Pearl Lam (林明珠): Hello, this is Pearl Lam Podcast. I’m really lucky today. I’m very happy that I have Kevin Kwan with me. Kevin, just in case people didn’t know about you, which I think very rarely, that people won’t know about you, can you see, tell them about yourself.

Kevin Kwan: I wouldn’t presume anyone knows anything about me. I’m a writer. I write novels and nonfiction as well. But I’m probably most well known for having written the Crazy Rich Asians novels.

Pearl Lam (林明珠): The Crazy Rich Asians has changed the world. And let’s start from the beginning. You were Singaporean, living and in Texas. How did you, you know you studied journalism, right?

Kevin Kwan: I did, yeah.

Pearl Lam (林明珠): And then from journalism you then went to Parsons to study art and then you have a creative agency, Right. And how did it all of a sudden become a writer? Yeah, because I think I read about you saying that you were just writing a book for your friends and you did not realise that it can be really a popular book, commercially successful book, and change your whole culture.

Kevin Kwan: That is very true. But if we rewind it to the beginning, I very much was a writer from the very beginning. As a child, I always loved to write stories.

Pearl Lam (林明珠): You love reading, right?

Kevin Kwan: Reading and writing and all that. And then of course I went in college, I majored in journalism, media studies and literature. So I was always learning about writing, training to be a writer. But you couldn’t make a living doing it. Especially what I did, experimental poetry.

Pearl Lam (林明珠): I love experimental poetry.

Kevin Kwan: I actually also did art criticism. My first published work was an art review of the Art Guys. I don’t know if you remember the Art Guys.

Pearl Lam (林明珠): Yes, I remember.

Kevin Kwan: I reviewed one of their shows in Houston, Texas. Right.

Pearl Lam (林明珠): But they pay peanuts for it.

Kevin Kwan: Not even peanuts, you know, oh my God. So you couldn’t make a career as A writer. So I completely had to pivot to something else. And I moved to New York and did something far more practical. I went to art school. You’re supposed to laugh.

Pearl Lam (林明珠): Art school, practical art school.

Kevin Kwan: I wasn’t thinking practically. I wasn’t thinking practically. I didn’t have any guidance, you know, so I just made up my own world, right, of how to.

Pearl Lam (林明珠): And your parents did not, you know, like my parents.

Kevin Kwan: My parents did not care at all.

Pearl Lam (林明珠): You’re lucky.

Kevin Kwan: I was very lucky in the sense that there was so much benign neglect and I benefited from that. I benefited from the fact that my parents were very atypical and they were not tiger parents at all, you know.

Pearl Lam (林明珠): Which is very surprising. Chinese are traditional parents.

Kevin Kwan: It is, but it is not. If you knew the background of my family, you know, from Singapore and, you know, my parents were both very artistic souls in their own way.

Pearl Lam (林明珠): And I read that your father is a qualified architect.

Kevin Kwan: He is not.

Pearl Lam (林明珠): He’s not qualified.

Kevin Kwan: He studied architecture, but he never finished. I think at a certain point he pivoted to engineering that became, you know, he was at University of Sydney. He did architecture for a few years, then he. Engineering was the hot thing to do in the late 50s, early 60s, you.

Pearl Lam (林明珠): Know, so there’s a lot of engineering in China and all 50s and above.

Kevin Kwan: But his heart was always in something, I think, far more creative, because I could even. He drew like nobody’s business. He could do portraits and paintings and his sisters, you know. So I know that there is, genetically, I come from a very artistic branch, you know, because I see my aunts, they are all such gifted artists, you know, and so I, you know, and I had a natural talent for drawing and painting and all that, all that kind of thing. But once again, going to art school, you can’t make a living doing it, right? So it’s a passion. But I had to find a way to really bridge the gap and I fell into this world of design consulting, right, because I knew how to combine words with imagery. So I could work for magazines, I could work for websites, I could work for publishers and do beautiful visual books, you know. And so I became this specialist. I did a book for Elizabeth Taylor, the book about her jewellery collection. You know, I worked with architects, David Rockwell, people like that, you know.

Pearl Lam (林明珠): But you know, what amazed me about your book is you wrote it in such a witting, so not Chinese, you know, Chinese are supposed to write very seriously, like Ha Ching and all that. And your book, lighthearted, savvy, lots of Pop culture and you hold your book and you don’t want to put it up and it’s written and lots of humour. Now this is a part of Chinese that is not typical. We do have that part. We do have a part of frivolity.

