Tuesday December 19, 2006

Raise the Red Lantern

Lewis lent me this book. It is written by a Su Tong and in fact has three stories in the book. The title story is about a woman Lotus who becomes the fourth Concubine for a Chinese chap called Chen Zuoqian. As you would expect there is a certain amount of friction created as she enters the house. Near the end where the story reaches a dramatic conclusion there is an excellent sentence where Lotus reflects that women are strange; a woman can understand other people perfectly, but can never completely understand herself. The Third mistress Coral dies in the book and another great line in the story is The fox mourns the death of the hare. Creatures of the same kind grieve for one another, thats all .

The second story is called Nineteen Thirty four escapes. The narrator is discussing their families history in 1934. It seems to me to be a mixture of fact and fantasy and there are several prominent relations who feature in this story. The location is a place called Maple Village and the Grandfather is one of the main people in the story. His name is Chen Baonian - he owns a shop that sells things made out of bamboo I think. The narrator's father is currently inside the womb of their grandmother that is someone called Grandmother Jiang. A uncle called Dingo is also introduced to ourselves who collects dog manure in order to save money for a pair of rubber overshoes for the winter. The money is collected in a wooden box. The box is lost and Dingo suspects his relations of stealing it but after a flood the box reappears having been moved by a family of mice. Very strange. At the end of this strange story Chen Baonian dies after being soaked with water on a freezing night. One of the people who alledgedly did the deed ends up inheriting the shop.

The final story is called Opium family which I did not read. I found the first two heavy going and although I enjoyed them I decided to give the last one a miss.

There is an interesting note at the beginning of the book by the translator Michael S. Duke. He says a salient characteristic of Su Tong's writing is the use of very long multiple sentences marked with commas. This is to be expected of Modern Chinese writing. The first book was originally called Wives and Concubines, but was later changed. There was also a film made in 1992.