Tony's Reading List at the 2014 Melbourne Writers Festival - Part One

Friday the 22nd of August was a beautiful late-winter day in Melbourne, and it also happened to be the day for my annual visit to the Melbourne Writers Festival.  I only go in for one day, but I do my best to make the most of it, and this year I managed to fit four events into about five-and-a-half hours.  And what, exactly, did I see?  Well, stick around, and you'll find out...

*****
One of the main reasons I ended up making the trip in to the big city was the (free) event with Spanish writer Nicolás Casariego, whose novel Antón Mallick Wants to be Happy I read a few days before heading to the festival.  This was actually a late addition to the programme after the cancellation of another event, and many of the people who attended were actually unaware of this - the printed programme still had the old details...

The event was MCed by local academic and translator Lilit Thwaites, and considering that the majority of the people in the small ACMI Cube room had heard of neither the book nor the writer, it all went fairly smoothly.  Both Thwaites and Casariego read short extracts from the novel, and they then discussed the book, particularly in relation to similarities between the writer and the eponymous hero of the novel.

The book (which I will be reviewing in early September) is the diary of a man seeking happiness, and one way in which he does so is through an analysis of self-help books and classics.  Casariego said that the reading was perhaps the best part of the writing process; however, he's not a fan of self-help books himself, believing that they're rather aggressive and help to create egotistical monsters.  As for the other books he read in the search for Antón's happiness, he actually preferred some of the more pessimistic ones...

Antón Mallick... is a funny book, something which Casariego says isn't true for all of his works.  One of his biggest challenges was to temper the use of humour in the book, lest it overpower and overshadow the story (certainly, the early sections have a lot of scenes where getting a laugh is the main focus).  The style of the novel, written in the form of a diary, is also important as it allowed the writer to play with the reader.  For one thing, he was able to be a little less politically correct than is normally the case as Mallick is writing for himself, with no need for self-censorship.  However, it also allows him to be a little tricky as there's no guarantee that Antón is telling even himself the whole truth...

Never one to hold back, I asked Casariego a question at the end of the session.  You see, with so many loose ties at the end of the novel, I was wondering if the writer had ever considered a sequel to Antón's quest for happiness.  The answer was a fairly firm 'no', but now that the idea had come up... ;)  If Antón Mallick does return for a second outing, then, you know who to thank/blame :)

*****
After a thirty-minute break spent chatting to Lilit, getting my book signed by the author and cramming a sandwich down as fast as possible, it was back to the cube for the second of the day's events.  This was one of the four City-to-City events designed to give insular Australians more information about some of our Asian neighbours, and the first in the series was on Shanghai.  Author Nic Low was the moderator, and the guests were famed Sino-Australian writer Ouyang Yu (Sino-Australian in that he's lived and worked here for a good while) and two fellow Chinese academics, Gong Jing and Hongtu Wang.

In all honesty, this was by far the weakest of the four sessions I attended.  As an ESL teacher, I've spent many an hour listening to Chinese students reading a prepared script while other students struggle to understand what's being said, and this hour was like a flashback to presentation moderations of times past.  Jing, in particular, merely read a text talking about her life in Shanghai and then barely offered a word in English for the rest of the hour.  When you add to that the fact that the session actually had very little to do with literature, you can imagine how disappointed (and bored) I was for the most part...

Luckily, the third member of the panel was a far better, and more charismatic, speaker, and Yu entertained and informed the small audience with his Shanghai experiences.  From his anecdote about his introduction to Australian literature (when getting his first academic position, all he knew about it was that in Patrick White's fiction "people farted a lot"), to the poems he wrote on his return to Shanghai, about a cheap hotel room and a student who simply could not master a point of English grammar ("She wrote 'Aftering I finished the exam, I felting bad.' - I felt bad too."), Yu was a relaxed, witty speaker - I really must get around to reading one of his books...

Still, it wasn't quite enough to make this a session I would recommend to others, and I walked out hoping that the rest of the day would be better.  The good news?  It definitely was - but you'll have to wait until next time to find out why ;)

'Running through Beijing' by Xu Zechen (Review)

Anyone interested in literature in translation is bound to have stumbled across the name of Scott Esposito at some point.  He has his own blog, Conversational Reading, and oversees the publication of The Quarterly Conversation, an excellent online periodical.

Obviously, that's not enough to keep him busy though (even with his BTBA judging duties and the That Other Word podcast), and his work at the Center for the Art of Translation in San Francisco includes bringing books out with Two Lines Press, another small publisher with a focus on fiction in translation.

So when I was asked to take a look at one of the most recent publications, how could I say no? ;)

*****
Xu Zechen's Running through Beijing (translated by Eric Abrahamsen, e-copy courtesy of the publisher) is the story of Dunhuang, a petty criminal who has just been released from jail, having spent some time inside for selling fake IDs.  He's a boy from the provinces, with no real connections in Beijing, and as he walks the streets alone, buffeted by the dust storms sweeping over the city, he begins to wonder what he's going to do with himself.  It's then that he bumps into Xiaorong, a seller of fake DVDs, who allows him to stay for a while, and that's all Dunhuang needs to get back on his feet.

Dunhuang also moves into the DVD game, his chance of a second start in the big city:

"It was different now, though.  He was an old hand, calloused, nonchalant.  Anyway, selling pirated DVDs was miles closer to legality than making fake IDs.  And what was most important was his return to entrepreneurship - he was basically restarting his life in Beijing.  He reminded himself constantly that he was working for himself, and that filled him with confidence."
(Two Lines Press, 2014)

A hard-working, smooth-talking, handsome lad, Dunhuang is bound to make a go of things, and he manages to make the best of his limited opportunities.  However, in Beijing, it's always two steps forwards, one step back, especially when you're living outside the law...

