re:mote voices

Title: Lili
Author: Annie Wang
Publisher:Picador

I grow suspicious. I have heard that Western journalists often interview Chinese by treating them to lavish dinners and shows and then prying information out of them. Such Chinese "sources" usually get into big trouble afterward and are punished for "breaching national security."

i read this extract from annie wang's lili ages ago, since then i have intended to read the book, the first from this chinese writer to be written in english. something which she found to be a considerable challenge, learning english in the writing process! for some reason the novel is published in the US by random house, where the above extract is located, and in the UK by picador, who don't supply an extract (which is a pity and negligent in my opinion!). of the two, and is often the case i prefer the british cover to the book.

it is 1989, lili is a 28 year old chinese girl, fresh out of prison for being a hooligan. times are changing some what in china, but for a single chinese woman, with a "past" things remain difficult. when lili was a child her parents were sent away to be re-educated, being intellectuals at the time of the cultural revolution. with no one else to look after lili, she ended up in the monkey village as well, where she was neglected and uneducated. raped at the age of 12 by a party official she ran away and returned to beijing for a life on the streets. as a gang member she earned safety and food with her body.

with this past she has little options and has pretty much closed down, taking little interest in the world or the politics going on around her. but when she meets an american journalist she is still conscious of his american naivety when it comes to understanding china. regardless a relationship forms between the two and we follow the sides of how the look on china, and how those compare to the realities as they visit rural villages and witness real poverty beyond that of beijing itself.

to some degree the first 200-250 pages are really a set up. fleshing out lili and her relationship with roy. so that it is the last 50 or so pages where things really start to get under way. student protests start to occur in tiananmen square and despite the fact that lili doesn't really understand the concepts of democracy she is still drawn to events. at the same time she is foreced to confront who she really is, and what the concept love really means.

on some level lili is described as being a love story. and in some ways it is. on some level lili is described as being a novel of tiananmen and the events which happened there. and in some ways it is. but in so many ways it is about both of those things - it is about love and democracy and so much more. however, overall lili is a novel about china, reflecting on the history of a nation and a period of flux within that history, which goes some way to account for the life of the author who experienced some of those events, and for how that nation became what it is now. personally, i really enjoyed this book.