(THIS ARTICLE IS MACHINE TRANSLATED by Google from Norwegian)
Recently, The Guardian reported that the Communist Party Central Committee is planning a new economic zone 100 km southwest of Beijing – Xiongan New Area, an urban area that will be nearly three times the size of New York. In other words, a brand new Chinese megaby is underway. And as Yan Lianke points out in the novel's afterword The Explosion Chronicles, there is nowhere where the distinction between reality and fiction is more ambiguous than in present-day China: This problem does not only apply to Chinese writers, he says: Writers across the globe would struggle to recreate what is now happening in China in a credible way.
Lianke's solution to the problem is what he calls mytorealisme, a literary writing practice that uses a variety of innovative techniques to reveal and display an otherwise invisible dimension under the tangible reality. This seems both pretentious and at the same time quite pretentious – for revealing and displaying hidden dimensions is probably what all good and important novels do.
The theory gets a little more substance when Lianke refers to Kafka (especially The transformation) and Gabriel García Márquez's magical realism as two important preconditions for myth realism. But the best evidence for the theory can be found in Lianke's present novel. It is about China's ongoing transformation, which appears to be kicking and without any clear plan, yet thorough, profound and with extreme efficiency.
The city is both a life-giving, dynamic phenomenon and a threatening, destructive force, a miracle that balances success and failure, triumph and doom.
Mixed style. The starting point is the village of Explosion up in the Balouf mountains in Henan province, a region the author has added to the action for several of his novels. After centuries of dynasties and regimes coming and going, the small village also survives the purges during Mao Zedong's cultural revolution in the 1960s and 70s. It then takes part in Deng Xiaoping's major reforms and modernizations in industry and economics beyond the 1980s and 90s, which eventually transforms the small place into a vibrant gathering of big cities, a so-called megalopolis. And as the name suggests, Explosion is both a life-giving, dynamic phenomenon and a threatening, destructive force, a kind of social miracle that balances on the edge between success and failure, triumph and doom.
The small place is divided between three clans: the leading Kong family and the Zhu and Chen family. Clan leader Kong Dongde asks King Mianling and the three other sons to go out and seek happiness. And while his brothers travel far, King Miangling eventually returns to Explosion, where he meets and marries Zhu Ying, the daughter of the Zhu clan's head of family and a woman with at least as many ambitions as he does.
Here Lianke plays out her version of mythorealism: Fathers challenge sons to go out and meet the big world; ambitions and dreams are realized; a pair from two rival clans form a union and consolidate power. Classic mythical material, in other words. At the same time, it is a fact that hundreds of millions of young people have actually moved from traditional agricultural settlements to the big metropolises in search of happiness, that is: success and wealth.
Translator Carlos Rojas points out in the preface that Lianke's narrative model is based on two traditions. One is from Siam Quian who wrote down the first historical record of the imperial dynasties in the first century BC. and the other is what can be called «local histories» (local gazetteers). These existed in the thousands around China and were written down by officials and nobles. They contained material about locally famous people, events, anecdotes and gossip. The use of these models can be interpreted as a satirical attempt to give the novel a kind of quasi-official approval from the Communist Party, the same party that often bans Lianke's works and forces him to publish in Hong Kong, Singapore or Taiwan.
It's all about money in today's China, no one escapes, everyone is corrupted, infected, infected – including writers, artists, intellectuals and opposition.
Mammon. Lianke also uses satire in other ways. The prosperity and wealth of Explosion originally began by stealing goods from passing trains, and then reselling the goods. The poor people jumped on the trains at speed and eased coal and goods, and many were killed when they jumped off again. Village leader King Mingliang gives these victims status as heroes and martyrs, and he comforts the grieving relatives by having large, flashy monuments built over the dead, while at the same time promising that both prosperity and wealth approach for all. Zhu Ying, who is first his declared rival for power and with whom he later marries, goes to the big city, prostitutes himself and puts up money. When she returns to Explosion, she entices the local girls to do the same. In time, she becomes a sugar-rich owner of Explosion's most lucrative brothel, where party leaders, government officials and wealthy foreign investors draw in droves. And the money that King Miangling, Zhu Ying and eventually many others are raking in on various dubious projects, is spit in ever-increasing amounts into election campaigns, lubrication and various types of corruption.
Money is the driving force, money can buy and fix everything, and both Yan Lianke and his colleague Yu Hua say in interviews that it's all about money in today's China, that no one escapes, that everyone is somehow corrupted, infected, infected, including writers, artists, intellectuals and oppositionists. When Lianke talks about this, it seems as if he is actually talking about a kind of omnipotent and omnipresent deity, which is quite ironic when you think of the religious cult that existed around the anti-capitalist Mao Zedong just a few decades ago.
As in previous books, Lianke weaves lyrical symbols and surrealistic sequences into the story, and he often uses traditional Chinese metaphors in these parts: the seasons, the weather changes, animals, colors, plants – and not least flowers. They usually have a kind of transformative function: they transform pain, foolishness and death into beauty and harmony, calm and balance. One of the most grotesque examples in the book is where King Mianglang decides to impress the power elite in Beijing, and promises to build the world's largest airport in a week. His brother, General King Mingyao, takes on the task, saying he needs 5000 legs and 10 fingers to do the miracle job. And fingers and toes are amputated and buried in the ground on the construction site, and out of blood and bones grow both runway, terminal and air tower – in just four days. This combination of transformation à la Kafka, magical realism and not least the demonstration of the almost inconceivable human costs behind the development and modernization of China, is a brilliant example of Lianke's mythorealism. The last element is the so-called invisible dimension that Lianke wants to evoke by blasting the image of power that those in power (read: the Communist Party) present to the outside world.
regime Criticism. As I see it, mythorealism is also about the power of definition. In China, this is traditionally with the Communist Party, so one can well look at Lianke as a kind of rebel. He points out the madness and greed behind the ever-new metropolitan projects (such as the Xiangon New Area). And «megalopolis» is also reminiscent of "megalomania", megalomania, a character trait that is found in both King Mianglang, King Miangyao, Zhu Ying and several others in the story. In a way, these novel characters can be interpreted as a new black archetype: They represent a mentality that tears down everything that stands in their way, that which does not give great and quick profit, that which is associated with outdated values and customs. Lianke tackles some of this by using traditional and well-known storytelling models, which many Chinese readers probably have a sense of. Perhaps they also interpret it as a sign of subtle opposition and criticism of both the madness, greed and not least the regime behind the development, the same regime that forbids both Lianke and other artists to show neither their e in China.
At its core, it is the dictatorial one-party state that stimulates mythorealism, one could almost say that they have the copyrights to it – because they have the defining power over the language, even though books like The Explosion Chronicles in a subtle way manages to convince me otherwise.
