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Review: Su Tong 蘇童 - The Madwoman on the Bridge and Other Stories (2008)
This was an interesting set of short stories. I could make sense of some of them better than others, but overall, I still found them enjoyable even if I didn't totally understand them. I would recommend this book as a chill read, focused on stories that kind of straddle the line between mundane and slightly surreal.
Spoilers, I guess?
Stories
I'll talk a bit about each of the short stories here.
Madwoman on the Bridge
The madwoman in question was mad because she was wearing a cheongsam, even though such vain luxuries were looked down upon. A doctor secretly loved it and tried to trick the madwoman into coming with her to the tailor so that the doctor could make a cheongsam like that made for her.
I think one of the themes of this short story was hypocrisy and opposite meanings. Luxuries were looked down upon, but people still loved them. The madwoman wore a beautiful cheongsam and even some jewelry, but was ridiculed for daring to wear such extravagant clothes, and a passerby even told her to hide her jewelry because it would get stolen (implying that other people do actually like jewelry). In addition, the short story ended with the madwoman being sent "to Sanli Bridge." This actually meant she was going to the mental hospital that was located under Sanli Bridge. The narrator emphasized that everybody knew this, which I think again relates to the fact that everybody is openly practising hypocrisy.
Another reason that the madwoman was unsettling to passers-by was because "paintings are for people to look at, but why is the painting looking back at them?" People thought women in cheongsam were beautiful, but they did not want that beauty to have a mind of its own. It was unsettling that something that was supposed to entertain them had a life of its own. This is also related to the doctor trying to trick the madwoman. She'd come up with tons of tricks and lies to get the madwoman to come with her to the tailor (or to take off one of the frogs so the tailor could copy it), and the whole time, she'd disregarded the madwoman's feelings.
I felt this story was a great opening story. It left a big impression on me.
Weeping Willow
This story was about a driver visiting a roadside inn.
I think one of the themes of this story was the idea of mixing things up, lack of individuality, etc. Just the idea of identities and memories being muddled together.
When he got there, he was greeted by a server he'd never met, but she had the same name as the last server he'd met at the inn. However, that could not have been possible as this server had insisted she'd been working there for a while. The proprietress of the inn had greeted the driver warmly, but the driver suspected whether she'd actually recognized him or if she thought he was someone else. The server was watching a Hong Kong TV series that was dubbed in Mandarin. The driver hated these dubbed shows because the same voices were always being used.
Tensions rose between the driver and the server until they got into an argument. The server was acting like a perpetrator but playing a victim in her conversation with the driver. She left in a huff. However, the proprietress made up a totally unrelated story about why the server left to her patrons.
This was a strange story, but I think it also helped to set the tone for the more mundane stories in this collection.
On Saturdays
This story was so relatable. It was about a couple, Ningzhu and Meng, who were friends with a man called Papa Qi. Papa Qi was well connected, and ended up helping Ningzhu and Meng. The unspoken rule was that Papa Qi would go over to spend time with Ningzhu and Meng on Saturdays. However, over time, Ningzhu and Meng got really tired of the visits and tried to hint to Papa Qi that they didn't want to meet anymore. One day, Papa Qi had come over, and Ningzhu and Meng had pretended they weren't home. However, when Ningzhu peeked behind the curtain, she was looking straight at Papa Qi, which was awkward, but he probably got the message.
The story meant to illustrate the tedium of building connections (guanxi). In name, Ningzhu and Meng and Papa Qi were friends, and Papa Qi was doing things for them because he was a friend (getting their clock fixed, getting Meng a job in the high development district). However, their relationship obviously had a transactional aspect to it. In return for Papa Qi's services, Ningzhu and Meng were to entertain him every Saturday. One time, Meng and Ningzhu tried to give Papa Qi a gift to thank him for what he did, but Papa Qi said he wouldn't take the "bribe." Meng and Ningzhu almost had to blackmail Papa Qi into taking the gift. By giving Papa Qi the gift, it'd free Ningzhu and Meng of having to spend their Saturdays with Papa Qi.
