Setting the Scene
I was thinking a lot about the way that the wealthy seem to have more say in society and the way the less wealthy end up as almost cogs in an engine struggling to be heard. Right? Struggling to be paid, struggling just to get some say or some control over their lives.
JANE
Ai Jiang is a Chinese Canadian writer and winner of many awards. Her work often involves people who are struggling between different realities. She talks about living in the past, the future, and how it blends with the present.
She believes young people today have more courage than her generation and do not fear saying what they think. Ai shares lots of thought-provoking ideas, so let’s listen now. Well, greetings, Ai, it’s really great to see you face to face. Could you tell me a little bit about yourself? Because I know you’re Chinese Canadian. How did your life begin?
Ai’s background
So I was born in Changle District in Fujian in China, and I immigrated to Canada when I was about four years old. So I used to live in downtown Toronto in Chinatown before my family moved up to Scarborough, and now I live with my spouse in Markham.
JANE
Interesting. Of course, if you were only four when you came to Canada, you don’t have an adult memory of China. I don’t know. Have you been back to China?
AI JIANG
I have. So when I was younger, I would visit maybe once every three years, so once in the third grade, once in the sixth grade. I believe ninth grade, 12th grade. And then in the most recent few years, I’ve been to China four times because me and my spouse, we were planning our weddings, seeing family, things like that. So just in the past two years, I’ve been back maybe three, four times already.
Sci-fi as a warning of potential darker futures
Nice. I bet there’s quite a difference between Chinese and I would say North American science fiction. I’m not an expert. I read a lot of science fiction, but I’m no expert like you are. Are there any striking differences between the two cultures of science fiction?
AI JIANG
I think at least from what I have been exposed to, I feel like there is a lot that is focused on the collective, I think, in Chinese science fiction. Whereas in Western science fiction, I think there is more of a focus on the individual, even if there’s a group collective. You would have zoom in on very individual characteristics of each person in the group.
JANE
Interesting. I’m sure that has to do with the culture of the two countries. That’s very interesting. Do you see an overall purpose in science fiction other than, of course, entertainment? Do you feel there’s an underlying purpose?
AI JIANG
I feel like, especially in most recent popular media, science fiction, like Severance, Black Mirror, Love, Death Robots, I feel like there has been a shift to maybe or telling a darker future that could come to fruition or is slowly becoming reality that it is warning us of, not the pitfalls of technology or the uses of current society that we should be more wary of, if that makes sense.
JANE
It sure does. Yes. I would say it’s not a negative view you’re expressing. It’s a warning of sorts.
AI JIANG
I would think so.
JANE
That we need to be more aware of certain things like what, like technology in general or what do we need to watch out for?
AI JIANG
I think not necessarily technology in general, but how we approach using it specifically and how bigger powers are using technology for something that might end up impacting us negatively rather than positively. Right? I think when I’m reading a lot of science fiction because there are new sub-genres like solar punk, lunar punk, which imagines more positive futures and more positive uses of technology, right? Solar panels, futures that are more regenerative, things like that.
But then you also see episodes of Black Mirror where it’s like, “Oh, subscription services for this new brain technology. Yes, you can bring back your dead loved ones.” Or not dead loved ones, but maybe dead, loved ones who were in a vegetative state. But it’s on a subscription model and they can only reach this much bandwidth or this much area. And if you want to travel to another country, now you have to pay more. Right? So things like that, like very almost insidious capitalist uses of technology versus ones that are more utilitaric. I don’t even think that’s a word, but I think you know what I’m trying to say.
Ai’s stories about people struggling
Yes. Interesting. Your stories, the ones I’ve read anyway, are built around, very much built around people, characters that are often struggling between two different kinds of realities, which is a little bit what you’re talking about now, where there’s a struggle between life and death or between real and not real. And one story that I absolutely love, I think it might have been the first one is I Am AI. I Am AI is a very powerful story. What’s the background? What brought you to write it?
AI JIANG
So it’s funny you mentioned that one. And I feel like a lot of the stories that people end up mentioning are the ones that are very personally connected to lived experiences I have. And when I was writing I am AI, it was shortly after I had quit a ghost-writing job. So I had picked up a ghostwriting job during lockdown and I would be working sometimes 60 hours in a row because you would get paid by page. So the faster you write, the more you get paid. And when I was writing I am AI, this was prior to when ChatGPT came out actually.
