Review
RED DUST, Ma Jian
September 2002
Blurb says:
In 1983, Ma Jian turned 30 and was overwhelmed by the desire to escape the confines of his life in Beijing. Deng Xiaoping was introducing economic reform but clamping down on 'Spiritual Pollution'; young people were rebelling. With his long hair, jeans and artistic friends, Ma Jian was under surveillance from his work unit and the police. His ex-wife was seeking custody of their daughter; his girlfriend was sleeping with another man. He could no longer find the inspiration to write or paint. One day he bought a train ticket to the westernmost border of China and set off in pursuit of himself.
His journey would last three years and take him to deserts and overpopulated cities. The result is a compelling and utterly unique insight into the teeming contradictions of China that only a man who was both an insider and an outsider in his own country could have written.
They say:
"If you have time to read only one book on China this year, choose 'Red Dust'"
"A tour de force ... a powerfully picaresque cross between the sort of travel book any Western author would give his eye-teeth to write, and a disturbing confession... It stands out among the many literary offerings of the Cultural Revolution's 'lost generation'"
"Enthralling... He depicts a land of extraordinary physical beauty and interest and his prose is always elegant. Read this book for its human truthfulness and for unforgettable moments"
"Ma Jian's travels are picaresque. His narrative is blessed with a prose style that compresses meaning as succinctly as Chinese calligraphy. It opens windows on landscapes small and vast, all still largely unobserved and unknown to Westerners"
We say:
Is "picaresque" the new "evocative", "enthralling" the new "important"? No doubt the word "understated" has also been applied to this book. It certainly has attracted a puff load of hi-falutin praise and I for one (or we for seven) quite fail to see why. Where is the word "monotonous"? Why no mention of shapeless interminable tedium? And how do the critics think we plan our lives with their pseudy "if you have time to read only one book on China ..."?
As usual, we, the hapless reader, greedily seduced by the rapture pressed upon 'Red Dust', set upon it with innocent hope and anticipation and, predictably enough, pretty soon found ourselves in familiar territory: that bleak hinterland, that well-trod tundra gap between foolish expectation and reality. We had saddled ourselves with another pile of old tripe.
Having said that, we are not so gross as to dispense with the enormous gulf in cultural freedom taken for granted by a Western reader compared with the spiritual starvation and void of cultural opportunity meted out to those yoked beneath communist China. Finding a touchstone beyond basic humanity was difficult and we are perhaps too "sophisticated" to come to this book unalloyed by our own baggage of relative privilege. But as a Western audience, we were told the wrong things: we wanted more detail and colour, and far fewer cups of coffee and clunky poetry. We could also have done with fewer friends: they might well have helped him survive the crushing absurdity of the communist dictates but they prove interchangeable wallpaper to read about (despite the Who's Who at the beginning), and seemingly all called Ping.
Oh, but we're demanding: we were disappointed to be denied real truths reached through real suffering and a tale of the triumph of the spirit through brickwall adversity and instead to be fed fatuous workaday stuff about whom he fancied and which story had been sent to which magazine. He threw away the meat of the book by referring back to interesting episodes rather than inhabiting them - 'after I'd spent three days clinging to a rock cliff, I saw a girl with a great smile in a caf¨¦.... Once I'd finally made it there [where? anywhere] despite nearly dying of thirst in the desert, next day I got up and set off on my way again.' WHAT!?!? OK, this is a clumsy piss-take, but the point is there, the book was more informed by what it didn't tell you then what it did.
P brought round her photos and souvenirs of a trip taken through China at much the same time which invested our discussion with some life and context completely lacking in the actual book. But to dredge up some positive comments, the occasional fleeting insights into the state persecution were shocking, as well as the deprivations of day-to-day living, the grossly crowded and cramped sleeping quarters, the dirt and lack of basic amenities.
But fundamentally at its core what also did not work, for us, was the portrayal of Ma Jian himself. Whilst one must admire him for his extraordinary adventure around China, he is not a character to whom one can warm and he trivialises many of the episodes with the defining thrust of his adolescent hunt for a woman. And did we mention monotony?
Last Updated:
September 7, 2004
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