I’ve recently been reading a back issue of Asia Literary Review that I picked up at a second hand book store. It is the Winter 2008 issue. I thought it might be fun to have a look at what some of the Chinese authors featured on the pages had to say. I’ll start with a piece, though, that is not by a Chinese author, but is rather about life in China during the Japanese occupation.

Caroline Petit’s short story “Flight” opens the issue. It is a fun story of two foreigners in China during the Japanese occupation who meet on a train. Both are trying to escape from China. One will have no problem, with his Australian passport, but the other, a Russian lady, isn’t going to have it so easy. The story seems that it is moving along rather predictably, though it comes with a bit of a twist before all is said and done.

Petit’s writing is strong, and for anyone who’s very familiar with China and its history, I think the representations of the expats moving around during that time in China’s history will probably feel pretty familiar. There’s certainly at least a little bit of stereotyping going on (by race, nationality, occupation, etc.), but that is part of the fun. The tension that filled China during the occupation by Japan is captured pretty nicely, and serves as a perfect backdrop for the story to operate. Overall, I enjoyed Petit’s fiction.

The two works of prose in the Winter 2008 Asia Literary Review that were by Chinese writers were both memoirs. Both were well-written, but Chiu Kin Fung’s “Children of the Walled City” was probably my favorite of the two pieces (and maybe my favorite piece in the whole journal).

Chiu uses a pretty clever technique in getting his memoir underway, making reference in the third paragraph to Robert Ludlum’s representation of the Walled City in his novel The Bourne Supremacy. I remember reading the novel when it was fairly new, perhaps in 1989 or 1990, three or four years after its publication. The depictions of the Walled City in that story are vivid, and stuck with me for a long time after having read it. Chiu gives kudos to Ludlum for “how well he captures time and place” (p. 161). Then he goes on to tell us what the Walled City was like for those who were raised there, including Chiu himself.

Chiu’s telling of life in the Walled City doesn’t carry a real aroma of the seedy, dangerous lifestyle that most depictions of the place have. He looks nostalgically back on his childhood as a time of liberty and loyalty. He knew who his friends were, and he knew what it meant to trust them. It seems that this is what is most significant in Chiu’s memories of that time and place. And I think it is fair to say he mourns its passing.

The other memoir in the Winter 2008 issue of the journal , Z. Z.’s “China High,” addresses lawlessness within China’s borders today, rather than looking back to that ill-reputed time in Hong Kong’s history that Chiu has captured. Today, China is not generally thought of as being a place that would be described as seedy or lawless, but that is the picture that we get from Z. Z.’s essay. (Z. Z. is a US-trained lawyer. Make of that what you will.)

Z. Z.’s world reminds me a lot of that presented in the novels of Wang Shuo, though the two write about completely different times. Still, the sense that one can get away with whatever he wants as long as nobody’s looking (and nobody’s ever looking) pervades. Drugs and partying play prominent roles, and in Z. Z.’s essay, fast living is best done perched atop an illegally-obtained, fast-driving motorcycle.

I feel pretty certain that the world Z. Z. presents exists. I’ve seen hints of it here and there, though it is not exactly an accurate representation of the circles I mostly move in while living in China. It is, where it is available at all, decidedly a countercultural lifestyle — one that Z. Z. happens to write about very well.