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Master for Quark6 Review essays s e The Subversive “Pleasure v i a t c n i of Thinking” e h p s c r e SEBASTIAN VEG p ang Xiaobo, born in 1952 in Beijing and one of in 1997, Wang Xiaobo the most widely read writers in China and the achieved a meteoric fame. WChinese-speaking world today, wrote in his His fiction and essays swept famous essay “The Silent Majority”: through campuses in China at a time when most students Most people are subjected to the benefits of speaking were disillusioned with the once they enter school at seven. In my case, I think it self-righteous social criticism Wang Xiaobo, happened even earlier, because ever since I can and cultural soul-searching Wang in Love remember, I was surrounded by people trumpeting at “roots” fiction of the 1980s. (3) and Bondage. the top of their voice, making a constant din. (…) He probably remains, ten From what they said, I learned that one mu of land years after his death, the most Translated and could produce 300 000 catties of grain; that was widely read and discussed with an when we began starving to death. All in all, since I author among students and introduction by was a child, I have not had much faith in spoken readers under 35, and has Hongling Zhang words. The sterner the tone and the louder the voice, gained recognition even from the less faith I had; this scepticism derived directly the initially hostile literary and Jason from my aching stomach. Compared with any act of establishment. Sommer, speaking, starvation always represents a deeper form Hongling Zhang and Jason Albany, SUNY Press, of truth. (1) Sommer’s translations of 2007, 155 pp. three short stories, the first of In the world in which Wang grew up, speaking, or “taking a Wang’s work to be published position” in public was what he called a form of tax due the in English, are therefore to be welcomed, not only because state, which he consistently refused to pay. As in Kundera’s Wang is a very enjoyable author (and he is generally well novels or Vaclav Havel’s plays, language itself seemed to served by the translation, which emphasises his colloquial have become absurd by virtue of the system in which it was style, perhaps occasionally to excess), but also because his institutionalised as a political tool. Luckily for his present- writing encapsulates something of the unique spirit of the day readers, Wang eventually decided to come out of his nineties, and the mixture of jaded street-wiseness, hilarious silence and publish the manuscripts that had accumulated in in its desperation, and down-to-earth sincerity that sets apart his drawers, noting that this represented something like “los - the young people who grew up after Tiananmen. Zhang and ing (his) virginity.” But he immediately added: Sommer have selected the stories from a considerable bulk of work, offering a good first taste of Wang’s style. Wang’s Opening my mouth to speak did not mean that I had Trilogy of the Ages , his major work, is well represented by reverted to the feeling that it was my responsibility to “The Golden Age ,” the title story of the first volume, which pay the tax; if that had been the case, everyone would deals mainly with life in Maoist and post-Maoist society, and have seen me producing a huge bin of rubbish. What (2) I felt was a different type of responsibility. 1. Wang Xiaobo, Siwei de lequ (The Pleasure of thinking). Kunming: Yunnan People’s Press, 2006, p. 3 (my translation). In a brief period of five years, from the time he published 2. Ibid ., p. 11. his first and most famous novella The Golden Age in the 3. For a taste of the enthusiasm aroused by his writings, see the recollections of blog - ger Michael Anti: “The Ten Years of how I cast off the influence of Wang Xiaobo ,” summer of 1992, until his premature death of a heart attack http://zonaeuropa.com/20070412_2.html. 109 N o 2008/1 Review essays s e v i a t “2015” from the second volume, The Silver Age , which rural collectivism. By equating the Maoist agrarian utopia – c n i e depicts a totalitarian future . (The third instalment of the tril - for which he shows not the slightest nostalgia – with an age h p ogy, The Bronze Age , consists of three novel-length narra - of unfettered, bestial, often fetishistic sex that reduces indi - s c r tives drawing on historical subject-matter, conceived as viduals to their biological functions, Wang Xiaobo suggests e p China’s answer to Braudel’s Civilization and Capitalism , that all utopian attempts to break out of the framework of and was no doubt difficult to fit into a short introductory vol - society are a form of regression. Retreating from the human ume. ) Finally, the translators have included