Kevin Kwan: But it’s just not amplified.

Pearl Lam (林明珠): Absolutely.

Kevin Kwan: Your generation, my generation, we were taught to behave. We were taught, you know, you were taught to be a lady, you know, and I was taught to be a gentleman. So you’re never allowed to really be sarcastic. Sarcasm is seen as rude.

Pearl Lam (林明珠): Of course. Of course.

Kevin Kwan: Because.

Pearl Lam (林明珠): And your whole book is a satire. I mean, it’s just great because when I’m reading it, I mean, I remember the first time I heard about the book, I was in Singapore and my staff in Singapore was saying, did you read the book? Do you know who this is? Do you know who this is? They were all guessing which other character you were referring to. That was really great.

Kevin Kwan: Thank you.

Pearl Lam (林明珠): That was fantastic.

Kevin Kwan: And that would have never happened, I think, if I hadn’t left Singapore and come to America and gone to American high school and really sort of been integrated into American pop culture.

Pearl Lam (林明珠): Not just that you need to be confident, I mean, to write this, to laugh at your own culture. This is self-deprecating humour.

Kevin Kwan: And I think I had the confidence of knowing that I could write whatever I wanted because it would never be published. You know, which is why I tell other writers and artists these days, just go for it. Really, really, you know, zero in on your truth and tell it like it is. Because once you start censoring yourself, that’s really the death of art.

Pearl Lam (林明珠): Yeah, because. Because what I really love about, about when I read it is I can see your confidence and you are actually talking about the society that the west doesn’t, has no knowledge of it. And that reflection is great because you change the whole, the whole impression about Asians because you give that importance to the Asians. But when you’re writing it, do you think about it? That wasn’t your aim, right.

Kevin Kwan: You know, it was kind of a spiritual goal, you know what I mean? I really noticed a gap. You know, when you went to bookshops, you never saw any books, any fiction based on contemporary Asia. You would see historical Asia, right? You know, books about the rape of Nanking, Shanghai in the 30s, things like that. Or you would see stories that were very specific to the Asian American immigrant experience. Right. Joy La Club and Joy Luck Club. Maxine Hong Kong. Amazing writers who were telling their truth at a time, you know, But I think I was Part of a new generation. Where I grew up in the East, I grew up in Singapore. And I think the first 11 years of my life were so important. I see it now because I grew up feeling empowered. You know, my role models were successful, attractive, vibrant Asian people. Exactly right. And I think that makes all the difference in the world. And then also Singapore in the 70s and early 80s, you know, like, Hong Kong was so international, right?

Pearl Lam (林明珠): Absolutely.

Kevin Kwan: And our friends were British, New Zealanders, Australians, Indians, some Americans, actually fewer Americans. But it was a very international.

Pearl Lam (林明珠): It is.

Kevin Kwan: And so I had no problem mingling with other cultures and getting to know people. And you learn from a very early age always how to behave around adults, how to speak to adults. So, you know, that gave me the advantage. When I came to the us, I wasn’t a fish out of water. I could immediately start swimming and continue my journey of exploration.

Pearl Lam (林明珠): Confidence. Yeah, confidence.

Kevin Kwan: And I think that was key. Had I grown up here, I think I would have had a very different experience growing up as a minority from day one, you know, what it does to your psyche. It’s something I’m only beginning to understand in the last few years as I really delve in more into Asian American culture.

Pearl Lam (林明珠): So do you actually recognise or aware that there has been or there still is racial discrimination when you were going to. When you were at school?

Kevin Kwan: Absolutely. Absolutely. There was discrimination, but I didn’t even see it. I didn’t feel it, but it was definitely there.

Pearl Lam (林明珠): I did not feel it at all. And I was the only Chinese. Yeah.

Kevin Kwan: I was one of three other Asian kids in my high school. But I also, you know, it’s about seeing the glass half full of half or half empty. You know, if you go looking for the problems, you will find them. And I think I had a natural confidence where I wasn’t looking for the problems. I wasn’t looking for the insults or the slights or feeling like, you know, I was already a weird kid. I was already a small, tiny kid. So I had to. I had to just really sort of stand out from day one.

Pearl Lam (林明珠): So today, do you consider yourself as an Asian or American or American Chinese or a Singaporean who.

Kevin Kwan: I mean, I don’t really think in terms of those labels like me, I don’t feel labels at all.

