I searched for this online and couldn't find it. So, here it is, transcribed. One day I will search for it again and forget it's here.

This one of several small essays that serve as the introduction to Sheng Keyi's Northern Girls (盛可以, 《北妹》). It's about the magical realist conclusion to the novel, which weirds out most readers after they read a very realist novel. Wu Qiang also takes a couple stabs at figuring out the metaphorical breasts of the novel. He argues that Qian Xiaohong, unlike the other women of the novel, never uses her "female capital"/"女性资本," and always retains her independence.

I guess I'd disagree that the novel is pure, pure realism and suddenly introduces fantastic, exaggerated elements at the end. The descriptions of Xiaohong's breasts often go beyond the boundaries set up by the more realistic, prosaic descriptions of other people and places in the novel. Even in the first descriptions, where they are imagined as deadly objects that seem to exist outside of the person of Xiaohong. And, unlike some critics (杨志广, "评盛可以的《北妹》"), I didn't find the ending particularly unexpected or unsatisfying.

But anyways:

魔幻的乳房

吴强

1.

原本是十分写实主义的文本——

在其中，我们可以读到所有最贴近生活的东西，无论是在乡下农村，还是在县成，抑或在S城；无论是男男女女，老老少少，无论是吃饭，工作，睡觉，甚至性交，我们都可以体会到一种触手可及的亲切感。这种亲切感不仅仅得益于作者所描写的内容：一个，两个，打工妹，在陌生的环境中奋斗挣扎的历史，这种历史即使不是我们亲身经历，甚少我们曾经道听途说，再或者，如果稍微一些好奇心和想象力，我们也能够在街头，在身边，在一张张脸上所能够加以揣测的；这种亲切感更来自于作者精湛的文笔，那种叙述故事的能力，且不说那种行云流水的笔调本身就显示了对语言不凡的把握能力，单是那些弥散着生活气息的措辞几乎令人羡慕作者的阅历以及将这种阅历转换到纸上的能力。如果说对语言的把握和措辞的精到还是一件可以通过锻炼达到的事情，那么，小说中俯拾皆是的比喻则更凸显了一种难以模仿的才能，短小精悍、干净利落，绝不夸张和矫揉造作，宛若灵光乍现。我差点忘了我从开头起要说的本意，让我赶紧回到起初

——在百分之九十的篇幅之后，突然安上了一个魔幻主义的尾巴。小说本来的结构就呈现一种回环往复：从女主人公钱小红一对并非来自遗传、可是却“两座山峰一样”的乳房开始，到变成异乎寻常、“两袋泥沙一样”的乳房结束。现实的乳房，经过生活的历练，居然成长为魔幻的乳房。

2.

魔幻的乳房似乎表达了作者的一种写作焦虑：

作者一直试图不动声色地叙说——有声有色的只是那些生动的语言、那些构筑小说大厦的材料；绘声绘色的只是那些牵扯到性的说法、情节，即便写到性，作者也都是尽量点到为止，并不渲染。所有这些都只不过是作者在表达，在用一种特殊的方式表达自己——可是，这种叙说在女主公命运的坎坷之后，突然变得高昂起来，作者似乎突然想站出来，站到读者面前来，来说明她想要说明的东西。作者在她的文本后面隐忍了许久、隐忍了大约十四万字，作者突然担心读者会迷失在她的文本之中，因为这个文本讲述一个个并不惨烈的故事时太行云流水了：它不够艰涩，它不够曲折，它似乎如同一马平川的河道，没有明礁暗礁挺立水面，没有流水能够激荡拍打，同时引起读者内心的汹涌澎湃。因此，作者突然让她的女主人公张出一对魔幻的乳房。起初，这对乳房还在正常允许的范围之内，要知道原本这对蓬勃的乳房曾经是钱小红无往而不利的“武器”。医生做了透视之后表示，只不过是“乳腺增生”，一种很平常的、几乎可以忽略的疾病，可是这种疾病迅速越过了正常的范围。它们甚至将钱小红拖垮，把钱小红变成一个被围观的怪物。

可是作者要表达的，或者说作者要表达的，或者再进一步说，作品所表达的究竟是怎样的焦虑呢，为什么会有这样的焦虑？

3.

解读这种焦虑需要冒一定的风险，如果碰上作者表示自己并无此意尤其如此。这就好比辩护律师在为被告寻找无罪的理由，被告突然全盘推翻一样。好在作品既然问世，就只能让别人来说三道四了，就像钱小红到了S城之后、再回家乡的时候，都只能让别人说三道四一样。

钱小红从来不是一个被动的女性，她做的一切都表明了她的不断进取之心。她坚决、果断、当机立断、敢作敢为。我们跟着她一起到S城这个陌生的城市、在陌生的人群中做陌生的冒险。从物质上来讲，虽然她混得并不十分成功，但至少不是很差，甚至她还曾经因为物质的满足而引发了精神提升的需求。她的冒险过程中总离不开男性的出现，男性出现的视野中又总离不开钱小红的女性资本：那对硕大的乳房。然而，钱小红从来没有过运用自己的乳房去为自己谋利益，从来没有把它们当作达成目的的工具；相反，在一切有可能被作为交换的时候，钱小红都拒绝了。这种拒绝因为旁边许多人的不拒绝而显得分外珍贵。钱小红的乳房从来都只是用来取悦自己，只是在她自己也有需求的时候，她才会奉献她的身体。这个时候，已经不能叫做奉献了，而只是享受。这种享受甚至就如同钱小红享受生活、享受新鲜的城市一样自然。她曾经有过渴慕，有过贪恋，甚至有过对家庭的朦胧温情，一旦有了这种愿望，钱小红都不约束自己、不压抑自己。男人看中钱小红的乳房，钱小红看中自己的感情。

