Hai Fei Explores Inner World of Spies in Novels

Jiang Jingmi

Hai Fei， a native of Zhuji in eastern Zhejiang， is now a full-time writer based in Hangzhou. Like most writers， his day starts at noon. He begins to write in the afternoon. In the evening he takes a stroll for an hour before resuming his writing. He doesnt go to bed until three or four oclock in the early morning.

He works at home. The small room where he writes was originally a balcony. It is now wrapped in with big glass windows on three sides. He pulls the curtains over the windows during daytime and opens the curtains up at night. While working at the small room， he wears pajamas， his hair looking angrily unkempt.

Hai Fei is not a born writer. He does not have a college education background. He has never received any training in creative writing. He began to write seriously in his 20s in a bid to make a difference in his life.

After graduation from middle school at 14， he started working in a rural factory which made electrical switches. At 17 he signed up for military service without informing his parents of his decision until the call-up papers came in. After he was discharged from the 3-year military service， he worked as a security guard at a chemical fertilizer factory for four years before he made a mistake in work and got dismissed from the job. The sense of insecurity hit him hard. He wanted a way out and up. The only way available to him was to write. He sent his contributions to publications published by businesses. Eventually he changed his job and worked as an editor for a corporate newspaper of a pharmaceutical. Then he worked for a middle school newspaper and then became a journalist for Zhuji Daily， the biggest printed news media in his hometown Zhuji. He spent three years there but resigned in early 2004 when he was 32. A senior colleagues retirement gave him a scare. He shuddered at the thought that he would retire like the colleague one day if he did not make necessary changes fast. He quit the job.

Wind Catcher， a spy novel by Hai Fei

It was in the same year that he wrote his first novel. In 2005， a short story he wrote won a first prize in a competition for emerging writers sponsored by . Zhejiang cultural authorities recognized the prizewinner as a promising young writer. He was appointed editor-in-chief for a showbiz and gossip magazine in Hangzhou. A year later he resigned and began to work self-employed. Since he signed up with Zhejiang Institute of Literature in 2007， he has been working as an editor of ?published by the institute.

Hai Fei has published novels and short stories and has adapted some of his novels into scripts for television series. As a script writer， he is successful. The market has responded warmly to the television series he rewrote and he has firmly established himself as a scriptwriter.

Exploring the complexity of human nature is the very factor that accounts for the phenomenal success of Hai Fei. If one examines the characters in Hais novels and television series， one can probably pinpoint anxiety as a common denominator. According to the author， uncertainties and worries about the present and future give rise to anxiety， which in turn plays a part in the decisions these characters make. All these characters， especially men， are not good people in the final analysis， but they eventually stand up to challenges， and engage in battles they did not wish to fight originally and fall in love unexpectedly.

Just like Mo Yan， a Chinese writer who became a Nobel Literature laureate in 2012， Hai Fei is obsessed with human nature. “Create a bad character as if he were a good guy; create a good character as if he were a bad guy; write myself as if I were a criminal，” reads a motto on display at the memorial gallery in honor of Mo Yan in Gaomi， the laureates hometown in Shandong Province. Unintentionally， the novels and scripts Hai Fei has written reflect this motto in various ways and at different levels.

It was by accident that Hai Fei became a scriptwriter. After he published some novels， his friends asked him to adapt a novel of his to a television series. The first trip to Hengdian， now known jokingly as the Chinese Hollywood， still stays vivid in his memory： the ride to the shooting location was full of flying dust. Nowadays， he visits filming sites occasionally. Sometimes he hangs around doing nothing and thinking nothing. Sometimes he becomes excited after seeing how the characters from his imagination become real. He chats with actors about characters and plots. Sometimes he forgets himself and feels as if he were the director of a drama.

Hai Fei has now turned to writing spy novels set either in World War II or in the civil war that followed almost immediately and paved the way to the birth of Peoples Republic of China in 1949.

Hai Fei thinks novel writing is the way he wants to be nice to himself. “A good novel has nothing to do with whether it is published or how the market responds，” he believes. Spy novels are never simply about what spies do or dont do. It is primarily about the inner world. Spy novels are about their struggle for survival under pressure and about human nature. “My theory about spy novels is that a spy story is like a deep sea： The sea may look placid at a casual glance， but ferocious undercurrents and dangers lurk beneath the surface. Such a peace allures readers and viewers to look beneath. Writing in a cerebral way challenges and inspires me and gives me a huge kick，” confesses the writer.

Hai Fei is ambitious. He is planning to publish a series of spy novels that feature the metaphor of deep sea and undercurrents. The publishing will be done with his publisher Huacheng Press. Altogether there are seven novels in this series： six are written and published or to be published， the last one is waiting to be written. After the so-called “Deep Sea” series， he is going to write spy novels set in cities during the wars in China in the first half of the 20th century. The cities that will appear in these novels include Chongqing， Shanghai， Harbin， Tianjin and Nanjing. The new series may take him ten years to complete， but what is a decade to him？ In the next decade， he has nothing else to do except for sipping tea， watching clouds， and writing novels. This is the way of life he desires and enjoys. He is not in a hurry.