Pearl Lam (林明珠): I feel that I’m an international person.

Kevin Kwan: Same here.

Pearl Lam (林明珠): And also I feel that I’m a bridge. It’s like you that I recognise, you know, our own culture, something that we can laugh about it and that the west didn’t know and therefore they should recognize.

Kevin Kwan: if there’s anything I’m most proud to call myself, I always called myself, I’m a New Yorker, you know, because I think being a New Yorker is a state of mind, it’s a way of being, it’s an attitude. Of course, now I live in LA more than I live in New York, but still, you know, it’s that I identify with that tribe of other creative souls. But of course I’m Asian, of course I’m Singaporean, of course I’m Asian American, I’m all those things. But I don’t want to be labelled just one thing.

Pearl Lam (林明珠): Absolutely right, I agree, I agree.

Kevin Kwan: I thankfully have never had to really.

Pearl Lam (林明珠): Contend with that you have actually changed, I mean, the culture, especially in Hollywood. Right. You’re crazy rich Asian. That movie, it was the second movie or the second Chinese cast movie. Third.

Kevin Kwan: Third ever. Ever, ever, ever.

Pearl Lam (林明珠): And so you actually jumpstart even Michelle’s movie. Everywhere. Everywhere.

Kevin Kwan: Everything. Everywhere, all at once.

Pearl Lam (林明珠): Yeah, everything everywhere. Because without your movie, you won’t have another Chinese castle movie. You must be so proud that you actually create these changes, this transformation.

Kevin Kwan: I mean, I feel very gratified that, you know, my books and my movie helped to light a fire that other amazing creative people have continued to build on. So that much I’m very proud of. But I still think we’re in very early days, right?

Pearl Lam (林明珠): Absolutely.

Kevin Kwan: The fact that you can only name a few movies.

Pearl Lam (林明珠): Yeah. When is it?

Kevin Kwan: How many billion Asians are there around the world and even in the us? You know what I mean? Like, you know, we are still very underrepresented in modern culture.

Pearl Lam (林明珠): But even though, I mean, I mean, recently when we talk about diversity, I mean, one sees that Hollywood has actually have other nationality, other race in most of the movies. And of course, now the new administration is against DEI and all that. Has Hollywood changed following this new.

Kevin Kwan: I think Hollywood, in a way, has always been at the forefront of change and I still see amazing projects happening that do showcase diversity, you know what I mean? I have a TV show working in the works, movies in the works, a Broadway musical. So none of that has changed.

Pearl Lam (林明珠): I understand the Crazy Rich Asians is coming to Broadway and it’s also, there’s a TV show. Yes, show. When is it?

Kevin Kwan: I mean, hopefully we start going into production, you know, next year on the TV show or later this year. Right. And Broadway is a ten year process.

Pearl Lam (林明珠): Ten years!

Kevin Kwan: Ten years, yes. We’re in year five or six at this point. So it’s. Well, you know, you think about It. Right. So many things have to happen. Music, music, lyrics, choreography, costumes, staging. And then also, you know, on Broadway there’s only 30 theatres. So it’s a game of another show has to leave.

Pearl Lam (林明珠): Yeah.

Kevin Kwan: Before they can actually install. Wow. So the real estate is very precious. You understand that.

Pearl Lam (林明珠): How about. And that is on your trilogy, right?

Kevin Kwan: Yes.

Pearl Lam (林明珠): And how about your two new books?

Kevin Kwan: Those are also being adapted into films.

Pearl Lam (林明珠): Sex and Vanity and Lies and Lies and Marriage

Kevin Kwan: Lies and Weddings.

Kevin Kwan: You’re close. Yeah. So those are with different studios, you know, different studios.

Pearl Lam (林明珠): Oh, you are busy here.

Kevin Kwan: I am quite busy, yeah.

Pearl Lam (林明珠): Are you writing next book?

Kevin Kwan: I’m really hoping to start writing this year a new book.

Pearl Lam (林明珠): But you often take a few years.

Kevin Kwan: Before I do because, you know, I always feel like you have to, number one, refuel your tank.

Pearl Lam (林明珠): Yeah, of course, of course.

Kevin Kwan: You know, like it or not, my books are really based so much on observation. So I have to live, I have to experience things in order to materials. Have you been back in Asia recently? I was in Asia last year. Yeah. So I was in Hong Kong.

Pearl Lam (林明珠): You didn’t even call me when you were in Hong Kong. You didn’t even send me a message.

