Xaio, Jiwei

English

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98 The International Fiction Review 33 (2006)Shen CongwenSelected Stories of Shen CongwenTrans. Jeffrey KinkleyHong Kong: The Chinese University of Hong Kong, 2004. Pp. 300. US $17.50Reviewed by Jiwei XiaoThe publication of Selected Stories of Shen Congwen , which collects sixtranslated stories of Shen Congwen (1902–1988), is a welcome addition to theEnglish resource on this important Chinese writer. With almost all his literaryworks written between the 1920s and 1940s, Shen was most famous for his local-colored stories about his hometown of West Hunan. The region’s distinctiveethnographic landscape, religious rituals, sexual customs, and moral ethos aswell as legends and everyday life of local people make their way to volumes ofhis stories in the form of folkloric tales, short stories, novels, and travelogues.Telling stories often in a restrained and understated manner, Shen shows hisextraordinary talent to deliver lyricism as well as social criticism withoutsubmitting to ideological biases. Shen’s aesthetic subtlety, humanist compassion,and apolitical standpoint went unappreciated for a long time. After decades ofhis self-imposed withdrawal from creative writing and the official ban on hisworks during the Mao era, Shen was almost totally forgotten in mainland China.He was reintroduced to the modern Chinese literary canon in the 1980s as hisworks were republished and reevaluated. Shen is now recognized and revered asone of the founding figures who wrote the best modern Chinese “literature ofhome and country” (xiangtu wenxue).The book, in its English-Chinese bilingual edition, is one of the BilingualSeries on Modern Chinese Literature published by the Hong Kong-basedChinese University Press. It should also be counted as another accomplishmentof the translator and scholar Jeffrey Kinkley, whose decade-long devotion to aclose study of Shen has produced the landmark literary biography The Odyssey ofShen Congwen. Kinkley is also the editor and major translator of Imperfect Paradise,a book featuring twenty-four translated stories of Shen and so far the best andthe most extensive collection of Shen’s works in English. Compared to ImperfectParadise, Selected Stories of Shen Congwen has a less ambitious scale and a morecoherent theme—in Kinkley’s words, “the contradiction and reversals in ShenCongwen’s portraits of ‘paradise,’ even in his depiction of ‘corruption’” (xxii).The titular heroine of the story “Sansan” is one of Shen’s many prepubescentfemale characters whose threatened innocence is portrayed as psychologicallyrealistic as it is allegorically meaningful in the larger context of socialmodernization. The male characters in “Husband” and “Quisheng” appear firstas ordinary peasants content with their lives but are both later awakened to theirinferior status in a society whose class oppression is coded in sexual possessionand deprivation. Kinkley also shows his superb knowledge and understandingBook Reviews 99of Shen Congwen’s “critical lyricism” by placing “The New and the Old,” a storythat has invited little attention from other critics so far, on top as the first story ofthe collection. “The New and the Old” tells the story about an old soldier calledWarrior Yang who finds himself caught in a nightmarish experience of beingunable to tell reality from dream when he is carrying out his job as anexecutioner for one last time. Having spent the larger part of his life as anexecutioner beheading prisoners, Warrior Yang earns a name for his excellentdispatching skills. But it seems that in his old age and in the “new” time, hisskills are rendered obsolete by the use of guns and bullets. Just as he easies into anonviolent quiet life as a gatekeeper, his life takes a drastic turn when one day hereceives the order to behead two prisoners in public. The irony is that while therifle allows the government to kill people with far more ease, it lacks theintimidating power of the ritualistic gruesomeness of beheading with a sword.Although Warrior Yang successfully executes his job, he has felt, throughout theevent, being estranged from the reality. When he runs into the temple of the citygod and crawls under the altar to ask for forgiveness after the execution, as wasthe custom and as he did every time in the past, everyone takes him as amadman.Warrior Yang is vaguely aware of the fact that, while his technique isneeded, the old customs have long since been discarded and forgotten. What heis not so clear about is the contrast between “the Old” and “the New”—no matterhow meaningless to the point of being farcical it looks, the old ritual of theexecutioner’s praying for forgiveness and the ensuing “performance” of trial andpunishment of him in the court at least carries a recognition that deprivinganother man of his life is a crime. Warrior Yang’s “madness” and later deaththerefore announces a total alienation of modern man from tradition and fromhis humanity. Here, rather than criticizing the stupor and barbarity of theexecutioner, the writer instead goes to great lengths to delineate the inner worldof the man, his uncanny feelings, his bewilderment, as he gropes for sanity in thewildness of time. But if the reader is riveted and moved by the inner chaos of this“last executioner,” Shen’s depiction of the man’s “exteriority” has a similar effectof humanizing the otherwise cruel figure. Those seemingly insignificanteveryday details about Warrior Yang’s simple and idle life as a gatekeeper beforethe incident—the faded bloodstain on the old soldier’s sword, his lethargicbasking in the sun, his friendliness with other soldiers and children—allowhumanity to shine through in the most unlikely places.

Shen Congwen. Selected Stories of Shen Congwen

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Shen Congwen. Selected Stories of Shen Congwen

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