Meng and Ningzhu obviously got very frustrated, and Ningzhu was starting to be a bit rude about it, doing her work in front of Papa Qi and such. However, as they started taking more extreme means (such as pretending they weren't home), Ningzhu actually panicked quite a bit.
I think the point of the story was just to illustrate this complicated world of building connections and unspoken rules of how to pay back favours.
Thieves
This was a story about a childhood memory. A boy with a good reputation was friends with another boy who he knew to be a thief. The thief had stolen a beautiful toy train and hidden it. Because the boy liked it so much, he outed the thief and later took the train for himself. I forgot what happened in th end of the story (what he did with the train) but it was still an interesting study in character.
The boy had only spoken out against injustice (the thief's thieving ways) when he wanted something out of it (the train for himself). The boy was definitely hypocritical, and he also only told this story years after it'd happened, when it was far removed from his current life and would not affect him anymore.
Whoever had the train couldn't even play with it for two reasons. One was that they didn't have the key that could make the train run, and the other was that just taking out the train was too risky and would out the thief. So this story also illustrated the interesting psychology behind stealing.
How the Ceremony Ends
A folklorist visited a town and found out about an old custom. A person would be chosen randomly (by drawing lots), everybody would whack him once, and then he'd be put into an urn. The folklorist thought it was a crazy ritual, and because of him, a demonstration was put on. By luck of the draw, the folklorist had been drawn as the victim, and he was beaten to death.
When the folklorist brought up the story to the villagers, they'd shown distaste for it. They thought it was arcane and barbaric to just kill a man like that for no reason. Obviously the folklorist thought that too.
When the folklorist was chosen and being held in preparation to be beat, he was panicked. However, the villagers reminded him that he was the one who brought up the ritual.
My interpretation of the story is as follows. Outsiders like the folklorists raise up a big stink about old stories like this that not even the locals care for anymore. The locals feel pressured to respond to outside comments on these old rituals, and then the outsiders become even more scandalized when the villagers even try to defend themselves. (Sorry if this explanation doesn't make sense at all)
Basically, I think it's a commentary on how outsiders are not understanding of how customs can change in local towns. Obviously the town had been past that particular custom, but the one who was hung up on it was the folklorist.
The Private Banquet
This was one of the stories that I didn't really understand. A professor had returned to his old hometown, and he was seen as a bit of a snob because he'd adopted city customs such as ignoring people rather than greeting every single passerby.
The professor was invited to a banquet of an old acquaintance. He'd refused it by using his mom as an excuse (classic), but another old friend had come and shamed him into going. The banquet itself was awkward. There was bad blood between the professor and the host, as well as some of the other attendees. The banquet ended with the professor getting drunk and doing some wacky stuff at the party, and then he left to back to the city the next day.
During the banquet, there was a story about a baby duckling leading other baby ducklings to a predator in hopes that they'd save themself. That might've been a reference to the old acquaintance who'd shamed the professor into going to the banquet in order to save himself.
At the banquet, the host was also pushing for the professor to be more involved, to drink more, to engage more with the lady who was there to be "entertainment," etc. The professor was not very receptive, until he got drunk and shined the host's shoes and also got slapped.
Again, I was a bit confused by this story, but my guess is that maybe it was another story about handling social conflicts.
Goddess Peak
This story was about a couple going on a vacation with another friend. During the trip, the girlfriend went off with the friend, leaving the boyfriend alone.
The girlfriend was the kind of person who could only talk shit about anything and everything. I unfortunately know people like this and it is terrible being around them. She had a natural urge to talk down literally everything, even stuff that had no relation to her own life. Somehow, the girlfriend was charmed by the friend. Maybe it was because he was different. He was not as accommodating as her boyfriend (who was almost a doormat), so maybe it was that she needed a bit of resistance.
When the boyfriend realized that his girlfriend and friend had gone away together, he was panicked at first. However, when the boat he was on finally passed Goddess Peak, he found himself amazed and a bit free. My takeaway is that this story might've just been about the girlfriend, a person with a suffocating character.
