Golden Age Read online

  Copyright © 2022 by Wang Xiaobo

  English translation copyright © 2022 by Yan Yan

  Originally published in Chinese as The Golden Years by Thinkingdom Media Group Ltd., 2017. Publication of this revised translation of “The Golden Age” is made possible by permission of the State University of New York Press, publisher of Wang in Love and Bondage: Three Novellas by Wang Xiaobo © 2007 by State University of New York.

  All rights reserved. Copying or digitizing this book for storage, display, or distribution in any other medium is strictly prohibited.

  For information about permission to reproduce selections from this book, please contact [email protected].

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  Astra House

  A Division of Astra Publishing House

  astrahouse.com

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Names: Wang, Xiaobo, 1952–1997, author. | Yan, Yan (Translator), translator.

  Title: Golden age : a novel / Wang Xiaobo ; translated by Yan Yan.

  Other titles: Huang jin shi dai. English

  Description: First edition. | New York : Astra House, [2022] | Summary: “Wang Er, whose long affair with Chen Qinyang has attracted the attention of local authorities, is shamed and forced to write a confession of his crimes. Instead, he takes it upon himself to write a modernist literary tract. Later, as a lecturer at a chaotic, newly built university, Wang Er navigates the bureaucratic maze of 1980’s China, boldly writing about the Cultural Revolution’s impact on his life and those around him. Finally, alone and humbled, Wang Er must come to terms with the banality of his own existence.”—Provided by publisher.

  Identifiers: LCCN 2021059054 (print) | LCCN 2021059055 (ebook) | ISBN 9781662601217 (hardcover) | ISBN 9781662601224 (epub)

  Subjects: LCSH: Wang, Xiaobo, 1952–1997.—Translations into English. | China—History—20th century—Fiction. | LCGFT: Novels.

  Classification: LCC PL2919.H8218 H83413 2022 (print) | LCC PL2919.H8218 (ebook) | DDC 895.13/52—dc23/eng/20220114

  LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2021059054

  LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2021059055

  FIRST EDITION

  Design by Richard Oriolo

  The text is set in CenturySchoolbookStd.

  The titles are set in BureauGrotesque-ThreeSeven.

  CONTENTS

  INTRODUCTION

  GOLDEN AGE

  AT THIRTY, A MAN

  YEARS AS WATER FLOW

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  ABOUT THE TRANSLATOR

  INTRODUCTION

  by Michael Berry

  WANG XIAOBO IS SOMETHING OF an anomaly amid the landscape of the contemporary Chinese literary world. Born in 1952, Wang was basically a member of the same generation of those superstar writers that earned great acclaim in the immediate aftermath of the Cultural Revolution—writers like Jia Pingwa (born in 1952), Wang Anyi (born in 1954), and Mo Yan (born in 1955). However, unlike Jia Pingwa, Wang Anyi, Mo Yan, and other writers, Wang Xiaobo was not a member of the literary elite that emerged during the late 1970s and early 1980s. Wang did not start publishing his work until a full decade after his contemporaries, and his career as professional writer would last a mere five years before he would succumb to a heart attack at the youthful age of forty-four. Although Wang Xiaobo only spent a few years as a full-time writer, he produced a stunning output of novels, novellas, short stories, and essays that have placed him firmly alongside Mo Yan, Wang Anyi, and Jia Pingwa as one of contemporary China’s greatest writers. More than two decades after his death his books continue to top best-seller lists in China and speak powerfully to readers through his piercing social critique, sarcastic tone, sharp humor, and wild literary imagination.

  Wang Xiaobo’s youth in some ways mirrored the early years of the People’s Republic of China (PRC), which was established just three years before his birth, in 1949. Much of Wang’s youth was therefore swept up in the many political movements of early PRC history and his education stunted during the Cultural Revolution. Wang’s early life experiences were rich and varied: he spent time as an “educated youth” in Yunnan and as a laborer in Shandong. During the early days of the Reform Era he worked in an instrument factory before earning a degree in trade economics from Renmin University of China in 1982. After staying on for two years after his graduation as an instructor at Renmin University, Wang’s life took a dramatic turn in the mid-1980s when he traveled to the United States to pursue graduate studies. This change was also marked by a shift in his field of study, majoring in East Asian studies at the University of Pittsburgh. It was there in Pittsburgh from 1984 to 1988 that Wang would become close with the legendary sinologist Professor Cho-yun Hsu, whose work would also have a profound impact on the future writer. This experience—growing up amid the “red fever” of Mao’s China, working in factories, enrolling in college during the early Reform Era, and moving to America during the height of China’s “culture fever” of the 1980s—collectively contributed to an incredibly powerful and unique literary vision.

