Considered to be the Chinese Dubliners – the dedication is “To the
Irishman who inspires me” – this is a collection of short stories about the
people who live in Shenzhen. The young city of Shenzhen has grown
astronomically to become a major metropolitan centre; a city in which everyone
is a newcomer. The author writes of teachers, taxi drivers, dramatists and
peddlers; we see their relationships with their family members and their
environment. The prose is crisp and sparse, accompanied by simple but
expressive line drawings by Chinese illustrator Cai Gao.
The blurb on the back of the book
jacket claims it is, “The first book in English by acclaimed Chinese-Canadian
writer Xue Yiwei) but on the front are the words, “Translated from the Chinese
by Darryl Sterk”, and the acknowledgments at the end refer to “translator Darry
Sterk, who has turned the original Chinese into elegant English with the skill
of a magician.” The different spelling of the name may be an unfortunate typo,
but the whole thing is a little confusing, especially because language and pronunciation
play such a big part in the stories.
Translation battles continue between
characters; “I said it was a straightforward line. I couldn’t think of a need
to translate it any other way.” The unnamed, omniscient narrator considers
their words carefully when describing The Dramatist. “The neighbours called him
a weirdo. But I felt that weird was
the wrong word for him. From the start, I felt that eccentric would be more apt.” In other stories, specifics of pronunciation
place a person in a strict class hierarchy. “Most of my classmates had worse
pronunciation than mine, not to mention my teacher, a lady for whom even vowels
were a challenge.”
There are aspects of the Chinese culture
that are specific to the place, although they are not always remarked upon. One
character casually notes, “I reached under my bed to retrieve the envelope with
my yearly allowance, which Chinese children receive every Chinese New Year.” We
recognise the element of childhood competition in everything from reading and swimming
to mastering languages, maths or chess. One character reminisces, “I was a
prodigy the whole city had taken note of. I was the apple of my parents’ eye
and the centre of public and media attention. I was a role model, and example
other parents held up when assessing their own children, a pair of exceptional coordinates
on the grid of achievement.”
Most of these characters are
male, and the ones who are female are sketchy. The Taxi Driver reflects, “He
had never much cared about the expression on his daughter’s face, or about her
existence. He was the same with his wife. He’d never imagined that they might
cease to exist.”
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| Shenzhen: the tech capital of the world |