And then once I had finished writing it and was looking to place it, that’s right when ChatGPT came out. Yeah. It was very interestingly time because I remember that was like around November, was it 22 or 23? 2022, I believe. And then I am AI had come out in June 2023 and there were some comments that were like, “Oh, this is not far future anymore.” And I was like, “Well, when I wrote it, it was far future.” So I was thinking a lot about the cheapening of time and the cheapening of skills acquisition in general and kind of burnout culture and job security at the time and how replaceable it felt like.
Not only in that job, but just like other jobs at the time, because there were so many people looking for work and just not enough work. And also the idea of toxic productivity and work-life balance, because at that time I would just be on call 24/7. I would be doing other things and they were like, “Hey, can you write this thing?” And I’m like, “Well, I guess so because I need money.” And kind of like remote work versus in person work and how that will very much change in the future.
JANE
Wole Talabi gave you a great comment about the book and I’ve interviewed him on my podcast maybe a year ago. He’s a very interesting person. And so when I saw, I don’t normally read blurbs from people about books until after I’ve read the book. But when I saw his name, he says, “You take the seeds of increasingly tech enabled late state capitalism that currently pervade our world.” And then he goes on and has says a bit more, but he’s talking about late state capitalism, which sounds like he’s suggesting it’s coming to an end.
AI JIANG
I feel like I do not know enough about it to speak about it the way that Wole can, because Wole is such an interesting mix of the tech and the creative because of his background. Right? But I feel like in my personal life, I feel the fingers of capitalism only growing stronger every day and how much I am dependent on these services because of the way they promote and market these services.
And even if you’re being very intentional about it, like not relying on delivery, going into store and kind of promoting in store visits, things like that, brick and mortar of the past or not of the past, still in the present, but a lot of people are kind of straying away from it now and relying on just having things delivered. Right?
JANE
Oh, yeah.
AI JIANG
Yeah. And I feel like that really does connect to what I was exploring in I am AI as well in the cheapening or not cheapening of time or more like losing time or feeling like you don’t have enough time to do things. So then you end up relying on these services more and more because you’re like, “Okay, but a trip to the store will take me an hour, two hours, but if I just order it, that’s five minutes.” Things like that, right?
Cultural assimilation
Yeah. Moving on to another story that I also loved. I love your work a lot.
AI JIANG
Thank you.
JANE
So I might get a little repetitive in what I’m saying, but the story that really grabbed me was “Give me English.” That is a powerful story, Ai, really powerful. Can you talk about that a little bit, the idea and what drove you to write that?
AI JIANG
So Give Me English was a very interesting one because I remember for most of the stories I write, I usually just sit down, start writing it and see where it goes, or I spend a long time thinking about it before I settle down and write it. But for this one, it was like it came to me fully formed already and I wrote it in almost a fever dream state in one afternoon. And I think it is because I felt so… At least I can’t remember exactly what I felt at the moment now, but I remember it was a very, very strong emotion.
I was writing this piece and I was thinking a lot about cultural assimilation, but also the way that the wealthy, not just in Canada, but also in China, the way that the wealthy seemed to have more say in society and the way the less wealthy end up as almost cogs in an engine struggling to be heard. Right? Struggling to be paid, struggling just to get some say or some control over their lives.
When I was writing this, I had just graduated from university as well and I was looking into different employments and I was looking at how there are several that value communication skills. Especially like in Canada, if you want a government job, let’s say you would need to know both English and French. But even as I was applying to more minimum wage jobs like bubble tea shops, they were like, “Okay, but you need to know English, Mandarin, Cantonese. Be great if you know the other ones too,” type of thing. And I was like, “Oh my gosh, I am not fluent in half of those.”
JANE
Well, one thing you say is, “Language is money. Words are bought and sold. The silence have no words left.” It’s very powerful. I mean, I forget where it happens in the book where the woman or the girl gives a word to a silent and the word was what? It was “And” or… I forget what the word was and the silent was so grateful.
Life and death, blending memory and grief
And the whole thing sounds crazy if you think about it sort of literally, but if you think about what it means, it is just so true. It is just so true. You have a lot about life and death and you have developed, I think, a interesting… How would I say? I start to say relationship between life and death, but it’s not quite that simple, but the two perspectives mirror each other in a certain way and they blend together. And one I just found amazing was Missing Dolls Around the World. Can you tell us a little bit about that?
AI JIANG
So at the time I was writing this story, I had been reading many articles on residential schools as well as listening to true-crime podcasts and dark history podcasts. And I was just thinking a lot about those who have passed and who have been robbed of a chance to kind of tell their own stories, whose stories are often told by others and sometimes accurate, sometimes not.