Kevin Kwan: But I thought you lived in London.

Pearl Lam (林明珠): No, I live around. I’m in Hong Kong. London, Shanghai. I don’t know where I am most of the time.

Kevin Kwan: Next time for sure.

Pearl Lam (林明珠): Next time for sure. Yes, you must.

Kevin Kwan: So I don’t like to bother people, you know that and you know what it’s like when you go back to Asia. You have to see so many relatives and this and that. I didn’t have time to actually see many friends at all.

Pearl Lam (林明珠): It was non stop. Do you still have relative in tonnes?

Kevin Kwan: Tonnes.

Pearl Lam (林明珠): Hong Kong as well?

Kevin Kwan: Yeah.

Pearl Lam (林明珠): I thought all your relative is in Singapore.

Kevin Kwan: Singapore and Hong Kong. I mean, my grandfather grew up in Hong Kong, so he’s one of the Hong Kong Kwans, you know, that’s why he’s. Nancy Kwan is his cousin. So it’s, you know.

Pearl Lam (林明珠): So you’re related to Nancy Kwan?

Kevin Kwan: Yeah, she’s my cousin. So a lot of Kwans.

Pearl Lam (林明珠): That’s why you can write about biracial.

Kevin Kwan: Well, that’s one reason. But I also.

Pearl Lam (林明珠): Eurasians.

Kevin Kwan: Yeah, I have many, many cousins who.

Pearl Lam (林明珠): Are also biracial and all Eurasians.

Kevin Kwan: Yes.

Pearl Lam (林明珠): Wonderful. So next book, would it be about Asians

Kevin Kwan: I mean, the next book is really part of this trilogy of new books that I write about. Beginning with Sex and Vanity, which is about Asians outside of Asia.

Pearl Lam (林明珠): Outside Asia.

Kevin Kwan: It’s really about the collision of east and West. Right. So the first book was about a biracial Asian American living in New York. The most recent book, Lies and Weddings, is about a British Chinese girl.

Pearl Lam (林明珠): Family. And about the boy. I don’t know who brought that. Trying to find the right.

Kevin Kwan: Exactly.

Pearl Lam (林明珠): But I thought that was really funny because you pinpoint the right thing, you know, now it’s not about just women. Man is doing the same thing. And this time you actually give a lot of importance to the father. So all your books before, you talk a lot about strong mothers. And also it changed the stereotype of how the west always think that Asian woman. Women are very submissive, subservient. You actually change this whole perception.

Kevin Kwan: Yeah.

Pearl Lam (林明珠): Perception about that.

Kevin Kwan: Which was because, as you know, the women rule.

Kevin Kwan: In Asian families, in Chinese families, especially the mother, the grandmother is the queen. Right. So the men.

Pearl Lam (林明珠): I love it.

Kevin Kwan: The men just submit. Yeah.

Pearl Lam (林明珠): But this time, I thought was very, you know, you absolutely change another direction. You put more importance on the father.

Kevin Kwan: I felt that was important to do for this story and to also really give a chance. You know, this is definitely much more focused on the male protagonist.

Kevin Kwan: It’s Rufus. He’s the one. He’s the Cinderella that has to find the glass slipper for his own foot. You know what I mean? So I’m turning the tables on that. And also looking at father, son relationships. Father, daughter relationships. You know, that was important for me to really kind of examine in this book.

Pearl Lam (林明珠): Okay, define for me love.

Kevin Kwan: Oh, my gosh.

Pearl Lam (林明珠): Define for me. Because all your stories is all a lot about love, but love is always mixed with wealth. Right? So what is. I mean, what is, to you, a perfect love story?

Kevin Kwan: wouldn’t even be able to answer that. I think there’s so many forms of love. Right? And there’s so many.

Pearl Lam (林明珠): And now we are talking about a boy and girl. I mean, I mean, your story about boys and girls is always. Money plays a very important part, whether it’s positive or negative. Of course, in the real world, it’s like that.

Kevin Kwan: So, I mean, you know, my books are satire, right? They’re satire and they are emphasising, you know, these characters that live in a very rarefied world where money does matter, does matter to at least one of the people involved or the families that are involved. You know, if you look at my.

Pearl Lam (林明珠): You always have to. Yeah, exactly. It’s all about family.