Running through Beijing is an entertaining story of people trying to make ends meet in a shadowy environment.  Dunhuang is our (fake) passport to the Chinese capital, taking us from illegally-constructed shacks to hidden DVD factories, from squalid university dormitories to anonymous tower blocks.  Despite some of the setbacks the characters face, it's a fairly light-hearted story at times, with the occasional touch of pathos.

We find ourselves in a city where most people realise that the law is there merely to be circumvented.  Everyone wants fake DVDs, everyone knows that fake IDs are available, and the police are mainly trying to catch thieves in order to take a cut of the fines they impose.  Even one of Dunhuang's landladies is in on the act - when she catches him with some of his illegal films, her indignation is just an attempt to squeeze more rent money out of her (illegal) lodger.

Dunhuang is a very interesting character, one who is actually a lot more naive and innocent than he thinks (a Chinese Oliver Twist...).  A former student, he decides he needs to break the law to survive.  When he's not peddling fake goods, he's actually pretty honest, though, particularly in his support for the friend who took most of the responsibility when the two were arrested.

"He would spend his days selling DVDs to make money, of course, but he would also find some time to visit Bao Ding.  Ideally, he'd locate Qibao before that - he didn't want to disappoint Bao Ding."

Of course, when he meets Bao Ding's girlfriend - and finds her rather attractive -, his honesty is put to the test... 

The girlfriend issue aside, over the course of the novel, Dunhuang shows several signs of personal growth.  Not only does he try to keep his word to Bao Ding, he also begins to take a look at his life and make some changes.  Once immersed in the fake DVD world, he begins to develop an interest in some of the more esoteric films he's selling, devouring books on cinematic history in his spare time.  He starts jogging, buys better clothes and is a different person by the end of the story (let's change the comparison to a Chinese David Copperfield...), the final scene showing his true character.

Running through Beijing is a great look at the real, urban China, unlike some books which focus on the plight of the rural poor and oppressed.  Recently, I read Ma Jian's The Dark Road, a rather harrowing (and manipulative) novel about government repression, but Xu's book is about different people.  This is the next level up, migrants who have made it to the city, but now have to fight to make a living there, using any means available.  The story reminded me of another book on China I've read, the Comma Press collection Shi Cheng (Ten Cities) - funnily enough, guess which writer-translation duo represented Beijing in that book?  That's right, the story 'Wheels are Round' is another Xu-Abrahamsen co-production :)

The story ends as it begins, with Dunhuang running aimlessly through the streets of Beijing, highlighting his need for perpetual motion in a hostile environment.  However, he has changed, and his prospects have too, showing that while there are always ups and downs, who knows what's possible if you work at it hard enough.  As Bao Ding comments:

"A life of luxury is tough in this damned city, but you're not likely to starve either."

And that's a surprisingly optimistic tone on which to end the review - despite some of the darker scenes, Running in Beijing is a book which has a very glass-half-full view of the world:)

'The Dark Road' by Ma Jian (Review - IFFP 2014, Number 9)

After a couple of diversions, I'm back on my Independent Foreign Fiction Prize journey, with today's leg taking us on a watery trip though the Chinese provinces.  A word of warning before we begin, though - this is most definitely not one for the faint of heart (or weak of stomach)...

*****
The Dark Road by Ma Jian - Chatto & Windus
(translated by Flora Drew)
What's it all about?
Meili is a young woman pregnant with her second child, which in most places would be a cause for celebration.  Sadly, this is late-twentieth-century China, and the womb is the property of the state, meaning that for those who get pregnant without permission, the so-called Family Planning Officers are able to come and issue fines - or worse.

With Meili's husband, Kongzi (a seventy-sixth-generation descendant of Confucius) set on producing a male heir, the small family is forced to flee their home village, taking to the polluted waterways in an attempt to find a safe place to bring a son into the world.  Sadly, there are few safe places in this country, particularly for those unfortunate enough to be born both peasants and poor - this is a journey which will take a very, very long time...

A warning - The Dark Road is one of the most upsetting books I've ever read.  From the very first chapter, Ma plunges the reader into a chaotic, brutal world where our nerves are shredded simply by reading about Meili's experiences.  Every time that Meili and Kongzi appear to be making headway, you can guarantee that there's another disaster waiting around the corner, each more horrible than the last.

It's a novel of life in a totalitarian state, a country which has taken control of the most basic functions of life.  Most people will have heard of the One-Child Policy, but few will have envisaged the way in which it was carried out:

"SEVER THE FALLOPIAN TUBES OF POVERTY;
 INSERT THE IUDS OF PROSPERITY."
p.15 (Chatto & Windus, 2013)

The state has its eye on all women of child-bearing age, jumping in with mandatory IUD insertion and forced sterilisations, seemingly on a whim.  With slogans like this posted and painted on walls all over the towns and villages, it's a wonder that women dare to fall pregnant at all.

