China's Avant-Garde Fiction: An Anthology

As the introduction describes it, the avant-garde period in Chinese fiction was relatively short, with most of the production between the years 1987 and 1989. The avant-garde fiction was marked by a turn from politically focused literature towards a more experimental, literature-for-literature's approach. Most of the stories in this collection have an element of ambiguity and uncertainty, a calling into question of the very nature of narrative. The first two stories, both from Ge Fei, are investigations, the first (“Remembering Mr. Wu You”) a murder mystery, the second (“Green Yellow”) a historical investigation, which only become more puzzling the farther the searcher enters into them.

One other element running through many stories is violence, sometimes quite savage in nature. Yu Hua's “1986” tells of a man obsessed by the violence of China's ancient past and broken by the violence of its recent past, and his reenactment of that same violence. Bei Cun's “The Big Drugstore” spins its tale of an herbalist's shop into nightmarish dimensions. Su Tong's fiction resembles Ge Fei's in its irresolvable mysteries, but in “The Brothers Shu” also gives us a boy giving rein to his savage side.

The collection finishes off with a handful of stories that evoke the modern crafter of labyrinths, Jorge Luis Borges. Sun Ganlu's “I Am a Young Drunkard” makes allusion to the “blind Argentinean” before going on to tell of the narrator's encounter with an old poet, a tale quite poetic in itself. Ma Yuan's “A Wandering Spirit” begins with an epigraph from Borges, then proceeds to a twisting narrative where truths collide.