Salt of the hearth
An intriguing novel recounts the fortunes of a fictional merchant family against the backdrop of upheaval in an uncertain time, Yang Yang reports.
In a helter-skelter world where one’s bearings can easily be lost, deciding on what path to take can be difficult. Choosing a direction in life and making the necessary choices are at the heart of Li Jingrui’s latest novel Shen Yu Tang. Li tries to explore this concept through an intricate story about a rich business family surnamed Yu in the fictional city of Zicheng in Sichuan province. The story covers a span of 12 years since the abdication of Pu Yi, the last emperor of the Qing Dynasty (16441911).
The Yus have been running salt wells for more than two centuries and, when the story starts, they are one of the big four salt merchants in Zicheng.
In Chinese history, at the end of the Qing Dynasty, salt merchants in Sichuan grew wealthy very quickly due to the government’s new policies. However, they fell quickly, too, when, during a brief period at the start of 1920s, warlords caused turmoil in a fight for power following the collapse of the royal family.
Li hails from Zigong, a city in Sichuan once famous for its salt mines. She says that she wanted to write about the salt merchants’ decline against the historical backdrop of a sea change in the country’s governance.
“The story has been in my mind for many years. Since I quit my job and became a professional writer in 2012, I have been collecting related books, photos and essays. I stacked them at home and leafed through them during my free time,” the 37-year-old says.
When Li went back to Zigong, her father would drive her around to see the deserted salt wells — neglected cultural relics.
Li did not write the first sentence until October 2015, when she was visiting Chinatown in Yokohama, which reminded her of the Chinese intellectuals that escaped there after the Hundred Day’s Reform failed in 1898. The city, nestled beside Tokyo, inspired two of the key characters in the novel.
“It’s very likely that a writer will write stories that he or she likes reading,” Li says.
She says she loves realistic narration, long Russian novels like those by Fyodor Dostoyevsky, stories in which history, family and city intertwine, as well as romances with melodramatic twists like those created in 1920s and 30s by Chinese writer Zhang Henshui. All these elements converge in Shen Yu Tang.
“Initially, I wanted to write a romance about a family and its history of running salt mines. But, gradually, my ambition grew and I wanted the characters to respond to what was happening during that historical period,” she says.
The novel runs to 430 pages, which is long, but there were many character arcs and plots that had to be fully developed, she says.
“The biggest difficulty was to maintain the confidence to finish the novel. There were ten thousand times when I doubted whether the story would work, and whether the figures that I worked on every day could really breathe,” she says.
After four years’ toil, “the story kept torturing me so that, by the end of its creation, I felt I could not hold on any longer. Completing the novel is already a victory for me,” she says.
“A writer cannot always realize what he or she plans,” she notes.
Li published her first story — a tale of young love — at the age of 13 in a magazine for teenagers. She continued writing and was invited to contribute more youth fiction to such outlets.
However, as a top student at high school, having read novels by Leo Tolstoy and Fyodor Dostoyevsky, she aspired to write something outstanding and realized that there was a big gap between ambition and ability.
As a result, she stopped writing for more than a decade, pursuing a career as a journalist instead. After working for 10 years, upon turning 30 in 2012, Li quit the job and became a professional writer. Since then, she has published two essay collections, two short story collections and three novels.
In her fiction, she injected memories about her hometown Zigong, her experience in Beijing, New York and Tokyo, as well as her thoughts about “the torrent of the times” that easily sweeps people away and individuals’ courage to make choices to resist the “torrent”.
Shen Yu Tang contains similar elements. The first half of the novel centers on Yu Lixin, a middle-aged father in the family and the most powerful figure among the salt merchants in Zicheng. Although he bribed the local government to secure the family business, the abdication of the last emperor and the threat of the warlords forces Yu Lixin to escape to Peking, as Beijing was referred to at the time.
In the hope of finding reliable protection, Yu keeps betting on the wrong people in the capricious power struggle among different factions. After squandering a lot of money, he gradually loses his mind, turning into a violent opium addict.
Li originally wanted to develop the second half of the book to focus on another male figure, Lin Enpu, who decides to devote his life to revolution.
However, in the middle of writing, her characters took on a life of their own and Li found that her feeling towards Yu Lingzhi, a female character, grew deeper. Yu Lingzhi gradually evolved into the main protagonist in the second half of the novel.
Also in her original plan, the ending was tragic but, in the published version, despite the chaotic world and hectic circumstances, there were clear-headed people like Yu Lingzhi, who took a road completely different from those chosen by men. For Li only, this road leads to hope.
Yu Lingzhi is the youngest child of the Yus. Her eldest brother Yu Jizhi leaves for the United States to study medicine and returns as a pious Christian, yet finds the meaning of life in a taboo relationship.
Her elder brother Yu Dazhi goes to Japan to study law and politics, but he quits to make bombs in a desire to help establish a new world order. In a bid to achieve his goal, he does not hesitate in murdering his nephew.
Yu Lingzhi, betrayed by her fiancee, marries another man unwillingly and gives birth to a boy. After the boy is murdered, she wakes up from her seemingly peaceful life and travels to Beijing to continue higher education.
There she witnesses the May 4th Movement and takes part in an initially peaceful protest against the unfair treaty that the then Chinese government was forced to sign at the Paris Peace Conference in 1919 following World War I.
Li was surprised to read from historical records that, at the start of 1910s, when power struggles between the various factions carried on unabated, despite the country falling into chaos and an unpredictable future, the then minister of agriculture and forestry Chen Zhenxian chose to organize people to plant trees at the Temple of Heaven in Beijing.
“When I read the historical records about it, I was deeply touched. They planted about 3 million trees, even imported ones from Germany,” she says.
In a world where one’s bearings can be lost, we can choose to do something constructive like growing our own trees, just as Yu Lingzhi decides to do at the end of the novel, she says.
The story has been in my mind for many years. Since I quit my job and became a professional writer in 2012, I have been collecting related books, photos and essays.”
Li Jingrui, writer