Han, however, raises his definition to an intense pitch of emotion by using it as a pretext to describe an incident involving an ultra-humble character, Yanzao. He is someone who is given all the most menial tasks, things even more disgusting than the norm in that deprived and forsaken village. Han returns after many years and asks after him. That evening he shows up from many miles away, carrying a huge log on his shoulder. In the event they barely talk.
Han feels disgusted at Yanzao's swollen gums, the bulging veins in his neck, his grunts and his sour country smell. After half an hour they part, but as Yanzao leaves, Han catches sight of a tear in the corner of his eye. Among all the pressures of city literary life, he writes, whether sleeping or awake, he can't forget that tear. It's the difference between the Maqiao words for the man who's far away, and the one who's real, present, and standing crying in front of you. It's the difference between an abstract idea of backward peoples, and the reality of their poverty, their need, and their inability to escape who they are.
In an important Afterword, Han comments on how differences of language define people, giving character to not only regions but also to generations. The people of Hainan Island, he points out, have what is perhaps the largest fish-related vocabulary in the world. Yet when he asked one market salesman to identify an item in Mandarin, all the Hainan man could come up with was "big sea fish."
Not only was the fish's identity blurred and diminished by the man having to speak Mandarin, Han asserts -- so was the speaker's.
When it first appeared in Chinese in Taiwan, this book won the China Times Best Novel award, and has elsewhere been cited as one of the Top 100 works of 20th century Chinese fiction. It was first published in English last month.
It would be a pity if, at a time when foreign-language films as well as translated books are reportedly becoming harder and harder to sell to the American public, this magnificent fictional work was left gathering dust on bookstore shelves. It's that rare pleasure, something that is both of high quality and yet at the same time readable and enjoyable. The translation is everywhere excellent - -- fluent, colloquial where appropriate, without being excessively so, learned in places, and without any hint anywhere of "translationese."
This is a wonderful book, surely destined for classic status. When you start it you think it's just the working out of a clever idea. But in the event the depths it touches are extraordinary.
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