In his latest work of fiction, Ma Jian wants to do more than provide an agonizing description of what went right and wrong in Tiananmen Square.
A critically acclaimed dissident writer in China, best known for a memoir, "Red Dust," and a novel, "The Noodle Maker," Ma Jian focuses on Tiananmen Square and its tragic aftermath in his epic novel, "Bejing Coma" (Farrar Straus, and Giroux) Ma Jian was with the students during the protest: the book is an act of apocalyptic rememberance, an attempt to commemorate, with bleak intensity, what the author sees as "a defining moment in twentieth century history" that the Chinese government wants the country to forget.
Beijing Coma
The novel explores how fear and ignorance generate a lethal amnesia that undercuts individual freedoms and social bonds. The story weaves together a documentary chronicle of the students in the square with a nightmarish tour through the consciousness of a protester, Dai Wei, who is shot in the head during the crackdown. Throughout the novel he is in a comatose state, trying to make sense of what happened as his mother struggles to keep him alive.
In "Beijing Coma" Ma Jian wants to do more than provide a description of what went right and wrong in Tiananmen Square. He has an eye on what light the protest sheds on contemporary China. At the end of the book Dai Wei's home is destroyed to make room doe a stadium for the upcoming Olympics Games. Bill Marx of World Books spoke to Ma Jian and his translator, Flora Drew, during the PEN American World Voices Festival in early May.
Flora Drew and Ma Jian: Translator and dissident author at PEN American World Voices Festival
The World: Do you have a favorite candidate in the American presidential election?
Ma Jian: The Chinese in the mainland, because their news is so distorted, probably have a very warped vision of the American presidential election. They would question whether America really has a democracy. They see Bush Junior taking over from Bush Senior and Clinton's wife taking over from Clinton. Of course, they are fed this propaganda by the ruling party, which propagates the idea that the United States is not a democratic country but a tyranny where people don't have the freedom to choose their own leaders.
As for my preference, I would probably lean to Hillary Clinton because of how she has spoken out against the Chinese Communist Party and her experience with dealing with it.
The World: How do the Chinese people view the United States?
Ma Jian: The Chinese people's attitude to the United States has always been double-sided. On the one hand, a few liberal-minded people support America's democratic institutions and want to learn from them. On the other hand, many of the others see America as an enemy that wants to thwart China's economic development.
Though it will not make the United States more popular in China, the American media should continue to put pressure on the country to improve its human rights record. It should step up the pressure it puts on the Chinese government. Otherwise, all that is wrong with China will become a virus that will infect the world. If the autocratic tendencies of China are not curtailed in some way by the West, the result will not only be harmful to the ideals of democracy but also to civilization and moral values around the world.
The World: What are your feelings about calls for a boycott of the Olympics? Do you think that PEN American, as part of its fight for freedom to write around the world, should call for such an action?
Ma Jian: If foreign statesmen attend the Olympics it will be playing into the hands of the Chinese government, whose motive for the Chinese Olympic bid was to strengthen its authority at home and around the world. I believe that Western leaders should not play into the ruling party's hands and collaborate in this big propaganda show. If they do, the Olympics will be a true farce because the party will have made Beijing into the cleanest prison in the world. All the undesirables, the mentally unstable people, all the dissident writers will have been detained and arrested before the event, so the atmosphere of openness will just be a charade, a piece of theater in which Western leaders will play their part.
The World: So you are in favor of a boycott of the Olympics?
Ma Jian: If the Olympics are to be a purely sporting event, than Western leaders should not attend the opening and closing ceremonies. If President Bush attends the opening ceremony it would be another shameful blot on his presidency.
The World: Your novel "Beijing Coma," which centers on the 1989 student protest in Tiananmen Square, depicts the rebellion against the government as farcical rather than heroic. By showing how much went wrong with the demonstration, the book appears to undercut the struggle for freedom in China.
Ma Jian: For me, the events in Tiananmen Square are not romantic so I don't wish to romanticize them. I see them as a tragedy, a tragedy because these young students had no idea of their own history, they had no memory, so when they stood up for what they understood to democracy, human rights and freedom they didn't know what these terms meant or how to effectively bring them about in reality. And because they had grown up amid political indoctrinization they had no other reference points, no other models to follow, so when they achieved a certain level of power they turned into a miniature Communist party, with all the infighting and bickering that maneuvering for power brings.
The World: You elaborate on that image of paralysis in the novel. A paralyzed student, Da Wei, who was shot in the head in Tiananmen Square, narrates the story. Is his state of suspension between life and death another image of futility?
Ma Jian: Actually, the protagonist's comatose state allows him to retreat into his consciousness, to go on an interior journey during which he struggles to make sense of his past and Chinese history. Although he is physically frozen, Da Wei is mentally active. Ironically, his ability to freely reflect makes him more alive than any of the other students who survived Tiananmen Square because the latter -- numbed and fearful -- have made too many spiritually corrupting accommodations with the pressures of living in a repressive society.
The World: Given the bleakness of your message, what should readers take away from "Beijing Coma"? Could you be reacting against what you see as the rosy propaganda of the Chinese government by offering pessimism as the truth?
Ma Jian: The interior journey that the protagonist takes is also a search for hope, it is a search for the sparks of life that the society hasn't crushed, it is a search for love and for the essential power of the individual to understand his or her own experience. I am not sure whether the protagonist is successful, but the book acknowledges the human desire to look for the beauty in life, to find ways to give life meaning. But what I found when charting Da Wei's inner journey is that when he reaches the end of his struggle he experiences a great sense of loneliness, isolation, and emptiness.
Perhaps the strongest element of hope in "Beijing Coma" is the relationship between the patient and a sparrow that flies into his room and refuses to leave. There is an element of transcendence in how these two creatures nurture each other, find some comfort in each other's presence, and show self-sacrifice and compassion. But this is a spark of hope that only comes after Da Wei feels overwhelming despair for the human condition.
======================
The World: What was the most difficult challenge of translating "Beijing Coma" into English?
Flora Drew: Time plays an integral role in the story because the novel is written from the point of view of a comatose patient. After Da Wei is shot he loses a conventional sense of time: he lives in his memories, trying to bring different pieces of his past and present together. He primarily experiences the external world through sound, touch, and smell.
The Chinese language doesn't have tenses, so the past, present, and future intermingle because the language makes it easy to jump about fluidly in time. But capturing that expansive experience of time becomes tricky in the English language, where you also have to maintain a solid backbone of chronology. My goal was to retain Ma Jian's sense of ambiguity and timelessness while also making the story understandable to an English-speaking reader.
