Modern Chinese prose is almost unknown: the average reader, without resorting to the help of Google, will hardly remember anyone, except, perhaps, the Nobel laureate Mo Yan. Books written in English by second- or third-generation Chinese immigrants (such as "Don't Say We Have Nothing" by Canadian Madeleine Thien or "Kinder than Loneliness" by American Jun Lee) are somewhat famous, but literature from China proper, the reputation of something alien, hermetic and of interest is more cultural than purely reader's.
In this context, Zhang Yuezhan's novel looks like a real breakthrough: while remaining in the mainstream of the Chinese tradition, he at the same time possesses a happy ability to be perceived outside of it completely directly, without the slightest hint of exoticisation and aloof indulgence. Moreover, due to the unmistakable historical parallels between the history of the twentieth century, it is “Cocoon”, perhaps, that will be especially close and understandable with little or no explanation.
Zhang Yuezhan's novel is built as two intertwined and facing each other monologues: the boy Cheng Gong and the girl Li Jiaqi were friends in childhood, at the very beginning of the 1990s, then separated, and now they have grown up and, almost by chance, got together at the bedside of Li's dying grandfather Jiaqi, a famous surgeon and respected academician, tell each other about the years they have lived apart. Unloved, lonely children (Cheng Gong abandoned her mother, Li Jiaqi lost her adored father early), from eight to eleven years old they were a whole world for each other and never for a minute doubted that their relationship would last forever. But then they were separated by a mystery: the boy and the girl learned that they were born by enemies, that the great misfortune of the Cheng Gong family (his grandfather, who ran the local hospital during the "Cultural Revolution", had been in a vegetative state for many years - not alive in the full sense of the word, but not dead either) is directly related to Li Jiaqi's family. This dark shadow, like a family curse, falls on both families, enclosing them in an impenetrable cocoon, inextricably linking each other and isolating them from the rest of the world, which lives according to normal human laws. And this same shadow overnight destroys the childhood friendship between Cheng Gong and Li Jiaqi.
However, what initially appears to be the plot core of the novel - what happened to Cheng Gong's grandfather and who is to blame for his endless but never coming death - quickly fades into the background. For Zhang Yuezhan, a long-standing crime that stained some and deprived others is a kind of starting point, a stone thrown into the water, from which infinitely expanding bizarre circles spread across the surface of the text, capturing more and more heroes. As a single event in the past, it distorts and transforms the fate of people connected with it directly or tangentially - this is precisely this, and not at all the detective intrigue as such interests the writer to the greatest extent.
Li Jiaqi's father, a talented poet and university teacher Li Muyuan, is crushed by hereditary guilt. This guilt poisons his relationship with his daughter, drags him into an exhausting confrontation with his father, and ultimately drives him to the grave. The curse lying on Li Muyuan is reflected in the fate of everyone who loved him, and then it ricochets even those who only dared to love those who loved him. Incomplete revenge and shameful cowardice cover Cheng Gong's family with a dark cloud, turning his grandmother into a fierce tyrant, his father into a criminal, aunt into a downtrodden insignificance, and himself into a man devoid of will, purpose and guidance. And even the ascetic, emasculated, devoid of everything human and reduced to pure professional service, the life of Li Jiaqi's grandfather seems to bear the same imprint of inescapable guilt and impossible, unattainable atonement.
Li Jiaqi flees her hometown in the vain hope of getting closer to her father who had rejected her and died long ago. Cheng Gong continues to live at home, and his life remains eerily unchanged and motionless, like a fly in amber. However, the past holds firmly, and in essence the heroes do not live full-fledged lives, but halves of one, divided in two. And only having folded, fused together the parts of the whole, combining the edges and healed family wounds, they can count on peace, forgiveness and the long-awaited exit beyond the circles diverging on dark water.
As mentioned above, "Cocoon" is an uncompromisingly Chinese novel, written (unlike emigrant books) without deliberate orientation to European taste and horizons, therefore it reflects all the key events, without which China in the second half of the twentieth century is simply unimaginable. The "Cultural Revolution", the death of Mao, the events in Tiananmen Square, the era of "wild" capitalism in the 1990s (if you caught the edge of the era of the nosy and noisy Chinese shuttles that flooded Russian cities at that time, you might be interested in taking a look on the same realities from the opposite side) - all this is present in the novel and to some extent determines the actions of the heroes. However, Zhang Yuezhan's global, big story never rushes into protagonists, being content with the role of a backdrop and giving way to the proscenium of little people with their chamber, simple and therefore especially heartbreaking dramas. It is this fixation primarily on the private, and not the political, that allows us to speak of Cocoon as a truly universal, universal book, at the same time distinctly local, and towering above this locality.
Well, it would be wrong not to mention one more important detail. At the very beginning, barely arriving at the house of his dying grandfather, Li Jiaqi takes Emily Bronte's "Wuthering Heights" from the shelf, and her choice, of course, is not accidental - it is this novel that serves as a semantic key to Zhang Yuezhan's entire book. The dark and romantic story of Bronte's heroes Cathy and Heathcliff, who were destined for each other from childhood, separated and sharing a common curse in two, is refracted in the story of Li Jiaqi and Cheng Gong, highlighting, complementing and explaining much in it. And the fact that a young Chinese writer chooses one of the most famous English novels of the 19th century as her main literary reference, obviously hoping that this parallel will be easily deciphered by readers at home, makes us, if not reject, then at least to reconsider the conventional wisdom about the exceptional tightness of Chinese literature, its isolation from European tradition and impenetrability to outsiders.
This article was sponsored by Robert Charvet.
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