Kevin Kwan: In my most recent book, you know, the boy and Girl really don’t care about money, but they’re forced into caring by the family. You know, Rufus is forced because he’s the heir to a title and a grand estate and he has to be able to fund his estate for future generations. Right. This is a sense of the duty he has.

Kevin Kwan: Not only the British duty, but the Asian sun duty, where his mother is pressuring him, like, you have to continue the family name, you have to give me grandchildren, you have to do all this. So he feels that tie, you know, and it’s stifling in many ways, it’s claustrophobic. But he’s trying to navigate his own personal happiness and he wants to be an artist. I don’t know if you know that in the book. He’s actually struggling. Starving. No, not starving, but he’s trying to make it as a painter.

Pearl Lam (林明珠): Making it to as a painter is very painful.

Kevin Kwan: Yes.

Pearl Lam (林明珠): But the way that. I think, the way that you’re speaking about family, you know, Asians is all about family, so it is that culture. This is the way that you brought people to recognise how important this Confucius influence on our culture. Whether you are American Chinese or whether you’re British Chinese or whether you are Asians from Asia. That family structure, unit is really the coil of everything but money. So we are talking about a real world complicates it.

Kevin Kwan: Money always complicates the family.

Pearl Lam (林明珠): Complicated. So now I’m asking, I’m asking you, Kevin, in the real world, in the real Kevin’s world, is money important? Is money or love important?

Kevin Kwan: Wow! You know, I think both are important. I mean, you know, you need, on a very practical level, money to survive, to live, but I think you also need love to thrive. And you know, I think, you know, to me, I think love is the most important thing of all.

Pearl Lam (林明珠): Of course, love gives you that confidence.

Kevin Kwan: Exactly. So, you know, I think it’s very much a duality. Right. In fact, I was actually thinking of calling the book Love and Money, believe it or not. But I thought Lies and Weddings was actually a little more interesting.

Pearl Lam (林明珠): I would say that you are this younger generation of writers who is actually integrating with pop culture, and that’s why you resonate with the west, with the Western, with the readers in the west in such a profound manner, you give.

Kevin Kwan: Them something they can understand when you are introducing things that are very new and very exotic. So it’s that combination that sort of allows people to really go into that world. But I think that’s how World culture has changed. Even in the East. Even in Asia. The kids are so westernized these days. And so it works both ways.

Pearl Lam (林明珠): So when you go back to. When you return to Asia, you do get along with all your cousins and all your relative in Asia?

Kevin Kwan: Very much so. And I think I very much enjoy getting to know them and getting to know what their lives are like because it’s so vastly different from my life. You know, I. I left the clan. And I think in America, you are much more alone. You know, my family was much more alone. It was just my parents, my brothers. Here we are in the middle of Texas. And you don’t have this gigantic clan around you.

Pearl Lam (林明珠): Why did your family chose. I mean, why did your family choose Texas?

Kevin Kwan: You’re gonna have to ask my dad that.

Pearl Lam (林明珠): I mean, so. So weird. Texas.

Kevin Kwan: In a way, it was the worst thing that could have happened and the best thing that could have happened because it really allowed me to be in a whole different alien territory where I could really actually learn a new way of thriving and really kind of find my creativity. Because I really always say this. If I had stayed in Singapore, right. I really think.

Pearl Lam (林明珠): How about if your parents moved to San Francisco or LA or New York?

Kevin Kwan: I think that would have been different too. Because then I would have had so much more exposure to culture.

Pearl Lam (林明珠): Yeah.

Kevin Kwan: But being in Houston, I felt so isolated. I felt like I was in the desert. And so my goal was move to New York. Move to New York, go to art school, go to Parsons. From day  one. And New York, to me is the answer. If I can’t go back to Singapore, I’m gonna aim for New York. So that became the goal, and I achieved the goal.

Pearl Lam (林明珠): So when you were in and in New York, what makes you the most excited? I mean, what makes you excited about New York when you’re actually living there? Just living there

Kevin Kwan: From the day I moved to New York, you know, having one friend, literally knowing one person, Only one friend. Only one person. I actually slept on her sofa. The first week I was there as I was enrolling in art school. And then I, from there, moved into a dormitory. When I went to Parsons, within, I would say, a week, I had made 30 new friends. Who are still my friends to this day.

Pearl Lam (林明珠): Amazing.

