This is a collection of short stories about the capital of China. BingBing Shi's introduction gives a brief overview of the history of this city of 'charming complexities' which 'wears its history on its sleeve' even as the city itself constantly changes. The later part of the introduction outlines how the city's literature has reflected and been affected by this history, and gives a brief introduction to each of the stories.Beijing is a huge city, so it is fitting that the selected stories are so varied in style and content.
Three of the stories in this collection focus on the city's rich history:
Blue Peony
by Ning Ken, translated by Alison Sharpless, is set during the Cultural
Revolution. Little Yong is left to look after himself during the week when his parents are sent to work in the countryside.
At first, Little Yong is reluctant to feed Big Yellow, the family cat, until he starts demanding food:
"That day, when Little Yong came home from school, Big Yellow was positively friendly, no longer
putting on airs. He submissively rubbed up against Little Yong’s trouser leg, walking back and forth, sometimes pressing up against him as hard as he could, before giving Little Yong a final sweep with his long tail."
Little Yong then starts to steal bones and kidneys from the grocer's store where Blue Peony
works. This story, focussed on the experiences of one boy and his cat, highlights some of the issues that many people faced during that period of Chinese history.
Moving forward in time is Date at the Art Gallery by Wen Zhen, translated by Jack
Hargreaves. A young couple wander through an art gallery late at
night, on their last date before the woman leaves Beijing. As they
wander, she considers the history of their relationship intertwined with
the recent history of Beijing itself, including Tiananmen Square and the 2008
Olympic Games.
Is Mr. Zhang Home? by Shi
Yifeng, translated by Hongyu Jasmine Zhu, describes how the past can haunt the present. A young
couple inherit a flat in an abandoned military compound. Once they move in, they are regularly visited at night by a presence:
"Before Li Xiaoqing and the echo could answer, I caught a glimpse of a human face outside the window, and from that fleeting impression, I could swear it didn’t have any facial features. An utterly white oval. I felt something catch in my throat, and before I could say anything, there was a steady knock on the door."
The presence turns out to be a young boy looking for Mr Zhang, but is this a ghost or a real child?
Several of the stories are set in the Beijing of today, looking at various aspects of everyday life.
The Second Ring Road by Yu Wenling, translated by Helen
Wang follows Qi Yue's search for a flat inside the Second Ring Road of
Beijing. The story examines the complexities of trying to
buy a place in an overheated market and the complications added in by
family relations and financial deals.
So many people want to move into Beijing that the sale of fake IDs is big business. Secretly by Xu Zecheng, translated by Eric Abrahamsen, features a young journalist who wants to find out about the lives of people who sell fake IDs, revealing some of the complexities of this aspect of life in the city.
Football is a relatively new sport in China. Dogshit Football by Xu Kun, translated by Katherine Tse, takes a feminist viewpoint on football fandom. Liu Ying's emotions on meeting her husband are described in football terms:
'Yang broke through her lowered defenses with unnerving dexterity, laying claim to that which
she had tended as zealously as a goalkeeper, save for a momentary distraction: her affections.'
However, Liu Ying feels alienated by her husband's liking for football and the behaviour of his boorish friends who come round to watch matches in her home. She totally despises football until she discovers Maradona, and she remains a loyal fan until the day she attends a match and is disappointed by the inherent sexism of the whole football scene.
Any large city has problems with pollution, and Beijing is no exception. In Glass River, by Qiu Huadong, translated by Paul Harris, river pollution acts as a metaphor for the hidden problems in a relationship. Feng Bin goes fishing on the beautiful Chaoqing River, which isn't, however, as pristine as it at first seems:
"the river was full of broken glass. He now knew that all that glass gleaming at the bottom of the river wasn’t the myriad of dancing fish he had imagined. And however hard he tried to avoid it, he kept treading on the sharp edges. Both his feet were now badly cut and hurt terribly."
This glass strewn river hides other secrets that ultimately threaten to undermine Feng Bin's marriage.
Commuting is a large part of life for many people living in the city. In On the Subway
by Fu Xuiying, translated by Chris MacDonald, Wutong bumps into her old
friend Zhang on a commuter train. This is a beautifully written story -
I particularly liked the descriptions of passenger reflections on the
windows mingling with the outside world:
"Passenger faces are
reflected in the window glass, bizarrely superimposed against the
backdrop. A face sprouts trees and a high-rise looms from someone’s
eyes. Big characters are briefly stamped across a chin: BANK OF CHINA.
Something feels magically unreal about this intermingling of faces from
inside with visions of the city outside."
But what of train travel in the future? Reunion by Han Song, translated by Carson Ramsdell, envisages a time in
the far future where Beijing Railway Station has taken on a life of its
own, becoming a self replicating entity and a subject for investigation by numerous PhD students. The station has
its own hotel zone, where piles of rubbish have formed entire new
ecosystems. A thousand people a day get lost in the myriad zones of
the station, sometimes dying before they can be found. But who exactly is the narrator of this tale?
Technology is affecting the way we all live our lives, particularly those of us who live in big cities. The MagiMirror Algorithm by Gu Shi, translated by Florence Taylor loo ks into the near future to analyse how technology might develop and change our everyday interactions. MagiMirror is a technology that lets users read other people's expressions and moderate their own behaviour in response to other people's reactions. The story contrasts relationships developed through this new technology with those developed in face to face reactions between neighbours in a large apartment block.
Taken as a whole, these stories give a fascinating insight into the city of Beijing. An ideal read for anyone wanting to visit the city or to sample some of the many talented authors based there.
The Book of Beijing, edited by BingBing Shi, published (2023) by Comma Press.
**
Disclaimer: I received a free electronic copy of this book, in exchange for a fair and honest review.
You may also be interested in The Book of Shanghai edited by Jin Li and Dai Congrong, which I reviewed here.
