As usual, I find myself a little behind in posting book "reviews" but it's probably a good thing to let it sink in and see what I remember about it a few weeks later.
Todd surprised me with Beijing Coma by Ma Jian for Christmas. He was quite sneaky and got onto my Kindle and looked at my "Save For Later" list (i.e. wish/to be read/want list) and this is the stuck out. My addiction to reading on the Kindle had been pretty strong, but I am glad he got this one because one of the big negatives in my book (ha!) about the Kindle is no book covers (or even reasonable b/w reproductions of them)... and this book has one of the most gorgeous covers I have seen (so much so that I used it as a backdrop for a handwriting / photography meme). It's so nicely textured and the light at the end of the bird's beak really does seem to glow.
Ironically, it is highly doubtful that this book will ever be on a bookshelf in Beijing as the protagonist, Dai Wei, is a survivor of the Tiananmen Square massacre... well, a survivor of sorts... as the title of the book suggests, "awake" but still in a coma ten years after those events of June 1989. Even without the book centering around this taboo subject (more on this later), Jian already had his works banned in China back in 1987, as a short story collection about incest and rape in Tibet apparently didn't go over to well with the government. Jian left for Hong Kong (it's own strange entity), but still traveled through China and supported the pro-democracy movement in Tiananamen, but has lived as an ex-pat in Germany and London since the late 1990s. The book alternates between Dai Wei's current life in a vegetative state (more active than you would imagine!) in his mother's apartment and flashbacks to Dai Wei's life leading up to the day he was struck in the head with a bullet.
I'm guessing I am not alone in that my primary (or heck, lone!) memory of Tiananmen was "Tank Man," the brave man who stood and tried to block the tanks coming into the square to crack down on the protests. And I'll also admit, in advance of going to Beijing I didn't do any additional research about it. This was both a good and bad as I was blissfully ignorant of the extent of the massacre during our brief and rain-soaked visit to the Square. But once there we quickly realized what a big deal it is... we only got onto Tiananmen on our 3rd attempt. With the world watching during the Olympics, it seemed as if it didn't take much to close the Square. Also, as with two different tour guides - both friendly and quite vibrant young people - and on the bus to the Square we were told politely, but pretty firmly, to not ask about or even mention anything aloud about the events in 1989 when on the Square. To this day, I don't have a sense how much even our tour guides knew about it - other than it happened. I read somewhere, that people born after 1989 aren't aware of the event and when Frontline somehow showed the now college-aged students photos of "Tank Man" in a 2006, some thought it was some sort of military parade.
So now you can see how provocative this book is... and even further (!!!), it delves into some history about the Cultural Revolution and Mao Zedong, a history that is exponentially more horrific than Tiananmen and again quite strange since Zedong's image is omnipresent from his portrait at the entrance to the Forbidden City and overlooking Tiananmen and his own Mausoleum... and his face is pretty much on every piece of currency! You can probably understand why I am so intrigued by this country!
Ok, as not is so unusual, I haven't said much about the book! I am currently on my 4th book of the year, and if I have to rank them - right now this book would be pretty comfortably at the top. That said, it is a book that I am sure I could comfortably recommend to many people. If it wasn't for my lingering obsession with China, this would have been a tough book to get through. Heck, even I found it a bit of a slog at times ... dare I even say, it was coma inducing at in spurts!
Clocking in at nearly 600 pages (or just a little shorter than this rambling post!), a large chunk of the book is devoted to the organizational details of the student protests, which maybe for 100 pages or so is okay, but beyond that it gets to be a bit much. And I don't know if others feel this way, but when characters are not named Joe and Mary... but Zhu, Zhoa, Tian, Ke, Mou, etc. it can get pretty confusing/hard to follow... and likewise, it is not a history text book so I did find myself scouring the Web for more background information about the actual events (even watching old news footage via You Tube).
So while it was a challenging read (though Jian's prose is not difficult to read, if that makes any sense!), it is a rich work... often lyrical/poetic work, but also funny in parts... and certainly did nothing to quench my thirst for more things China.
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