Kevin Kwan: So it was, you know, it took me, in one week, I could make 30 friends in Houston. It took me 10 years to make 10 friends. And that had nothing to do with the colour of my skin. Can I just tell you? That was just connecting with who I felt. People that were truly part of my tribe, which is the tribe of creatives. And going to art school, you know being able to just sit up at night in your dorm room drinking cappuccino as you’re working on a painting and being able to reference, you know, Giacometti or Gaultier without anyone questioning you. Was my freedom to be able to say. To find your tribe and say, oh, my God, do you want to go to MoMA tomorrow and see the Robert Frank Show? Versus in Houston? Most of the time, that would have been weird, right? You couldn’t say that going to a normal American high school. So that was what I connected to, I think, being in art school with other artistic kids.

Pearl Lam (林明珠): Oh, that’s great, because you’re speaking the same language and you were understood.

Kevin Kwan: I was finally understood and finally seen. Versus, I think, in Houston for the first 10 years, in many ways, I had to just sort of hide. And pretend to be many things.

Pearl Lam (林明珠): But now with Houston, you have a really great museum there now. Only now, now, because the Museum of Houston is amazing.

Kevin Kwan: The Menil, I think, started in 86 or 87 or maybe even 88. Before that, it was a private collection.

Kevin Kwan: And that changed everything, because even in college, you know, when I first started going to college, I loved being in downtown Houston, the Museum of Fine Arts. That became my haven. Right. And then I was really part of the poetry scene, the experimental, you know, poetry slam scene. That. Yes. But I wanted more.

Kevin Kwan: That was still such a small community, and I knew I needed more than that. So I loved what Houston did for me because it nurtured me. It allowed me to sort of grow and nurture my talent. Because I think if I’d moved at age 11 to New York, it would have been overwhelming. It would have been too much, too soon. So I had these 10 years to really kind of develop and mature and really kind of also figure out how to live in America.

Pearl Lam (林明珠): Right, Exactly. As a. As a young Asian boy.

Kevin Kwan: Exactly.

Pearl Lam (林明珠): Going to Texas to high school and you’re interested in creativity.

Kevin Kwan: It kept me safe, you know, and, you know, it was not a cultural wasteland, so. That’s not what I’m saying. But, you know, I was very lucky, you know, because I think my father was very, very supportive and really, really very, very lucky. One of the things he did for me, when I was a teenager was, you know, he bought me a Salvador Dali lithograph, you know, and I was 12 years old, and that was the first piece of art that I owned. You know what I mean?

Pearl Lam (林明珠): This is impressive because Chinese parents, unheard of. But, you know, I think. I think in the west, you wouldn’t understand how Chinese parents are. Chinese parents up to today, now, today is a bit better. But my generation, our parents never encouraged.

Kevin Kwan: So your parents didn’t do that?

Pearl Lam (林明珠): No. Never encourage any of the children to touch anything. On art and culture. It’s amazing to. Even.

Kevin Kwan: So art was your rebellion?

Pearl Lam (林明珠): I chose art because I didn’t need to study.

Kevin Kwan: Was your family Cantonese or from Shanghai?

Pearl Lam (林明珠): My mother is Shanghainese. My father is from Swato. Okay.

Kevin Kwan: So fantastic food.

Pearl Lam (林明珠): Fantastic.

Kevin Kwan: I love these guys.

Pearl Lam (林明珠): If you come next time to Hong Kong, I take you to Chuzhou. And the other one. The other place which is very good is Shaman.

Kevin Kwan: Yeah, now I’ve heard. Exactly. That’s where my grandmother’s family is from.

Pearl Lam (林明珠): Oh, really?

Kevin Kwan: Shaman? Yeah, they called it Eimoy back in those days.

Pearl Lam (林明珠): So do you speak Hokkien or do you speak Cantonese?

Kevin Kwan: I speak none of it, unfortunately. But I can understand some of this.

Pearl Lam (林明珠): When you were here at 11 years old, before 11 years old at home, what do you speak?

Kevin Kwan: English.

Pearl Lam (林明珠): You don’t speak any Chinese?

Kevin Kwan: No, I spoke a bit of Cantonese because my nanny was Cantonese. But at home, we spoke English. My parents only spoke English. My parents don’t speak a word of Mandarin. Mandarin.

Pearl Lam (林明珠): My Mandarin is so bad that I, you know, I love it.

Kevin Kwan: And then with my grandparents, also English. So, you know, my grandfather was very Anglophised, right? So. And he went to school in Scotland. So he was.

Pearl Lam (林明珠): So at home you speak English? Because most of the home. Because in what, in Singapore, you usually.

