Lapse of Time

by Wang Anyi, 王安忆

Wang Anyi represents the new generation of Chinese women writers. This work deals with the tribulations of a generation whose lives were disrupted by the Cultural Revolution, and who now struggle with the realities of modern China. Her accurate portrayals and seasoned writing style set her apart from Chinese traditionalist authors such as her mother, Ru Zhijuan.

Genres: Fiction, Short Stories

315 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1988

About the author

Wang Anyi (王安忆, born in Tong'an in 1954) is a Chinese writer, and currently the chairwoman of Writers' Association of Shanghai. The daughter of a famous writer and member of the Communist Party, Ru Zhijuan(茹志鹃), and a father who was denounced as a Rightist when she was three years old, Wang Anyi writes that she "was born and raised in a thoroughfare, Huaihai Road." As a result of the Cultural Revolution, she was not permitted to continue her education beyond the junior high school level. Instead, at age fifteen, she was assigned as a farm labourer to a commune in Anhui, an impoverished area near the Huai River, which was plagued by famine.

Transferred in 1972 to a cultural troupe in Xuzhou, she began to publish short stories in 1976. One story that grew out of this experience, "Life In A Small Courtyard", recounts the housekeeping details, marriage customs, and relationships of a group of actors assigned to a very limited space where they live and rehearse between their professional engagements.

She was permitted to return home to Shanghai in 1978 to work as an editor of the magazine "Childhood". In 1980 she received additional professional training from the Chinese Writer's Association, and her fiction achieved national prominence, winning literary award in China.

Her most famous novel, The Everlasting Regret (长恨歌), traces the life story of a young Shanghainese girl from the 1940s all the way till her death after the Cultural Revolution. Although the book was published in 1995, it is already considered by many as a modern classic.

Wang is often compared with another female writer from Shanghai, Eileen Chang, as both of their stories are often set in Shanghai, and give vivid and detailed descriptions of the city itself.

A novella and six of her stories have been translated and collected in an anthology, "Lapse of Time". In his preface to that collection, Jeffrey Kinkley notes that Wang is a realist whose stories "are about everyday urban life" and that the author "does not stint in describing the brutalising density, the rude jostling, the interminable and often futile waiting in line that accompany life in the Chinese big city".

In March 2008, her book The Song of Everlasting Sorrow was translated into English.In 2011, Wang Anyi was nominated to win the "Man Booker International Prize."

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wang_Anyi

Reviews

[Inderjit Sanghera · Rating 4 out of 5]

The stories which form part of this collection act as snapshots into the lives of the characters are they navigate the at times dreary and decadent society of China just as it is in the thrones of revolution and change. Anyi is able to depict the banal, quotidian events which make up their lives and turn them into something almost transcendent, such as in 'And the Rain Patters On', where a lachrymose young woman is roused out of her romantic stupor by the appearance of a young man who offers her a ride on the back of his bicycle. The atmosphere Anyi is able to create resembles the mood of the young woman who the story focuses on, etiolated and incandescent beneath the ceaseless patter of rain, the story largely takes place in the imagination of the young woman as she reminisces about her relationship with the young man, whose presence acts as a break from the sense of boredom which has taken over her life.

Otherwise Anyi deftly explores various aspects of human frailty, from the sense of selfishness which divides a family in 'The Destination' to the internal politics of a travelling cultural troupe in 'The Stage, A Miniature World'. If anything the longest story, 'Lapse of Time' is the weakest in the collection, as it meanders to its conclusion, whereas Anyi's real strength lies in her ability to capture the lives of her characters in shorter, more condensed stories. Whilst lacking the artistic genius of her opus 'The Song of Everlasting Sorrow', her stories often contain little nuggets of beauty which, just like her characters, can be overlooked if the reader doesn't look carefully enough;

"The rain, misting down. is again making a low swishing sound. It washes the road clean and bright, lighting up the fresh, sky-blue, murmuring world."

[Luke · Rating 3 out of 5]

3.5/5

The Destination - 4/5
And the Rain Patters On - 2/5
Life in a Small Courtyard - 2.5/5
The Stage, a Miniature World - 3/5
The Base of the Wall - 3.5/5
Between Themselves - 3.5/5
Lapse of Time - 3/5

A few years back, I took advantage of my last year of undergrad to ransack the university library for every single underread/rated work by a woman of color that even slightly intrigued me and read as many as was humanly possible during a full load of upper div English courses during the school year and 40 hour work weeks otherwise. Wang Anyi's The Song of Everlasting Sorrow: A Novel of Shanghai was one of the absolute gems that that all too brief period of revelatory work rewarded me with, so when this showed up at one sale or another, I grabbed it without a second thought. The not insignificant difference in my reception of this compared to that of the novel can of course be chalked up to usual arbitrary persnickities, such as my bias towards novels and the fact that each of the five short stories and the one novella had their own translator. However, I imagine the biggest difference was the age, seeing as how this collections include all but one of Wang's earliest works, all written between twenty to thirty years before the aforementioned novel that has been proclaimed a modern classic by those far more fluently erudite than myself. In any case, Wang has a lot more where that came from in terms of what's been translated into English, so all I need is someone to get their stuff together and release another compendium all of her own already. Let's not encourage Anglo types to only read Chinese works when the author's a Nobel Laureate, yes?

