“Hard Like Water,” by Yan Lianke, 2001
This is a satiric novel of the Great Proletarian Cultural
Revolution in a backwater town in China, led by a somewhat intense ex-soldier who has returned to ‘make revolution.’ Aijun
is a married man with delusions of grandeur, who meets and falls in love
with a young married woman, Hongmei.
Their sexual attraction to each other is especially spurred by the
hearing of certain revolutionary operas, which is one of the continuing
jokes. Sex and 'the revolution' are intertwined for them. Aijun is intent on bringing the
GPCR to his town, Chenggang, and having a career as a great revolutionary leader. He had been promised a cadre job in the town
by his wife’s father, the Party branch secretary, a former 8th Route
Army PLA soldier. When that falls
through, he becomes intent on replacing the old man, becoming Party head and
putting his young allies in positions of power.
In a way, it begins as an obvious battle of the young versus the old.
Aijun thinks in clichés derived from the writings of Mao Zedong,
imagining that what he is doing is like the Long March; that the “east wind
must prevail over the west,” that “revolution is not a dinner party.” His first plan is to tear down an old arch
entrance to the town, put there by its’ feudal founders. He is stymied, as the fathers, mothers,
grandfathers and grandmothers come out and stop the youth from wrecking the ancient
arch. His next plan is to expose his
father-in-law, the local Party branch secretary, by finding trivial incidents or
comments that incriminate him over his insufficient love for Mao and the Party.
Aijun takes advantage of the suicide of his own wife in
this way, as she damaged a bust of Mao in his house, tore down a Mao poster and
soiled one of his Collected Works
before hanging herself. This becomes ‘a
counter-revolutionary suicide’ - which incidentally also makes her father look
bad. Don’t laugh. This and the 17 ‘denunciations’ Aijun has
weaseled out of his young followers enables him to ‘overthrow’ her father,
the old man. One of the denunciations is
he used a page from Mao’s sacred Quotations
to roll a cigarette and gave another to his grandson to use in the toilet.
After this Aijun becomes head of the local GPCR
revolutionary committee; his beautiful, slim, alabaster helper Hongmei becomes
#2. Aijun’s job consists of putting up
posters of Mao’s sayings all over town and in every house and tree, which is
creepy in itself. He mandates that all villagers
memorize many Quotations, including
school children who need not learn anything else. This becomes a typical idealist exercise,
substituting Mao’s sayings for Confucian or Biblical quotes and thus expecting
reality to change. Aijun is also in
charge of the farm production brigades, which he has no clue about. This food and production issue is the most
concerning for the poor peasants of rural Chenggang. Not for Aijun however. He believes that hunger strengthens ‘the
revolution.’
Burning some joss sticks to celebrate ancestors becomes a GPCR
crime which Aijun uses to intimidate and then win-over the Cheng family, the most populous in the
village, some of whose members had done it.
His long-range plan is to destroy the Chen temple in the center of town,
starting with its musty, yellow documents, even though the building is
protected as an historical monument. After being stymied by the mayor, Aijun denounces him anonymously. He also kills a witness to his affair. And so it goes in a story of Maoist rhetoric and careerism.
This too-long story is sometimes told in the language of
nature, using similes, personification and metaphors that give it an odd and
humorous distance from reality. Everything in Aijun’s mind and every event is
filtered through some revolutionary aphorism, giving it a grandeur it does not
deserve. In this way the author
ridicules the events in town, including the arduous building of a secret underground
tunnel by Aijun whose purpose is to facilitate sexual congress with
Hongmei. Ultimately Aijun’s illicit but passionate
affair with the married Hongmei creates problems for ‘the revolution,’ even if
their love-play also inspires new slogans.
In politics, sex is a stumbling block and the GPCR is no exception.
If you are an orthodox Maoist who believes the GPCR was
some kind of perfect struggle against ‘capitalist roaders’ you will not like
this book. If you are an acolyte of the
present Chinese CP, you won’t like it either. Lianke’s work is mostly banned in
China as you might expect, though this prolific writer still lives in
Beijing. Lianke would have been 8 when the GPCR started and 18 when it ended, so he lived through it as a young person. Most leftists familiar with Maoism will recognize many of the ideas in the book, which never let up. If you want some insight into
China during this period, including a level of dogmatic and ultra-leftist absurdities
and barbarities, you might like it. The book is somewhat overlong but the ideological
pokes and jokes keep coming, which helps a reader get through to the very dark end.
Prior blog reviews on this subject, use blog search box,
upper left, to investigate our 14-year archive of reviews: “Maoism
& the Chinese Revolution,” “The End of the Revolution,” “China’s New Red
Guards,” “Russia and the Long Transition from Capitalism to Socialism,” “The
Rise of China,” “Is the East Still Red?” “China – the Bubble That Never Pops,”
“China 2020,” “From Commune to Capitalism,” “Jasic Factory Struggle,” “The Fall
of Bo Xilai,” “Striking to Survive,” “Class is in Session,” “China on Strike” or
the word ‘China.’
And I bought it at May Day Books!
Red Frog
July 17, 2021
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