Hair-raising tales, not for the fainthearted

"Originally, many stories in Grimms' Fairy Tales are very dark and scary. When I showed this story to a child's mother, she told me she wouldn't let her child read it, worrying that it would cause permanent trauma."

Though he enjoys writing freely, A Yi has also not shunned his responsibility as a writer to care for reality.

In The Fraud Has Come to the South, he tells a story about how a fraud deceives investors of their life savings.

"In reality, there are so many people who have been cheated. Almost every Chinese person has been harassed by fraudsters. Even if there are many people who have not been deceived themselves, they have received phone calls from fraudsters, or very likely they have a classmate or a relative who has been deceived," he says.

"Theoretically and in practice, every Chinese person has experienced fraud, which is an extensive phenomenon. I have friends and relatives who have been deceived. So I wrote this novella out of anger."

A Yi feels strongly about his writing to bring this issue of fraud to light.

"This is a world full of fraud. I have the responsibility to bury them alive in my story," he says. "It's a kind of hatred, but also helplessness."

For two years, A Yi has been collecting ghost stories. He collected about 200 so far, but felt that those ghost stories could not touch him, so he dropped the project and started writing a novel.

"The ghost stories or this new book is just a process and it was not until lately that I have directed myself on the right track," he says.

He writes 800 words a day. He says he feels happy writing a novel that is not about the outside world, but an autobiographic novel that reflects how the inner world of his generation has changed throughout the years.

"Now, it's a joy to write. Every morning when I get up, I will see the basin of inspiration so full that I have to delete two-thirds of the material," he says.

"My writing now is like a call for bids. If this topic does not let me feel happy and easy, I won't touch it. I write for fun, not for fatigue."