  Upon his return to China in 1988, Wang took up several teaching posts, where he proved to be something of a polymath—although his degrees were in trade economics and East Asian studies, he taught courses in sociology and accounting. But, of course, his “other calling” was literature and, as a writer, Wang Xiaobo was a true innovator publishing nonfiction academic works, fiction, a screenplay, and a series of popular prose essays. He was one of the first PRC writers to win major critical acclaim in Taiwan in the early 1990s (he was a two-time winner of the prestigious Unitas Literary Award for outstanding novella). His published works spanned numerous genres and forms. In nonfiction, he coauthored the sociological study Their World (Tamen de shijie) with his wife, sociologist Li Yinhe. Their World was the first serious academic study of homosexuality in contemporary China and a landmark book for its breaking of social taboos and contribution to the fight against the stigmatization of the queer community in China. Wang’s research on the Chinese gay community also led to his role as screenwriter on Zhang Yuan’s film, East Palace, West Palace (Dong gong, xi gong), a film often cited as the first example of “queer cinema” in the PRC. (Wang also became the first Chinese screenwriter to win an international award for his screenplay). But outside of his fiction, Wang made the biggest impact through his short essays, which were collected in several volumes including My Spiritual Garden (Wo de jingshen jiayuan), The Silent Majority (Chenmo de daduoshu), and the new English-language collection The Pleasure of Thinking: A Collection of Essays by Wang Xiaobo. Wang’s sharp and witty observances on history and society have earned him a special place in the hearts of Chinese readers over the course of the past twenty years and have been consistent best sellers.

  But standing apart from Wang’s varied body of published work is his fiction. Spanning the Tang dynasty to the Cultural Revolution and into a brave new science-fiction future, Wang Xiaobo’s fiction revealed a fresh perspective and stunningly original voice that hypnotized readers when it first became widely available in the mid-1990s. His trilogy—Golden Age (Huangjin shidai), Silver Age (Baiyin shidai), and Bronze Age (Qingtong shidai)—presented a wild absurdist world filled with black humor and Kafkaesque logic, punctuated with moments of penetrating insight and sublime beauty. The crown jewel of that trilogy is the novella Golden Age, a dark and humorous look at the Cultural Revolution. The novella also had a very interesting publication history. Certain story elements were loosely inspired by Wang Xiaobo’s experiences as a sent-down youth in Yunna
n, where the story is also set, and he began writing a draft as early as 1982. However, Golden Age would not be published until a full decade later, with its first edition appearing in Taiwan in 1991. A Hong Kong edition appeared the following year in 1992. But owing to the scandalous content, PRC publishers did not publish the book until 1994 when veteran editor of Huaxia Publishing Zhao Jieping took a chance on the controversial novella. Upon publication the novella was subject to severe criticism, but gradually began to build up a loyal readership, eventually earning a major cult following, and going on to be regarded as one of the most important Chinese literary works of the 1990s.

