Stranger Than Life | China Books Review
We recommend five Chinese-language books that draw on real-life experiences, from an LGBTQ short story collection to a reality-TV inspired novel. Writers tend to bristle at the adage, “Life is stranger than. . .
We recommend five Chinese-language books that draw on real-life experiences, from an LGBTQ short story collection to a reality-TV inspired novel. Writers tend to bristle at the adage, “Life is stranger than fiction. ” While in a country as vast as China, bizarre things happen every day and everywhere (social media accounts such as@dongbeicantbefuckedwithand@raddi_mediaare rich reservoirs for surreal moments), there is a hidden risk in yielding to this logic. After a sensational event, the quote is surfaced to assert the superiority of reality over art. In doing so, it reduces what is truly “strange” in the artistic sense — having the capacity to surprise, excite and inspire reflection — to what is merely outlandish or melodramatic, dismissing the value of creative writing. In this latest “What China’s Reading” column, we share five titles that illustrate how fiction and nonfiction writers draw inspiration from fact and transform it into a deeper, more rewarding truth. There is a novel inspired by mid-2000s reality television; true crime reportage on a Peking University murder case; an essay collection on the perils of translating during Taiwan’s White Terror; a rare mainland novella collection with LGBTQ themes that explores the allure and danger of performance; and a novel in which a Sichuanese family tries to live with a secret after it comes to light. Phoenix Seed凤凰籽Dong Lai’s debut novel,Phoenix Seed, stems from the 2000s Chinese reality showX-Change, which had urban and rural children swap lives for a few weeks. Intended to teach city children resilience while offering rural children a glimpse of a broader world, the show was panned as a voyeuristic portrayal of class inequity. In the novel, a similar exchange reshapes the lives of two boys: Yang Ke-sen and the nameless narrator. Born to a peasant father and a mentally challenged mother, the precocious narrator enters the swap desperately hoping for escape. Upon meeting Yang’s family, he becomes acutely aware of the unbridgeable class chasm between their worlds. Nonetheless, the narrator is absorbed into Yang’s world, ascending the social ladder from college to white-collar jobs. However, his past haunts him wherever he goes, leaving him hollow and unfulfilled. Masterfully executed, this page-turner dissects the pain of self-reinvention, challenging the narrow definitions of success in a society obsessed with progress. The Abyss of Humanity人性的深渊The Abyss of Humanityis a true crime book about a 2015 murder case that scandalized China, igniting a national debate over parenting, education and the human psyche. Wu Xieyu, then a sophomore at Peking University,killedhis mother, Xie Tianqin, and scammed 1. 44 million yuan (roughly $200,000) from relatives and friends before his 2019 arrest. The case prompted intense scrutiny of Wu’s motivations and the complicated mother-son dynamics between them. Driven by these questions, journalists Wu Qi and Wang Shan set out to understand the family’s origins. They retrace the hardships the parents endured as children in backward villages and their drive for upward mobility — a trajectory that came to a halt when Wu’s father died of cancer, leaving the family’s financial and emotional burdens to Xie. What emerges from the investigation is a thought-provoking portrait of the making and unmaking of a Chinese nuclear family, revealing the tragic interplay between individual decisions and historical currents. Translation Detective Agency翻译侦探事务所After World War II, Taiwan’s official language changed from Japanese to Mandarin, and literary translators were almost exclusively Mainlanders who had moved to Taiwan. What’s more, after the Kuomintang’s retreat to Taiwan in 1949 and the declaration of Martial Law, books by leftist translators were banned. To circumvent censorship, publishers resorted to scrubbing out translators’ names or using pseudonyms such as Wu Mingshi (吴明实), which sounds like the word for “Nobody. ” In this informative and entertaining essay collection, Taiwanese scholar and translator Lai Ciyun puts on her detective hat and tries to identify the real translators of popular classics such asJane Eyre,WaldenandLady Chatterley’s Lover. With sympathy and wit, she uncovers the stories behind these publications and traces the trajectories of translators caught in an ideological tug-of-war. Originally published in Taiwan in 2017 and introduced to the mainland in 2023,Translation Detective Agencyoffers a rich repertoire for those intrigued by how text can be manipulated to serve an agenda. Crossing穿行An ambitious actress wrestles with her identity and desires when she lands a once-in-a-lifetime role playing Hamlet in a new adaptation of Shakespeare’s play. An underground documentary director finds himself drawn to his subject, a drag singer at a local pub. A photographer pressured by his fiancé’s family to marry must first confront a strange secret hidden in his own past: his grandfather’s lifelong obsession with a hand-carved wooden sculpture of a woman. InCrossing, playwright Chen Si’an’s debut collection of three novellas, characters challenge Chinese society’s entrenched ideas about gender, identity and relationships. Consciously or subconsciously, they resist the heterosexual marriage trajectory laid out by traditional social values, navigating an unscripted path ridden with both possibilities and dangers. Drawing from her prolific career in theater, Chen centers her stories on performers and observers, who interrogate the act of making art. With censorship making LGBTQ themes relatively rare in contemporary Chinese literature, Chen’s work is a vital invitation for readers to confront their own desires and fears. Wind and Rain刮风下雨In this rambunctious novel, Beijing-based novelist Li Jingrui returns to her hometown of Zigong, Sichuan province, a city famous for its 1,000-year-old salt industry and flavorful cuisine. The characters populating her new book are as boisterous and spicy as the food they consume. Meet the Lins: a close-knit, three-generation clan consisting of matriarch Hou Lanqing and her husband, Lin Guixuan, as well as their seven sons and two grandchildren. In the late 1990s, their lives are interrupted when a woman in her 30s arrives, revealing herself as Lin Guixuan’s illegitimate daughter from a fling in the 1960s. This revelation ripples through the family as members try to piece together the elders’ storied pasts. Despite its slightly melodramatic premise, the novel resists cheap drama. In an accompanying essay, Li recalls a real-life event that inspired the book, noting her surprise at how calmly her family welcomed the new member and moved on. The title,Wind and Rain, comes from Sichuan-style mahjong jargon for when every player has the opportunity to reap a reward, however small, as long as they persist. ∎Hailing from Chengdu, Na Zhong is a New York-based fiction writer and literary translator. Her work has appeared inGuernica,A Public Space,Lit Huband others. She co-founded the bilingual creative community,Accent Society, and co-hosts the Mandarin literary podcast跳岛FM. Na is a 2021-2022 Center for Fiction Emerging Writers Fellow, and a 2023 MacDowell Fellow. Browse the archiveJune 30, 6:30-8pm; Asia Society NYCPanel: Hong Kong’s Past, Present and FutureJoin us exactly six years after the implementation of Hong Kong's National Security Law, for a panel discussion on how Hong Kong has undergone profound political, social and economic changes since, with authors and experts Xu Xi, Mark Clifford, Anna Kwok and Simon Elegant. Use code CBR15 for $10 off as a China Books Review reader!Register nowSign up for our newsletter: