Brothers Read online

  ALSO BY YU HUA

  Cries in the Drizzle

  Chronicle of a Blood Merchant

  To Live

  The Past and the Punishments

  CONTENTS

  TRANSLATORS’ PREFACE

  PART ONE

  PART TWO

  TRANSLATORS’ PREFACE

  THE YEAR 2008 has been a watershed for modern China, for reasons both anticipated and unanticipated. From the agonizing spectacle of digging children's corpses out of the rubble of collapsed school buildings following the Sichuan earthquake, to the spontaneous outpouring of communal support and goodwill that ensued; from the international controversies that have surrounded the preparations leading up to the Beijing Olympics, to the nationalistic pageantry that was the Olympics itself, the Chinese people have experienced a year of remarkable highs and lows. As such, this past year has appeared to contain in concentrated form many of the contradictions that have characterized Chinas multidecade transition from high Maoism to hypercapitalism.

  Published in 2005 and 2006, Yu Hua s Brothers spans many of these same emotional extremes. Though he originally conceived of the idea for the novel as early as 1995, Yu Hua was inspired to revisit the project during a seven-month sojourn in the United States and France that he began in late 2003. The China he left behind, meanwhile, was in the grip of a pre-Olympics beauty-pageant fever. In September of that year, for instance, a national beauty pageant was held on Hainan Island as a prelude to Chinas first time hosting the Miss World competition two months later. Having banned beauty pageants for the entire latter half of the twentieth century, China dove back into the pageant habit with a vengeance, and over the next few years proceeded to host a wide variety of regional, national, and international pageants—including a Tourism Queen International pageant, a Top Model of the World competition, a National Contest of the Beauty of the Gray-headed for contestants over fifty-five, a Miss Artificial Beauty pageant for plastic surgery recipients, as well as three out of the next four Miss World competitions. Inspired quite possibly by the perspective he gained from his trip abroad, together with the melding of sexual display and regional pride found in the pageant fever that was simultaneously sweeping China, Yu Hua returned to China in March 2004 and immediately began writing Brothers, his first novel in a decade.

  Completed over a two-year period, Brothers is a two-volume, half-million Chinese-character behemoth that traces modern Chinas past four decades of social and cultural transformations through the lives of the stepbrothers Baldy Li and Song Gang. The first volume, which covered the brothers’ childhood during the tumultuous years of the Cultural Revolution, was an immediate national sensation when it appeared in 2005. Published the following year, the highly anticipated second and final volume brought the narrative of Brothers through the post-Mao period and the first giddy years of a new capitalist China.

  Brothers presents a unique perspective on contemporary Chinese history, viewing it through a gaze that is precariously balanced between beauty and perversity. The object of this narrative gaze is often the female body (together with its various substitutes), but just as often it is the Chinese body politic—the deeply schizophrenic national history that Yu Hua has lived through, and to which he attempts to give life in the pages of the novel.

  Like a beauty pageant, Brothers is flashy, blunt, and often deliberately repetitive, yet has moments of sublime beauty and gut-wrenching pathos. It uses a combination of subversive humor and haunting sentimentality to chronicle contemporary Chinas transition from socialist austerity to capitalist hyperbole. Featuring frank descriptions of sexual perversity and unthinkable political violence, not to mention detailed accounts of gender-bending cosmetic procedures and harebrained confidence schemes, Brothers presents a highly idiosyncratic account of Chinas transition from Maoist state into that curious socialist-capitalist hybrid that Deng Xiaoping euphemistically called "socialism with Chinese characteristics."

  The tenor of the work is established unapologetically in the opening pages. First, the protagonist, Baldy Li, sitting on a gold-plated toilet, imagines himself on a Russian Federation space shuttle, peering down at the Earth below. Almost immediately, the narrative jumps back three decades to another toilet scene, in which fourteen-year-old Baldy Li was caught peeking at women's naked posteriors in a public latrine. Although he doesn't realize it at the time, it is revealed that the teenager is actually following in the footsteps of his father, who, on the day of Baldy Li's birth, lost his balance while also sneaking a peek in the public latrine and, as a result, drowned in the cesspool below. At the same time, this scene anticipates Baldy Li's subsequent lifelong obsession with women's nether regions, and specifically their hymens—an obsession that will culminate decades later in his hosting a hilarious national beauty pageant for virgins.

  Like conventional beauty pageants, this Inaugural National Virgin Beauty Competition comments on issues of sexual purity the lure of celebrity, and national pride, as well as processes of self-commoditization. The twist is that it is quickly revealed that none of the contestants is actually a real virgin; instead, they all rely on a combination of artificial hymens and hymenorraphy or hymen-reconstruction surgeries, to create an illusion of virginity (an echo of the Miss Artificial Beauty competition that was held in December 2004, while Yu Hua was writing his novel). The pageants motifs of personal self-reinvention and the creation of a veneer of sexual purity also suggest the ways in which Beijing attempted to refashion itself in the eyes of the world in preparation for hosting its first Olympics, in summer 2008. China, Yu Hua seems to imply, is presenting the international community with an illusion of refurbished purity, while Brothers, by contrast, attempts to plumb the depths of the nations soul.

  We saw Yu Hua and his family when they visited Cambridge, Massachusetts, in November 2003. We were, of course, already very familiar with his works, but what struck us most during the few days spent together was not Yu Hua the literary bête noire, but Yu Hua the doting, proud father to his ten-year-old son, Yu Haiguo. Yu Hua marveled at how quickly Haiguo, after only a few short months in the United States, was adapting to his new environment, and he took obvious delight in Haiguo s many quirky observations of their shared adventure. In addition to everything else, Brothers is about parents and children, and the lengths to which parents will go to protect their children from a world gone mad. We ourselves have come to appreciate that aspect of the novel more as we have, in the interim, found ourselves proud parents to a little Baldy Li of our own.

  PART ONE

  CHAPTER 1

  BALDY LI, our Liu Towns premier tycoon, had a fantastic plan of spending twenty million U.S. dollars to purchase a ride on a Russian Federation space shuttle for a tour of outer space. Perched atop his famously gold-plated toilet seat, he would close his eyes and imagine himself already floating in orbit, surrounded by the unfathomably frigid depths of space. He would look down at the glorious planet stretched out beneath him, only to choke up on realizing that he had no family left down on Earth.

  Baldy Li used to have a brother named Song Gang, who was a year older and a whole head taller and with whom he shared everything. Loyal, stubborn Song Gang had died three years earlier, reduced to a pile of ashes. When Baldy Li remembered the small wooden urn containing his brothers remains, he had a million mixed emotions. The ashes from even a sapling, he thought, would outweigh those from Song Gangs bones.

  Back when Baldy Li's mother was still alive, she always liked to speak to him about Song Gang as being a chip off the old block. She would emphasize how honest and kind he was, just like his father, and remark that father and son were like two melons from the same vine. When she talked about Baldy Li, she didn't say this sort of thing but would emphatically shake her head. She said that Baldy Li and his father were comple
tely different sorts of people, on completely different paths. It was not until Baldy Li's fourteenth year, when he was nabbed for peeping at five women's bottoms in a public pit toilet, that his mother drastically reversed her earlier opinion of her son. Only then did she finally understand that Baldy Li and his father were in fact two melons from the same vine after all. Baldy Li remembered clearly how his mother had averted her eyes and turned away from him, muttering bitterly as she wiped away her tears, "A chip off the old block."

  Baldy Li had never met his birth father, since on the day he was born his father left this earth in a fit of stink. His mother told him that his father had drowned, but Baldy Li asked, "How? Did he drown in the stream, in the pond, or in a well?" His mother didn't respond. It was only later, after Baldy Li had been caught peeping and had become stinkingly notorious throughout Liu Town—only then did he learn that he really was another rotten melon off the same damn vine as his father. And it was only then that he learned that his father had also been peeping at women's butts in a latrine when he accidentally fell into the cesspool and drowned.

  Everyone in Liu Town—men and women, young and old—laughed when they heard about Baldy Li and couldn't stop repeating, "A chip off the old block." As sure as a tree grows leaves, if you were from Liu Town, you would have the phrase on your lips; even toddlers who had just learned to speak were gurgling it. People pointed at Baldy Li, whispering to each other and covering their mouths and snickering, but Baldy Li would maintain an innocent expression as he continued on his way. Inside, however, he would be chuckling because now—at that time he was almost fifteen—he finally knew what it was to be aman.