And I was thinking a lot about just who has the right to tell these stories and who determines this. And I was thinking a lot about journalism, documentaries, news, fiction, podcasting, and how all the pieces we are missing because we never truly know the person whose stories are being told only one small facet or only fragments of their lives.
JANE
Yeah. I remember discovering a place in Nebraska, which is where my family lived. I mean, literally my several generations back and there was an Indian school in the town and the people were all very proud of it as being… We educated the Indians. But when you look into the history of that school, it’s very depressing. And when I read Missing Dolls Around the World, it made me instantly think of the Indian school that I’d visited and I’d seen the land around it.
And I know that there’d been some discoveries of bodies and I, suddenly your story brought all that back for me. And I think it’s something it’s very easy to forget. And the perspective of the citizens of that small town in Nebraska felt they were doing a good thing by educating the Indian children. And in reality, they were taking away the essence of those children. Is that what you think?
AI JIANG
I do think so. I think this also kind of connects back to Give Me English and kind of cultural assimilation. And I was just thinking a lot about the way language, it’s connection to connection and how connection essentially is wealth, connecting not only to people in your community, but to your family, things like that. And once you lose your language, lose your culture, you also lose that wealth of connection.
JANE
Yes. Yeah. You have that strong theme in a lot of your work. One of your, I don’t know how it holds up in your whole writing history, but an incredible book is, do you pronounce it Linghun?
AI JIANG
Yes.
JANE
Linghun, yeah. That’s amazing. It takes a bit of time to get into the spirit of it. As I started reading it, I was a little confused about the use of the word home and different characters in there. I had to go back a few times and look at things because I wanted to be sure that I understood it correctly. That’s a very powerful book. I think you got a major prize for that, didn’t you? Well, you’ve gotten a lot of-
AI JIANG
Yeah.
JANE
… awards. So.
AI JIANG
Yeah. I had ended up winning the Bram Stoker Award and Nebula Award for it.
JANE
Yeah. Well, that’s not surprising at all. It’s an incredible book and it makes the reader think about what is life and what is death and the impact of death on the people who are still there and the impact on those people, of the live people around them. How did you get that idea, Ai? I’m trying to… I just can’t. I mean, I’m not a science fiction writer, but I think the idea is just amazing.
AI JIANG
Thank you.
JANE
Did something trigger it? Or if it’s too personal, you don’t need to say it.
AI JIANG
So I had experienced my first death or first known death to me in the family when I was in fourth grade, and it was of an uncle who was very, very close to me growing up in China at least. And every time I visit him, I feel that same sense of closeness because he would basically be almost like a father to me when I was from ages one to four before I went to Canada. And each time I visit him, it would feel like he treated me as though I’d never left. So in like the third grade.
But it was very interesting because at that point I had lived in Canada apart from him for like four years. Right? So even though he felt like someone who should have been very close and familiar to me, he did not feel as familiar anymore. And I was just thinking about the way that when people pass away, you kind of remember them in the stage that you’ve seen them last or have experienced interacting with them last.
So I never see him at his moment of death. He passed away from cancer, but I’d seen him years prior or to, a year prior to that when he was still healthy. Right? And prior to that when he was still young and lively. But my mom had seen him right before he had passed away. So in Linghun, I was kind of wanting to explore the idea of memory and how it attaches to death and how hard we cling onto the dead and how for some people, the ghosts of dead loved ones might appear in a very different state than for other people.
JANE
The way you talk about it and the feeling I had when I read the book, it’s not necessarily a pessimistic view. There’s a lot of energy and hope, and I would say not hope. I should use the word life. There’s a lot of life. When you think about all those people sitting around in the yard waiting, and there’s a lot of life in those people. Well, we can’t go into the story of the book because it’s too long, but I found it an intriguing relationship between life and death.
And then I wrote to you that little note that I found a quote from Marcus Aurelius that personally I refer to a lot, “Keep hold of this alone and remember it. Each of us lives only now. This brief instant, the rest has been lived already or is impossible to see.” Now Ai, for me, that’s very helpful because I have a tendency to think about the future and be concerned about the future. And when I think about what he said there, it brings me back to me in the present. I find it very powerful. And when I think about your book, when I think about Linghun, it’s different, I think. The people are not living in the present. What do you think? How do the two relate? Do they relate at all?