以色事人，能得几多好？这是许多文学题材反复表达的题材，钱小红的故事中也不例外：既有和有妇之夫欢好，怀孕之后被弃之不顾的李思江，也有卖淫赚钱、却被谋杀的朱丽野，更不用提丈夫有外遇之后受冷落的吴樱和替他人生孩子赚钱的张为美——所有这些女性都并不幸福，因为她们运用她们的女性资本，只能够获得一时的利益，这种利益建筑在流沙之上，随时都会飘散。可是，钱小红并没有那样啊，钱小红始终保持着自己的独立。但是，钱小红照旧被欺负，被认识的、不认识的人，被亲近的人，被所有的人。

4.

因此，作者的焦虑是来源于生活的焦虑：即便女性保持了自己的独立，即便不将女性的（身体）资本用作交换的工具，女性还是避免不了在这个社会中不幸的命运；这种不幸的来源多种多样，你无法将之归纳为某一个人、某一件事，因为这个人、这件事都是在按照自己的、有道理的逻辑在运转。当你找不到谴责的对象的时候，这种痛苦才趋于最大化，因为这就是世界！在小说中，我们甚至看到，一贯保持乐观的钱小红，在这种对外在的谴责没有渠道发泄的时候，便转而郁积在自己的心胸中，充塞、膨胀，乃至变为毒瘤。魔幻的乳房，描述的就是这样一种魔幻的痛苦——说它魔幻，因为它不是人的智力所能够对付和排解的。

我不想人们觉得，经过我这样的解读之后，《北妹》只不过是一份新时代的“女性主义”宣言书。不，作者并没有这样地说教过，作者所想要传达的只是一种压抑的无奈——这种无奈在生活中难以排解，是这样的生活造成了这样的无奈，哪怕冒险，哪怕乐观，哪怕沉浸性爱，哪怕无所事事，都难以排解。

"墨书者，我冥冥中信任的只有鲁迅。" 张承志, 《静夜功课》.

"有过一个非常善意的外国人问我："鲁迅真可以被称做文学家吗？"－－他的意思我懂，他是指先生文章，犀利有余，政治论战、投枪匕首有余，而纯粹艺术意味的文学性不足。" 张承志, "致先生书（永远的鲁迅）."

There's a certain approach to Chinese literature that takes Lu Xun as the root of modern literature, 中国现代文学之父, placing him at the bottom of the flowerpot, and everything grows out of his writing. It's prevalent in Western writing on Chinese literature, and it's prevalent in Chinese writing on Chinese literature. Even when writers try to examine literary modernity in China, they are willing to shift Lu Xun around slightly, look at him from a different angle, but at the end of the day, he's still at the bottom of the flowerpot, or near enough. I think an example might be David Der-wei Wang and Repressed Modernities. He sometimes tries to get us to look at Lu Xun a little differently, reminds us of how important he was as a translator, or he just uses him as a foil for other late-Qing writing, but he's still in the center of everything.

I don't want to complain that I don't get or appreciate Lu Xun, because I sometimes do. But maybe I'd like to complain, or note in passing, that writing on Lu Xun usually leaves me cold, wondering what the writer is trying to tell me about what they dig about Lu Xun, and sometimes I just straight up disagree with it. I'd read more about Lu Xun than by him and I was eventually forced against my will to sit down and powerread a big chunk of his writing. It made the stuff I'd read about Lu Xun make even less sense, actually.

Following the new Lu Xun Complete Fiction of Lu Xun dropping, there've been quite a few essaylets and reviews... "China's Orwell" says Jeffrey Wasserstrom, who makes the point that you have to read Lu Xun to understand China. I meekly accept that argument simply to avoid having to argue against it, but I don't think he makes the argument very well-- I don't think very many people have made the argument very well, even if I tend to meekly agree with them.

The writer that comes closest to convincing me is Zhang Chengzhi. He's an interesting guy to write about Lu Xun, since he's basically a cultural conservative but one that looks back to a lot of early modern Chinese ideas that have basically fallen out of fashion or are unable to be re-investigated in any serious way. He's kind of a throwback to a time when intellectuals were trying to figure out exactly what the Chinese nation/state/literature would look like. You could call him a cultural critic, I think, and one of the few true cultural critics in the PRC. He self-consciously uses Lu Xun as his model for cultural criticism, outward looking, literary, harsh.

I wish I had the energy and talent to translate some of Zhang Chengzhi's writing on Lu Xun. I think all of it is untranslated, along with most of the best stuff Zhang Chengzhi has written. But it's still out there.

鲁迅路口, "Lu Xun Crossing" is a good start for understanding Lu Xun on the politico-literary revolutionary front. He uses the image of "Lu Xun Crossing," a bus stop near Lu Xun's old home, where all the buses of Shaoxing eventually end up making a stop, just like all Chinese writers. Zhang Chengzhi, like Lu Xun, spent time in Japan, and he takes that as his starting point of the essay, as well as the lives of Xu Xilin, Chen Tianhua, and Qiu Jin.

