The Best Chinese Fiction You’ve Never Read PAPER-REPUBLIC.ORG About Us Paper Republic is a website run by translators of Chinese literature located all over the world. We have compiled this package of books we feel worthy of translation in for- eign languages with an eye both to diversity of subject mat- ter, and consistent quality. All books in this package have been included with the knowledge and consent of their authors. Substantial trans- lation samples for each book are available for download from paper-republic.org. You can contact us via the website, or email us at [email protected]. This package was created using funds from the Arts Coun- cil England. Contents Happy ‡ Jia Pingwa 1 Abandoned Capital ‡ Jia Pingwa 4 Screwed ‡ Han Dong 6 Truth and Variations ‡ Li Er 8 Northern Girls ‡ Sheng Keyi 11 Common Sense ‡ Leung Man-Tao 13 Ball Lightning ‡ Liu Cixin 15 Happy ‡ Jia Pingwa Happy, by Jia Pingwa 2007 Writer’s Publishing House 320pp Jia Pingwa Jia Pingwa is the last of China’s contemporary ature, and each of his books is eagerly anticipated by literary greats to be discovered in English. His in- readers, critics and journalists. Though the English fluence and reputation within China is on par with translation of his novel Turbulence won the Pegasus that of Mo Yan, Yu Hua and Su Tong: he is a regular Prize for Literature in 1991, he is better known in recipient of most of the country’s top prizes for liter- other languages, particularly French. 1 Happy ‡ Jia Pingwa Jia Pingwa’s oeuvre is extensive and varied, in- women, dreaming of the day when they might rise cluding novels, novellas, short stories and essays. high enough in the ranks of the trash-collecting hier- Both he and his writing are identified with China’s archy to become “trash kings”. Wufu and Happy are countryside–not the bleak scrabble of Great Leap not equally ambitious, however–Happy is a dreamer, Forward peasantry, but the bloody, mythic, richly- prone to ferociously optimistic flights of fancy, imagined roots of China’s rural civilization. His whose sole ambition is to become a “city man” (and subjects range from the effects of modernization who believes that his sale of a kidney to a Xi’an resi- on Chinese society (Ruined Capital), to the ancient dent has secured him that right). Wufu, on the other agrarian sensibilities at the heart of Chinese culture hand, has humbler aspirations, and can’t shake the (Qin Opera), to the tragedies and absurdities of ur- feeling that he was never meant to leave behind the banization (Happy). The majority of Jia’s work is set simple pleasures of village life. in and around Xi’an, once the capital of China’s fa- Jia Pingwa’s latest novel Happy is a departure bled Tang dynasty, now something of a backwater. from his signature lyric, semi-mythic style. The ma- His use of Xi’an and its surrounding countryside as a jority of the work consists of the episodic adventures setting in which to examine China’s rural/urban di- of Happy and Wufu as they navigate their baffling vide gives his works a depth and relevance beyond new home, encountering a wide cast of characters the spectacle of development limited to Beijing and both cruel and kind, wooing women far above their Shanghai. status and doing battle with corruption and bureau- cracy. While the story as a whole tends towards the tragic, individual chapters are narrated in a spare, Happy comedic style, exhibiting Jia’s mastery of scene and Happy begins as Liu Hawa, aka ‘Happy’, tries to character, and disguising a penetrating critique of smuggle the body of his friend Wufu home on the social transformation as a rollicking picaresque. train. Happy and Wufu are peasants who came to The deep-seated spiritual anxiety caused by Xi’an from the countryside in search of a better China’s transformation into an urban society has life, and from the opening chapter the story back- been a common theme in Chinese literature of the tracks to their arrival in the city and their early days past few decades, but few writers can match Jia (who as trash collectors, roam the streets of the modern continues, somewhat tongue-in-cheek, to identify metropolis, gawp at fancy hotels and even fancier himself as a peasant) for insight and perspective. In 2 Happy ‡ Jia Pingwa the character of Happy the author has concentrated A film version of Happy, directed by Ah Gan all the ambitions, misconceptions, vanity, earnest- (Ghosts, 2002), and starring Guo Tao (Crazy Stone) ness, pride and principle that describe the psychol- was released in February, 2009. ogy of China’s newest urban population. 