Considering our recent discussion about the lack of Chinese women writers in English translation, I turned my attention to the only Chinese work on the 2019 Man Booker International Prize long list: Annelise Finegan Wasmoen’s translation of Can Xue’s Love in the New Millennium. Can Xue is the pen name of Deng Xiaohua, an enigmatic novelist who worked as a tailor before embarking on her writing career; Wasmoen has translated many of Can Xue’s works.
Love in the New Millennium poses a unique reading challenge in two ways. First, it focuses on a vast network of characters, among them Cuilan, her lover Wei Bo, former factory workers A Si and Long Sixiang, antiques dealer Mr. You, and Chinese medicine practitioner Dr. Liu. Keeping track of these figures, their pasts, and ever-shifting relationships with one another requires some patience. Second, this novel revels in tonal discord, playfully mismatching events and their consequences; topics like hard prison labor and sex work receive light, sometimes humorous, treatment here.
Reviews note how Love in the New Millennium’s characters embrace changing identities. It’s true that their interactions with one another and even with the natural world are fluid; at one point, a woman seems to transform into a cicada. The novel begins with Cuilan, a widow, in the midst of a heated affair with soap factory worker Wei Bo. But those anticipating a simple love story should proceed with caution. We have yet to meet A Si and Long Sixiang, other figures from his love life, not to mention his wife, Xiao Yuan, and her fixation with Dr. Liu. As Xiao Yuan reminds Wei Bo, “People can change themselves into forms they could never imagine in dreams.”
What is the effect of this strange fantasia? Oddly enough, reading Love in the Millennium reminded me of the “Wandering Rocks” section of Joyce’s Ulysses. After several dense episodes focused on protagonists Leopold Bloom and Stephen Dedalus, “Wandering Rocks” forces us to turn to marginal figures obscured by the narrative’s lens until then. Can Xue’s approach is even more democratic; no single character is a privileged focal point. Without a sole protagonist to orient ourselves, everyone in the text possesses equal significance.
Love in the New Millennium also experiments with rapid swings in tone and genre. The city in which much of the novel takes place provides two career options for women: a mill or prostitution at the local hot springs. But grim social realism isn’t in the cards; Long Sixiang frets that she is “too old” to join the sex workers at the hot springs, while A Si happily buys a new apartment with assistance from Wei Bo and her other lovers. When Wei Bo finds himself serving a “three-month [prison] sentence” for no particular reason, his attitude is one of indifference rather than terror: “Hauling sand not only tempered his body; he was also sleeping much better.” A fellow inmate describes hard labor as “addicting.” Although these tonal shifts sound flippant, their impact is stronger, encouraging readers to question their assumptions about everything from gender roles to surveillance and detention.
It’s a bitter irony to discuss Love in the Millennium’s egalitarian style when Can Xue is one of the few Chinese women writers available in English. If anything, its widespread acclaim reveals how much we need more translations—and soon.
Can Xue, Love in the New Millennium, trans. Annelise Finegan Wasmoen (Yale Margellos World Republic of Letters, 2018)
Photo Credit: 玉 潘, Meixi Lake, Changsha, Hunan, China, from Pixabay.
Throughout Women in Translation Month, I’m reviewing recent, acclaimed translations. Read last week’s edition here.