That they do, and this is certainly the case with Meili, is mainly due to the importance of the male heir in Chinese society.  In fact, while the state may have primary control of the uterus, the husband is next in line, well before the woman herself.  As one of Meili's friends comments:

"Take my advice: never rely on a husband for your happiness.  The government persecute men, then men persecute their wives in return." (p.26)

Much of Meili's suffering is brought about by the stubbornness of her husband.  A kind, educated, decent man, he is simply unable to accept life without a son and is determined to do anything he can to fulfil his filial duty.  You'd think that the well-being of his wife and daughter would take priority when the Family Planning Officers are (literally) above the law - you'd be wrong...

The novel is about far more than the effects of the One-Child Policy though.  The family's flight southwards allows the writer to take aim at several other contemporary Chinese issues.  Some of them are environmental, such as the effect on the communities forcibly relocated to make way for the impending Three Gorges Dam and the horrific pollution caused by the dumping of recycled electronic products in Guangdong Province.  The picture Ma paints of this part of China is not a pretty one.

However, the novel also explores the plight of the 'peasant' in a country where (as was the case in countries like France and Russia centuries ago) free movement is impossible.  Meili dreams of becoming a city dweller, but while she is able to mimic city fashions, she has little hope of actually making it one day:

"So, what documents do you need to avoid arrest?" Dai asks, brushing some white cotton fluff from his jumper.
"Identity card, health certificate, temporary urban residence permit, temporary work permit, birth permit, marriage licence..." Kongzi says, rattling off the list.  "But even if you have them all, if you are in a big town or city, and you look like a peasant, they'll still arrest you.  And once you're in handcuffs, they'll squeeze as much money from you as they can." (p.101)

With corrupt officials all around, one false step will see Meili lose all the ground she has painstakingly made over years.  It's not easy being a 'peasant'.

In the end though, the story always comes back to Meili and the fight for a chance to raise her children in freedom.  It's an incredible tale, made all the more chilling by the realisation that it's mostly true.  The writer spent time incognito in China researching the information - not only could this happen, it did, every day...

Does it deserve to make the shortlist?
Personally, I'm undecided.  The Dark Road is an excellent book, both fascinating and compelling, but it has one flaw for me, and that is the way the writer strings the reader along with his plotting.  While it's an important novel, one which allows us to witness events we would not have been able to experience otherwise, there are far too many cliffhangers and dramatic scenes.  Ma deliberately ratchets up the tension time and time again before finally unloading the next bombshell - it's certainly effective, but I felt manipulated at times, and that took the novel down a few points in my estimation.

Will it make the shortlist?
Almost definitely.  This has all the makings of a potential winner, ticking just about every IFFP box you can think of.  In my BTBA v IFFP discussion a while back, one idea that came up was that the British prize is very much concerned with problems and social issues, and this is a fairly major one.  A couple of years back, Yan Lianke's Dream of Ding Village, a novel about an AIDS epidemic in China brought about by a drive for selling blood, made the shortlist (and was highly commended) - The Dark Road is a far better novel.  Don't be surprised if you see Ma Jian and Flora Drew (writer and translator, husband and wife) accepting the prize in May :)

*****
Time to move on, and while I'd love something cheery after all these dramas, I suspect that I'm unlikely to get it.  The next stop on the tour is Iraq, and in a country devastated by war, there are pretty much guaranteed to be corpses...

'Shades of the Other Shore' and 'Ballade Nocturne' (Review)

It's been a while, but I've finally found a few hours to devote to the other two beautiful Cahiers I received from Daniel Medin at the Center for Writers and Translators at the American University of Paris.  Last time, I looked at an interesting piece from László Krasznahorkai and an alphabetical guide to the life of a translator - today's offerings are just as interesting and varied :)

*****
Shades of the Other Shore, like many of the cahiers, is another mix of prose and imagery.  Writer Jeffrey Greene and artist Ralph Petty are two Americans with a new life in France, and their words and paintings provide an outsider's view on the country.  Petty's vivid watercolours accompany Greene's mix of poetry and prose nicely, but (of course) I'm more focused on the literary side of the partnership...

The writing shows some interesting juxtaposition at times (e.g. Jeanne d'Arc and Steve Irwin...), but many of the pieces come back to the two constant themes of his mother, who lives with him in France, and death.  In 'On Hoarfrost', the writer turns cleaning his frosty windscreen into something deeper in his attempts to remove the white, equalising covering:

"My mother is already seated in the car, engine running with the defroster blowing, and as I scrape away the hoarfrost, her face and figure emerge from under the glass, looking out as if I were exhuming her from the next world into this one."
p.8 (Sylph Editions, 2013)

'The Silent Gardener' treads a similar path, but in a more poetic vein:

"My mother sleeps under a fig tree
 with no leaves, only the spring sun" (p.16)

The title also seems to examine this preoccupation with 'the other side', although he might just be talking about France.  If I'm honest, this wasn't really my thing, but there were some nice lines, and the pictures were very pretty :)

*****
The second work was one I was a little more interested in checking out as it was by a writer whose work I've enjoyed before, Gao Xingjian.  While all the work I'd previously read by the Nobel laureate had been prose works, the subject of this cahier is a short play, originally written in French, translated (by Claire Conceison) into English directly, but with a possible Chinese version in mind.

The play, Ballade Nocturne, is a short piece, with a focus on music, pictures and dance.  There are just four roles: a musician, two dancers and an actresss who also plays a character called 'she'.  Anyone familiar with Gao's prose work, especially Soul Mountain, will recognise the focus on shadowy pronouns as descriptors...

