One man is bitter before his time, the voice of another is cramped by accent, and someone who falls on a mountain path is described as being a guest of the small stones. He describes a cat as follows: "It sat in the hot sun by their door and lice swam like dolphins through the fur of its head, seeking the night inside. It had a hidden necklace of ticks."
He also knows a lot about the buffalo cult of the Miao (the sacred color of which is blue), and for the secret words of their funeral rites that cite nine scholarly sources.
Interest is certain to focus, though, on Smith's material related to biological weapons. This is partly based on research into Japan's notorious Unit 731 and its experiments on prisoners during its occupation of northeastern, and less extensively eastern, China in the 1930s and 1940s. Victims were infected with several pathogens, including anthrax, and anthrax shells were also tried out.
Recent political developments make it preferable not to go into too much detail here, but Smith makes the claim that more than 250,000 Chinese in 20 provinces were killed by biological warfare during Japan's retreat from territories it had occupied. He also refers to evidence that cholera might have been deployed against Chinese troops during the Korean War.
In addition, Smith has a lot to say about the viability of race-selective pathogens -- diseases modified so as to affect only one particular racial group. This, he points out, has been made a real possibility following the completion of the Human Genome Project.
He makes this relevant to his plot by creating a character who is writing a book attributing degrees of humanity to different races. One Miao girl is judged less than human, and as a result her death is considered less than murder. Smith points out that such ideas have a long history in China, as elsewhere, but also goes out of his way to insist that the Chinese are in reality no more prone to such pseudo-science than almost everybody else.
This short novel is most unusual, most disturbing, and most absorbing. Walking out into the street after finishing it, you see the world with different eyes. If you read only one book about China this year, make certain that it's this one.
Publication Notes:
Something Like A House
By Sid Smith
216 pages
Picador
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