Even after all the research into Lu Xun, no one has sufficiently explored his bitter ten year sojourn in Japan: the prejudice that was called "difference," the self-reproach as he watched the murder of a countryman, the self-reproach that festered at the bottom of his heart from then on. What shadows floated around him? Chen Tianhua, who refused to allow himself to be insulted. Xu Xilin, who staged a contemporary recreation of Jing Ke's tragic drama. Qiu Jin, who had her life cut short-- his compatriots, whose lives bloomed and then withered. Their memories floated around him like shadows. Those shadows became what set Lu Xun apart from his fellow writers. Their shadows flickered in his heart like the lantern slide of the execution he had witnessed in Japan. They never let him rest.

This year, I ended up in Shaoxing again. I had already seen all those places travelers to the city should see, and I felt a sense of loneliness and emptiness in the city. Shaoxing looked like countless other cities undergoing the whitewash and updating of modernization. The architectural face of the city had become a contrasting construction and destruction.... At the gate to Lu Xun's old home, the roaring traffic of the city crashed like a wave against a roundabout, crashed like a wave against an opposing stream of tourists and gawkers. I hesitated for a moment and then decided, no, not again. I stepped out of the line without buying a ticket.

"致先生书（永远的鲁迅）" is a more literary musing on what Lu Xun might mean to contemporary readers, and contains the zing answer to the epigraphic question.

"我想，我可以反问那位不乏善心的外国人了：你真的可以被称为读者吗？你有什么资格议论别人的文学呢？"

"...洋溢的是对资本家的憎恨、对腐败官僚的痛斥和对劳动者的赞扬."

I've always seen Utopia 乌有之乡 as far left ideologues but not much more, connected to but vaguely divorced from more populist groups (who are themselves probably more than vaguely divorced from real, on the ground politics). Kinda like rightwing talk radio pundits, in my imagination: sentimental about the good old days, up to date on their team's skewed view of economics and elite-level government policy, but not really deeply concerned with the nitty gritty of poverty. There are vast differences between the American right and the Chinese left, but it's tempting to draw comparisons. (I wonder how the populist strength [ability to move people] of the Chinese left compares to the American right [or the Canadian right? or the Swiss right?] and how useful that comparison really is).

But... there's something kinda surreal about this piece from Utopia 乌有之乡. It details the performance of the New Workers Performance Troupe, a group of musicians and singers that does oldies-but-goodies singalongs and a good amount of socialist anthems. I don't know what strikes me as odd or awkward about it. But read it.



(Guitar reads: "This Machine Kills Fascists" "生活就是一场战斗").

Let's sing the songs of the worker:

On the evening of the 21st of November, the New Workers Performance Troupe held a groundbreaking performance at the Utopia film co-operative (电影公社). There was no spectacular stage show or parade of stars. There was a humble stage and a few people wearing Mao and Che shirts, a drum machine, a guitar and a bass, and some tambourines. But that narrow stage was the site of a thrilling performance of popular songs.

After the host's brief introduction, the recital kicked off with "Song of the Yellow River Boatman" ("黄河船夫曲"). As the singers reached the climax of the song, the audience seemed to forget the cold weather that they had braved to get here. The warm flush of excitement filled the room. Over the next three hours, the performers treated us to their versions of: "Remembering that year" ("想起那一年"), "Biao Ge" ("彪哥"), "Beijing, Beijing" ("北京、北京"), "Oh, Child!" ("孩子啊"), "Song for the Workers" ("劳动者赞歌"), and twenty or so others.

As we watched the performance, we truly understood that the New Workers Performance Troupe had left their hometowns and come to the city to make a new life, and the triumphs and sorrows of that new life. These songs are the cries and shouts of the worker. They are the marching songs of the worker. The audience was swept up in the performance, pounding out the beat of the songs and joining the choruses. When the Troupe performed "Song of the Communist Youth Leaguer" ("共青团员之歌"), several audience members vaulted onto the stage to join the performers in belting out the well-known song. The slowburning excitement suddenly exploded, and the final performance saw everyone present joining together to sing "The Internationale" ("国际歌"), pushing the evening to its climax. That night, the performers, the audience, and the workers owned the stage.

The whole night, I was continuously moved by the performers and their ballads of the working class. The New Workers Performance Troupe was organized by a group of manual laborers, who formed the group to bring artistic and cultural education to their comrades. The work of the founders is truly an inspiration: these men and women, who have come from their hometowns to an unfamiliar city to work the most difficult jobs there are. These songs represent their hopes and dreams for the future. Their songs have none of the stupidity of modern pop music, but instead are absolutely permeated with hatred for capitalists, bitter attacks on corrupt bureaucrats, and praise for the worker. During the performance, they explained that as well as performing, they also tutor the children of migrant workers.

The New Workers Performance Troupe realized that history will never record the songs of the people, unless the workers themselves make an effort to keep them alive. They have constructed a museum that will house the cultural and artistic products of the working class. These performers are truly amazing. Not only do they perform for the worker, spreading the songs of the people, but they also pitch in to help the lowest of the low, the workers that arrive from the countryside to work in our cities. This shows us the unselfish heart of the proletariat.