AI JIANG
I think so, but instead of worrying about the future, for Linghun, everyone is worrying about the past and how to bring it into the present, if that makes sense. How can they bring their past loved ones, their memories into a place where they are living in currently? And in doing so, they are essentially just living in the past with their memories instead.
JANE
Yes. And the people in the past, the ones who have died, seem to take on life, even though it’s not what I would say living life, but they take on a real, true, strong reality. When you think about the conversations they had through the window, there’s some very powerful scenes in there that I remember. In fact, when we finished, maybe this evening, I’ll read it again, start reading it again. Were people disturbed by it?
AI JIANG
I think there were some people who went into it thinking it would be much more horrific in a jump scare sense, I guess, who did not find what they were seeking. And then there were some who have experienced grief, death, and loss, perhaps in a similar way in their life who really resonated with the book.
Ownership and digital rights
We could go on for hours talking about your work. In fact, just now I skipped one I read, I think earlier today or yesterday called Return Policy. That was very interesting. In fact, that’s very close to reality. I said we’re not going to talk about your work, but here I go doing it again. It’s a very interesting idea because I read a lot online.
I buy a ton of Kindles and I just wish that I could keep them and that they really belong to me. And we know that they don’t, we’re renting them. And when I pass, I cannot… I forget who it was, someone who wanted to put in his will that all of his Kindle books would go to, I forget what younger relative, and apparently Kindle said, “No, we can’t do that.”
AI JIANG
No.
JANE
Yeah. Because they said, “No, you cannot transfer ownership. It does not belong to you. You’re just borrowing it or renting it.” I forget how they phrased it. So that shocks you?
AI JIANG
Yes, that’s wild. Okay. So I have this thing that I read online too. It’s slightly connected, but not connected at the same time, but it was basically this long thread of this woman who had lost her spouse. Right? And she was trying to go to the bank to claim life insurance to get all the accounting sorted, things like that.
And the bank was like, “But your spouse has to sign off on it.” And she was like, “My spouse is in ashes in a… He’s been cremated. What do you mean he has to sign off on it?” They’re like, “Yeah, you just have to get them to come in and sign off on it.” And it’s wild to me that there are things like that. So ownership and how it passes on. Right?
The future – positive or negative?
Yes, exactly. Overall Ai, do you feel positive or negative as two extremes about the future, being I’m talking about the next 10, 20 years, that foreseeable future. If that’s foreseeable, I’m not sure. I don’t mean future 50 years, a hundred years from now, just 20 years from now.
AI JIANG
I want to be positive. I feel like I want to be optimistic about it, but every time I look at the news or social media, I don’t know if it’s my algorithm, other people’s algorithm, everyone’s algorithms a little different, I’m always seeing pessimistic things.
I think for my spouse, especially, a lot of pessimistic news appears on his newsfeed, whereas I feel like I get slightly more positive things, but it is two ends of a spectrum that happens in the world. Right? I do feel like though on my feed, a lot of small acts of humanity ends up popping up and it gives me hope that eventually these small acts will accumulate and hopefully make the world a better place.
JANE
Have you considered writing about that, making the world a better place?
AI JIANG
I think so. I think so. I feel like I am trying to imagine how it would look like at maybe a smaller scale versus something very grand or great that I have trouble imagining because I am not from a very activist background or scientific background. So it makes it very hard for me to try to think about improving the world in those specific ways. Right?
The younger generation more courageous and open than us
Do you think the younger generation, the people who are 10 to 15 years old now will… Do you know the younger generation? Do they read your work?
AI JIANG
So I’ve had a few younger… So I can’t tell now actually how old people are, but they seem quite young when they came up to my table for signings and things like that. So I would say yes, maybe in their teens, early to late teens, there are people reading my work. And I feel like at least compared to when I was a teen, something I think they have more of is courage.
JANE
Ah.
AI JIANG
Yeah.
JANE
What makes you say that?
AI JIANG
I think just the courage to be so straightforward in front of someone who is older than them compared to when I was younger, me and my peers, it feels like there are a lot of us who were afraid to speak our minds in front of a more authority figure, of someone who seems older than us, of afraid of being wrong, afraid of asking questions.
But I feel like this generation, they feel like it seems like they’re more open to asking questions, more open to being wrong. And I think that’s a great thing because I feel like we should not be afraid to learn from our mistakes. And I think at least in the past, I don’t know about now, society really encourages you to not make mistakes. You know what I mean? They don’t-
JANE
I do.