3 Abandoned Capital ‡ Jia Pingwa Abandoned Capital, by Jia Pingwa 1994 Writer’s Publishing House 300pp Please see Jia Pingwa’s author profile on page 1. resulting in a soft ban that lasted until the publi- cation of a new edition in 2009. Though the con- troversy centered around (relatively harmless) sexual Abandoned Capital content, creating a reputation for lasciviousness that The book that gained Jia Pingwa his reputation as unfortunately persists today,it is not for the naughty a Chinese literary giant, Abandoned Capital created bits that this novel is considered one of the mas- enormous controversy upon its publication in 1994, terpieces of modern Chinese literature. The char- 4 Abandoned Capital ‡ Jia Pingwa acters of Zhuang Zhidie, the literary lion of Xi’an, of George Eliot, the dense realism of Thomas Mann. and Zhou Min, the young challenger from the coun- Its closest correspondence might be to Stendahl’s tryside, have become bywords in the discussion of Rouge et Noir: the story of an idealistic young Chinese culture and its discontents, and the book’s man’s journey to the center of culture and learning, richly textured narrative style has served as a model where he finds not the elegance and elevation he had for many authors who came after. dreamed of, but instead a slightly sordid collection Though written in the 1990s, Abandoned Capital of hypocrites and libertines basking in the fading is more in company with European literature of the glow of an earlier golden age. 19th century: the social and psychological tapestry 5 Screwed ‡ Han Dong Screwed, by Han Dong January 2010 Shaanxi Normal University Press 250pp Han Dong Born 17 May, 1961 in Nanjing. Han Dong’s par- as one of China’s most important avant-garde po- ents were banished to the countryside during the ets, and is now increasingly influential as an essay- Cultural Revolution, taking him with them. Follow- ist, short story writer and novelist. He is stead- ing the Cultural Revolution he studied western phi- fastly opposed to the Party-controlled writing “es- losophy, and became a full-time writer in 1993. tablishment” and the wholesale “commercialization” Han Dong has been well-known since the 1980s of contemporary literature. His deceptively simple, 6 Screwed ‡ Han Dong subtle style of writing has acquired a cult following reported, some of the villagers concoct a plan: to among young Chinese writers and readers. install the hapless Xiaofei as a substitute husband. His chief works include collections of poetry,es- Xiaofei is released and guided through pitch dark- says, short stories and novellas, and four full-length ness to the widow, who eventually succeeds in se- novels. Among these, Banished! won the indepen- ducing and “marrying” him. The next morning, the dent ‘Chinese Language Media Novel Prize’ in 2003. brother’s corpse is discovered in the river, and hur- Its English translation, by Nicky Harman, was pub- riedly identified as that of Xiaofei. Xiaofei assumes lished by the University of Hawai’i Press in 2008 and the identity of the dead brother, enabling the elder was long-listed for the Man Asia Literary Prize that brother to escape justice. year. Six years pass with Xiaofei in semi-hiding, and Mao’s policy of sending all high school students to the countryside is reversed. But to return to Nan- Screwed! jing and his former life, Xiaofei needs documents A Chinese Midnight’s Children? A post-modern take which, of course, can’t be obtained since he has been on Metamorphosis? There are many resonances in declared dead. He tracks down his former perse- Han Dong’s fourth novel, Screwed!, yet this is a cutor, the sinister Party official, Wang, who bullies wholly original work. him into confessing to the subterfuge. The surviving In 1968, Xiaofei, along with millions of other brother is then finally arrested for murder… high school students, is sent on Chairman Mao Ze- Han Dong is well-read in contemporary West- dong’s orders to settle in remote villages. To relieve ern literature, citing Kafka, Murakami, Kundera and the monotony of their new country life, he and his Garcia Marquez as influences, yet his is a wholly friends start rumours that they have been screwing original voice. In Screwed!, Han Dong’s experiments the villagers’ only ox, Girlie. The joke goes wrong with the novel form have produced a distinctive and when Girlie falls sick, and the blame is pinned on Xi- highly readable narrative. The story moves with as- aofei. He is brutally interrogated and found guilty of surance between the credible and the incredible, re- sabotaging production by raping the animal. For this alism and fantasy, and builds suspense right up to offence, he faces execution. Coincidentally, that day the last page. Like much of Han’s previous work, there is a fight in a village compound shared by two Screwed! is bitingly satirical, yet also softened by af- brothers and their families.