Part of what I appreciated most about Wang's novel all those years ago was how invested it was in a city, its people, its history, the sort of authorial control akin to the jeweler turning a gem to meet the light, refracting one event, one memory, one significance, then another, with only the slightest heed paid to single individual interiority or linear flow of time. You'd start a sentence that'd become a paragraph that'd become a page that become the full daily page allotment, and what you found yourself interested in was technically a person, but only when they were cocooned, crystallized, and finally choreographed into their role in the living, breathing holism that was an urban landscape ponderously moving through the shuddering upheavals of history threatening to engulf it. That's a tall order to fill under any writing circumstance, and there's been many a time when I myself found works that attempted such far too apolitical as consequence for my tastes. For whatever reason, Wang is an exception, and while I saw bits and pieces of what magnificence was eventually to develop, especially in the first story of this collection, too many of the works grounded themselves too much in cut and dry expectations of rise, climax, conclusion, character traits, character development, facts, figures, historical context, all jostling around without that smoothly enticing and ultimately indescribable narratological cohesion that would bless Wang's writing a few decades later. The worst of it was the all too pat happy ending or moral lesson or personal revelation that would come right on time in the last few pages, cause if there's nothing I so dislike, it's self help manuals masquerading as literature. Not the Christian kind that seems to seep into everything these days for once, but still. Get thee behind me and all that jazz.

It's nearly the end of Women in Translation Month 2020, and Wang Anyi's one of five previously read authors whom I've managed to revisit, with a sixth and final one to be slipped in at the last minute. French, German, Mandarin Chinese, Arabic, Spanish, Russian, and Japanese to be started up after I finish this work: seven original languages powering a total of eleven written works. Overall, the works have made for a comfortable stretching of my brain that just can't be matched by most Anglo works, but while quality is always preferable to quantity, there's no arguing with an empty book stack, so I'm content to switch my focus to other pastures and let this particularly concentrated area replenish itself. Involving myself in the Twitter scene this year more heavily than I have done in the past meant subjecting myself to a sizable amount of advertising, sometimes of the obtusely exploitative sort, but there were enough regular human beings on there reading, writing, and translating to make for a nice community experience amongst the wildfire and the plague. In any case, it's not over the top to say, using Wang Anyi as an example, that there is a wealth of women writers who, for whatever reason, have barely anything translated into English, and far more who have nothing whatsoever. Until that's done, my particularly Anglo-dunderheaded self will have to sit and make do with what I can get: one eye rapidly skimming the ridiculously familiar, the other poised to pick out that hint of a work that represents a mere 1% of the Anglo publishing market. I'd obviously be welcome to authors who have previously served me well, but luck-of-the-draw picks have at least given me experience in various areas of world literature where they haven't engaged or astounded, and I so rarely come across promising works of the WIT variety that it's rather silly to pass them by. I don't expect another Wang to show up this weekend when I do another used bookstore run, as I don't think any other Anglo publications of hers exist, but one never can know.

Her mother-in-law's face softened a bit as she sipped her tea. She was beginning to feel better about the family's terrible political background.

[emily · Rating 3 out of 5]

‘Time does not simply vanish without a trace; it always leaves something behind—Time was passing, making the silent transition from yesterday to tomorrow, leaving in its wake dew, fog, and flowers that were blooming or dying. But it always left something behind for mankind. It never made its passage in vain.’

Favourites from the collection being 'The Destination' and 'Lapse of Time'. Stylistically not very much to my taste, but I thought the ‘stories’ were interesting enough (and the characterisation done brilliantly). Rounded it down to a three for now, but might round it off to a four at a later date. Maybe a fuller RTC later.

‘I’ve muddled along all my life on the Shanghai Bund, thirty years in the old society and thirty years in the new. I’ve come to see that men are like fish, money like water. A fish out of water is done for.’

‘This wasn’t a matter of a broken milk bottle, which could be compensated for, but the responsibility for a human life—If there’s going to be a war, then there’s going to be a war, and we’ll all die together. But while we’re still alive we’ve got to eat—.’

‘What had previously been no more than necessities to sustain life had become life’s very goals. He had always considered basic survival as being in the service of some magnificent ideal, but anyone could see that we are put on this earth only to survive and to improve the quality of that survival, if at all possible. We eat to have the strength to work; we work to eat a little better. The methods and the goals move in endless cycles, with no beginning and no end.’

‘But with every visit he only felt the distance between him and Shanghai grow. He had become a stranger, an outsider, whom the Shanghainese looked down upon. And he found their superiority and conceit intolerable—Still he was forced to admire Shanghai’s progress and superiority.’

‘People said he looked better that way for the weight he had gained before he came home was not healthy. It was the result of the flour and stodge he had eaten in the North, whereas in Shanghai people ate rice.’

