The
Ancient Ship
Zhang
Wei
Translated
by Howard Goldblatt
First
published 1987. Translation 2008.
The
year of first publication of this book in Chinese was about a decade
along the Deng Xiaoping capitalist road taken by China after the
demise of Mao and Maoism. The narrative spans about four or five
decades, with references to the 'glorious' past of Zheng He.
Zheng was a great 15th century admiral of the Chinese navy, who
explored and established trade links in many countries, as far afield
as Africa and America, and including, of course, much of South Asia.
In this book he is used to invoke some visions of a stable,
comfortable, reasonably prosperous past in the small town of Wali on
the banks of the river Luqing. Wali is famous for its production of
'White Dragon' glass noodles (made of starch extracted from mung
beans), made traditionally since, perhaps, the time of Zheng He, and
sold all over the country. The factory, at the beginning of the
nineteenth century, is communal property, though mainly controlled by
the Sui family. Two other prominent families, the Zhao and the Li,
wrestle intermittently for control. With the advent of Mao and
Maoism, the equations change. The traditionally more powerful family
finds itself jockeyed out and the upstart Zhao family takes hold of
the levers of political power, i.e. of the local branches and twigs
of the Communist Party of China. But, despite the change in the
equations of power, initally at least, some of the centuries-old
feudal structures remain, and the populace does not deviate from its
ancient traditions of inter-personal relationships. Slowly, however
there is corruption, and the erstwhile landlords and their families
start being treated cruelly. There is brief period in which the
landlords return to power and visit unspeakable horrors on their
recent masters and their minions. But the tables turn once more, and
more permanently. Now it is the turn of the landlord families,
including the Sui, to suffer torture and cruelty. Soon the communist
party cadre from the urban centres descend on Wali, shaking up and
remaking the hierarchies entirely. Everyone goes through the famine
and the drought brought about by the Great Leap Forward, and the
Cultural Revolution, and the other idiocies of Mao. Large swathes of
the population of Wali join the millions of Chinese who die during
this period. After a few decades of this, the capitalist road
beckons. Wali is not itself much affected or changed directly by this
new economic philiosphy, but young men from the town go to one of the
large urban centres to set up some small business and make a living,
coming back occasionally to thier home town to lord it over the local
populace.
This
tale of recent Chinese history is not told linearly. The timeline
goes back and forth with no clear indication of the transitions, so
we will be reading about the 1980s and in the next few pages the
story will shift back to the cultural revolution, and a few page
later shift to the pre-Mao times, before leaping back to modern
times, and so on. This, taken together with the fact that I needed
some time to get used to Chinese names, meant that often I had to
reread portions ofthe novel to keep track of what was going on. The
novel cannot be called gripping – at least it is not so without
considerable concentration and effort. For all that, it is a good
read, and worth all that work. The history I have described above is
not explicitly narrated as such, but takes place in the background.
The focus is on three generations of individual people in the town of
Wali, and the way in which their inter-relationships are affected by
the larger happenings in the country.
This
is an honest book, somewhat anti-communist, but not tendentiously so.
The sincereity of the author is palpable, and as I said before, it is
a good and satisfying read.
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