The entire existence of the New Workers Performance Troupe is a true miracle. After the Cultural Revolution, art and culture wandered into the realm of the market and fell under the spell of capitalism. Our new society is full of the love songs of the petty bourgeoisie. Songs in praise of the motherland have disappeared. The songs of the worker and the farmer have vanished. Where are the socialist anthems? This new troupe of workers and performers will surely give the Chinese left new inspiration and something to ponder. It is also surely a breathe of fresh air for the working class, who are fed up with songs of adolescent moaning and groaning, and the anthems of servility. The workers need their own songs!

Let us take these new cultural workers as our model. Let us go among the workers and peasants. Let us travel to the fields of the farmer. Let us go to the oil fields and the mines. Let us learn the lessons of labour and seek out new artistic material. Let us create new songs of the worker and sing the old ones.

Original is here: 我们要唱劳动者的歌.

This is the first two chapters Northern Girls 《北妹》 by Sheng Keyi 盛可以, published in 2004.

+++ First, it's an attempt to transform my complaints and griping about translations of modern Chinese novels into practical results. I think a book like this deserves modern, vernacular language. If it's dirty, let's make it dirty and not pull any punches. Let's not be too mechanical. Let's not bake all of the fun and sexiness out of the work.

If I got to take a red pen to English translations of Chinese novels, I'd be circling the tortured English grammar. Above all, I hope I've preserved the spirit of the writing of the original work while making a reasonably readable and compelling English text (while also trying not to make horrible, glaring mistakes in interpreting the Chinese). But I'd love to have people point out horrible, glaring mistakes and tortured English grammar.

+++ Second, I think it's a dope book. Check out the original, or wait for the publication of my translation.

+++

Chapter 1

I'm talking about Qian Xiaohong, that girl from Hunan.

I remember her hair had a bit of a curl and she kept it cut short. She had an oval face. She was around five feet tall. Just glancing at her you'd probably think she was from a good family. You'd think she was probably married. You'd think that maybe she had a couple kids at home. Nope. Not even close. Circumstances beyond her control forced her to live a messy, indecent life. What happened to lead her away from that world of good families and satisfied husbands and happy kids that we just imagined for her? It was her breasts.

To be honest, her breasts were absolutely perfect. Even looking at them through a layer of clothes, you couldn't help but imagine what it would be like to hold them in your hands. No matter where you live, you've got to fit in. But she couldn't fit in. Her breasts set her apart. Those breasts were offensive. Those beautiful breasts were an eyesore. How do you explain it? You can't. There's nothing moral or humane about the world. The people in her village and their own self-loathing had finally found an outlet, their base impulses finally found a communal orifice into which they could be released.

Xiaohong's mother died of liver disease. Some of the gossips in the village were quick to note that Xiaohong didn't really look much like her mom. They looked at her mom's chest, then at Xiaohong's and announced that there was no family resemblance whatsoever. After her mom died, Xiaohong grew up in the care of her granny. Her granny was made a widow at 30, and died at 80, and she was the only one that knew the secret of Xiaohong's breasts. She took the secret to her grave.

Starting in about fifth grade, there had been fingers pointing and eyes following Xiaohong as she walked past, words buzzing like flies behind her. The rest of the girls in the village slouched over, wore loose clothes. They tried to cover up. Xiaohong was the only one to abandon that childish modesty. She let the village know that she was a woman. Those breasts were God-given, but it was Xiaohong who had the guts to flaunt them.

By the age of thirteen, Xiaohong was fully mature. She had lost interest in classes. After she finished middle school, she quit going. She spent her days hanging around the village. Her father would come home a few times a month. On those visits, Xiaohong would sit in his lap, gazing up at him childishly. Those same gossips wondered what was going on between her and her father. It was kind of strange for a daughter Xiaohong's age to still be acting like that with her father.

Her father was a contractor and, when he started making money, he built a two storey house in the village. Both floors were built to be separate apartments, fully equipped, and done up in a style even nicer than the houses he'd built in the city. Xiaohong chose the top floor for herself. It had its own set of stairs leading up to it. Some of the boys in the village started to realize that her family had some money and they'd stop by, hoping to make her their girl. Lots of people said she'd been trying to find a man since elementary school, when she started hanging out with the older students. Later, she turned her eyes to the rougher boys in the village, who had already left school.

There was a perpetual wet spot in the middle of her bed. She'd drag men back home with her, bringing them up to her apartment to fuck. Summer nights, when she was sitting outside to enjoy the breeze, that's all she was thinking about. Even in broad daylight, she'd take them down to fuck inside the power station canal's runoff drain. She thought, Whatever, if people are going to say I'm fucking around, I might as well do it for real. There was talk in the village that her breasts were dangerous, something you shouldn't play with. They were a live wire, one touch and you'd be done for.

Qian Xiaohong had a sister, too. She was eight years older than her. When she was younger, the two sisters slept in one bed, with their granny. After their grandmother died, it was just the two girls, Xiaohong and her Sis. But her big sister got a boyfriend. Her sister didn't think Xiaohong was old enough to understand the difference, so the three of them slept together, pressed together in the same bed. Xiaohong didn't mind and brother-in-law didn't mind. You can't always trust gossip in a village like that, but in this case, it was plain as day that Xiaohong and her brother-in-law had something going on.

***

The year everything changed was the second year after Xiaohong's granny died. That spring, the fields were full of golden yellow canola. Nothing could hide in that ocean of yellow. It stretched to the horizon. It waved in the wind, abundant, stirring up feelings that were pushed down at other times. Xiaohong, her sister and her brother-in-law were working in the family's plot.