the story “East world is impossible, but this is no cause for despair; as Chen Palace, West Palace,” adapted as a film by Zhang Yuan Qingyang puts it , “People live in this world to suffer torment (screened at the Cannes Film Festival in 1997, just weeks until they die. Once you figure this out, you’ll be able to after Wang’s death), using the film title rather than that of bear everything calmly” (pp. 112-113). In a final twist to the the original novella (“Sentiments Like Water”). The collec - story, Chen Qingyang, after spending the night with Wang tion, while true to Wang’s eclecticism, therefore creates Er in Beijing and before returning to Shanghai, reveals that what may be an overly fragmented impression of his writing in order to put an end to the repeated demands for more by taking the three stories out of their immediate context self-criticisms by the commissars in Yunnan, she wrote a final and chronological order. confession stating that she had “fallen in love” with Wang “The Golden Age” won a major prize in Taiwan and made Er when he carried her back down the mountain after their Wang famous virtually overnight: not without reason, given retreat into nature. Concluding that sex, even purely biolog - the combination of sexually explicit scenes and the sensitive ical and devoid of emotions, leads to love, Chen Qingyang subject of “educated youths” sent down to the country dur - symbolically brings both characters back to society. “Return” ing the Cultural Revolution for re -education by the “middle to an agrarian paradise, whether in its tragic Maoist version and lower-middle” poor peasants. The narrator, Wang Er (4) or in its ironic depiction of two “educated youths” living is sent down to Yunnan during the Cultural Revolution, just naked among the buffalo, is an illusion. like Wang Xiaobo himself from 1968 to 1970. Entrusted by Nonetheless, this unfettered sexuality reveals a deep-set anti- his production team with tending to the water buffalo, the authoritarian form of resistance of which every individual is 21- year -old Wang Er experiences a unique sexual awaken - capable when faced with persecution. Wang Xiaobo, when ing, manifested by an erection of cosmic dimensions, which studying at the University of Pittsburgh from 1984 to 1988, epitomises his vitality and resistance to authority; at the read Michel Foucault’s History of Sexuality , which was same time, the exaggeration of the image allows the author translated into Chinese in the late 1980s and analysed at to poke fun at the cliché of sensual awakening in the natural length by the famous sociologist Li Yinhe, who was also habitat of China’s remote “minority regions .” The narrative married to Wang. Wang found in Foucault the confirmation is two-tiered, shifting back and forth between the past – in that all political conflicts have a sexual dimension, although which Wang Er tries to flee into the mountains in the com - he resists (unlike many of his commentators) reducing the pany of a young female doctor, Chen Qingyang – and the Cultural Revolution to a form of sado-masochist interaction present, when the two protagonists meet again by chance 30 between the Chinese state and intellectuals. Reading years later. Although Chen Qingyang notes at this point that Foucault gave Wang a more general insight: relations of Wang Er has “become civilized” (p. 94), while “reliving power are never totally asymmetrical, and the “victim” (their) great friendship” by making love in a Beijing hotel, always has some sort of paradoxical leverage over his perse - they agree that the years in Yunnan represented their “gold - cutor . Wang repeatedly portrays victims who are sexually en age .” This raises the central question of Wang Xiaobo’s aroused by political humiliation, as Chen Qingyang is dur - story: how should the Cultural Revolution be remembered ing a struggle meeting (p. 110). This revelation informs 30 years later? (5) Wang’s view of the self-pitying trait in Chinese intellectuals. The answer suggested by the story is as provocative as it is singular, in a context in which historians continue to experi - 4. His name means “Wang Two”; as noted by Sommer and Zhang (p. ix),Wang Xiaobo ence major difficulties in conducting and publishing scientif - would also have been a “Two” in the family count of sons. This autobiographical slant is deceptive, however: there is a Wang Er in almost all of Wang Xiaobo’s stories, and they ic research on this period in China. Idealising the life of the all have slightly different life stories, occupations, love lives , and political or existential “educated youths” and their withdrawal from society (in the convictions.
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