Fat Years - Chan Koonchung [130]
In The Fat Years, even those chic intellectuals like Lao Chen may become uneasy about China’s potential to become frightening in the future; all they can do about their unease, however, is what the 2000 Nobel Prize–winning novelist Gao Xingjian advised—escape. The reality of geopolitics demonstrates that it will probably be a long time before He Dongsheng and the Chinese Communist Party’s dream of Chinese world hegemony is fulfilled, if ever. But the question remains: would this hegemony be the free, just, and civilized power that so many of its concerned citizens hope for? In the meantime, The Fat Years provides the most interesting and enlightening way for us to understand both the possible future of China and what it is like for many urban Chinese to live in the belly of the Chinese Leviathan.
I would like to thank Josephine Chiu-Duke for her thoughtful suggestions concerning the interpretation of this novel and for considerable help with the translation.
MICHAEL DUKE, FEBRUARY 2011
TRANSLATOR’S ENDNOTES
Master Chen: The literal translation would be “Teacher Chen,” but this is not a recognized form of address in English.
The sweet smell of books in a literary society: A common Chinese saying, as in “a whiff of refinement.”
Deng Xiaoping’s 1992 southern tour: After Deng Xiaoping formally retired, he still remained in power. His “reform” policies were threatened after the 1989 Tiananmen Massacre, so in 1992 Deng took a long tour through southern China and made several speeches announcing his continued support for economic reforms. At this time he may or may not have said “to get rich is glorious.” Deng’s reforms continued under the new leader, Jiang Zemin.
Ji Xianlin said the twenty-first century is the Chinese century: Ji Xianlin (1911–2009) was a celebrated Chinese linguist and Indologist.
This year is the year of my zodiac sign, and a lot of strange things are bound to happen: The Chinese believe that the year of a person’s zodiac sign, coming once every twelve years, is unlucky, and so one has to be very careful throughout that year.
They treat the Taiwanese like their little brothers: China’s party-state government has long regarded Taiwan as a renegade province, and the 85 percent of Taiwanese on the island (as opposed to 15 percent of mainlanders) are considered of lower status than mainlanders.
The Tiu Keng Leng refugee camp: Also known as Rennie’s Mill, this was a special settlement created by the Hong Kong government for Nationalist (Kuomintang) soldiers and supporters after they lost the Chinese civil war in 1949.
Chen Yingzhen: A Taiwanese leftist writer and political activist (b. 1936) who spent several years in prison in the late 1960s and early 1970s.
ethnic conflict was growing increasingly acrimonious: This is a reference to the feuds between the Taiwanese and the mainlanders. Chen Shuibian, president of Taiwan from 2000 to 2008, pressed for independence for the island, causing fears that the Chinese would invade.
I loved to watch those post-1949 Chinese films: All the films from 1949 to the 1980s were Communist propaganda for any campaign that was running at the time. They are now known as part of China’s “Red Legacy.”
The Three Years Natural Disaster: A Chinese Communist euphemism for the greatest famine in world history, which resulted from Mao Zedong’s Great Leap Forward policies and led to the death of some 45 million Chinese.
Politburo: The Chinese Communist Party is organized on the Leninist