'Elle', the focus of the piece, is all woman:

"On dirait une femme nature,
 mais pas fatale.
 On dirait une femme perdue,
 mais sans rien de public,"
p.2 (Sylph Editions, 2010)

"One might call her a natural woman,
 but not a femme fatale.
 One might call her a lost woman,
 but not a common whore." (p.17)

First we are introduced to her as a person, then the writer positions her as a representative of her gender in a battle of the sexes:

"Oh là là, femme contre homme,
 une dure bataille.
 Qui sera le vainqueur?
 Et qui sera conquis?" (p.4 )

"Oh la la, man versus woman
 a tough battle.
 Who will be the conqueror?
 And who will be conquered?" (p.19)

In the eternal struggle, Gao suggests that men need first to understand women to be worthy of them.

This theme of the struggle is taken up more literally as the play continues (at one point, the musician - the only male character - is trussed up and dragged off stage!).  It's very clear that 'she' is protesting against a man-made world and would like to propose some alternatives:

"et s'il ya une religion en laquelle croire,
 ce sera notre propre corps." (p.11)

"and if there is a religion worth believing in
 it will be our own bodies." (p.29)

If women ruled the world...

There is an intense focus on what is going on around the actors, and the cahier is full of stage directions, descriptions of the background music, and the dances the two dancers are to perform.  To an uncultured novice like myself, it's all rather arty, and Ballade Nocturne is described in the translator's introduction as a 'polymorphic' work, one which can't be pigeon-holed into 'theatre', 'dance' or 'art'.

As always, there is an abundance of beautiful extras.  In addition to Conceison's insightful introduction, the 'reader' is treated to Gao's beautiful ink-wash illustrations, as well as the original French-language version in a pamphlet insert.  It's a book which is a joy to read and admire - being totally honest, I'm not completely sure I'd enjoy sitting through the actual play though!

*****
The Cahiers Series produces beautiful pieces, coffee-table books for those interested in good literature and translation, and I'm very grateful to M. Medin for sending some my way.  Sadly though, with two young kids around, they're unlikely to be sitting on my coffee table any time soon.  Perhaps some of my readers will have more luck with that idea...

'Shi Cheng - Short Stories from Urban China' (Review)

Comma Press is a small publisher that concentrates on short-story collections, and as some of those are translated into English from other languages, I've reviewed a few over the past year.  However, today's collection is a little different.  Whereas the ones I've read so far have been single-author works, this post will look at a book which takes us on a more varied literary journey...

*****
Shi Cheng - Short Stories from Urban China (review copy from the publisher) is a recent anthology from Comma Press, which... well, it does pretty much what it says on the cover.  It contains ten different stories, each by a different writer and each concentrating on one Chinese city (Shi Cheng is Mandarin for 'ten cities').  The stories are arranged a little unusually in that they literally take us on a journey through urban China - we start off in Hong Kong, move onto cities like Xi'an and Nanjing, move up the coast through Shanghai and Beijing, before finishing off in the cold northern city of Harbin (and no train ticket required!).

The habitual reader of translated fiction probably has certain expectations about works translated from Chinese, thinking that they are likely to be controversial works on banned topics (e.g. Ma Jian's Beijing Coma) or stories about the hardship poor peasants face (e.g. Yan Lianke's Dream of Ding Village).  Shi Cheng, however, is a very different book.  It avoids any real explicit political message (although there are plenty of implicit stabs at Chinese politics) and concentrates on the way the average Chinese citizen lives their life in the big cities.  Strangely enough, it makes for a refreshing change.

One common topic is the importance of education in China, something we all hear about but can't quite grasp.  In Cao Kou's But What About the Red Indians? (translated by Rachel Henson), the main character in the narrator's story is a young man whose failure to succeed in the highly-competitive university exams is partly responsible for a shocking event later in life.  The protagonist in Ho Sin Tung's Square Moon (translated by Petula Parris-Huang) takes an art history major at university, instead of following the path of an artist, simply because there are better job prospects at the end of the course.

The stories also have a common focus on the urban divide, and many subtly criticise modern China's superficial consumer society.  Wheels are Round by Xu Zechen (translated by Eric Abrahamsen) looks at a group of illegal workers in Beijing, migrants from the countryside who try to scrape together a few Yuan on the black market.  The criticism is more scathing though in Han Dong's This Moron is Dead (translated by Nicky Harman), where a vagrant's corpse on the streets of Nanjing is greeted with both indifference and scorn...

A third important area is relationships, and if Shi Cheng is anything to go by, true love is a rare quality in China.  Infidelity abounds, and several of the stories use cheating as the focus of the plot.  Zhang Zhihao's Dear Wisdom Tooth (translated by Josh Stenberg) consists of a conversation between a married couple who are about to split up, where the man's embedded wisdom tooth serves as a metaphor for their marriage, but Ding Liying's Family Secrets (translated by Nicky Harman) is a much more chilling tale of the effects of infidelity.  As for Jie Chen's Kangkang's Gonna Kill that Fucker Zhao Yilu (translated by Josh Stenberg), well, I think I'll just leave that one to your imagination ;)

One of my favourite stories though does have a more political edge to it.  Diao Dou's Squatting (translated by Brendan O'Kane) is a clever allegory of how well-meaning reformers can be co-opted into supporting the status quo.  Starting with some concerned, well-meaning citizens and descending into farce through some Kafkaesque regulations, it is a bizarre tale with a cunning twist at the end.  It is definitely the story that has stayed with me the longest :)

Shi Cheng is a fascinating glimpse into the lives of the average urban-dwelling Chinese, and the book is visually delightful as well, with a handy map to follow our route and a transport map of each city introducing its story.  And if, like me, you enjoy this one, Comma Press has a few more books you might be interested in.  You see, as well as this trip around China, you might want to wander around the Middle East (Madinah), or take a leisurely journey through Europe (Decapolis).  Forget your local travel agency - this is the way to see the world in comfort ;)

Shadow IFFP 2012 - Round-Up Number Two

Thursday evening, and #translationthurs has rolled around again on Twitter, so it's time for my second round-up of books from the Independent Foreign Fiction Prize longlist.  Today we're off to the far east for a story told from beyond the grave - I hope you're not afraid of ghosts...

