'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...

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...