  Nowadays the world is filled with women's bare butts shaking hither and thither, on television and in the movies, on VCRs and DVDs, in advertisements and magazines, on the sides of ballpoint pens and cigarette lighters. These include all sorts of butts: imported butts, domestic butts; white, yellow, black, and brown; big, small, fat, and thin; smooth and coarse, young and old, fake and real—every shape and size in a bedazzling variety. Nowadays women's bare butts aren't worth much, since they can be found virtually everywhere. But back then things were different. It used to be that women's bottoms were considered a rare and precious commodity that you couldn't trade for gold or silver or pearls. To see one, you had to go peeping in the public toilet—which is why you had a little hoodlum like Baldy Li being caught in the act, and a big hoodlum like his father losing his life for the sake of a glimpse.

  Public toilets back then were different from today. Nowadays you wouldn't be able to spy on a woman's butt in a toilet even if you had a periscope, but back then there was only a flimsy partition between the men's and women's sections, below which there was a shared cesspool. On the other side of the partition the sounds of women peeing and shitting seemed disconcertingly close. So instead of squatting down where you should, you could poke your head under the partition, suspending yourself above the muck below by tightly gripping the boards with your hands and your legs. With the nauseating stench bringing tears to your eyes and maggots crawling all around, you could bend over like a competitive swimmer at the starting block about to dive into the pool, and the deeper you bent over, the more butt you would be able to see.

  That time Baldy Li snared five butts with a single glance: a puny one, a fat one, two bony ones, and a just-right one, all lined up in a neat row, like slabs of meat in a butcher shop. The fat butt was like a fresh rump of pork, the two bony ones were like beef jerky, while the puny butt wasn't even worth mentioning. The butt that Baldy Li fancied was the just-right one, which lay directly in his line of sight. It was the roundest of the five, so round it seemed to curl up, with taut skin revealing the faint outlines of a tailbone. His heart pounding, he wanted to glimpse the pubic area on the other side of the tailbone, so he continued to lean down, his head burrowing deeper under the partition. But just as he was about to catch a glimpse of her pubic region, he was suddenly nabbed.

  A man named Victory Zhao, one of the two Men of Talent in Liu Town, happened to enter the latrine at that very moment. He spotted someone's head and torso burrowing under the partition and immediately understood what was going on. He therefore grabbed Baldy Li by the scruff of his neck, plucking him up as one would a carrot.

  At that time Victory Zhao was in his twenties and had published a four-line poem in our provincial culture center's mimeographed magazine, thereby earning himself the moniker Poet Zhao. After seizing Baldy Li, Zhao flushed bright red. He dragged the fourteen-year-old outside and started lecturing him nonstop, without, however, failing to be poetic: "So, rather than gazing at the glittering sea of sprouted greens in the fields or the fishes cavorting in the lake or the beautiful tufts of clouds in the blue sky, you choose instead to go snooping around in the toilet…"

  Poet Zhao went on in this vein for more than ten minutes, and yet there was still no movement from the women's side of the latrine. Eventually Zhao became anxious, ran to the door, and yelled for the women to come out. Forgetting that he was an elegant man of letters, he shouted rather crudely, "Stop your pissing and shitting. You've been spied upon, and you don't even realize it. Get your butts out here."

  The owners of the five butts finally dashed out, shrieking and weeping. The weeper was the puny butt not worth mentioning. A little girl eleven or twelve years old, she covered her face with her hands and was crying so hard she trembled, as if Baldy Li hadn't peeped at her but, rather, had raped her. Baldy Li, still standing there in Poet Zhao's grip, watched the weeping little butt and thought, What's all this crying over your underdeveloped little butt? I only took a look because there wasn't much else I could do.

  A pretty seventeen-year-old was the last to emerge. Blushing furiously, she took a quick look at Baldy Li and hurried away. Poet Zhao cried out for her not to leave, to come back and demand justice. Instead, she simply hurried away even faster. Baldy Li watched the swaying of her rear end as she walked, and knew that the butt so round it curled up had to be hers.