The Diary for August
A boy was arrested for throwing a stone at a couple in a park. The police officer had interrogated him harshly but the boy did not own up. The boy wrote up a (sort of fantastical) account of what happened and the police officer kept it in his office drawer for a while.
The couple themselves did not come forward, likely because if they had, they'd had to admit that they were in a relationship, which might've been a no-no. So there technically were not complainants.
The boy never once owned up to the crime of throwing a rock at the couple, only that he'd been dropping rocks near them. I mean, the truth was probably that he was dropping rocks and they'd scared the couple and someone saw. The only way this event would've been noticed was if there was a bystander.
Anyway, the boy had written up an account of what he'd done during the day, painting himself as a great altruistic hero. The police officer just kept it in his desk and didn't find it until years later, when he saw it and chuckled at it.
My interpretation of this story was that the police officer had chuckled at the fantastical story because he himself was someone who made fantastical stories. It was obvious that he was sensationalizing the crime to try to get the boy to own up, but it didn't work. In hindsight, when the crime was no longer on anyone's radar anymore, it became something funny, but to someone who was not as sharp as the boy, it might've cost them their life and freedom.
Dance of Heartbreak
A school was having a dance performance, and one of two boys would make it as the last dancer. In terms of events, not that much happened, as the narrator ended up not getting the role. I think this story was more about the characters.
The narrator and the rival Xiaoguo didn't have much against each other until they were set up to be rivals. I think it was implied that the narrator never had a shot at the role, and that he was only brought in as motivation for the rival to improve himself for the performance.
During the story, there was a side story about a teacher getting a hemorrhage and dying. The narrator didn't really understand what hemorrhage had to do with death. I think the narrator was unable to recognize death as death, and if I'm stretching, I'd say that related to him not understand that he never had a shot at the dance performance.
There was another girl in the performance called Wenyan. She had incontinence, and also had a suicidal mother. Wenyan did also pee during the performance. However, when she grew up, Wenyan went on to become a famous dancer. Because she'd left home, her mother had finally succeeded in committing suicide (whereas Wenyan would usually be there to stop her).
As for Xiaoguo ended up falling from scaffolding and breaking both legs, which was extremely unfortunate.
The narrator revealed that his own wife was also another dancer in the performance, but she seemed completely detached from dance. She thought that men who danced were disgusting. But when the narrator mentioned that he liked her dancing when they were in school, she showed interest despite not remembering a single thing she did, showing that the wife was kind of shallow in character.
I think the story was about how the dance didn't really say anything about what the characters would turn out to be, but the act of dancing itself said a lot about the characters themselves.
The Water Demon
This was another story I didn't quite understand. There was a little girl who'd hang out on a bridge warning people about the water demon. Construction workers, passers-by, and even her own mom would ridicule her for believing in the water demon. At the end of the story, the girl was holding a red lotus, which was believed to have come from the water demon.
At one point in the story, the little girl called her mother the water demon. It was probably something she just uttered because she was upset, but I wonder if the water demon was supposed to represent everybody who was ever mean to her.
I also didn't understand the significance of the red lotus (i.e. if it has any subliminal meanings).
Atmospheric Pressure
I think this was another story highlighting the difficulties of navigating social situations. The narrator had returned to his hometown. He'd bumped into someone who he thought was his high school physics teacher, but the teacher (known as Diesel) did not remember him at all.
Diesel was very combative and defensive when the narrator was talking to him. Even though Diesel didn't remember him, the narrator felt a bit bad about their disagreeable conversation and thus agreed to stay at an inn of Diesel's recommendation. The stay at the inn was terrible, as there was no central heating, the air conditioning didn't work, and then Diesel locked the narrator out of his own room.
I think one of the themes was showing respect to someone who no longer remembers you. The narrator had respected Diesel as a teacher, but Diesel no longer remembered him as a student, so do they have that relationship anymore? Kind of like how grandparents with dementia are different people, so you're not really sure how to approach them.
As a side note, the narrator felt an obligation to do business with Diesel after a bad encounter, which was counterintuitive, as that bad encounter should've been a sign that he shouldn't continue engaging with Diesel.
