Chairman Mao with Pig-tails

Chairman Mao is edited by the imminent sinophile Howard Goldblatt. Goldblatt is that type of scholar who oozes love for his subject, and one senses this in his selections for Chairman, a book that, despite its title, is far from political. In his introduction, Goldblatt explains this:

Mao must have know that the only truly dangerous writing in a totalitarian society is that which ignores politics altogether, literature that serves art, not society

This thought forms the fulcrum on which these stories teeter. These are not political diatribe, but are rather the art of a generation emerging from the morass of an overly politicized society.

The collection is a bit dated. It was published in 1995, and most of the stories were written in the immediate aftermath of the Tiannamen Massacre. Yet there is here a playfulness, an emerging sense of a literary aesthetic, that stokes my already growing excitement with contemporary Chinese fiction.

A few stories stand out:

“The Brothers Shu,” by Su Tong

This story solidifies my belief that Su Tong is China’s greatest living writer. In a manner characteristic of his stories in Raise the Red Lantern (the title story of which is my least favorite Su story) and Rice, Su gets into the minds of two families who live in a small town in rural Southern China. Tong is to Southern China and Chinese Literature what Faulkner is to the Southern U.S. and American Literature, viz. its master story teller—both advocate and critic and a damn fine wordsmith. Su’s brilliance lies with his characters and his compassionate submission to their whims and fancies. The man tells tragedy with a mix of humor and matter-of-fact narration that gets deep in your mind. His stories take on the shape of memory.

“When I Think of You Late at Night, There’s Nothing I Can Do: Five Tales of the Wen Clan Cave Dwellers,” by Cao NaiQian

There is still in Chinese literature a palpable connection to the land. In much of the literature of China, both past and present, an agrarian realism looms over the storied landscape. The best of Chinese writer’s know how to tap this feature and use it as the fourth-wall in their stories, without ever touching the subject in a direct thematic way. Cao’s story does just this. Laying forth five stories of men in love. The tragedy of love in China is a theme that reoccurs (see the earlier review of Ha Jin’s Waiting), and Cao manages here to vivify the notion, shifting the narrative voice from active to passive, moving in and out of the landscape of these five men, and, in much the same way as Su Tong, leaving the reader with images branded in the mind.

“Fritter Hollow Chronicles,” by Wang XiangFu

In this story, Wang plays with story telling itself. He writes as a amateur storyteller who is trying to tell a tale of his small rural village. The story is one of murder, old grudges, pride, and success, and while the story reveals much about the structure of post-Cultural Revolution villages, it also manages to inspire with its humanity and brutality. Good stuff.