  Once the round butt disappeared into the distance and the weeping little butt also left, one of the bony butts started screeching at Baldy Li, spraying his face with spittle. Then she wiped her mouth and walked off as well. Baldy Li watched her walk away and noticed that her butt was so flat that, now that she had her pants on, you couldn't even make it out.

  The remaining three—an animated Poet Zhao, a pork-rump butt, and the other jerky-flat butt—then grabbed Baldy Li and hauled him to the police station. They marched him through the little town of less than fifty thousand, and along the way the town's other Man of Talent, Success Liu, joined their ranks.

  Like Poet Zhao, Success Liu was in his twenties and had had something published in the culture center's magazine. His publication was a story, its words crammed onto two pages. Compared with Zhao's four lines of verse, Success Liu's two pages were far more impressive, thereby earning him the nickname Writer Liu. Liu didn't lose out to Poet Zhao in terms of monikers, and he certainly couldn't lose out to him in other areas either. Writer Liu was on his way to buy rice when he saw Poet Zhao strutting toward him with a captive Baldy Li, and Liu immediately decided that he couldn't let Poet Zhao have all the glory to himself. Writer Liu hollered to Poet Zhao as he approached, "I'm here to help you!"

  Poet Zhao and Writer Liu were close writing comrades, and Writer Liu had once searched high and low for the perfect encomia for Poet Zhao's four lines of poetry. Poet Zhao of course had responded in kind and found even more flowery praise for Writer Liu's two pages of text. Poet Zhao was originally walking behind Baldy Li, with the miscreant in his grip, but now that Writer Liu hustled up to them, Poet Zhao shifted to the left and offered Writer Liu the position to the right. Liu Towns two Men of Talent flanked Baldy Li, proclaiming that they were taking him to the police station. There was actually a station just around the corner, but they didn't want to take him there; instead, they marched him to one much farther away. On their way, they paraded down the main streets, trying to maximize t
heir moment of glory. As they escorted Baldy Li through the streets they remarked enviously, "Just look at you, with two important men like us escorting you. You really are a lucky guy"

  Poet Zhao added, "Its as if you were being escorted by Li Bai and Du Fu…"

  It seemed to Writer Liu that Poet Zhao's analogy was not quite apt, since Li Bai and Du Fu were, of course, both poets, while Liu himself wrote fiction. So he corrected Zhao, saying, "It's as if Li Bai and Cao Xueqin were escorting you…"

  Baldy Li had initially ignored their banter, but when he heard Liu Town's two Men of Talent compare themselves to Li Bai and Cao Xueqin, he couldn't help but laugh. "Hey, even I know that Li Bai was from the Tang dynasty while Cao was from the Qing dynasty," he said. "So how can a Tang guy be hanging out with a Qing guy?"

  The crowds that had gathered alongside the street burst into loud guffaws. They said that Baldy Li was absolutely correct, that Liu Town's two Men of Talent might indeed be full of talent, but their knowledge of history wasn't a match even for this little Peeping Tom. The two Men of Talent blushed furiously, and Poet Zhao, straightening his neck, added, "It's just an analogy."

  "Or we could use another analogy," offered Writer Liu. "Given that it's a poet and a novelist escorting you, we should say we are Guo Moruo and Lu Xun."

  The crowd expressed their approval. Even Baldy Li nodded and said, "That's more like it."

  Poet Zhao and Writer Liu didn't dare say any more on the subject of literature. Instead, they grabbed Baldy Li's collar and denounced his hooligan behavior to one and all while continuing to march sternly ahead. Along the way, Baldy Li saw a great many people tittering at him, including some he knew and others he didn't. Poet Zhao and Writer Liu took time to explain to everyone they met what had happened, appearing even more polished than talk-show hosts. And those two women who had had their butts peeped at by Baldy Li were like the special guests on their talk shows, looking alternately furious and aggrieved as they responded to Poet Zhao and Writer Liu's recounting of events. As the women walked along, the one with a fat butt suddenly screeched, having noticed her own husband among the spectators, and started sobbing as she complained loudly, "He saw my bottom and god knows what else! Whip him!"