Diesel was offended that the narrator would let him climb through a window to open his room (at his age). Here, there's a conflict between the older vs. younger relationship and the staff vs. patron relationship. Which one comes first? It's a tricky question when it comes to Asian cultures where Confucianism is still strong.
Over the course of the night, the narrator got more and more fed up with Diesel's incompetence. As we grow up, we realize that some of the adults in our lives were actually terrible role models.
At the end of the story, the narrator started to remember the local Tiancheng dialect. This is similar to the story about the banquet. But I'm still not totally sure what it means in the context of this story.
The Q of Hearts
This was another story I didn't quite understand. It was about a boy who'd lost the Queen of Hearts in his playing card deck. He was so upset about it that his dad took him to the city to look for playing cards. On the way back, they bumped into some strange people on a train. The boy had gone to the washroom and found a Queen of Hearts, but it had blood on it so his dad made him throw it away.
Playing cards were called the "feudo-capitalistic plaything of revisionists." I have no idea what this means, but I thought I'd note it down in case someone knows what it means.
There was a blood motif in this story. When the boy and his dad were staying in a hostel, the boy had gotten scared of some blood on a wall, thinking it was mosquito blood. After it was clarified to be human blood, he seemed less scared of it. When the boy found a Queen of Hearts in the train washroom, his dad told him to throw it away because of the blood.
On the train, there was a bunch of guys surrounding a man in a mask. Years later, the boy's dad had said that the man in the mask had his tongue cut out. I'm not really sure what this scene meant, and I'm really curious.
Home in May
A woman went to visit her brother (with her son) only to find out he'd moved. The woman went around town trying to find remnants on her past, and even went to her old childhood home and dragged out a cabinet, believing it to be a memento of her childhood. However, there was a photo in a cabinet of a completely different family, implying that all of the memories that the woman had thought of were fabricated. After that debacle, the woman and her son went shopping with much higher spirits, and then they went home.
I think this story is about old family memories and how they ground a person. The woman in this story was so obsessed with old memories of family (visiting her brother who clearly wanted nothing to do with her, visiting an old family home and trying to get her son to remember something from when he was a baby, etc.). At this point, tensions with her son were rough. On the way back from what was supposed to be her brother's house, the woman had gotten lost too. There was a brief comment in the story about how homing pigeons could find their way home (contrasting with how lost the woman and her son were).
The woman's memories were dragging her down (both figuratively and literally via the heavy cabinet). Once she realized that the cabinet was not her own (and the memories of love were probably not her own/fabrications) she felt more free. She was on better terms with her son, and they even did some fun shopping.
On the way back home, the woman opted not to take a taxi, as she said they could rest while on the train. Her wording was that she didn't need to buy something she didn't need. I think one way to interpret this was maybe that she didn't need to spend brain power on those memories anymore. She thought they were special to her, but she couldn't find a single thing to back them up.
The Giant Baby
This was probably the most surreal story as it involved some possibly supernatural forces. It was about a woman with burn marks on her face who gave birth to a scary baby. It was supposed to be a virgin birth, but she claimed the father was the doctor who'd given her a fertility soup.
One of the themes was probably misdirected hate. The villagers hated the woman because of her apperance. She needed a baby in order to get revenge, and then the villagers hated the baby for terrorizing their children. The villagers questioned why she had to take revenge on the innocent children of the village. However, the woman's burns were probably not her own fault, so she was technically innocent too.
Towards the end of the story, the woman was hunting down the doctor as he was supposed to be the baby's father. However, the doctor didn't recognize the baby as his own son.
I wasn't sure of the other themes of this story, but I felt that it had something more to say as it tried to use supernatural elements to give its message.
Other
Quite a few places and things in this book were called "Red Flag." There was a school called Red Flag, there was a street called Red Flag, etc. I wasn't sure if this was just a generic name that the author used, or if it was really such a popular name because the stories were set around the Cultural Revolution.
Overall
I thought this was a very interesting set of stories. As mentioned above, the stories kind of straddle the line between mundane every day life and a slightly more surreal atmosphere, and I think that plane is an interesting setting in which all of these stories take place. This is likely a product of both the actual writing and how it was translated into English by Josh Stenberg, which I enjoyed. I'm actually not sure of the Chinese name of this collection, and whether it was just a collection that was put together for English readers.