‘Still he was glad he had returned to Shanghai even though his contentment was marred by a feeling of emptiness. Something was missing. The longing of the past ten years, an ache that had affected his sleep and appetite, had come to an end—he was at a loss and felt empty—He got off the bus—He could see the ships anchored in the Huangpu River on the other side of the road. On the bank there were green trees and red flowers—He felt lighter. He crossed over to the river, the symbol of Shanghai. It was not blue, as he recalled, but muddy and stinking. Everything should be viewed from a distance, perhaps. A closer look only brought disappointment.’

‘The houses lining it resembled pigeon coops or the squares of a harmonica—behind the colorful shop windows, dazzling billboards, glamorous clothes and the latest film posters, there existed streets that were narrow, rooms that crowded, lives that were miserable. Shanghai was not as wonderful as one imagined.’

‘The pedestrians increased, edging from the pavement onto the street—Life in such a compressed world was difficult. He remembered the struggles on buses. In restaurants, he had to stand beside tables for seats, and then others waited for him to leave while he ate. In the parks three couples sat on one bench and in the Yu-yuan Park lined up to have a picture taken on a rock mountain. Humans created not only wonders, but also problems. Why must he squeeze in? Why?’

‘People rubbed shoulders—Though they lived so closely, they were all strangers. Not knowing or understanding one another, they were proud and snobbish. He remembered a song—a few days ago: "People on earth are thronged like stars in the sky. Stars in the sky are as distant as people on earth."’

‘The bittersweet yearning in the past decade disappeared, and with it the fullness he had felt in the past ten years—Should he follow the new trend and equip himself with Western-style clothing—find a sweet-heart and get married? Yes. He could start doing that though it required effort and hard work. But would he find happiness if fashionable clothes concealed a heavy and miserable heart? If he married for the sake of getting married and the wife he chose was not understanding, wouldn't he be adding a burden to his life? Again he missed the new-moon eyes and the chances he had lost—He suddenly felt that the destination he sought ought to be something bigger. Yes, bigger.’

‘Accustomed to—vast spaces—the north, he found Shanghai oppressive—crowds made the air stale–Another train was leaving the station. Where was it bound? He knew that his destination would be farther, greater, and he would have to wander more than a decade, maybe two or three decades, a lifetime. He might never settle down. But he believed that once he arrived at his true destination, he would have no doubts, troubles, or sense of rootlessness.’

‘He didn’t like reading. It seemed to him that the stuff in books was just put in there by some writer to fool people. But this diary was something real; he didn’t believe that pale girl had what it took to write a book. This was real, and new to him, a life he had never experienced—This was the kind of life that went on—behind the roomy parlors, the pianos and refrigerators, a kind of life that intrigued him no end.’

‘His spirits lifting, the dark clouds parted slightly to let through a dim light. Dim and hazy, it was still a light—if he had asked, where are you going? She would have replied. He had never asked, and he would never know where she came from and where she was bound.’

‘Ningbo—has a flavor all its own—climb Putuo Mountain and burn some incense there—The scent of lilacs was stronger than ever.’

[Nick · Rating 3 out of 5]

Wang Anyi writes of that period between the Cultural Revolution and Tianamen Square. This is a dense Shanghai, where people make money standing in food lines for others, where college graduates labor in workshops, where families fight over who takes which room. In the final novella, a family with the stain of past wealth loses control over the ground floor, and never really recuperates it despite being legally entitled to after the fall of the Gang of Four. This is raw storytelling, that doesn't worry about strict point of view, or showing versus telling. Significant years pass in the title novella with little comment. And it flirts with sentimentality, as the families in these stories find resolution to their problems in most of the stories. But Wang Anyi is unblinking enough to note that restoration of some pre-Revolutionary wealth does not by itself bring happiness.

[David · Rating 4 out of 5]

I remain a big fan of Wang Anyi, but my big problem with this collection of 11 stories, some short, some not so short is that they were uneven, which may be that they all have different translators and that makes a big difference. The collection is published by the Foreign Language Press of Beijing. The title story is wonderful and the translation by Howard Goldblatt is excellent. I found the protagonist a fascinated and very real person. Her life as the daughter-in-law in a wealthy family reveals a small part of Chinese history from just before the Cultural Revolution the the years following it. It followed the blossoming of her true strength and understanding of the world around her I also enjoyed Life in a Small Courtyard translated by Hu Zhihui. I sort of liked the final story Miaomiao, but was troubled by the translation which did not reflect the usual poetic writing of Wang Anyi.

[Hanna · Rating 5 out of 5]

I liked this book. It's a novella, not quite a novel. It's about the Cultural Revolution in China, but not its excesses and extreme violence, but more the everyday experience of a "normal" family in Shanghai. It's a quiet book, and very sensual. I think it gives a very accurate account of the period and of how the vast majority of city dwellers might have encountered it.

[Ted Manahan · Rating 3 out of 5]

Snapshots of life around the time of the cultural revolution. Rarely exciting, but sometimes moving. The translations are somewhat uneven and wooden at times.

[Usha Hegde · Rating 4 out of 5]

You can really get a glimpse of life in China. Style is superb.