*****

Dream of Ding Village by Yan Lianke (translated by Cindy Carter)

What's it all about?

Dream of Ding Village is a fascinating novel, set in a small Chinese village in the countryside, and narrated by a corpse.  Our deceased friend, a boy who was poisoned by angry villagers, tells us of the plight facing his hometown because of a mania for selling blood.  His father, a rather nasty, grasping entrepreneur, got rich by convincing his fellow villagers to sell their blood - and by skimping on the hygiene while he was at it.  Now, a decade on, AIDS ('the fever') has broken out in the Chinese provinces, and the villagers are beginning to pay the real price for their past actions...

The main character is Grandpa, also called Professor, the patriarch of the Ding family and a retired teacher of sorts.  Attempting to make up for the role his elder son played in the misfortunes of the village, he decides to house all the sick inside the school, creating a kind of commune in which those who are destined to die can live out their days in comfort.  Unfortunately, human nature proves to be too strong for community spirit to triumph over: Grandpa's noble efforts are doomed to failure as his dream descends into selfish egotism...

The reader of Dream of Ding Village is constantly reminded of various classic tales: the post-apocalyptic feel of Camus' The Plague; the Darwinist horror of Golding's Lord of the Flies; the "some animals are more equal than others" turn of events at the school, reminiscent of Orwell's Animal Farm.  The more the story progresses though, the more it appears like a biblical reckoning, a plague sent to punish the greedy and inconsiderate.  In a society where people only care for themselves, there is nobody (except Grandpa Ding) who bothers to think about what tomorrow may bring.

The extent to which the selfish villagers will sink to is frightening.  Several attempt to cheat the group out of their share of food by putting rocks in the bags of rice and flour they are required to donate.  A local youth with the fever arranges to marry an uninfected woman from a neighbouring town, and the village is sworn to secrecy.  And the trees - don't get me started on the trees...

Dream of Ding Village is not for the squeamish - there is a lot of talk of blood and rotting flesh -, but there are some bright spots.  The blossoming romance between Grandpa Ding's younger son and a fellow AIDS sufferer shows that there is a positive side to the live-for-the-moment feeling which has swept the community.  On the whole, however, it is a rather bleak picture of a serious subject, one which doesn't paint Chinese society in a favourable light.  Perhaps then it's not that surprising that it was banned in mainland China...

Do you think it deserves to make the shortlist?

Possibly...  It's a good book, but I'm not sure it's good enough to be one of the main contenders.  The translation was alright, but nothing special - the dialogue, especially, was a little stilted at times, a problem which often arises when the very different Asian forms of address are put into English.  It will depend a lot on the books I haven't read yet, so if I like a lot of the others, this is one which will probably miss the cut.

Will it make the shortlist?
Again, possibly.  Most of what I've heard from other people has been positive, and I have a feeling that people would like to see a non-European book on the shortlist.  I think this may be one which will be mid-table and pushing for that final spot on the list.

*****
Join me again on Sunday, when we will be leaving Asia and heading back to Europe.  Just a warning - it might be a bit chilly...

Political Sleepwalking

There are some events which are so wide-reaching that it seems incredible that anyone could be unaware of them, yet a couple of years back I had a slightly unnerving conversation with a young Chinese student I knew.  It was the twentieth anniversary of the Tiananmen Square incident, and I asked them if they had seen any of the coverage of the anniversary on television.  Not only had they seen nothing in the news, they actually knew nothing about the occurrence at all - and, initially at least, thought I was making the whole thing up.

To understand how something like this could happen, you need to find out more about the country, and the incidents of June the 4th, 1989, and there are few better ways to do so than by reading Ma Jian's celebrated novel Beijing Coma.  The story is told from the viewpoint of Dai Wei, a young student who is in a coma after being shot in the head after the students occupying Tiananmen Square were forced to leave by the army.  Through Wei's reflections on the events leading up to his shooting, and the little he grasps from his sick bed, we are given two parallel stories of life in China: the tumultuous build up to an infamous historical event and the following decade of corruption and denial.

The happenings in Tiananmen Square are certainly impressive.  A group of students somehow mobilise a demonstration which grows and grows, gaining support from the common people of Beijing and students elsewhere in China.  At its height, Dai Wei, a security officer assisting the real stars of the movement, looks across the square and estimates that he's looking at around one million people...  Of course, dictatorial regimes are not as easy as all that to shift, and as the weeks pass, not only does the revolutionary fervour dull a little, but the regime starts to quietly plan the protests' end.

Meanwhile, back in Dai Wei's flat in the future, he lies on his solid iron bed, almost fully aware of what is happening around him but unable to communicate with the outside world.  From visits from friends (and his mother's increasingly bitter and confused ramblings), he gleans information about the aftermath of the protests and the consequences for his friends.  With the passing of the years, although the state's interest in him wanes slightly, there is a new threat to his safety.  The Chinese government wants to attract the Olympics to Beijing, and old, decrepit buildings like Dai Wei's home need to be knocked down in order to make way for a new, shiny capital...