Spoilers, I guess?
Stories
I'll talk a bit about each of the short stories here.
Madwoman on the Bridge
The madwoman in question was mad because she was wearing a cheongsam, even though such vain luxuries were looked down upon. A doctor secretly loved it and tried to trick the madwoman into coming with her to the tailor so that the doctor could make a cheongsam like that made for her.
I think one of the themes of this short story was hypocrisy and opposite meanings. Luxuries were looked down upon, but people still loved them. The madwoman wore a beautiful cheongsam and even some jewelry, but was ridiculed for daring to wear such extravagant clothes, and a passerby even told her to hide her jewelry because it would get stolen (implying that other people do actually like jewelry). In addition, the short story ended with the madwoman being sent "to Sanli Bridge." This actually meant she was going to the mental hospital that was located under Sanli Bridge. The narrator emphasized that everybody knew this, which I think again relates to the fact that everybody is openly practising hypocrisy.
Another reason that the madwoman was unsettling to passers-by was because "paintings are for people to look at, but why is the painting looking back at them?" People thought women in cheongsam were beautiful, but they did not want that beauty to have a mind of its own. It was unsettling that something that was supposed to entertain them had a life of its own. This is also related to the doctor trying to trick the madwoman. She'd come up with tons of tricks and lies to get the madwoman to come with her to the tailor (or to take off one of the frogs so the tailor could copy it), and the whole time, she'd disregarded the madwoman's feelings.
I felt this story was a great opening story. It left a big impression on me.
Weeping Willow
This story was about a driver visiting a roadside inn.
I think one of the themes of this story was the idea of mixing things up, lack of individuality, etc. Just the idea of identities and memories being muddled together.
When he got there, he was greeted by a server he'd never met, but she had the same name as the last server he'd met at the inn. However, that could not have been possible as this server had insisted she'd been working there for a while. The proprietress of the inn had greeted the driver warmly, but the driver suspected whether she'd actually recognized him or if she thought he was someone else. The server was watching a Hong Kong TV series that was dubbed in Mandarin. The driver hated these dubbed shows because the same voices were always being used.
Tensions rose between the driver and the server until they got into an argument. The server was acting like a perpetrator but playing a victim in her conversation with the driver. She left in a huff. However, the proprietress made up a totally unrelated story about why the server left to her patrons.
This was a strange story, but I think it also helped to set the tone for the more mundane stories in this collection.
On Saturdays
This story was so relatable. It was about a couple, Ningzhu and Meng, who were friends with a man called Papa Qi. Papa Qi was well connected, and ended up helping Ningzhu and Meng. The unspoken rule was that Papa Qi would go over to spend time with Ningzhu and Meng on Saturdays. However, over time, Ningzhu and Meng got really tired of the visits and tried to hint to Papa Qi that they didn't want to meet anymore. One day, Papa Qi had come over, and Ningzhu and Meng had pretended they weren't home. However, when Ningzhu peeked behind the curtain, she was looking straight at Papa Qi, which was awkward, but he probably got the message.
The story meant to illustrate the tedium of building connections (guanxi). In name, Ningzhu and Meng and Papa Qi were friends, and Papa Qi was doing things for them because he was a friend (getting their clock fixed, getting Meng a job in the high development district). However, their relationship obviously had a transactional aspect to it. In return for Papa Qi's services, Ningzhu and Meng were to entertain him every Saturday. One time, Meng and Ningzhu tried to give Papa Qi a gift to thank him for what he did, but Papa Qi said he wouldn't take the "bribe." Meng and Ningzhu almost had to blackmail Papa Qi into taking the gift. By giving Papa Qi the gift, it'd free Ningzhu and Meng of having to spend their Saturdays with Papa Qi.
Meng and Ningzhu obviously got very frustrated, and Ningzhu was starting to be a bit rude about it, doing her work in front of Papa Qi and such. However, as they started taking more extreme means (such as pretending they weren't home), Ningzhu actually panicked quite a bit.
