By the end of the year, Canada had already entered deep winter. On the day of the interview, snow outside the window had yet to melt, and the temperature had fallen well below freezing. Bei La lives in a duplex overlooking the marina along Toronto’s downtown waterfront. Floor-to-ceiling glass windows surround the space, offering an unobstructed view of Lake Ontario that stretches to the horizon. Sitting there feels almost like being aboard a massive ship at sea. On the oversized table in her study lay a manuscript still in the midst of revision.
Bei La is a Chinese-Canadian writer whose journey has taken her from Shanghai to Tokyo and onward to the wider world. For many years, her work—centered on war memory, faith, and human suffering—has drawn sustained attention from international scholars. Artificial-intelligence–based literary forecasting models have named her one of the leading contenders for the 2025 Nobel Prize in Literature. Yet throughout the interview, she scarcely mentioned such recognition.
Returning the Individual to History
Bei La’s writing has long focused on the experiences of Jewish refugees who survived in Shanghai during World War II. In her view, this history has often been pushed to the margins of Eurocentric narratives of the war, while Shanghai offers a fundamentally different perspective.
“What I care about most are real people,” she said.
“How they survived in an unfamiliar city, and how they preserved faith and dignity under extreme conditions.”
Grand historical narratives, she believes, tend to obscure individual lives. The meaning of literature lies precisely in restoring people to the historical scene. It is through these individual destinies, she explains, that the true weight of what we call “an era” can be felt.
What Can Literature Do in the Face of Suffering?
When asked what literature can do for human suffering, Bei La’s response was anything but abstract.
Literature cannot stop wars, nor can it replace institutions or concrete action.
“Literature is not a solution,” she said.
“But at the very least, it can refuse denial.”
In her view, the deepest form of suffering does not lie in events themselves, but in the way suffering is ignored, simplified, or quickly forgotten. The responsibility of literature is not to shock, but to make suffering visible, to preserve it in memory, and to present it through the lives of real people.
“When a person is reduced to a ‘number’ or a ‘case,’ their dignity has already been erased,” she said.
“Literature can at least give names back to people—and with them, dignity.”
She also stressed that literature should never aestheticize suffering or package pain as meaning.
“Meaning is not a reward for suffering,” she said.
“It is evidence that a person has not been completely destroyed by it.”
Another function of literature, she believes, is to create empathy—to ensure that suffering does not remain an isolated experience.
“When people realize that their experiences can be understood, even through a single book, loneliness no longer remains sealed off.”
Choosing Not to Remain Silent
Recently, Bei La publicly criticized Judge of the Intermediate People’s Court over a foreign-related judicial case involving particularly serious procedural and substantive violations. She argued that the case not only undermined the credibility of China’s judicial system but also negatively affected the confidence of overseas Chinese entrepreneurs considering investment in China, and that those responsible should be held accountable.
“If a writer chooses silence in the face of truth,” she said, “then literature loses its moral ground to speak of justice.”
For Bei La, criticism is not negation, but an expression of basic expectations for the rule of law and fairness.
“Even overseas, our roots remain in our homeland,” she said.
“Love for one’s country is carried in the blood.”
Wherever she is, she added, she can still hear the sound of the Huangpu River flowing.
Literary Vision and Cross-Disciplinary Exploration
Bei La’s position on literature has remained remarkably consistent. Literature cannot replace law or politics, she argues, but it can offer a moral compass.
“At the very least,” she said, “literature should remind people that some things should never become ‘normal.’”
She is also the originator of a frontier concept she calls “Musical Literary Cosmology,” an approach widely praised by UNESCO-affiliated scholars for its healing, humanistic qualities. Her work seeks cross-media expression between poetry, symphonic structures, and narrative. Several of her poetic cycles—centered on life and death, faith, and destiny—have been examined by researchers as interdisciplinary literary experiments.
Yet Bei La herself places little emphasis on theoretical labels.
“In the end,” she said, “writing always returns to the human being.”
Quiet Commitment
Less widely known than her literary achievements is Bei La’s long-standing personal commitment to philanthropy. Over the years, she has devoted most of her royalties, copyright income, and investment returns to supporting vulnerable communities around her and to projects that promote Chinese stories abroad. These include aid for elderly people living alone, refugee children, and initiatives in cultural translation and exchange.
She has not yet considered establishing a literary or arts foundation.
“I’m too busy,” she said.
“Only in literary creation do I truly find myself.”
Homeland and the Future
When speaking of her homeland and her place of origin, Bei La’s tone becomes both tender and restrained.
“To me, my homeland is like a mother,” she said.
“It doesn’t need constant proof. It simply exists.”
Looking ahead to 2026, her most important plan is to organize and publish several Chinese-language novels she has been developing for more than a decade. These works represent a concentrated expression of her humanistic vision.
Her New Year’s wishes are simple: fewer wars, greater understanding, and a shared human future grounded in love, peace, and freedom. She hopes her family and friends remain safe and well. As for herself, she smiled slightly and said she would be content if she could “write a love story in literature that feels as unforgettable as a scene from a film.”
By the time the interview ended, night had fallen and snow was beginning to fall again. Bei La walked us to the door with few words of farewell. Just before closing it, she added:
“When I return to literature, I see Yasunari Kawabata’s Snow Country. It is a new world—pure and beautiful, like snow itself.”