At one point, the author makes a telling comparison, saying:

"Your body is a trap, a square with no escape routes." Beijing Coma (2008), Chatto & Windus, p.266

These parallel versions of the story, with Dai Wei trapped and besieged both in the square and in his bed, make up the most important message that Beijing Coma has to offer, namely that in a totalitarian state nowhere is safe.  You have no home when the state can kick down the door at any time.  You have no family when many parents will deliver you to the authorities themselves.  However, the coma could also be seen as an allegory for the whole Chinese populace, who know what democracy is (and want it) but are unable to do the slightest thing about it.  Ma Jian's book is really a portrayal of a whole country trapped in its sleep.

In contrast to the oft-quoted 'Tiananmen Square Massacre' label, most of the students were funnelled out of the square by the enormous number of soldiers who went in to clear it, and Ma Jian makes this very clear in the book.  Nevertheless, this novel is (as far as I'm aware) banned in China, where any mention of the 'June the 4th Incident' is strictly taboo.  In my opinion though, the writer's criticism is focused less on the events leading up to the clearing of the square and more on the blatant human rights violations both before and after the crackdown.  For those of us living in (imperfect) democracies, it's only when we read about what actually happens in other countries that we realise how lucky we are to live in a country where two groups of professional politicians take it in turns to sort out the country and make snide comments at each other.

While the criticism of the ruling party is a given, what is a little more surprising is the way Ma Jian handles the demonstrating students.  Instead of a desperate, freedom-seeking gang of desperadoes, what we instead see is a horde of power- and publicity-hungry egomaniacs, each one afraid of being left behind in the latest shuffle of organisations and functions.  Dai Wei's low-ranking role enables him to observe the power games from the inside and the outside, the ludicrous screaming matches over who is really in charge (while the tanks slowly roll towards the square) are reminiscent of the Iraqi Minister for (mis)Information's denials of allied successes.

In many ways, this portrayal of the inevitable corruption of the students' ideals is very similar to what happens in George Orwell's Animal Farm - in Beijing in 1989, some animals students are definitely more equal than others.  As the student leaders lose their heads, arguing amongst themselves, changing their minds on an hourly basis and (some at least) kowtowing to the government, Dai Wei, the foot soldier of the student elite, strides through it all, hard-working, uncomplaining.  Just like Boxer in Animal Farm (and we all know what happens to him...).

Part of the beauty of Beijing Coma though is its pictures of normal life carrying on in less-than-normal circumstances.  They may be taking part in one of the most famous revolutions of the twentieth century, but that doesn't stop the students from looking around for someone to spend a few quiet moments in a shady corner with.  Dai Wei himself is guilty of spending more than a few moments lusting after a fellow student (although when you think of what is to happen, you can hardly blame him).

Sadly, at the end of it all, we know what happened, and we know what is still happening.  Despite the protests, Tank man and the loss of the 2000 Summer Olympics, little has changed politically in China, and there seems little prospect of any progress in human rights issues in the near future.  However, if the Chinese people are looking for hope, they could do worse than look a few thousand miles to the West.  The current events in Egypt show that people will only put up with repression for so long...

40 - 'Soul Mountain' by Gao Xingjian (Review)

In February, I posted a review of Gao Xingjian's collection of short stories, 'Buying a Fishing Rod for my Grandfather', and, after recently reading 'Getting Rich First' (and with the twentieth anniversary of the Tiananmen square crackdown just around the corner...), I decided it was time to give Gao's Nobel-Prize-winning novel 'Soul Mountain' another try. As previously mentioned, his merits are not unanimously agreed upon, so I thought that this time I would read the book with one eye on the controversial topics and methods denounced by certain detractors. Well, that's my story, and I'm sticking to it!

The book itself is a fictionalisation of a journey by the author around rural China in 1982, not (as you can imagine) because he needed a break from the rat race, but rather because he had heard rumours that he was shortly to be denounced and brought in by the government (so you could say the trip to the country was for his health). Two main narrators, 'I' and 'You', move around the countryside, the mountains and the forests of southern China in search of Lingshan, the Soul Mountain of the title. On the way, they encounter many interesting, bizarre, sensuous and worrying people and try to document some of the disappearing customs of life outside the major cities of the east.

Gao (or his literary representatives) is searching for something, and it is really up to the reader to decide what the mythical Lingshan represents. The main character 'I' often reminisces about his childhood and seems to be searching for some remnants of a time which, if not idyllic, is certainly better than the present. This search for times past may just be a desire to escape the oppressive period he is living in, a very difficult one for a writer whose opinions do not exactly mirror those of the state. Unfortunately, he eventually realises that escape is impossible; however many mountains he climbs, the next one always looks bigger and better. In the end, it's time to return to Beijing, to go back to society, friends and warmth.

The book also portrays a search for a style of life which may be becoming obsolete. Throughout their travels, the protagonists (especially 'I') visit rural towns and villages, interview monks and shamans, attend religious and cultural festivals, request performances of old folk songs from venerable elders, and look for ancient folk songs to copy down for posterity. There is an obvious desire on the part of the author to preserve these old traditional ways in the face of both the cultural rewriting of history and the unstoppable march of modernisation and urbanisation.

Although the village scenes may appear to be unchanged from hundreds of years ago, there are many signs of the decline of rural life. Most of the bearers of the old stories and songs are old, and the new generation is not always interested in keeping the traditions alive; the government officials most definitely not.