"I'm thirsty," Xiaohong said. She turned her ass around and walked back toward the house. The ass was a sign, waving back and forth in front of her brother-in-law's eyes. His head was all messed up inside, looking at that ass walking away from him. You know what they say about spring... the bees dancing over the flowers, the warm sun beaming down, the perfect time for love. That's what he wanted: love, to hold a woman in his arms. Every night, his wife lay beside him, as rigid as a corpse. His wife was just like these couple acres of land: he could plow them until he was exhausted, but that's about it. She treated their lovemaking like another of their chores; she'd lay there and he'd get it over with-- forget about anything like switching to another position.

He stood in the field, wondering what to do. Work was the furthest thing from his mind. He squinted and frowned and, after a while, squeezed out a fart. He said to his wife, straining to get out the words, "Stomach ache, gotta shit." His wife laughed and said, "Lazy as hell, hurry up and go shit." He ran back toward the house.

Xiaohong's sister kept working in the garden. One chili pepper seedling for every hole, placed as carefully as if she were embroidering. When she was done, she scanned the field like a proud mother and smiled happily, her face like a dark blossom in the sun. "Time to water and those two still aren't back yet." The wind blew across the field, filling her clothes with the yellow soil of the field. She was standing in the trench, where the seedlings were planted. She stood in the trench as if she were planted in it. After a while, she climbed out and stood on the edge of the trench. With her right hand shading her eyes, she squinted across the field at the house. She saw the shards of broken glass on the tops of the walls. The sunlight gleaming off of them enveloped the whole house in a golden aura. No sign of Xiaohong or her husband. What could they be doing? Something must be going on. She clapped the dirt off her hands and walked out of the pepper patch. She crept toward the house.

First, she checked for him in the bathroom. Empty. Maybe the kitchen? He was probably getting a drink-- nobody there, either. Her heart started to thud in her chest. She knew something was wrong. She climbed the stairs toward Xiaohong's room, leaning against the wall, a hand at her chest. She was breathing heavy. All that time in the sun had made her dizzy.

The door was unlocked, opened a crack.

"Get your clothes on. You gotta get outta here. Sis is gonna know something's wrong." "She doesn't know shit." "Well... if Sis finds out, what are you gonna do?" "Ain't gonna happen." "You probably got me pregnant this time." "I'll look after it!"

Xiaohong's sister stood outside, both legs trembling. She kicked open the door and marched into the doorway. The sunlight came through the window to shine on her, stretching and stretching her shadow into a long line behind her. The two faces on the bed, hidden in shadow, separated. A bee buzzed in through the window. Dust tumbled in a ray of sunshine. A sudden silence enveloped the room.　

Xiaohong didn't feel shy. She slowly and deliberately pulled on her clothes. Xiaohong had been scared of hurting her sister but now that they were face to face, she only felt relieved. Xiaohong didn't speak. After putting on all her clothes, she turned, back to the door, waiting for her sister to say something. Xiaohong's brother-in-law, completely naked, got to his feet. He looked like he'd just completed the most gratifying task ever accomplished. Xiaohong's sister looked blankly at her naked husband; her dark face was twisted into a frown. She tried to get a word to move past her lips. She suddenly cried out and covered her face. She ran from the room, crying.

When she got downstairs, she stopped. No, it shouldn't be like this. Why am I running away? It should be them! They should be embarrassed. They should be humiliated. They should be running away in shame. Those two: her husband and Xiaohong. Why am I running away like I did something wrong? She suddenly shrieked in a terrible voice, crying up at Xiaohong's room, cursing the two of them with the worst words she could think of: "You fucking son of a bitch... dirty slut... cheap whore! Filthy cunt. You--you--you goddamn worthless fucking slut." She shouted at them, but she was thinking of the villagers who lived nearby. As she hoped, the neighbors started to pop out of their doorways like ants coming out of a hole in the ground. They arrived one by one and gathered in front of the building.

[Used to have chapter 1, chapter 2 here. But edited for now. If you want to check it out, e-mail me: dylan_levi_king@hotmail.com].

Glancing at the 24 books on the long list for the 2008 Mao Dun Literature Prize 茅盾文学奖.

2. Mo Yan: Forty One Cannons, Shanghai Literature and Art Press, July 2003. 莫言： 《四十一炮》，上海文艺出版社，2003年7月.

+++ This is the opening of the novel:

A winter morning ten years ago--What year was it? How old were you? The question floated up, sounding as if it had emerged not from a man, but from a dark and forgotten cave. It was Lan, the wanderer, the vagabond, the homeless old monk, who had finally come to rest in this rundown temple. I shivered. Even in the humid mid-summer weather, I shivered.

That was 1990, old monk. I was ten years old, I mumbled. The people in my village said that this temple was built by the ancestors of Old Lan. Even though it was set down on a busy road between two small towns, there was always an air of desolation about the place. It was silent. Few visitors stopped in to burn incense. Dust covered everything. I looked up at the temple's enclosing wall. Resting in a comfortable spot atop it, lay a girl in green. She had a flower stuck in her hair, and a plump, round face. Her head rested on milky white hands. On one finger was a ring, which flickered garishly with the sun's reflection. That girl... she reminded me of the Lan family, their family mansion that got turned into a school after the Communists came. I heard lots of stories about these girls. And these sorts of girls were always in my imagination. They were the ghostly shapes that flitted in and out the old mansion after midnight, shrieking and howling.

