MCLC: Yu Hua in the New Yorker

[Denton, Kirk]

MCLC LIST
From: Ian Johnson <iandjohnson at gmail.com>
Subject: Yu Hua in the New Yorker
***********************************************************

Source: The New Yorker (8/19/13):
http://m.newyorker.com/online/blogs/books/2013/08/this-week-in-fiction-yu-h
ua.html

THIS WEEK IN FICTION: YU HUA
By Deborah Treisman

Your story in this week’s issue, “Victory
<http://m.newyorker.com/fiction/features/2013/08/26/130826fi_fiction_hua>,”
 involves a situation that is common enough: a woman discovers that her
husband has been unfaithful to her—emotionally, if not sexually. But the
aftermath of the discovery is not so much a crisis in the marriage as a
kind of battle of wills. Why do you think Lin Hong responds to the
discovery the way that she does?

There is, I agree, a battle of wills at the heart of this story. When Lin
Hong discovers her husband’s infidelity, she does not want to end their
marriage—she simply wants to punish him. She cannot, however, think of a
good way to do that. It might appear that Lin Hong holds all the cards,
but actually that’s not the case—throughout she is a passive actor,
waiting for Li Hanlin to chastise himself, waiting for him to put things
right. Li Hanlin keeps his head down, desperate not to provoke Lin Hong,
and so it might seem that he is on the defensive, but in fact that’s not
so. In confronting the crisis, husband and wife adopt different
approaches, but each is trying to break the other’s will. Because neither
of them wants to end the marriage, their seesaw battle is a long,
drawn-out affair—a case, as we Chinese would say, of “carving meat with a
dull blade.”

The title of the story, and the final lines, imply that Lin Hong is the
victor in this battle. But what has she won?

At the story’s conclusion Lin Hong has triumphed, in that she forces Li
Hanlin to engage in an action that humiliates his lover—or, at least,
that’s the way Lin Hong sees it. Of course, what she has gained is only a
psychological victory. Her marriage will go on, but other than that she
has won nothing.

You are careful not to show us the story from Li Hanlin’s perspective,
except in a few key lines. Does he feel that he has won this battle, too?
Or that he has lost?

After his affair is discovered, Li Hanlin tucks his tail between his legs
in an effort to keep the marriage intact. By the end of the story, he has
succeeded in this goal, and so, compared to Lin Hong, he is perhaps the
true victor. Both could be said to have won, in a certain sense, but Lin
Hong’s triumph is overt, whereas Li Hanlin’s is covert.

How would you imagine this couple’s marriage before Lin Hong’s discovery?

This is an important point. When writing a piece of fiction, I take into
account a lot of content that doesn’t make its way into the story: doing
that helps me to choose more precisely the material that is truly
essential. I imagine this couple’s marriage prior to Lin Hong’s discovery
as a fairly typical partnership: their time together is uneventful, with
few arguments and few exciting, passionate moments. To say that they are
in love with each other would not be as apt as to say simply that they are
engaged in living. It’s when crisis erupts that they realize they love
each other.

“Victory” is included in a collection of your stories, “Boy in the
Twilight,” which will be published in the U.S. in January. The subtitle of
the book is “Stories of the Hidden China,” and many of the pieces involve
characters who are underdogs, who are mistreated in contemporary Chinese
society. Do you think of Lin Hong as one of those characters? In what way
are these stories “hidden”?

This collection focusses on the daily lives of ordinary Chinese. In
contemporary society, what tends to catch people’s attention is the
endless series of incidents in the news, while daily life is generally
overlooked. Political events are offered up for public consumption; the
stories embedded in our everyday experience, on the other hand, are all
too easily submerged.

In your earlier books, including “Brothers” and “To Live,” you tackle some
of the brutal violence of the Cultural Revolution in China. These stories
seem gentler in their approach. Is this because you have changed as a
writer, or because the country has changed?

My writing is always changing, because my country is always changing, and
this inevitably affects my views and feelings about things. At the same
time, there are different dimensions to my writing, with books such as
“Brothers” and “To Live” that address the cruelty and violence of the
Cultural Revolution, as well as the milder stories in “Boy in the
Twilight.” Changes in my work are also shaped by specific projects and
sometimes determined by the subject matter at hand. For example, my latest
novel, “The Seventh Day,” just published in China, addresses the realities
of China in this current era. It relates a man’s experiences in the first
seven days after his death; the world of the dead offers a relief from the
sorrow and inhumanity that permeate the world of the living. It’s a novel
that criticizes Chinese social realities by recalling episodes from a
succession of broken lives, and I personally feel that it is a powerful
piece of work.

Translated, from the Chinese, by Allan Barr.