I think the point of the story was just to illustrate this complicated world of building connections and unspoken rules of how to pay back favours.
Thieves
This was a story about a childhood memory. A boy with a good reputation was friends with another boy who he knew to be a thief. The thief had stolen a beautiful toy train and hidden it. Because the boy liked it so much, he outed the thief and later took the train for himself. I forgot what happened in th end of the story (what he did with the train) but it was still an interesting study in character.
The boy had only spoken out against injustice (the thief's thieving ways) when he wanted something out of it (the train for himself). The boy was definitely hypocritical, and he also only told this story years after it'd happened, when it was far removed from his current life and would not affect him anymore.
Whoever had the train couldn't even play with it for two reasons. One was that they didn't have the key that could make the train run, and the other was that just taking out the train was too risky and would out the thief. So this story also illustrated the interesting psychology behind stealing.
How the Ceremony Ends
A folklorist visited a town and found out about an old custom. A person would be chosen randomly (by drawing lots), everybody would whack him once, and then he'd be put into an urn. The folklorist thought it was a crazy ritual, and because of him, a demonstration was put on. By luck of the draw, the folklorist had been drawn as the victim, and he was beaten to death.
When the folklorist brought up the story to the villagers, they'd shown distaste for it. They thought it was arcane and barbaric to just kill a man like that for no reason. Obviously the folklorist thought that too.
When the folklorist was chosen and being held in preparation to be beat, he was panicked. However, the villagers reminded him that he was the one who brought up the ritual.
My interpretation of the story is as follows. Outsiders like the folklorists raise up a big stink about old stories like this that not even the locals care for anymore. The locals feel pressured to respond to outside comments on these old rituals, and then the outsiders become even more scandalized when the villagers even try to defend themselves. (Sorry if this explanation doesn't make sense at all)
Basically, I think it's a commentary on how outsiders are not understanding of how customs can change in local towns. Obviously the town had been past that particular custom, but the one who was hung up on it was the folklorist.
The Private Banquet
This was one of the stories that I didn't really understand. A professor had returned to his old hometown, and he was seen as a bit of a snob because he'd adopted city customs such as ignoring people rather than greeting every single passerby.
The professor was invited to a banquet of an old acquaintance. He'd refused it by using his mom as an excuse (classic), but another old friend had come and shamed him into going. The banquet itself was awkward. There was bad blood between the professor and the host, as well as some of the other attendees. The banquet ended with the professor getting drunk and doing some wacky stuff at the party, and then he left to back to the city the next day.
During the banquet, there was a story about a baby duckling leading other baby ducklings to a predator in hopes that they'd save themself. That might've been a reference to the old acquaintance who'd shamed the professor into going to the banquet in order to save himself.
At the banquet, the host was also pushing for the professor to be more involved, to drink more, to engage more with the lady who was there to be "entertainment," etc. The professor was not very receptive, until he got drunk and shined the host's shoes and also got slapped.
Again, I was a bit confused by this story, but my guess is that maybe it was another story about handling social conflicts.
Goddess Peak
This story was about a couple going on a vacation with another friend. During the trip, the girlfriend went off with the friend, leaving the boyfriend alone.
The girlfriend was the kind of person who could only talk shit about anything and everything. I unfortunately know people like this and it is terrible being around them. She had a natural urge to talk down literally everything, even stuff that had no relation to her own life. Somehow, the girlfriend was charmed by the friend. Maybe it was because he was different. He was not as accommodating as her boyfriend (who was almost a doormat), so maybe it was that she needed a bit of resistance.
When the boyfriend realized that his girlfriend and friend had gone away together, he was panicked at first. However, when the boat he was on finally passed Goddess Peak, he found himself amazed and a bit free. My takeaway is that this story might've just been about the girlfriend, a person with a suffocating character.
The Diary for August
A boy was arrested for throwing a stone at a couple in a park. The police officer had interrogated him harshly but the boy did not own up. The boy wrote up a (sort of fantastical) account of what happened and the police officer kept it in his office drawer for a while.