The old monk sat in front of a statue of Wutong, serene on his rotted rush cushion, reminding me of a sleeping horse. He was motionless except for the hand that worked the string of purple prayer beads. His old robes looked as if they were made of flimsy rice paper, about to be torn to shreds by the slightest movement. Flies buzzed around his ears, but they ignored his bald, shiny head and greasy face. In the temple courtyard was a lone gingko tree, upon which a bird perched, singing his song, which was occasionally answered by the meowing of a cat. Two wild cats, a male and a female, slept in a big hole in the tree's trunk. Eventually, a loud, satisfied meow floated into the temple, which had been preceded by the sudden sound of flapping wings. Instead of saying that I smelled blood, I'll say that the memory of the smell of blood came to mind. I didn't really see the scattered feathers or the tree branches splatted with red blood, but I was picturing it in my mind. Now, the male cat was perching on the body of his prey, meowing out to the female cat. The female had lost most of her tail and now looked more like an immense, fat rabbit.

After I answered the old monk, I waited for more questions but none came. He had already shut his eyes and I wondered if he had even spoken or if I simply imagined it. Had he really suddenly cracked open his piercing, clear eyes and spoken? The old monk flared his nostrils slightly and I saw two tufts of dark black nose hair. They looked like the long black tails of crickets.

Old Lan was the descendant of the village's famous Lan family, a family that had produced so many great men. In the Ming, they produced a graduate of the provincial imperial examination. In the Qing, one of their sons was a graduate of the Hanlin Academy. During the Republican Era, they gave the world a great Nationalist general. After Liberation, they gave us a whole bunch of landlord class counterrevolutionaries. After the ravages of class struggle, there wasn't much left of the family, except Old Lan. When I was a kid, I remember his heavy sighs: Nothing ever stays the same. I heard Old Mengtou sighing the same sigh: One generation worse off than the last.

+++ Wang Huilan (王惠兰): The novel starts off looking like another expansive epic novel from Mo Yan, exhibiting the author's talent for describing life among the people. But the story gets bogged down; the reader begins to wonder what's behind the curtain, what's really behind all these impressive set pieces? The narrative skips along the surface of a deeper story, never quite getting below the surface. Only when we come to the story of the "Cannon Kid" Luo Xiaotong do things pick up, as the reader is endlessly regaled with descriptions of food and sex-- a waste of Mo Yan's talent. This relishing of the sensual is even more prominent than in Mo Yan's previous works and seems to bespeak an intellectual hollowness in this novel. One wonders whether or not this novel would have been more effective as a short story. The novel falls down on its superficiality, but it also falls down on form. The impressive descriptions of consumption (of food and sex) are lifelessly conventional. It's not a thoughtful novel. In fact, Mo Yan admitted, "I take thoughtlessness as an honor, especially when it comes to writing novels." Trust me when I say that I know what Mo Yan is trying to say here, but I worry that this novel carries that credo to an extreme and becomes a beautiful body without a skeleton to hold it up. (北大评刊组: 茅盾文学奖24部推荐作品点评（修订）).

+++ I'm worried that Wang Huilan's criticisms are describing what I liked about the novel and what I like about Mo Yan in general. It's full of sex. It's dripping with blood. (Luo Xiaotong talks about how he came to be a butcher... If I had grown up somewhere else, I doubt I would have turned out this way. Meat. I have a desire, a lust for eating meat. My village ran a slaughterhouse, so it absolutely revolved around meat. Meat, still on the hoof, being herded to slaughter. Meat, laid on a slab. Meat, drenched with blood, or cleaned, gleaming red. Meat, pumped up with water or sulphur dioxide or formaldehyde, or just pure, raw flesh. Meat, pork, beef, lamb. Donkey meat, camel meat....).

So, 1. I dig the meatiness of the descriptions of food and flesh, the horny lyrical description, tummy rumbling realism. 2. I dig that naïve narrator. 3. I dig the way Mo Yan represents the temporal and spatial wandering. You can write "莫言式" "Mo Yan style" and have people know what you mean. And I guess I'm sort of an unashamed fan of 莫言式 fiction.

Why is this different from other Mo Yan novels? Why is the sex and meat boring for Wang Huilan (and not just him). It's not Republic of Wine-style farce, not Big Breasts and Wide Hips-style metaphorical/psychoanalytical tits and ass stuff. It's--at least superficially--a neater, more direct realism. It probably comes closest to The Garlic Ballads (and it's set in about the same time period of post-'78 rural reform).

But it's the Mo Yan universe, where human desire is what drives everything and a lot of the novel is, as always, about desire and trying to control desire and the results of letting things get crazy. David Der-Wei Wang calls it Mo Yan's "spectacle of desire," and this is a continuation of that spectacle, which is fascinating to me and I think produces compelling fiction.

+++ What does it mean that Mo Yan is probably the best known Chinese novelist in the West, the one with the most works available in translation? What does it mean that this is one of the few titles on the 2008 long list that's a pretty sure bet for an English translation?

Glancing at the 24 books on the long list for the 2008 Mao Dun Literature Prize 茅盾文学奖.

