Fat Years - Chan Koonchung [0]
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This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, organizations, places, events, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
Translation copyright © 2011 by Michael S. Duke
Preface copyright © 2011 by Julia Lovell
All rights reserved. Published in the United States by Nan A. Talese / Doubleday, a division of Random House, Inc., New York, and in Canada by Random House of Canada, Toronto.
www.nanatalese.com
DOUBLEDAY is a registered trademark of Random House, Inc. Nan A. Talese and the colophon are trademarks of Random House, Inc.
Originally published in Hong Kong as Shengshi: Zhongguo 2013 by Oxford University Press (China) Ltd., a subsidiary of Oxford University Press, in 2009. Copyright © 2009 by Chan Koonchung. This translation was originally published in Great Britain by Transworld Publishers, an imprint of the Random House Group Limited, London, in 2011.
Book design by Maria Carella
Cover design by Michael J. Windsor
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Chen, Guanzhong.
[Sheng shi. English]
The fat years: a novel / Chan Koonchung; translated from the Chinese by Michael S. Duke; with a preface by Julia Lovell.—1st U.S. ed.
p. cm.
1. Beijing (China)—Fiction. 2. Political fiction. I. Duke, Michael S. II. Title.
PL2840.G84S5413 2011
895.1'352—dc22 2011014043
ISBN 978-0-385-53434-5
EBOOK ISBN 978-0-385-53435-2
First American Edition
v3.1
CONTENTS
Cover
Title Page
Copyright Page
Preface by Julia Lovell
A Note on Pronunciation
List of Main Characters
PART ONE
1. Two Years from Now
2. Never Forget
3. From Spring to Summer
PART TWO
1. Wandering Back and Forth
2. The Faith, Hope, and Love of Several People
PART THREE
EPILOGUE
A Very Long Night, or a Warning About China’s Twenty-first-century Age of Ascendancy
Translator’s Note
Translator’s Endnotes
About the Authors
PREFACE
Zhongguancun, China’s Silicon Valley in northwest Beijing, is a fine place to visit these days. In the thirty-odd years since China abandoned Maoism for market reforms, glass- and marble-fronted malls and five-star hotels, brimful of balloons, promotions, and the promise of the good life, have sprung up all over the capital; and Zhongguancun has its fair share of such high-rent establishments. The district’s grand shopping plaza sprawls across two hundred thousand square meters packed with boutiques, supermarkets, cinemas, eateries, and eager consumers. The area happens also to be the center of China’s elite institutions of higher education, home to China’s most privileged scholars and students. With its glittering temples to self-gratification and to state-approved academic endeavor, Zhongguancun is one of the flagships of the contemporary Chinese dream.
On December 23, 2010, at one of Zhongguancun’s police stations, a less harmonious episode was taking place. That evening, a Beijing law professor called Teng Biao decided to pay a visit to the mother of a friend. The friend, it so happened, was a human rights lawyer called Fan Yafeng, currently being held under house arrest by the authorities. Since Fan’s mother was at home on her own, Teng thought it would be courteous to look in on her. As soon as he entered the apartment, however, a plainclothes police officer stormed in and loudly demanded his ID, pushing him for good measure. Not long after, a gang of Public Security reinforcements arrived and dragged Teng back down the stairs (confiscating his glasses in the process, leaving him extremely shortsighted) and into a police van, and drove him to a nearby police station. There, more violence ensued—in which Teng’s hand was injured, his tie was violently yanked off, his legs were kicked, and he was sworn at—while he vainly quoted his citizen’s constitutional rights. “Why waste words on this sort of person?” one police officer