COURTING CONTROVERSY
Making literary waves is second nature to Jia Pingwa, who recently published his latest novel, The Mountain Stories. Mei Jia reports.
Jia Pingwa has been caught in controversies several times in his writing career that spans more than 45 years. His Ruined City was banned for 16 years until 2009, and he likens it to a “child with unlucky fate”.
Then, he courted controversy again with Ji Hua,a novel about an abducted woman, published in 2016.
In this book, Jia had the protagonist return to the place where she was kept captive because she could not go back to her former life.
It has been two years since the novel’s release, but the work still raises eyebrows with its storyline.
Speaking about the novel, Jia says: “I respect women and sympathize with them.”
And responding to the Chinese media, he says any comments and amplification of the original text is not right.
“As to the problems in rural areas, I’m actually in a dilemma over whether to praise or criticize. So, what I did was to represent the pains and complexity of human nature during social spasms as it progresses,” he says.
This book is not the first time that Jia has attempted to focus on human nature and reveal the complexity of society.
In his 2007 novel Happy Dreams, he focused on farmers and their dilemma of staying on in the city or going back to the countryside.
The theme of dealing with dilemma also lingers over his latest novel, The Mountain Stories (Shan Ben), released in April by two publishers, one for the paperback, one for hardback.
“In the book, Jia depicts people from the grassroots who are simple and honest, and it is also them, at least some of them, who are cruel and evil, and sometimes bloodthirsty,” critic Chen Sihe says. “He captures conflicts.” Jia is also prolific. His latest work is his fifth since 2011, when he published Old Kiln.
His other works were The Lantern Bearer (2013), Lao Sheng (2014), Ji Hua (2016) and Shan Ben (2018).
Commenting on his ability to churn out works regularly, publishing veteran Pan Kaixiong says: “It’s difficult even for a younger writer to maintain the momentum and quality that Jia manages. And each of his novels is distinctive.”
Pan says Jia’s works are the literary representation of contemporary Chinese history, from the early 1900s to the present.
Since 1973, Jia has published 16 novels and other works.
Jia says that over the years his literary influences have included ancient Chinese literature, Russian realism, Western modernism and post-modernism, as well as the revolutionary realism born shortly after establishment of new China.
“I started writing with what I was familiar with. Then I was concerned about the social meaning of my writing and thus I lost my voice and became a symbol of a collective consciousness, and later on I tried to find who I was,” he says.
“I feel a strong urge to write. I’m never satisfied with my output, thinking only that the next one might be the best.”
In his latest novel, Jia writes about frequent wars and deaths.
The story, however, is set in the Qinling Mountains in the 1920s and ’30s, and is about the complicated nature of history and human beings.
In the story, a local armed force has grown out of some auspicious signs and a goodhearted woman’s persistence.
Then, the heroes of the time rise to become warlords, but more warlords mean more suffering for ordinary people.
“I always wanted to write about Qinling, because to me, Qinling represents my hometown, and China,” he says.
Jia also says that he believes that 70 to 80 percent of the country’s historic events happened there, a place where the Yellow River merges with the Yangtze River, and the northern culture of the country merges with the southern one.
The idea for the book started taking shape when Jia visited Qinling to collect material for a book about animals and plants in the mountains.
But though that task is unfinished, he collected tons of folk tales about the 1920s and ’30s.
The mysterious aspects in deep mountains are turned into vivid elements in the novel, where a mouse predicts the coming of wars, an old tree knows to reward goodness and a man could understand animals.
Critic Wang Chunlin says the novel is an “encyclopedia about Qinling”, but adds that it is also about Chinese revolutionary history.
“Jia’s thoughts even delve into religion and philosophy,” Wang says.
Kong Lingyan, editor of the hardback, says Jia looks at history from above, and he chooses a small spot — a town — for a grand narrative.
Jia, who spent three years looking for ways to look back at history, says: “It (history) is subjective. It’s the accumulation of numerous oral accounts, and it’s about how individuals view it.
“From oral tales to literature, what really matters is the writer himself, how he or she views and feels things. Whatever I wrote, I was writing about me.”
Meanwhile, some literary critics say Lu Juren, the female protagonist who’s depicted as a perfect woman, stands for Jia’s belief in the warmth of human nature.
And Jia lets Lu grow into a better version of herself.
Besides his obvious writing skills, Jia also has beautiful handwriting and a talent for calligraphy.
Kong says Jia has a habit of writing all his drafts on notebooks.
“Editors often receive a pile of Jia’s notebooks full of beautiful handwriting.”