Another threat (which has since become a reality) is the plan to create the Three Gorges Dam, a project which will necessitate the removal of millions of people and the destruction of many villages and cultural artefacts. The project is mentioned several times, usually in connection with a place of beauty or site of historical interest which will be lost under the new water level. The dam project seems to be the epitome of the aims of the Cultural revolution; the ability to wipe out all resistance in order to create a new reality, whatever the cost.

Enough description, let's turn to the criticism (and there is a lot of it). Before (and while) reading 'Soul Mountain', I did a lot of research (OK, I used Wikipedia and Google...) on what people thought about it, and, while many people loved it, there was a significant number of disgruntled readers. One of the most common criticisms concerned the use of the multiple narrators and the part they played. In addition to the aforementioned 'I' and 'You', Gao also created a 'She' (to accompany 'You') and a 'He' (when 'You' became too close to 'I' - bear with me here). At times, this does cross over into poetical lunacy, but I found the idea and use of 'I' and 'You' aesthetically pleasing and relevant to the book. 'I''s (my?) journey was more grounded in fact while 'You''s (your???) story was more mystical and slightly less connected to reality. This use of the double character enabled Gao to explore the mystical and the practical at the same time - and gave the story a lot of variety, too.

Another criticism, which I have a lot more time for, is that the book is lewd and, at times demeaning to women. Although there were obviously political issues which the writer had to face, it is very easy to interpret the story as one big mid-life crisis. The main characters seem to fall in and out of bed with women on a regular basis, and these women are portrayed as sensuous and cunning, with a hidden agenda of ensnaring a man in their web of romance. The need for women to possess a man (a desire which Gao does not appear too fond of ) is pitted against man's desire to do the deed and get out of there pronto (I paraphrase slightly). I am not the world's biggest feminist, so if I cringe slightly at certain sections, many people may find the author's treatment of relationships somewhat disturbing.

The big question though, the 555-page question in fact, is this: is 'Soul Mountain' even a novel? Several critics have answered in the negative, and, if you are expecting a linear progression with a clear ending, you will be very disappointed. Several parts of the book could be chopped up and reassembled in a random order without making much of a difference to the reading experience (which actually sounds like a fun, and rather Zen, thing to do). Cleverly, Gao anticipates this; one of the later chapters consists of a dialogue between the writer and a literary critic who throws this accusation at the author (but never quite makes it stick).

My answer would be: is it important? If the reader enjoys a book on any level, then the definition of the genre can be left to academics with time and research money on their hands. Despite the admitted flaws in the work, I found 'Soul Mountain' to be an interesting journey through a place which could soon be consigned to the pages of history and a time where writers had to be very careful about what they wrote. One thing I would add to that though is that knowing a little about the writer and the history of his country makes for a much better reading experience. The information I gathered through reading Gao's other novel, 'One Man's Bible' (no review because I read it last year: sorry!) and surfing the internet meant that my second reading of this book was a more rewarding experience than the first.

37 - 'Getting Rich First - Life in a Changing China' by Duncan Hewitt

As you may have noticed, I haven't really reviewed a lot of non-fiction in my little blog. There are two main reasons for that:

1) With my work and studies, I read a lot of journals and articles anyway.

2) I have very little reading time and a lot of fiction I want to read!

However, I do make the occasional exception, and 'Getting Rich First - Life in a Changing China' is one of them. Written by a former BBC World journalist, who has lived in China for over twenty years, this fascinating book gives a broad overview of contemporary life in the world's most populous nation. From urban growth to rural decay, from big business to fine art, the book's thirteen chapters each take one area of Chinese life and attempt to make sense of sky-high economic growth in a communist regime.

The topic of China is an interesting one, both personally and for my adopted homeland. Trade with China, especially in the area of natural resources, is one of the most important factors in staving off the worst of the Global Financial Crisis here in Australia, and our (fairly) new Prime Minister, Kevin Rudd (hands up who knew that; I can hear the embarrassed silence from here...), is a bonafide Sinophile, having studied Chinese at university and lived and worked in China before his political career reached such dizzy heights (don't laugh. Being Prime Minister of Australia is a serious job. Who do you think tells all the kangaroos where to go?). Just as Japanese real estate investment was the talk of the town a few decades ago, tales of takeover bids by Chinese companies are now regular fodder for newspapers down under.

I have slightly less of a background regarding China, never having been there and not being able to produce more than a few mumbled expressions ('Ni Hao' and 'Xie Xie' probably won't get me very far with anyone more fluent than a six-month old baby. Or a dog.). However, in my work in international education, China is an ever-present factor. The majority of the students at my college come from mainland China, and, as is the case with most Australian higher education institutes, these full-fee paying students are responsible for providing the college with funds which the government is less than keen on providing. In fact, providing higher education for overseas students is one of the top few Australian export industries (I feel so proud that I'm doing my bit for the country).

Education is a major topic in this book, and Hewitt details the possibilities and strains brought about by a freedom of choice. The children of many wealthier Chinese families, fearing the stress of punishing high school exams and dubious about the effectiveness of local teaching methodology, now have the possibility of jetting overseas to get their tertiary (and, in some cases, secondary) education. Of course, this involves substantial costs, and very few families can even consider this option, but the expense is not the only issue here. The book touches on the problems these exported students face in studying at a young age in a different culture, and, unfortunately, I see this in my role as a Learning Adviser on a regular basis. Many young Chinese students, sent over (often alone) to a country with a different language and culture, are simply not mature enough to cope with the style of independent learning required in the west and retreat into their shells, often failing to acknowledge the offers of assistance from their school or college until it is too late.

