I’ve nearly completed a ten books of summer challenge and it’s not even the end of July yet, so I’m quite chuffed. Might be a bit challenging to stretch to 20 before the end of August, so I might be content with just ten or else stretch it to fifteen. Especially if I start reading all the poetry books that were going to be part of my challenge.
The reads below were all from my East Asian shelves, although I also read one set in India (Arundhati Roy’s memoir), which wasn’t part of the original plan, but I might count it anyway.
7. Cao Xuequin (also written as Tsao Hsueh-Chin): Dream of the Red Chamber, translated and adapted by Chi-Chen Wang, Anchor Books, 1958
This classic of Chinese literature is one of the Four Great Classic Novels of Chinese literature, dating from the 18th century, but revolutionary at the time because it was written in vernacular Chinese rather than in the more formal Classical Chinese. In this respect, it bears some similarity with Genji Monogatari. Another similarity with the Japanese novel: it has a very large cast of characters and they are often referred to by their titles or their family monikers (aunties and uncles abound), which can be very confusing, especially when they marry or change positions.
However, unlike the Japanese novel, which focuses largely on the life and loves of one main character, this book is about the rise and fall of a family, and therefore has more in common with the Buddenbrooks, perhaps. It is the story of several generations of the Chia family and the families related to them. We have the widowed Matriarch who rules everyone with an iron rod. We have her favourite grandson Chia Pao-yu, who was born with the mythical stone of precious jade (introduced in the first chapter) in his mouth and who is therefore more or less the hero of the story. Much to his strict father’s dismay, he is not all that keen on studying for his civil service exams and would much rather spend time with his cousins and their servants (especially the female ones). He falls in love with his cousin Black Jade, who moves into their home upon the death of her mother, but is ultimately forced to marry another cousin Precious Virtue, who seems to be the ideal woman, but whom he does not love. His older sister brings honour to the family by becoming an Imperial Concubine, which puts the family to a great deal of extra expense, building a special garden and pavilion in her honour. She is not very happy with her royal status and can only visit her home briefly (and dies young).
Chia Lien is another son of the Matriarch who is an inveterate womaniser – which was apparently all fine and dandy in that period, when there were concubines and their children living altogether in the same household, except that he keeps lying and tricking his wife Phoenix, who is the linchpin of the household, until she makes some unwise financial investments which lead to the downfall of the family.
There are lots of intrigues, rivalries, ambitions and deaths as the book covers many years and many branches of the family. There is also a lot of cruelty – both servants and relatives getting beaten or abused or even killed by various members of the family. This violence seems so commonplace in the Chinese literature I’ve read so far this year (see also my reaction to Red Sorghum), that I wonder what it is about the historical and social conditions in China that have made this kind of experience mainstream in their literature. I’m sure medieval and Renaissance Europe was just as violent, but there seems to be a queasiness about describing it so boldly – perhaps because of the influence of the church?
There is a soap opera quality to all the goings on in the book, and it is certainly an enjoyable read once you manage to remember the characters’ names. Their social circumstances may be very different to our own, but some of their thoughts, dialogues and characteristics feel very familiar. It is a fascinating description of daily life in a large, wealthy Chinese family in the 18th century, but it is also a meditation on the transience of love and material fortune, and contains many supernatural and fortune-telling or folklore elements. What struck me most of all is the detailed description of the lives and thoughts, the unhappiness and joys of women, at a time when they were barely given any consideration in society.
Nota bene: I read the abridged and adapted version of the work (I’m not sure that I could have coped with the full-length one, although it was interesting to be immersed in that world for a while). The translation is from the 1950s, so feels a little old-fashioned, but that is perhaps very well-suited for an 18th century piece of work, and the language reminded me at times of Clarissa by Samuel Richardson, written around the same time (and likewise portraying family and social pressures, as well as illicit love).
8. Frank N. Pieke: Knowing China. A Twenty-First Century Guide. Cambridge University Press, 2016
Although this is a relatively recent book by a professor of modern China Studies at the University of Leiden who seems to really know his stuff, the pace of change in China is so rapid and its influence around the world has grown so much recently that it is already starting to feel a little outdated. However, the basic concepts remain sound: the author tries to break down monolithic views of China and respond to some of the most pernicious myths. No, the Communist Party is unlikely to crumble and fall, but nor is it quite the all-seeing, all-commanding Big Brother some make it out to be. China’s economy will grow but cannot do so forever as they face many of the same demographic challenges as the rest of the world. There are certain freedoms for ethnic minorities and even for individuals, but there are no universal human rights as we understand them in the West, nor is there any chance of Taiwan or Tibet or Xinjiang being recognised as independent states.
