Photo provided to Hangzhoufeel
By Ye Linxiao
He came to Hangzhou in 2018 as a professor, yet with a rarely-known identity. If we resort to Wikipedia, he is described as "a Spanish writer specializing in Sephardic language and literature, and the Holocaust".
Salvador Santa Puche, the Spanish professor at the School of International Studies, Zhejiang University, mainly studies languages, histories and literatures in his class. Before coming to China, he has been a visiting professor in different universities in the United States, Estonia, Israel, Austria and Poland. In almost every country he has visited, Salvador would study by himself the local language, including English, Russian, German, like Arabic, Latin, Estonian, and so on. As a result, he can speak nearly 10 languages with good proficiencies. In the class, he would speak a language involuntarily when it is asked. Chinese is also a bead in his pocket: Salvador has been studying Chinese on his own through online courses and preparations for the HSK exam, by working on it for 1 or 2 hours before bedtime on weekdays and 4 or 5 hours on weekends.
Such a large command of languages and rich travel experiences become the sources of inspiration for his writing. For him, reading leads to writing to reading... His favorite English author is Edgar Allan Poe. Also, he reads translations of Chinese writers like Mo Yan and Liu Zhenyun.
His vast reading has contributed to the prolific output. When an inspiration strikes, he can always spend the afternoon sitting in the university library downstairs from his office, accompanied by a cup of coffee, and immersed in the world of writing.
Salvador has so far published 11 novels in Spain, and now he is completing a novel and a play at the same time. "I was so bored in the summer vacation when I was doing my PhD at the University of Murcia, so that I wrote a novel and sent it to the publisher to give it a try. I thought no one would read it, but the publisher especially liked it." he said, talking about the publication of his first novel.
Salva was the youngest doctoral graduate of the university at that time, and the subject of his doctoral dissertation was the Spanish medieval literature, and his novels were always set in the background of the Middle Ages or the Spanish Civil War. Overall, they are suspenseful stories in which the main character is usually an ordinary person who struggles to solve those suspense points.
As Wikipedia indicates, one of his interests of writing lies in Holocaust, to be precise, the tragedy of the Sephardic (Judeo-Spanish) in the Holocaust. Llorarás por Sefarad （You will weep for Sephardi）is one of his representative works. The extermination of the Sephardi during the Holocaust and an episode related to the expulsion are the plot clues of his novels.
In addition to writing fictions, Salvador has courageously embarked on the present series of volumes on the Testimonies of the Sephardi in the Holocaust. The two volumes are in fact mutually reinforcing each other. According to M. Halévy from the University of Hamburg, Salvador has produced a work of reference by collecting directly the memories of the survivors that have often been suppressed, and the documents that the Ashkenazi historians rarely wanted to consider until today.
In Spain, his novels are sold out quickly. He has been interviewed by journalists from the radios and televisions, like RTVE (Spain's largest state-owned public media company). When walking down the street in Spain, he was sometimes recognized and asked if he was the writer. "But I don't like being famous, I like being unknown," he said.
Living in Hangzhou, the novelist likes touring around the city and commuting from Xixi Campus to Zijingang Campus by shared bicycles. For him, this is a great way to get to know the city up close, just like accessing cultures through a variety of languages.
Last year Salvador went through an operation at the Second Affiliated Hospital of Zhejiang University School of Medicine. He admits that he was initially scared of the bold thought, but after learning about the doctors, equipment and technology of the hospital, he finally decided to have the surgery in Hangzhou instead of returning to Spain. Capable doctors, attentive nurses, the four-person ward and the cross-cultural communication among patients have only left him being thankful and feeling lucky.
Salvador intends to write a novel based on his life as a Spaniard in Hangzhou as his 13th novel in the upcoming summer vacation. He even wants to apply for a permanent residence permit to invite his family to Hangzhou this summer, and he hopes that his daughter can study at a university right in Hangzhou.