AI JIANG
Yeah. They really encourage failure to learn from falling down and how to get back up.
JANE
And you feel that young teenagers, I say young, but say teenagers today are more courageous and they, maybe they feel if they fail and fall down, they can get back up and do it again, try something different?
AI JIANG
I feel so.
JANE
You think they have that attitude?
AI JIANG
I think so.
JANE
Yeah.
AI JIANG
Yeah. I do wonder if it’s because as my generation also gets older, they’re like, “I don’t want to pass down what I had to experience when I was a kid. So do whatever you want, follow your dreams.”
JANE
Yeah. Can you imagine some kind of technology that doesn’t exist yet that could be built that would maybe give people a greater influence on the future or a different way of seeing things about the future?
AI JIANG
I feel like I’m not enough up to date on technology to know whether these things exist or not. And every time I think of something, I’m like, “Oh, but it comes with negative effects too.” So one thing I’ve been wanting every time anyone says, “If you could invent something, if you could do this or you had the power…” right? I’ll be like, “To pause time so I can read things faster.” But at the same time, I was just thinking if I could pause time, if there was a machine that could pause time, I feel like I would not value my time nearly as much as if it was finite.
JANE
So appreciation of time in the present is important.
AI JIANG
I think so.
Preparing for the uncertain future
Are you in any particular way preparing in your mind for the uncertain future? Do you have any sort of tricks in your mind like my Marcus Aurelius, who is your Marcus Aurelius?
AI JIANG
So I feel like growing up, I lived a lot in the past. I would be like, “I regret this. I regret that. I wish I can change this. I wish I can change that.” And then when I got older into university, I was like, “Okay, once I graduate, what’s going to happen? What should I work as? When should I get married? People are asking me if I’m dating, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. What should I do in the next five, 10, 15 years?”
Right? And I feel like especially after exploring so much about life, death, dying, losing people, grief, things like that, I have slowly learned to just try to let go of both things, both the past and the future and just trying to focus on what is happening now. What if there was no yesterday, what if there’s no tomorrow? What do I want to be doing now and be content with that?
JANE
How do you see your work evolving?
Other than hopefully improving in a craft sense, I want to be even more intentional, I guess, in my work and be coherently intentional, if that makes sense. I feel like oftentimes, especially in my longer form work, there are so many things I’m trying to unpack, so many things I’m thinking about as I’m writing that a lot of it doesn’t end up feeling very centralized.
It feels like I’m just musing in different chapters of the book about very big questions that probably should be its own book, but trying to cram everything into one book. Almost like let’s say I’m having a conversation with someone and I go through 50 years of philosophy or something and they’re like, “So what were you trying to say in this whole thing?” And I’ll be like, “I have no idea.” There were a lot of thoughts, there were a lot of things, but I don’t know what the centralized thing is. So I feel like I hope in the next 10 years at least, there will be some kind of centralized situation in my longer form work.
JANE
Interesting. Are there any thoughts or comments that you’d like to add, Ai, before we close?
I guess just technology moving forward and the accessibility of it all and how I’ve been thinking a lot about the ability of technology to connect us with people who we wouldn’t have connected with otherwise. But trying to learn new technology is also very, very difficult, I feel like.
Even for me, there are new things that are coming out, like let’s say social media or whatnot and how to function it because publishers would want you to use it to promote your own work and things like that. And it’s like a completely different skill now you have to acquire on top of whatever you are trying to master outside of it.
JANE
Good point. I agree completely with you.
AI JIANG
I really wanted to thank you for all these very thought-provoking questions though. And this has been such a lovely chat.
JANE
Yeah. It’s been wonderful. Absolutely wonderful. I will read more of what you’ve done.
AI JIANG
Thank you.
JANE
Oh, a book has just come out, hasn’t it?
AI JIANG
So it was 2025 in April. It’s “A Palace Near the Wind.” And then the second book and also the final book of the duology is coming out this year in April 2027. But what connects even more to our conversation actually is my debut novel, the one with lots of big questions coming out in September of this year, which really explores the idea of storytelling, technology, and the way kind of the world evolves with these two clashing together.
JANE
Do you have a title for the book or is it confidential still?
AI JIANG
It is An Empire in the Clouds.
JANE
An Empire in the Clouds. That sounds very interesting. When it comes out, we’ll have to talk about it.
AI JIANG
I would love that.
JANE
We’ll do another podcast. Great. Well, thank you very much for your time. It’s been really, really interesting.
AI JIANG
Thank you again.
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