The treatment of China’s history is curiously muted, with political developments merely alluded to, and the evolution of everyday life — notably clothes, food and disease — placed center-stage instead. Politics continue to happen, of course, and Mr Cheng commits suicide as a result of the Cultural Revolution and a school friend of Wang’s becomes a cadre. But Shanghai is presented as sailing its own course in spite of everything — not exactly serenely, perhaps, but certainly with a strong sense of its own special qualities and distinction.
The translators, Michael Berry and Susan Chan Egan, refer to “the power and beauty of [Wang’s] literary world,” and this readily comes over in their excellent translation. Weatherhead Books is a part of Columbia University Press, but this novel deserves far more than an academic readership.
Shanghai is presented as a city where people without money or power have little place, where every day is like Christmas and the partying rarely stops. But as Wang Qiyao tells one of her daughter’s friends, “They may all be clamoring for you today, but in a blink of an eye they’ll be running like startled animals. Women have only so much time to settle down. Those who miss the boat are mostly smart, beautiful girls like you.”
This is a long book, an overview of a huge swathe of social history (from the 1940s to the 1980s) that nonetheless refuses to give up on detail. It consequently has the richness of texture of some of the great 19th century novels, with which it implicitly invites comparison. Everything is marshaled into the one imposing edifice — the historical research, the visits to the locations described, the dispositions of the various characters, and so on. Very hard work combines with unflagging high-spirits, just as a sober view of the consequences of people’s actions manages to hold its own with a genuine sympathy for the author’s many creations.
And this, you’re finally convinced, really is a genuine classic, whatever that disputed term may be taken to mean..
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