A power warrior and a gentleman

[muckefuck]

英格力士 (English[*] in the translation by Martin Merz and Jane Weizhen Pan) is a semi-autobiographical coming-of-age novel set in Xinjiang during the Cultural Revolution. The author, Wang Gang (王刚), was born and raised in Ürümqi and salts the narrative with poetic paeans to the place, including historical asides and snatches of Uyghur folk songs. Like most Han born on China's far frontier, the protagonist suffers from a rootlessness which is only exacerbated by his parents' politically suspect background. His natural predilection toward the trappings of bourgeois life in an era where "intellectuals" are considered enemies of the state fills his educated parents with horror and his attraction toward a cosmopolitan English-teacher "sent down" from Shanghai drives them to cruelty and deceit. The novel is also very bourgeois in conception, being concerned with that most middle-class of plot-drivers, adultery. The whole first-person narrative is shot through with sexual shame. That might seem typical for novels focusing on adolescents, but the stakes are far higher under a totalitarian regime that makes a political crime of "morally suspect" behaviour.

"Love" Liu (刘爱) has an engaging voice, but one that's not entirely consistent, since Wang wavers between having him describe events from a place of juvenile naïveté and with all the benefit of adult hindsight. It also doesn't help that he includes some rather implausible episodes, such as having Liu live as a runaway for a month or having him caught in the throes of a major earthquake which seems to have little in the way of repercussions beyond allowing him his first caress of a woman's breasts. He's also conveniently in a position to hear and witness confrontations between adults a few more times than my suspension of disbelief could handle. (Of course, it's dubious that following Su Tong's example and simply abandoning the commitment to first-person for an entire section purely in order to follow developments concerning another central character would be any preferable.)

There are thematic similarities to Su Tong's 河岸, notably in the areas of parental fears, territorial exile (the far west vs the river), and sexual obsessions. Liu also seems to share with that novel's protagonist a dangerous alternation between aloofness and bursts of bold misdirected outbursts. But whereas Su's characters seem to have unlikely luck in escaping consequences for rash actions, English comes off as much more realistic in the threat and promise of punishment that freights and distorts everyday intercourse. Historical developments are also present in a way more familiar to me from non-fiction accounts, something aided by Wang's lapses into adult retrospection. On the whole I probably would've found it somewhat less intriguing without the exotic setting and the attention paid to language learning.



[*] Note that the title actually represents a phonetic rendition of the English word in Chinese characters (i.e. "Yīnggélìshì") rather than the usual Chinese word for "English language", 英語 (Yīngyǔ). A purely semantic rendering would be something like "English-style power warrior".

Comments

[lhn.livejournal.com]

A purely semantic rendering would be something like "English-style power warrior".

So then: Beowulf?