  Over the past forty years, narratives about China’s Cultural Revolution have gone through a series of evolutions—from the bare-it-all, tormented exposé stories of the “Scar Literature” movement to the more philosophical “Reflection Literature,” and from the “Search-for-Roots” movement, which attempted to excavate the Chinese cultural tradition in an attempt to make sense of the “ten years of eternal chaos” that had befallen the nation, to the “avant-garde” movement, which repositioned the Cultural Revolution in a twisted world of violence and allegory. Wang Xiaobo’s Golden Age came on the tail of this series of literary movements at a time when all narrative possibilities about the Cultural Revolution had seemingly been exhausted. But Golden Age, which told of the adventures of educated youth Wang Er, seemed to open up a truly new and innovative space from which to reflect upon this historical period. Here on Wang Xiaobo’s absurdist canvas, “political re-education” is transformed into a “sexual re-education,” struggle sessions where political victims are beaten and humiliated in public are re-imagined as S & M sessions, and political self-confessions is morphed into erotic confessions to titillate government officials. Wang Xiaobo’s outrageous narrative can be seen as something of a deconstruction of Cultural Revolution literary narratives, arriving on the tail end of the aforementioned series of literary movements fixated on the Cultural Revolution and just on the cusp of when a new series of commercialized, melodramatic, and watered-down narratives of the period came to dominate. In this sense, Golden Age marks not only a crucial point in the evolution of Cultural Revolution narratives, but also the last breath of a “golden age” of literary innovation and experimentation, which would soon buckle under the dual pressures of censorship and “the market.”

  MICHAEL BERRY is professor of contemporary Chinese cultural studies and director of the Center for Chinese Studies at UCLA. He is the author of five books on Chinese cinema, including Speaking in Images: Interviews with Contemporary Chinese Filmmakers (2005) and A History of Pain: Trauma in Modern Chinese Literature and Film (2008). He has served as a film consultant and a juror for film festivals, including the Golden Horse (Taiwan) and the Fresh Wave (Hong Kong). He is also the translator of several novels, including Wild Kids (2000), Nanjing 1937: A Love Story (2002), To Live (2003), The Song of Everlasting Sorrow (2008) and most recently Remains of Life (2017).

  GOLDEN AGE

  1

  I WAS TWENTY-ONE YEARS OLD, STATIONED at a commune in Yunnan. Chen Qingyang was twenty-six, working as a doctor in the same place. I was in Team 14 at the bottom of the hill. She was in Team 15 up at the top. One day, she came down from the mountain to ask me whether she was a loose woman, a so-called old shoe. I didn’t know her at the time, I had only heard of her. What she wanted to talk about was this: even though everyone called her an old shoe, she didn’t think it was true. Her theory was that loose women steal men, and she had never stolen anything, let alone anyone’s man. Even with her husband having spent the past year behind bars, she had never taken a lover. And even before that, she had never done it. Therefore, she just couldn’t understand why everyone called her an old shoe. Comforting her would have been easy. I could have done it just through logic. If Chen Qingyang was an old shoe, then she must have had affairs, and those men, at least one of them, must still be around to testify. So far, no such person could be found; therefore, calling Chen Qingyang an old shoe was unfounded. But still, what I said to her was, Chen Qingyang you are definitely an old shoe, there is no doubt about it.

  The whole thing with Chen Qingyang asking me to prove that she wasn’t an old shoe started when I went to her for a shot. The story went as follows: during the busy planting season, our captain didn’t hand me a plow, but asked me to plant rice seedlings instead, so that most of the time my back was bent downward. As anyone who knows me also knows I have an old injury to my lower back, and I stand over 1.9 meters tall. After a month of transplanting, I was in so much pain that I needed a cortisone shot just to go to sleep. Our infirmary only had a bunch of old busted needles with barbed tips that ripped the flesh straight out. They left my lower back looking like it had been shot with a shotgun, leaving lingering shrapnel wounds. It was then that I remembered that Team 15’s Chen Qingyang was a graduate of the Beijing Medical University. I figured she could probably tell a needle from a fishhook, so I went to her to get treated. It wasn’t more than thirty minutes after I returned from the doctor’s visit that she came barging into my hut, asking me to prove that she wasn’t an old shoe.

  CHEN QINGYANG SAID, it wasn’t that she had anything against loose women. As far as she could tell, they tended to be kind, helpful people who hated to let anyone down. She had some admiration for them. But the point wasn’t if they were worthy women or not, it was just that she was not one of them. It was just like how cats weren’t dogs. If a cat had found itself being called a dog, it also would have felt uncomfortable. With everyone calling her an old shoe, even she herself was beginning to question what she was.