The couple themselves did not come forward, likely because if they had, they'd had to admit that they were in a relationship, which might've been a no-no. So there technically were not complainants.
The boy never once owned up to the crime of throwing a rock at the couple, only that he'd been dropping rocks near them. I mean, the truth was probably that he was dropping rocks and they'd scared the couple and someone saw. The only way this event would've been noticed was if there was a bystander.
Anyway, the boy had written up an account of what he'd done during the day, painting himself as a great altruistic hero. The police officer just kept it in his desk and didn't find it until years later, when he saw it and chuckled at it.
My interpretation of this story was that the police officer had chuckled at the fantastical story because he himself was someone who made fantastical stories. It was obvious that he was sensationalizing the crime to try to get the boy to own up, but it didn't work. In hindsight, when the crime was no longer on anyone's radar anymore, it became something funny, but to someone who was not as sharp as the boy, it might've cost them their life and freedom.
Dance of Heartbreak
A school was having a dance performance, and one of two boys would make it as the last dancer. In terms of events, not that much happened, as the narrator ended up not getting the role. I think this story was more about the characters.
The narrator and the rival Xiaoguo didn't have much against each other until they were set up to be rivals. I think it was implied that the narrator never had a shot at the role, and that he was only brought in as motivation for the rival to improve himself for the performance.
During the story, there was a side story about a teacher getting a hemorrhage and dying. The narrator didn't really understand what hemorrhage had to do with death. I think the narrator was unable to recognize death as death, and if I'm stretching, I'd say that related to him not understand that he never had a shot at the dance performance.
There was another girl in the performance called Wenyan. She had incontinence, and also had a suicidal mother. Wenyan did also pee during the performance. However, when she grew up, Wenyan went on to become a famous dancer. Because she'd left home, her mother had finally succeeded in committing suicide (whereas Wenyan would usually be there to stop her).
As for Xiaoguo ended up falling from scaffolding and breaking both legs, which was extremely unfortunate.
The narrator revealed that his own wife was also another dancer in the performance, but she seemed completely detached from dance. She thought that men who danced were disgusting. But when the narrator mentioned that he liked her dancing when they were in school, she showed interest despite not remembering a single thing she did, showing that the wife was kind of shallow in character.
I think the story was about how the dance didn't really say anything about what the characters would turn out to be, but the act of dancing itself said a lot about the characters themselves.
The Water Demon
This was another story I didn't quite understand. There was a little girl who'd hang out on a bridge warning people about the water demon. Construction workers, passers-by, and even her own mom would ridicule her for believing in the water demon. At the end of the story, the girl was holding a red lotus, which was believed to have come from the water demon.
At one point in the story, the little girl called her mother the water demon. It was probably something she just uttered because she was upset, but I wonder if the water demon was supposed to represent everybody who was ever mean to her.
I also didn't understand the significance of the red lotus (i.e. if it has any subliminal meanings).
Atmospheric Pressure
I think this was another story highlighting the difficulties of navigating social situations. The narrator had returned to his hometown. He'd bumped into someone who he thought was his high school physics teacher, but the teacher (known as Diesel) did not remember him at all.
Diesel was very combative and defensive when the narrator was talking to him. Even though Diesel didn't remember him, the narrator felt a bit bad about their disagreeable conversation and thus agreed to stay at an inn of Diesel's recommendation. The stay at the inn was terrible, as there was no central heating, the air conditioning didn't work, and then Diesel locked the narrator out of his own room.
I think one of the themes was showing respect to someone who no longer remembers you. The narrator had respected Diesel as a teacher, but Diesel no longer remembered him as a student, so do they have that relationship anymore? Kind of like how grandparents with dementia are different people, so you're not really sure how to approach them.
As a side note, the narrator felt an obligation to do business with Diesel after a bad encounter, which was counterintuitive, as that bad encounter should've been a sign that he shouldn't continue engaging with Diesel.
Diesel was offended that the narrator would let him climb through a window to open his room (at his age). Here, there's a conflict between the older vs. younger relationship and the staff vs. patron relationship. Which one comes first? It's a tricky question when it comes to Asian cultures where Confucianism is still strong.