1. Wang Lichun: Bonfires on the Moon, The Writers Press, September 2005. 王立纯: 《月亮上的篝火》，作家出版社， 2005年9月.

Wang Lichun's 王立纯 Bonfires on the Moon 《月亮上的篝火》 is a novel about a petroleum development campaign (石油大会战) on the grasslands of Inner Mongolia in the 50s and 60s. It's about a canteen chef and other petroleum workers, and all reviews point out that it's actually about Daqing, the Communist-era model of industry.

A resemblance to Chinese-style socialist realist novels has been mentioned by more than a few reviewers, who mention it explicitly (usually the critics that don't like it) or find a way of suggesting it (usually the ones who dug it).

Zhang Guangming (张光明) calls it "...a panoramic vision of thirty years of history, a history that centers on the exceptional character of very ordinary people. The story focuses on a canteen chef, who battles against all odds and becomes a sort of heroic Everyman. The writer has a very fluent command of the language, humor, and rhythms of everyday life, and uses this skill to take us on a tour of three decades of history. But the exceptional character of the common man that he seeks to explore is rendered naively. The writing seems to lack any energy or literary flair. The writing style begins to lack appeal as the goodness of everyone involved begins to read like a work of propaganda." (北大评刊组: 茅盾文学奖24部推荐作品点评（修订）).

He says, "the 'propaganda mentality' ('宣传意识') of good people/good things/good attitude (好人好事好精神) pervades the entire work."

Han Zuorong (韩作荣), editor of Renmin Wenxue (《人民文学》) disagrees: "Writing about common people is important and necessary but it carries its own risks. A good writer knows the place he's writing about. A good writer isn't merely a tourist. A writer can only accurately depict the working class if they have a real connection with, and sympathy for, the working class. When writers describe the ground beneath their feet, there is always real emotion in the writing. If we compare this with conventional novels, there's a big difference. This book is an epic history, a history of mens' souls. The writing truly matches the writer's grand goals." (点燃“月亮上的篝火”).

I'd say the "risks" he's talking about are having the work read like a good people/good things/good attitude socialist realist novel, right? But at the same time there's praise for the characteristics of conventional Chinese socialist realist novels that he likes: an earthiness and connection to the place (ie. use of local dialect, local colour), and a focus on the working class. Han Zuorong doesn't really explicitly mention class, either (in my translation, he does), but rather uses a more neutral term that just means working class without saying working class.

I would also say that it breaks the rules of the Chinese socialist realist novel, if you really want to talk about the rules. I would say Chinese literary theory is--or was-- pretty strict on a definition of socialist realism, and the Chinese developed a socialist literary theory more stringent than anywhere else. Wang Lichun first popped up in the '80s, when people sat around figuring out what you could or couldn't write and still follow Chinese-style socialist realism (see: Cycles of Repression and Relaxation: Politico-literary events in China, 1976-1989, He Yuhuai; "Politics and Pathos: The Reappearance of Tragedy in Chinese Rural Literature," Rosemary A. Roberts, which mentions Wang Lichun's "The story of the 'President of Turkey'" 《“土耳其总统”的故事》). So... I think he knows what propaganda novels look like and I think he knows the form of the socialist realist novel very well and when he borrows from them, he does it very intentionally, but very carefully.

Zhang Guangming gets it right in that the novel isn't super progressive or anything and it pushes the same buttons as a lot of other nostalgic Mainland writing, that kind of blurry picture of a time that's passed into history. It's a down-to-earth historical novel without the camp of a lot of other novels on the 2008 prize's long list. It's well written and it's really, really funny and worth checking out. Didn't win the Mao Dun prize but it's just waiting to be turned into a TV miniseries.

A paragraph or two about Wolfgang Kubin.

+++ Critiques of Chinese cultural products are often statements about Western cultural concepts. When reading Kubin declaiming against the wasteland that is Chinese literature, I'd argue that there's not much to be learned about the state of Chinese writing or what motivates Chinese cultural production, but a lot to be learned about Western cultural prejudices and Western literary ideology. What Kubin is doing is setting up Western freedom against Eastern conformity, setting up an imaginary West that is built on individual freedoms and an imaginary East that is tightly controlled by shady bureaucrats. The West is a place where new literary styles flourish, while in the East, says Kubin, the writers are still using the literary forms of the 19th century and earlier. The West is envisioned as multilingual and multicultural, able to interact with the world and its literature, while China is monolingual and monocultural, closed off from the world, a literary 锁国.

+++ Kubin worries about the perception of Chinese literature as "matériau sociologique," while in the same breath treating Chinese literature as nothing more than "matériau sociologique." Kubin's criticisms of Chinese literature rarely move beyond the realm of crude sociology. He takes a run at Han Han and Guo Jingming, and superficially criticizes their literary output but in the end, he isn't criticizing them or their writing, but their entire generation: "Leurs livres sont à l’image d’une génération narcissique et égocentrique – celle de l’enfant unique qui avait pour lui seul deux parents et quatre grands-parents." Kubin seems unable to wield any form of literary criticism beyond the most elementary. He is very comfortable dealing with "matériau sociologique" but not so much with matériau littéraire.

This tendency, to move away from literary theory and into the world of crude sociology, when discussing Chinese literature (the bits of it you don't like) is, like, something approaching a pandemic. I've had conversations with respected, perfectly rational people, serious people who have produced fat books on contemporary Mainland Chinese literature, and when the conversation turns to certain time periods (post-'49, or post-'78, or post-'90s), all literary theory goes out the window. To them, literature stops in 1949, or stops in 1978, or stops in 1999. Or, there are merely a few bright little lighthouse lamps on barren islands surrounded by a vast sea of Maoist ideology, or market forces, or the narcissism of the new generation. And, again, everything is viewed thru the lens of Western cultural concepts (or, as most Western writers would like to see them: universal cultural concepts).