  Chen Qingyang appeared in my hut wearing a white doctor’s medical gown with bare arms and legs. It was the way she had looked earlier in the infirmary with the exception of a handkerchief tied around her long hair and a pair of flip-flops on her feet. The sight of her led me to wonder: was she wearing anything under that white gown, or was she not? The fact that she didn’t care what she wore was proof of Chen Qingyang’s beauty. She had the sort of confidence that had been nurtured from a young age. I told her she really was an old shoe and began to explain: the term loose old shoe is a stereotype. If everyone calls you an old shoe, then that is what you are. It doesn’t have to obey logic. If everyone says you are having an affair, then you must be having an affair. You can’t reason with it. As for why everyone wants to call you an old shoe, I think the reason was this: everyone believes that the kind of married woman who doesn’t have affairs should have leathery faces and saggy breasts. Your face isn’t leathery and your breasts don’t sag; therefore, you must be what they say. If you don’t want to be an old shoe, then you should weather your face and let your breasts sag. Only then will people stop calling you an old shoe. Of course, that would be quite a sacrifice. If you aren’t inclined to make such a sacrifice, then you should just have an affair. That way, even you will agree that you are an old shoe. They don’t need to figure out if you really had affairs before calling you an old shoe. You are the only one responsible for making sure that no one can call you names. When Chen Qingyang heard these words, her face turned red and her eyes bulged out. She looked like she wanted to slap me in the face. This woman was notorious for her generous slaps, many had felt the heat of her palm on their cheeks. But she sighed and said, “Fine, whatever, but what is or isn’t leathery or saggy is none of your business.” She added that if I pondered these things too much, I would probably get slapped.

  That was twenty years ago. I can still picture Chen Qingyang and me exchanging words about old shoes. My face was tawny and my parched lips were specked with shreds of paper and tobacco. My hair was like the mess of a bird’s nest. I wore a tattered army coat with more than a few taped-up patches. With one leg over the other, slouching on my wooden plank bed, I looked like a hooligan. You can only imagine how Chen Qingyang must have felt listening to a guy talk about saggy breasts, how her palm must have itched. It made her neurotic that it was always healthy, strong men coming to see her a
t the infirmary. They weren’t sick. They weren’t interested in seeing a doctor. They just wanted to see her. I was the only exception. My lower back looked like I had two farm rakes built in it. Never mind the pain, the cavities alone warranted a visit to the doctor. Those cavities somehow gave her hope that I could prove she was not a slut. Having one person believe it was qualitatively different from having no one believe it at all. But I let her down.

  My thinking went like this: if I had wanted to prove that she wasn’t an old shoe, and that my will to do so would have been proof enough of her innocence, then life would have been too easy. In truth, I couldn’t prove anything aside from some mundane facts that needed no further proof. In the spring, the captain accused me of shooting out his dog’s left eye, forcing it to constantly tilt its head like a ballerina. After that, the captain began giving me a hard time. If I had wanted to prove my innocence, I could have asserted the following:

  1.  The captain didn’t own a dog;

  2.  Said dog was born without a left eye;

  3.  I had no hands, so I couldn’t have fired a gun.

  Of the three assertions, none was true. The captain did, in fact, own a brown dog. Said brown dog’s left eye was, in fact, blinded after birth. And not only was I capable of pulling a trigger, I was quite a good shot. Not long before the incident, I had borrowed an air gun from Luo Xiaosi. Using a bowl of mung beans as ammunition, I exterminated a kilogram of rats in the empty silo. Of course, I wasn’t the only sharpshooter in our team. Luo wasn’t bad either. The air gun belonged to him and when he shot the dog blind, I was standing next to him, watching. I wasn’t one to tattle. Luo and I were pretty close. Besides, if the captain had had the balls to confront Luo Xiaosi, he wouldn’t have had to pick on me. So I kept quiet, and quiet meant guilty. That was how I ended up transplanting rice seedlings in the spring keeled over like a broken utility pole. After the fall harvest, I was ordered to herd oxen again. It meant no warm meal for me all day. Of course I didn’t just give in. One day, at the top of a hill, when I just happened to have Luo’s air gun with me, the captain’s brown dog crossed my path. I took the opportunity to put a bullet in its right eye. The dog was blind in both eyes now and couldn’t have found its way home for the captain to find out—heaven knows where it ran off to.