While this is unfortunate, some people could only dream of being in a position to be able to mess up their education in this way. Many Chinese children, especially in the countryside, do not even have access to a decent education, and this is also true for the children of economic migrants who flee the countryside for the giant cities of the eastern seaboard. Being registered in their home town, these new urban dwellers have no right to send their children to city schools and often face the choice between sending their children to sub-standard unofficial schools in the city or sending them back to their home town to live with their grandparents. Even if these children make it through a full course of education, the chances of obtaining one of the few places in a top university are extremely slight.

The most surprising topic laid bare in this book is the huge discrepancy in the treatment of urban residents and those who leave the countryside to join them in the big cities. Not only do country dwellers receive less welfare than their urban counterparts, but when they rush to the big city to join them, they are not eligible for even the little state help that remains from the good old days of true communism. This disparity in the treatment of the two groups resembles the way immigrants are treated in other countries; in fact, in a country the size of China, this is pretty much what they are (and, apparently, the locals can have the same attitudes towards the newcomers that many people can display towards foreigners).

This book is a great introduction for anyone with an interest in the country, and I don't really have the space (or the energy) to go into all the topics here now, but one last area I'd like to touch on is the media. The internet has made things a little more transparent despite the best efforts of the Chinese government to keep out information not considered 'necessary' for their citizens; however, one school of thought has it that by allowing a small degree of latitude, the government is able to concentrate on hiding more controversial topics. This was certainly borne out in a recent conversation at lunch with a friend of mine, a largely apolitical Chinese student who recently graduated from a Masters course at an Australian university. I'd read an article the previous week about the anniversary of the Tiananmen Square crackdown and the reaction to it by politicians and Chinese students in Australia, and (with a little caution) I told him about the news story and asked if he knew much about it. His reply?

He'd never heard of it.

12a (I'm very superstitious) - 'Buying a Fishing Rod for my Grandfather' by Gao Xingjian

Just over a week ago, I got the train into the city after my last day of work at the language centre to meet colleagues for drinks to celebrate the end of the traditional busy season. I got off at Melbourne Central, and (being a suburbanite who has no concept of how things work in the city) I took the first set of escalators I walked past and left my exit point from the station to chance. Luckily for me, I happened to dawdle past a 'Borders' book shop, and (being a suburbanite who lives a 40-minute drive from the closest 'Borders' shop), I decided to go inside and browse. Of course, fifteen minutes later, I walked out with two books, one of which I am about to review for you (aren't I kind...).

Gao Xingjian is a Chinese writer who, having had a few run ins with 'the party' (including the premature closing of his play; and Broadway producers think they have it tough...), decided to change his holiday in Paris to an extended stay outside China. He's still there. In 2000, he won the Nobel Prize for Literature for his novel 'Soul Mountain', and he followed this up with another novel, 'One Man's Bible'. I read both of these books last year, so I was happy to see virtually the only other translated work of his, a short story collection entitled 'Buying a Fishing Rod for my Grandfather', on the shelves of 'Borders'.

The book contains six short stories, most of which were written before his impromptu emigration, and it helps to have a passing knowledge of life under the Chinese cultural revolution to understand the subtle themes of the stories (or you can just read 'One Man's Bible', which is more of a memoir of that time). The brief tales mostly have an underlying sense of sadness and frustration, caused by a life of having to do what you are told and needing to keep your true thoughts and actions hidden from... well, just about anyone really. The sentences are usually deceptively simple, but the viewpoint often dances around, making it difficult for the reader to keep track of individual voices and views (which may well be the point).

The title story follows the reminiscences of a man who sees a fishing rod in a shop window and wants to buy it and give it to his grandfather in the country. This event sets off a trail of mingled memories and imagination, and a vain attempt to revisit the past. The sense of longing for a simpler time is palpable; the ending expected but poignant.

However, it's not all good with Gao. The final tale takes things a bit too far; a stream of seemingly unlinked, fantastic events bursts onto the paper and ends with a man sleeping on the beach forty pages later. The writer himself said that his works had no underlying meaning and were mainly about the language itself, but this story was everything non-literary types suspect books of being; overblown pretentious waffle.

Another area of concern was the translation. Translating novels into English is not as straight-forward as it may seem, especially if you have no desire to read a book written in a foreign language translated into another foreign language. Although the translator, Mabel Lee, is actually Australian, the language used can appear a little Americanised at times, at least for Englishmen like myself. There was also a story which interspersed commentary from a football (the round ball variety) match into the text, and I was less than convinced with Ms. Lee's rendering of the terminology.

Gao is lionised and idolised in the West; however, in the East, his fame is not quite as unanimously accepted. I have read some commentary which criticises his writing as obscene and boring - there have even been questions asked about his standard of Chinese. It is hard to know how much of this is genuine criticism though, and how much is funnelled through official mouthpieces. Most of his works are only published in Chinese in Taiwan and Hong Kong, and I haven't met any Chinese national who has actually read one of his books. The fact that the copies of his books which make it to the mainland are knock-offs may explain the language criticism.

Anyway, on the whole, I'm happy I got lost under Melbourne Central, and I look forward to re-reading (most of) these stories again soon. And, if you're good, I might even tell you (one day) what the other book I bought was...