Jianmin Tun, a Chinese writer also living in the US, thinks the whole thing would have been better off if China had opened its doors to a lot of its people, and opened up a bit of the rest of the world to more people, and that’s what these guys are protesting.

This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

Q: So why are they doing this? Can’t they be Chinese if they work in the US?

A: I wouldn’t put it that way. You can be Chinese in China or anywhere in the world. It’s all political.

Q: What’s so special about your writing?

A: I wrote my first book when I was 19. So all I could see was that I need to find a different writing technique, a different way of going at it. I was writing to a certain point, but then I got to do more with it. So to me it’s all about looking at other writers, other writers from a philosophical perspective — the history of writing, how literature is supposed to be written — and how you might apply those concepts to your own writing style.

Q: How do you know how to do it?

A: When I was writing a book called “Love and War,” I was trying to figure out how to write like the ancient Greeks, and I thought: “Well I’ll just write like a Greek. And I’ll do everything right.” It’s like getting the right haircut a little bit.

Q: So you’re writing from that perspective.

A: Yeah. But I mean, I’d love to be able to go to China and be a native Chinese but it wouldn’t make sense to try to write like the ancient Greeks…

Q: There isn’t any Chinese writing, is there?

A: Well, I guess you can use Chinese characters for writing, but in real life it’s not that easy. In China, writing is very impersonal. It’s very hard to convey feelings in that way. So I’d say that at the absolute minimum, my writing will sound something like the ancient Greeks.

Q: Any insight for other writers?

A: I have no insight. I’m not interested in that. If I ever had some insight into it, it would have been something from philosophy, actually.

Q: There is so much writing that goes