Short Stories Mirroring Contemporary Life

Short Stories Mirroring Contemporary Life

By LIU FANGNIAN

FOR Chinese literature, it is the best of times, and it is the worst of times, to quote the opening sentence of Charles Dickens’ A Tale of Two Cities. Literary critic Zhu Dake laments the bleak wasteland that literature has become, while poet Ye Kuangzheng has simply declared it dead. Yet the year 2011 saw the publication of 4,000 full-length works of fiction in China. More than 30,000 writers also serialized their short stories online and made writing their careers, according to the Annual Report on China Literature 2011 - 2012 released by the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences.

One incontrovertible fact is the rapid fall, due to low economic output, in the number of published novellas. It was against this backdrop that the China Writers Publishing Group and China International Publishing Group produced the Chinese Literature series as a vehicle in which to showcase and publish in English short stories by China’s contemporary writers.

The first volume, which came out last July, is made up of the five short stories: We’re All on Call; Runaway; Page Forty-three; Clear Soup of Greens; and Empty Nest. Their focus is on the concerns and confusions common in contemporary society, including extramarital affairs, the empty-nest phenomenon (where elderly men and women are left to live alone after their offspring have left the family home), and the control that high-tech products impose on everyday life.

The first, We’re All on Call, describes the kind of crisis that arises in an era where smart machines have gradually come to dominate daily life. Gui Ping, also known as Power Never Off, is a departmental director in a municipal government. To avoid the seemingly endless calls and messages that often obligate him to do favors for old friends and classmates distract him from his work, he changes his phone number and reveals the new one only to a few friends, relatives and colleagues. After an entire day without calls or messages Gui Ping feels anxious and ill at ease to the point of paranoia. Unable to stand the silence, he eventually reverts to his old number and feels instant relief at being able to return to what has plainly become normal life – one constantly punctuated with social interruptions.

In an age of dramatic change, Gui Ping’s cell phone is his anchor, whereas sex is the path to reassurance for the protagonist of Clear Soup of Greens. After obtaining wealth and social status, the main character falls in love with and moves in with a much younger woman. He tells his mistress that all he misses about the life he shared with his wife is the bowl of clear soup with tofu and greens she would make for him. What he does not know is that the soup was actually the stock in which his wife had simmered the best pork ribs she could find along with ham, meadow fowl, live shrimp, bamboo shoots, clams, mushrooms, and freshwater crab, for four hours in a clay pot, adding the tofu and greens after removing these essential ingredients. The husband eventually returns to his wife, but the soup she serves him is bland and colorless and a far cry from that she served him before he deserted her. When he complains she simply blinks impassively. No longer caring whether her husband likes her cooking or not, she has made only perfunctory preparations for what had been his favorite dish.

There is an old maxim that love is the most important ingredient in a marriage, one that some take for granted and that others see as something beyond their reach. Professor He, the main character in Empty Nest, is one of the latter. The live-in housemaid he hires after his wife passes away asks, months later, if her daughter can also move into He’s house to cut down on living expenses. After conferring with his grown-up son and daughter Professor He refuses and his employee leaves. Soon after, however, the loneliness of living along makes He regret his decision and he relents. He eventually marries his domestic worker, even though he agrees with his children that this is not a wise decision. His argument is, “Would anyone other than her have any time for an old man like me? When you reach my age, you’ll appreciate my feelings on the matter.” The conclusion to be drawn from this story is that empty-nest elders in China constitute a social conundrum that can only be solved through care and attention from their families and the communities in which they live.

History is said to impart wisdom. As the pace of life continues to quicken, however, few take heed of this fact. People generally have their attention fixed firmly on the future and have no time for past events. After boarding a train protagonist Beck of Page Forty-three finds himself 20 years back in time, long before MP3s or Coca Cola became commonplace in China. On coming upon a news magazine he finds in it a story that matches his present situation. It mentions the name and background of the train attendant he comes to know during the journey, but more alarmingly tells of a disaster at Zilong Gorge in which a mudslide buries the train and kills most of its passengers and workers. He tries to warn the attendant and others on the train, but the magazine gets lost in the confusion, and none is any the wiser. Having elected to jump off the train, Beck wakes up injured in a field back in his own time. After recovering in hospital he tries to clarify what happened. He establishes that the train ticket for that journey which is still in his possession is indeed one from 20 years earlier. A few more enquiries bring to light that there a train disaster took place on that day, and that train attendant Mo Xiaoting was one of the heroic workers who died because they refused to leave their posts. Beck remains haunted by the memory of the time he spent 20 years back in history, and particularly of attendant Mo Xiaoting.

The fate of small potatoes is easily ignored. They themselves seem to set little store by it. Mr. Song, the main character of Runaway, is the night watchman and general handyman at a haphazardly-run opera troupe. After 20 or more years at the post, during which time he earns a reputation for being a diligent, agreeable, quick and efficient worker, Song develops peripheral vascular syndrome in his leg. He needs RMB 15,000 for the surgery that will avoid amputation, but his savings amount to only RMB 150. Everyone in the troupe accordingly contributes to the cost of the operation. The sum is collected and presented to Song, but thoughts of his divorced daughter and grandson bring him to a momentous decision. Song disappears into the night and is never seen again in that city. Rumors circulate that he returned to his hometown and had his leg amputated, and that he has since run a stall at a tourist site selling films.

The author of Runaway Tie Ning, who is president of the Chinese Writers Association, presents in this story the distressing scenario of a man who has worked hard to establish himself as a person of good character and dignity who, in the end, must nonetheless be guided by practical concerns, abandon his ideals and bow to reality.

After three decades of economic development, China has accumulated considerable wealth. No longer intent on economic survival, the people now have time to consider the merits of culture and spiritual values. Literature is the perfect antidote to today’s highly materialized society. The short stories in Chinese Literature reveal the lot of everyday people and their struggle for happiness. Every reader can see aspects of their own lives in these stories and hence empathize with their protagonists.