+++ I've been reading a lot of Republican Era literature and, at the same time, Lydia Liu's Translingual Practice: Literature, National Culture, and Translated Modernity, which discusses the ways in which literary theories and methods traveled to China from the West. Reformist Chinese writers on Western literature have a few things in common with Kubin, in the way they look at Western literature and Western literary theory from a distance (even if it wasn't always a geographical distance). The writing says a lot more about a Chinese conception of literature and Chinese cultural concepts than it does about the topic they're ostensibly writing about, European literature.

+++ Kubin sucks.

Always complaining. / 李永平 vs. Goldblatt / 龟公 / Red Spring and Bluefield Jade.

刘老实看了他一眼，提起篮子，低着头走出了巷口。春红呆了呆，手一伸就往头上拔下了一根银发夹来，剔了剔牙，呸的一声啐出巷心。

「黑脸无常，一天到晚蹲在棺材店里，刨棺材板啊，刨得老娘我心里发毛！」
「春红姐，噤声，不要惹他。」
算命先生端详着她。
「棺材佬，死人。」
「春红姐，早晚阎王会出票，叫他拘了你去。」
「去干甚么，开窑子? 」
「春红姐。」
「嗯? 」
「你今年贵庚了?」
「龟公?」
「我说，春红姐，几岁了?」

《吉陵春秋》 (1986), 李永平.

Liu Laoshi merely glanced at him before picking up his basket and walking out of the lane with his head down. Red Spring froze momentarily, then pulled a silver clasp from her hair and began picking her teeth with it, stopping to spit in the lane.

"You black-faced angel of death! Hunkering down there in your coffin shop all day long, working your plane on those coffin boards until I get a creepy feeling!"

"Quiet, Red Spring, don't taunt him." The fortune-teller gave her a long, hard look.
"That coffin man can drop dead!"
"Sooner or later King Yama will summon you, Red Spring, and that man will carry you off."
"What would Yama want me for? To set up a whorehouse in hell?"
"Say there, Red Spring."
"What?"
"You're how long here?"
"Did you say whoremonger?"
"What I mean is, Red Spring, how old are you?"

Retribution: the Jiling Chronicles (2003) (Howard Goldblatt and Sylvia Li-chun Lin).

This might sum up everything that makes me hate reading Chinese-to-English translation. Mainly, because I think it ignores the point of translating a Chinese novel into English.

1. Just look at the little joke that ends it. What's wrong with it? First, I guess it's a neat trick but I'd like to know who would get it, without having read the original. That's the crucial thing! It's not an awkward representation of the original phrase and it doesn't even make sense in English. "You're how long here?" Read that to yourself a couple times.

Second, while stretching to make the line work, the meaning is almost lost entirely. "You're how long here?" doesn't ask her age, and, if we want to get really specific, a 龟公 is not a "whoremonger."

So, what can you do? Gloss it, "Hongchun didn't understand his flowery language," whatever. Cut it out, just let him ask how old she is. Life is tough, you can't put it all in there. It's a translation. Or, hey, if you love the sound of the original, get out the italics and asterisks and leave the original soundalikes (guigeng/guigong) in your translation, along with footnoted explanations, and it's all good. But don't do it like that. I can't understand what's going on there.

2. "You black-faced angel of death! Hunkering down there in your coffin shop all day long, working your plane on those coffin boards until I get a creepy feeling!" I want it a lot simpler. This translation goes as far as almost preserving the original text's word order, almost word-for-word. I want to read: "You give me the creeps, sitting in there all day making coffins." (Maybe that's too simple but...) The text lets us know that she's an uneducated prostitute, so maybe we could let her talk like one in English. Maybe we could make different people talk in a different tone, use our English ear to turn a Chinese conversation into an English conversation.

3. Red Spring is... do I have to explain how much this sucks? We've put a man on the moon and we're still having characters named Bluefield Jade and Loofah Gourd Autumn in English translations? It's just hard to read, and it's stupid. Does this happen in translations between any other languages? A Chinese translator would never render "Noah Baker" as 圣经里的先知·面包师.

If you abandon completely the goal of turning a Chinese text into a readable, somewhat natural English text, what are you doing? It's too easy to sit down and pick apart a short excerpt, but the larger text, as a whole, is overwhelmingly the same: overliteral, unnatural, a failure as an English text. It's too easy, even, to pick apart a single work, maybe.

Have you ever read old-ass translations of, like, socialist realist novels from the '50s, the ones published by Foreign Languages Press or whatever? They were all done by some smart-as-hell socialist intellectuals that were about to have their books burned and be sent to Qinghai. The translators' first language was Chinese, so the translations are always very formal, kinda stilted, with peasants talking like some upperclass English gentleman, because that's the only English they knew, basically. They're readable and stick to the script pretty closely. But the English text is perceptibly off, and the tone of the original, which is the last thing you want to throw out, isn't preserved in the translation in any way, and, all I can say is that they serve as a good reference, if you want to read the original. I can't say that Howard Goldblatt, an American author whose mother tongue is English, translating a modernist Taiwanese novel, does any better than those heroic translators of the socialist realist novels of the 1950s.