Kevin Kwan: Speak Hokkien or Cantonese.

Pearl Lam (林明珠): Cantonese. And then Malaysia usually is all Cantonese.

Kevin Kwan: Like I told you, our family was very much an outlier, right? We were very, very English. And, you know, and so growing up, we were even in Singapore. I felt sort of we were different in the sense that, you know, my grandfather was so British. He smoked a pipe every night, you know, and he spoke with a British accent. And then my father, you know, spent most of his time in Australia, right? He was educated there, went to boarding school, went to college there. So he was already very Westernised in his outlook. And I think he very much wanted that for his own children, Right? Like, he never. He never bought into Singapore society. I think he never quite fit in, quite frankly. He was so much Happier in times.

Pearl Lam (林明珠): Out of the. When he was out of all that.

Pearl Lam (林明珠): And how.

Kevin Kwan: Because I think that reminded him more of Australia. Right.

Pearl Lam (林明珠): And how about your other relatives? They still like that glamour, that society?

Kevin Kwan: See, I wouldn’t say they like it. I think it’s just. When it’s just part of your life.

Pearl Lam (林明珠): Yeah. It’s a way of life. It’s a way of life.

Kevin Kwan: They don’t see it as glamorous. In fact, they always ask me, you know, they’re like, who are these people you’re writing about? Like, who are these. All these rich people? You know, we don’t know these rich people. And I’m just like, I don’t know what to say. Like, I love it. Look at all your maids, look at your driver. I don’t know what to say. You know how it is though, right.

Pearl Lam (林明珠): Actually, do they change the impression of you when you now you are a very successful and well known personality. Do they recognise that and have they behaved differently towards you?

Kevin Kwan: I don’t think they really behave differently. I think, you know, I’m still and would be proud.

Pearl Lam (林明珠): At least they’re proud, you know.

Kevin Kwan: You know how also Asians never really say much.

Pearl Lam (林明珠): No, they know no, you know, you’re proud of.

Kevin Kwan: Yeah. So, you know, but they will have a little smile maybe. They’re all. They’ve always been polite. They’re still polite, but I don’t really sense a huge difference. I, you know, I went, you know, when I was visiting Thailand, my aunt came to one of my events.

Pearl Lam (林明珠): Yeah.

Kevin Kwan: So that was nice. You know what I mean?

Pearl Lam (林明珠): That’s great.

Kevin Kwan: And I was told by her children, oh, she never goes anywhere, but she actually ventured out into a crowd to come to one of your events. So I think in their way, they’re very surprised. But I think, you know, they’re not the type to emote and gush over you and say, ayea, you’re so, you know.

Pearl Lam (林明珠): No, this is not.

Kevin Kwan: They don’t ever want to pop up.

Pearl Lam (林明珠): This is very American.

Kevin Kwan: Exactly.

Pearl Lam (林明珠): I mean, Chinese doesn’t.

Kevin Kwan: No, no.

Pearl Lam (林明珠): But you can see from their smile. Right.

Kevin Kwan: Perhaps, you know, or maybe they’re horrified. I don’t know.

Pearl Lam (林明珠): And how about yourself? Yourself, how. I mean, the last 10 years, I feel very lucky.

Kevin Kwan: I feel incredibly lucky in the sense that I’ve been able to really achieve many of my dreams. Just the fact that I’m able to live a creative life and make a living with my creativity. I never imagined that would happen. I always thought, you know, I’m doing these practical things. I do consulting, I do this, but then that allows me to do some of my artistic projects. But now I can full time be involved in writing books, you know, making TV shows, making movies, helping to influence culture, you know, helping to influence a whole new generation of writers, really, Even artists, you know, I think there was a collector that was exoticizing what they were seeing in China or in Southeast Asia.

Pearl Lam (林明珠): Yeah, yeah, yeah, exactly.

Kevin Kwan: They saw it as just one exotic element. Yeah, exactly. Oh, I’m gonna, you know, have a, you know, one of these paintings and they would cherry pick from that. But I think what’s happening now in, you know, the emerging contemporary art in the US or in the west is that there’s a whole new generation of Asian American.

Pearl Lam (林明珠): Exactly.

Kevin Kwan: And Asian European artists, you know, who are doing dynamic. Amazing work.

Pearl Lam (林明珠): I think so. I think they have done a lot.

