Yu Hua, one of China’s most-acclaimed contemporary novelists, leapt to prominence, in English as well as Chinese, some three decades ago with his novels To Live and Chronicle of a Blood Merchant, both of which were made into well-received films. Both novels, about ordinary people struggling with extraordinary hardships, were notable for their matter-of-fact, slice-of-life rendering of their characters’ tribulations. Although his next novel, Brothers, a decade or so later, made more explicit use of farce and satire, in City of Fiction, Yu Hua seems to have returned to his roots.
Set in the final years of the Qing dynasty and the turbulent period of marauding armies, warlords, bandits and, as Yua Hua has it, general anarchy, that immediately followed, City of Fiction is structured as an interlocking novel and novella (the description of which would result in spoilers). It has the feel of a family saga, albeit one compressed into little more than a decade and a half.
The story opens with Lin Xiangfu arriving in the town of Xizhen. During a blizzard, he goes from door to door, begging new mothers with extra milk to spare some for his infant daughter. Lin is there looking for the girl’s mother, Xiaomei, who abandoned them both in his hometown much farther north. Fate has decreed that he stay in Xizhen, where he becomes a successful tradesman, landowner and pillar of society, reestablishing and surpassing the status he had back in his rural hometown on the road to the capital Beijing. His daughter grows into a beauty, and the two of them are adopted into a local family; they become one unit.
But the reality of banditry and China’s larger troubles impinge on his adopted town: there are kidnappings, murders and massacres, the brutality all told in vivid detail. Lin, despite—or perhaps because of—he stability of his new life, becomes a protagonist in the town’s own struggles against the bandits.
City of Fiction is almost picaresque in its multitudinous episodic adventures. This may be coincidental, but Yu Hua nevertheless turns the genre on its head to some extent: characters can seem to represent certain virtues or vices (motherhood, steadfastness, integrity, blind brutality, venality), yet are not always as first appear. Morality is ambiguous and sometimes unattainable.
Yu Hua’s simple prose will all of of a sudden yield a striking image. Here, the town leader Gu Yimin has been abducted:
That day, wailing and crying filled every corner of Gu Yimin’s grand courtyard mansion. Among his wife and concubines, some fainted, some beat their chests and stamped their feet, some wailed and sighed, and some could barely catch their breath. After Lin Xiangfu entered the home, Gu Yimin’s primary wife gathered everyone together in the main hall to discuss what they should do. The discussion, however, mostly amounted to them surrounding Lin Xiangfu and weeping until their tears ran down through their makeup, creating patterns like butterfly wings.
It is not so much the characters that are nuanced, but rather the town of Xizhen (the “city” of the title) and its inhabitants as a whole. The combination of stories, characters, incidents and evocative description bring the setting vividly alive during a tumultuous time. Yu Hua does not explain the broader political trends shaking China in the first two decades of the 20th century; the townspeople are more concerned the situation on their doorstep.
The two parts, novel and novella, are in conversation with each other; it is this structure that, more than anything else, raises the combined work above the ordinary. The characters of the novella are drawn with more subtlety and ambiguity, a distinction one assumes was deliberate: a reminder in form and substance that still waters can run deep. Todd Foley’s translation maintains the author’s unique voice.
City of Fiction is fatalist, yet contains many moments of happiness and satisfaction which, however fleeting and empheral, are worth living for. Hope can survive in tragedy.