It is this fresh insight that has enriched her work.
One day in the early 1990s when she was studying in America, she noticed a wet skirt hanging on the neighbor's balcony. Imagining how a man would feel at the sight of such a sexy garment, she outlined a short story about a Chinese immigrant's fantasy about his American landlady. The story won her a top literature award in Taiwan.
In 2004 the couple moved to Nigeria. The power of life in the African grasslands moved her to write "The Ninth Widow" (Di Jiu Ge Gua Fu), a novel about a courageous young woman who hides her father-in-law in a potato cellar during China's land reforms of the 1950s.
She has also written about various characters - soldiers, dancers, prostitutes and gangsters, and set them against the War of Resistance against Japanese Aggression (1938-45), the "cultural revolution" (1966-76) and waves of migration to Western countries.
Literature critic Li Jingze once commented that Yan's writing merited special recognition due to her background and experience. "She obtains her unique vision from the cultural difference of various countries and nationalities," he wrote.
Yan agrees.
"Traveling far and wide stops me from being trapped in any certain trend," she says. "I don't have to follow the so-called popular tastes anywhere. If Chinese mainland readers don't like this, OK, I still have America or Taiwan. If a story does not follow the current literature trend in America, OK, I have China."
Yan has been writing in English since her days at Columbia College, Chicago, in the early 1990s. In 2006 she published an English novel, "The Banquet Bug," which tells the story of a laid-off Chinese worker who poses as a journalist to enjoy free dinners at company and State-sponsored banquets.
San Francisco Chronicle said of her: "With a simple but powerful prose, Geling Yan evokes electrifying scenes of great cruelty and sensuality."
Publishers Weekly, meanwhile, found that: "A wooden dialogue and some awkward descriptions make it clear that English is not her mother tongue, though this also leads to some seductively nuanced moments that hint at her enormous potential."
Yan herself loves the bit about the "seductively nuanced moments", saying: "When I write in Chinese, I tend to be more cautious and introverted because I know a word's many meanings but in English I am like a child, very audacious."
She has an uninhibited way of writing in English and cites an example of when she needed to describe a foot massage bowl. The expression "condomed bowl" sprang to mind, Yan's way of illustrating the thin hygienic plastic layer between the water and bowl.
She has re-written "The Ninth Widow" in English and plans to publish it next year. Typically, she is not fretting about the reaction of Western readers.
"I have never written a novel for the sake of publishing," she says. "I just feel happy when I'm writing it. When I finish it, I feel like an angel."
(China Daily May 27, 2009)