Kevin Kwan: Influenced by a bit by their culture, but that’s no longer the main issue. They’ve moved beyond.

Pearl Lam (林明珠): Because for me, art is not about Passport. Yeah, I really don’t care what passport you’re holding. Most important thing is they are great artists. The art. I mean, there are works that I love other people doesn’t like, like it, but it needs. It needs to be accessible for me. So I really don’t look at passport as such. And I just hope that in your writer’s scene as well as a writer, I really hope that it’s the same. Do you feel that?

Kevin Kwan: I think it’s changing and I think that’s. We need more of a critical mass of writers who are of Asian descent. To tell their stories. To transcend the culture. To transcend the culture where it doesn’t become just, oh, I’m reading this person because they’re from Singapore or they’re from Malaysia or they’re from Korea, you know, you want these stories to become just so universal, right?

Pearl Lam (林明珠): Absolutely, absolutely. This is all what we are looking for, Right? Right.

Kevin Kwan: People don’t read Harry Potter because he’s British and it’s a British author. You know what I mean? So it’s like, when are we gonna get to that phase? But I think you need more of. You need more of these artists. I’m hoping that to normalise, you are.

Pearl Lam (林明珠): Going to write books eventually, not just about Asians.

Kevin Kwan: Yeah, exactly.

Pearl Lam (林明珠): I mean, because, you know, books itself is a content. The content today. Yes, it is interesting because people are learning about different, you know, different sort of Chinese culture or Asian cultures that they have never confronted. But eventually, as a writer, I mean, I hope that you would be writing and exploring other issues.

Kevin Kwan: I’m trying to. And I’m trying to create characters that are so full bodied that readers can immerse in their worlds and their race and the colour of their skin becomes irrelevant. Yes, right. They are just interesting people.

Pearl Lam (林明珠): They’re interesting people

Kevin Kwan: And I hope the world is living and breathing their lives and you really feel into their soul and their problems.

Pearl Lam (林明珠): Exactly.

Kevin Kwan: And it transcends their race or their culture. That’s at the heart of it. But that, but that very much. It does inform who they are. You know, we are a product of our families and our experiences. So how can we work with that? Like, how can we use that creative tension? And yet it’s not that. That’s not the sum of, you know, that’s not just all it is. Right. There’s much more than that.

Pearl Lam (林明珠): But you’re right, because we are. We are educated with a Western syllabus. The culture, I mean, we actually grew up in a Western culture. And obviously when you look at.

Kevin Kwan: I mean, you and I certainly both did, right. We grew up in a culture that was colonised by the British.

Pearl Lam (林明珠): Exactly, exactly. And definitely we’re looking at things in the Western lens. Whether we accept it or not. It is.

Kevin Kwan: Which is why it was so important for me in Lies and Weddings. You know, it’s my recolonization that is very interesting of taking this British family and I’m like, no, but I’m putting a whole Chinese family in there, Right. You’re gonna get a Chinese mother, you’re gonna have half Chinese kids. And, you know, and they very much are real families. They’re real families were in the British aristocracy now, where there are, you know, they’ve intermarried. But this is the reality of the world. And that’s why I always say, like, the more specific you make it to your culture, the more universal it becomes.

Pearl Lam (林明珠): I like this sentence. I like this sentence.

Kevin Kwan: People can really connect to the truth of who this character is, who this family is. When you really personalise it. And the story is about them in their little world, in their little village. The village might be in China or the village might be in England, but it’s still this little world. But someone in Pakistan can read it and go, oh, my gosh, this character is just like my cousin.

Pearl Lam (林明珠): Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Kevin Kwan: You know what I mean? And I’m sure that snobbery, snobbery, no matter where you are, the family that.

Pearl Lam (林明珠): You’Ve been writing, I’m sure that it happens in an Indian family and a British or American family happens.

Kevin Kwan: Exactly. And when they see that, that is how we create understanding. And that’s how we begin to demystify and that’s how we begin to shatter stereotypes.

Pearl Lam (林明珠): Yeah.

Kevin Kwan: When people can say, we’re all human. We’re all here having a human experience, expressing our human truths.

Pearl Lam (林明珠): On this note, I have to say thank you, Kevin. And it’s beautiful. I mean, it’s beautiful ending. Human note

Kevin Kwan: Thank you.

Pearl Lam (林明珠): Thank you for joining me.

Kevin Kwan: Always a pleasure, Pearl.

Pearl Lam (林明珠): Thank you.