same text according to their own experience and needs. He compared a work entering the reader’s heart-mind to a stone falling into water: what matters is the ripple it creates. Reading gains its meaning precisely from the fact that those ripples are different.

For the same reason, Xuemo said that interpretations diverging from the author’s intention do not need to be corrected. Misunderstanding, questioning, and criticism can all be part of the exchange. What matters most is that communication continues. He welcomed critical as well as sympathetic responses, because literature may thrive and dialogue may last only through interaction rather than through an authorized interpretation.

A Forest of Works, Translations, Scholars, and Readers

At the close of the forum, Xuemo used the metaphor of a forest to describe literary and cultural ecology. Works, translations, scholars, and readers are like different forms of life within the same forest. The richer the forest is, the more vital the ecology is and the more room there is for each participant to grow.

“From the Desert to the World” therefore describes more than geographical movement. It is a path by which experience rooted in one landscape enters other languages, cultures, and minds. The writer is the midwife of a book. Once the book is done, translation, scholarship, criticism, and reading continue its life. The desert is the point of origin; the world opens through each new encounter.