Here are a few things which made me (the anthropologist) even more curious to explore and observe in my future trip to China:
Heritage is anything but a weapon of the weak. Authorities have latched onto this internationally recognized concept to gain greater latitude and creativity in the construction and exploitation of aspect of local culture beyond the mere preservation of traditional minority cultures. The development of heritage often involves significant investment for the restoration of buildings, the reolcation of people and sometimes even the construction of whole sites from scratch… The production of heritage has liberated the energies of countless ambitious localities, groups and indiviudals and have paved the way to imagine the Chinese nation as made up of endlessly variable components.
Sustained development often continues to trump sustainable development… Whereas the central government has most to gain and relatively little to lose from stricter environmental standards, many localities and their governments depend on the employment and revenue generated by often highly polluting industry… the result is a political economy of environmental protection in which the costs have to be borne by those who are powerless and poor, while others who can curry favour with the local leadership continue to pollute and develop…. That is not to say that people in backward areas are unable to understand that pollution is bad for them, or that environmentalism is a luxury that only developed places can afford.
9. Mishima Yukio: Beautiful Star, transl. Stephen Dodd, Penguin, 2022.
This is an odd book, rather out of character for Mishima, one might think, although of course his concern about the state of the world and what needs to be done to save it resurfaces a few years later in his own life and politics, with tragic consequences. It is and it isn’t science fiction, just as it is and it isn’t about aliens. It was written in 1962 at the height of the Cold War, and was not translated into English for sixty years, perhaps because it was considered too ‘out there’ for Western tastes.
It starts off as the story of a middle-class family, the Osugis, who live near one of the American military bases in Japan, and who believe that they each hail from a different planet and have been sent to earth to rescue humanity from mass destruction. Father Juichiro is from Mars and leads the campaign for disarmament his beautiful daughter Akiko is from Venus, his mercurial son Kazuo is from – where else? – Mercury, while his wife Iyoko tries to provide some balance and support, while hailing from Jupiter.
The son gets involved in politics, the daughter in love affairs, and then the family confront their greatest problem: a rival group of aliens who have very different ideas of what the fate of planet Earth, the beautiful star, should be. Rather than being saved, they envisage utter annihilation. The book is both a searing satire of postwar Japanese society with its muddled politics, growing materialism and Western influence and its obsession with social conformity, but also an indictment of global politics and ambitions, all while living under the very real fear of the hydrogen bomb.
This starts out very well, and is much funnier than most of the other work I’ve read by Mishima. We are never quite sure if the family is suffering from some kind of group delusion or if they really are aliens, but they certainly are somewhat naive and fail to see how neighbours or strangers might view them or take advantage of them. For example, the local shopkeepers deeply resent the family and always sell them the worst of their produce at inflated prices. Akiko is blind to all that.
What lovely people they are… The whole family always looks happy and they bring such energy to their work… And they always greet me with such a nice smile! I’m no expert on the matter, but that’s the goodness and happiness of human life in a nutshell. We need to do our utmost to protect them from the hydrogen bomb.
Kazuo meanwhile gets caught up in politics, and Mishima is so sharp-tongued about political corruption and hypocrisy, about demagogues and the impossibility of living up to your ideals, that you cannot help but wonder how he came to have such extreme political views just a few years later.
The rival group of aliens come from the constellation of Cygnus and are much less enthusiastic about the human race. One might almost call them incels if we were to use contemporary language: Haguro their ringleader is a second-rate lecturer at a local university, and his acolytes are the chatty barber Sone and the young graduate Kurita, who yearns after women but was rejected and ever since has developed a huge hatred for them. They all see flying saucers together and realise they are aliens, although perhaps they are influenced by Haguro’s attempt impose his will and gain control over the minds of others.
Now was the moment for Haguro to come up with a concept that would illuminate their common past like an instantaneous bolt of lightning and terrify them to the core of their being. A concept that would touch everything with the same purple tinge expressed in a flash of lightening… It was only in hindsight that things had become clear, but there was some sort of bond between the three of them – so different in character, occupation and age – from the moment they set eyes on each other. They had various things in common. For example, none of them was much of a looker, they were all driven by constant hatred towards people, and they had equally harboured a long-standing vague hostility towards the whole of mankind.
Sadly, the fun of the book deteriorates at the moment when the two rival groups of aliens meet and Juichiro and Haguro have a lengthy exchange of speeches about their philosophy and the fate of the planet. This is a novel of ideas, I understand that, but it was so much better when it was a series of character studies and social satire.
Perhaps not the ideal entry point to Mishima’s work if you have never read him before, but I’m glad it got translated at last and enabled me to discover a more playful side to him (in spite of the sombre warnings).
findingtimetowrite 
