Anyi Wang

Wang introduces this wonderful book by drawing beautifully conceived, indelible portraits: the boy who wants to be a writer, Picked-Up Feng and his “wife,” Little Jade and Construction’s courting, Bao Bingde's crazy wife, Fifth Grandfather—an old man who wishes he were dead, and Dregs, the little boy who will be his friend. A series of events overtake the village and its inhabitants, allowing Wang to emphasize the value of decency in a largely detached, almost folktale-like, portrayal. The plot revolves primarily around Dregs (the last child of an older couple who exists largely unnoticed by his parents) and Fifth Grandfather, whom he “adopts.” Dregs dies attempting to save the life of Fifth Grandfather during a disastrous flood and when the aspiring novelist reports the story, Dregs becomes a “Youth Hero” and role model for the Communist Party’s propaganda machine. Baotown, previously unaffected by and unaware of national matters (such as the Gang of Four power struggle that is background here), is suddenly squarely in the national eye. Wang's tale is replete with ironies about the way myth and propaganda co-exist in a China at once deeply superstitious and dutifully Communist. This is a delightfully told and thoughtful story; recommended.… (más)

* I would like to thank NetGalley and the publisher for the opportunity to review this book. *

Fu Ping is an orphaned village girl who has been promised in marriage to a young man she has never met. She travels to Shanghai to be with the boy's grandmother. As she is immersed in the big city and meets people from walks of life she has never encountered, Fu Ping grows to be more independent and assertive, casting doubt on the plans for her future.

The great strength of this novel is how vividly Wang Anyi describes life in the back alleys and shanty towns of Shanghai. As Fu Ping encounters the unfamiliar, the reader is also taken to places and lifestyles that have mostly passed into history. I was particularly impressed with her accounts of the lives of the river folk, and of the impact of the annual flood of the river, which reminded me in some ways of Bleak House and Our Mutual Friend.… (más)

The city of Shanghai had always been different - a bridge between the East and the West, with its own culture and traditions. In its longtang, people are used to living almost on top of each other and knowing everything about their neighbors.

Wang Qiyao was born in one of the houses in these alleys and in 1946, after the Japanese finally leave China is ready to conquer the world. Her tickets to fame are her beauty and her fashion sense - the first will fade with time, the latter will carry her through the next 40 years. The novel spans the 4 decades from 1946 to 1986 - from the days immediately after the war, through the creation of the PRC, the Great Leap Forward and the famine, the Cultural Revolution and the opening to the world. But it is not about the big events - they are there in the background but almost never called by name - instead we see how they change the life of Wang Qiyao and those around her instead. You do not need to know much about Chinese history to enjoy the novel but a general idea of the period and what happens in what order helps to put things into perspective.

It all starts almost like a dream - after failing to get a role in a film, Wang Qiyao ends up as the second runner up in the Miss Shanghai contest and that propels her to some fame. It looks like she is set for life when she chooses to become a concubine (an old tradition in China) but then the world changes and that one decision marks her life forever. She falls in love a few times in the decades that follow and she even manages to get a daughter but the carefree and almost naive girl of the 1940s grows into a beautiful and cold woman who uses the people she needs to (when she does not have other choices anyway) and lives her own life. Except that she never finds what she looks for - her connections never really become very close ones, one set of friends replaces another and you can almost see the echoes in the later ones - they look like a faded copy of the original. China and Shanghai change all the time but not always in the direction she needs them to go - by the time the world finally gets to some approximation of the old world, Wang Qiyao is the faded copy. And yes she keeps trying - because she just do not know how to give up. People die around her, other disappear but she is still there - the woman of Shanghai.

It is a fascinating story but the style takes awhile to get used to. It switches between lyrical and everyday all the time - sometimes inside of the same sentence. It took me awhile to place the style - despite when it was written and the time it covers, its style is closer to the Victorian novels and the Russian and French novels of the 19th century than to anything more modern. Once that clicks, once you resolve the disjointedness coming from the conflicting style and story, it becomes a lot easier to read.

The end was not really surprising - the way it happened came almost as a shock but the novel was always going to lead there - there was no other ending possible for Wang Qiyao.

I still cannot decide if the novel was overly long or if it had to be that long. The style takes awhile to grow on you but once it does, it feels almost natural - I cannot imagine Wang Qiyao's story told in any other way. You do not even need to like her - I found a lot of her actions questionable and her self-serving as a whole. But then everyone is an egoist when it gets down to their survival and Wang Qiyao manages to survive (with a bit of a help from a dead friend's gift when at the end of it. It is somewhat ironic that what makes it possible for her to survive is also what makes her story unchangeable - the author almost talks directly to her in the last pages of the novel but even that cannot change the trajectory her life had always been on).

The edition I read has two notes - a translator note at the start (which explains some changes done for readability - apparently the Chinese text was even denser, with run-on sentences and direct speech directly incorporated into the narrative with no markers where it is) and an afterword by Berry (which most publishers and editors would have called Introduction and put at the front of the book) which gives some context and details that help understand the novel better (and spoil it if you read it first).

I am not sure if I can recommend this novel - not because it is a bad one but because I really don't know who it will work for. It is not exactly literary, it is nor exactly realism and it is not exactly 19th century and somehow it is all of that and then something else which is even harder to define. And yet, I am very happy that I read it.… (más)