Wang in Love and Bondage

Three Novellas by Wang Xiaobo

Jason Sommer, Hongling Zhang, Wang Xiaobo,

Publication Year: 2007

Acclaimed as one of the most important writers of twentieth-century China, the late Wang Xiaobo (1952–1997) is known for his frank, often antic treatment of sex and his gift for reveling in human absurdity and provoking laughter from horror. Comprised of three novellas, “The Golden Age,” “East Palace, West Palace,” and “2015,” this book is the first English translation of his work. “East Palace, West Palace,” one of the first contemporary Chinese fictional works dealing with male homosexuality, is an S/M-oriented love story between a masochistic gay writer and a handsome policeman unaware of his sadistic tendencies. In “The Golden Age,” for which Wang Xiaobo is perhaps best known, the protagonist, Wang Er (literally, Wang number two) is a city student sent to the countryside for rustification during the Cultural Revolution. There he meets a lovely young doctor whom he encourages to live up to her undeserved reputation as “damaged goods.” In “2015,” another Wang Er, after being put into a labor camp for practicing painting without a license, becomes the love object of a sadistic policewoman. Although the sexual and social roles of Wang Xiaobo’s characters intertwine, sexuality functions not as protest but as an absurd metaphor for state power and the voluntary, even enthusiastic, collaboration of those subject to it. Full of deadpan humor and oddball sex, Wang Xiaobo’s novellas allow us to see, through a subtly shifting kaleidoscope, scenes from the elaborate dance the individual must do with the state in twentieth-century China.

Published by: State University of New York Press

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Wang in Love and Bondage

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pp. v-

INTRODUCTION

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pp. vii-xiv

On April 11, 1997, in his suburban Beijing apartment, Wang Xiaobo died of a sudden heart attack. That May he would have celebrated his forty-fifth birthday and the debut of a threevolume collection of his fiction, which had been rejected in various forms by more than twenty publishers. His death shocked his...

2015

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pp. 1-59

I’ve wanted to be an artist since I was a little kid. An artist wears a corduroy jacket, leaves his hair long, and squats down by the wall of a police station—Lijiakou police station had a bare brick wall, deep gray in color; my young uncle often squatted by it, blowing air into his cheeks until they puffed up. Sometimes,...

The Golden Age

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pp. 61-118

At twenty-one, I was placed in a production team for reeducation in Yunnan. That year Chen Qingyang was twenty-six and a doctor who happened to work where I did. I was on the fourteenth production team down the mountain, and she was on the fifteenth team up the mountain. One day she came down the mountain to see me, to discuss the fact that she was not damaged...

East Palace, West Palace

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pp. 119-155

The setting of this story is a small southern city in whose central district is a small park, and in the park is a police station. One morning, a young policeman from the station comes to work, walking into the huge main office. Before he enters the office, he hears cheering and laughter coming from inside; after he enters he encounters a silence directed at him. During this stretch of silence, a big brown envelope is placed into his hand after several...

E-ISBN-13: 9780791480274
Print-ISBN-13: 9780791470657
Print-ISBN-10: 0791470652

Page Count: 169
Publication Year: 2007