Over the course of the night, the narrator got more and more fed up with Diesel's incompetence. As we grow up, we realize that some of the adults in our lives were actually terrible role models.
At the end of the story, the narrator started to remember the local Tiancheng dialect. This is similar to the story about the banquet. But I'm still not totally sure what it means in the context of this story.
The Q of Hearts
This was another story I didn't quite understand. It was about a boy who'd lost the Queen of Hearts in his playing card deck. He was so upset about it that his dad took him to the city to look for playing cards. On the way back, they bumped into some strange people on a train. The boy had gone to the washroom and found a Queen of Hearts, but it had blood on it so his dad made him throw it away.
Playing cards were called the "feudo-capitalistic plaything of revisionists." I have no idea what this means, but I thought I'd note it down in case someone knows what it means.
There was a blood motif in this story. When the boy and his dad were staying in a hostel, the boy had gotten scared of some blood on a wall, thinking it was mosquito blood. After it was clarified to be human blood, he seemed less scared of it. When the boy found a Queen of Hearts in the train washroom, his dad told him to throw it away because of the blood.
On the train, there was a bunch of guys surrounding a man in a mask. Years later, the boy's dad had said that the man in the mask had his tongue cut out. I'm not really sure what this scene meant, and I'm really curious.
Home in May
A woman went to visit her brother (with her son) only to find out he'd moved. The woman went around town trying to find remnants on her past, and even went to her old childhood home and dragged out a cabinet, believing it to be a memento of her childhood. However, there was a photo in a cabinet of a completely different family, implying that all of the memories that the woman had thought of were fabricated. After that debacle, the woman and her son went shopping with much higher spirits, and then they went home.
I think this story is about old family memories and how they ground a person. The woman in this story was so obsessed with old memories of family (visiting her brother who clearly wanted nothing to do with her, visiting an old family home and trying to get her son to remember something from when he was a baby, etc.). At this point, tensions with her son were rough. On the way back from what was supposed to be her brother's house, the woman had gotten lost too. There was a brief comment in the story about how homing pigeons could find their way home (contrasting with how lost the woman and her son were).
The woman's memories were dragging her down (both figuratively and literally via the heavy cabinet). Once she realized that the cabinet was not her own (and the memories of love were probably not her own/fabrications) she felt more free. She was on better terms with her son, and they even did some fun shopping.
On the way back home, the woman opted not to take a taxi, as she said they could rest while on the train. Her wording was that she didn't need to buy something she didn't need. I think one way to interpret this was maybe that she didn't need to spend brain power on those memories anymore. She thought they were special to her, but she couldn't find a single thing to back them up.
The Giant Baby
This was probably the most surreal story as it involved some possibly supernatural forces. It was about a woman with burn marks on her face who gave birth to a scary baby. It was supposed to be a virgin birth, but she claimed the father was the doctor who'd given her a fertility soup.
One of the themes was probably misdirected hate. The villagers hated the woman because of her apperance. She needed a baby in order to get revenge, and then the villagers hated the baby for terrorizing their children. The villagers questioned why she had to take revenge on the innocent children of the village. However, the woman's burns were probably not her own fault, so she was technically innocent too.
Towards the end of the story, the woman was hunting down the doctor as he was supposed to be the baby's father. However, the doctor didn't recognize the baby as his own son.
I wasn't sure of the other themes of this story, but I felt that it had something more to say as it tried to use supernatural elements to give its message.
Other
Quite a few places and things in this book were called "Red Flag." There was a school called Red Flag, there was a street called Red Flag, etc. I wasn't sure if this was just a generic name that the author used, or if it was really such a popular name because the stories were set around the Cultural Revolution.
Overall
I thought this was a very interesting set of stories. As mentioned above, the stories kind of straddle the line between mundane every day life and a slightly more surreal atmosphere, and I think that plane is an interesting setting in which all of these stories take place. This is likely a product of both the actual writing and how it was translated into English by Josh Stenberg, which I enjoyed. I'm actually not sure of the Chinese name of this collection, and whether it was just a collection that was put together for English readers.