Fu Ping: A Novel

by Anyi Wang, Anyi Wang

Nainai has lived in Shanghai for many years, and the time has come to find a wife for her adopted grandson. But when the bride she has chosen arrives from the countryside, it soon becomes clear that the orphaned girl has ideas of her own. Her name is Fu Ping, and the more she explores the residential lanes and courtyards behind Shanghai's busy shopping streets, the less she wants to return to the country as a dutiful wife. As Fu Ping wavers over her future, she learns the city through the stories of the nannies, handymen, and garbage collectors whose labor is bringing life and bustle back to postwar Shanghai.

Fu Ping is a keenly observed portrait of the lives of lower-class women in Shanghai in the early years of the People's Republic of China. Wang Anyi, one of contemporary China's most acclaimed authors, explores the daily lives of migrants from rural areas and other people on the margins of urban life. In shifting perspectives rich in detail and psychological insight, she sketches their aspirations, their fears, and the subtle ties that bind them together. In Howard Goldblatt's masterful translation, Fu Ping reveals Wang Anyi's precise renderings of history, class, and the human heart.

Genres: China, Fiction, Historical Fiction, Asia, Chinese Literature, Contemporary, Novels

296 pages, Paperback

First published August 6, 2000

Reviews

[Jim Fonseca · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book gives us stories about the life of rural peasants from a village who moved to Shanghai after World War II. We mostly follow Fu Ping, a young woman from the village, who has recently moved to the city to live with her former nanny, Nainai, whom she loves. Fu Ping is an orphan who lived in the village with her father’s brother and his wife. Nainai lost both of her sons in the war and, following Chinese tradition, has adopted a poor boy back in the village to be her grandson to carry on her family name.



Now Nainai is seeking a wife for her grandson, so she has brought Fu Ping to the city to check her out. The tension in the story is, will Fu Ping want to marry this guy and go back to rural life ‘after she has seen Paree’? There really isn’t any plot beyond that, so I think that accounts for the low rating of this work on GR (3.3). This isn’t really a novel, so it will be disappointing if you approach it with the idea that it is supposed to be one. Instead it’s more a collection of vignettes and interconnected stories about the ordeals of peasants moving to and adapting to life in the big city, and stories of those in the big city who have already made it. I’m giving it a rating of ‘3’ also, but if I think of it as a pop sociological study, I'd give it a ‘4.’

We follow the lives of these transplanted lower-class people – the maids, nannies, handymen and garbage scow men. But we also learn a bit about the more upper-class folks who hire Nainai or attempt to hire her. She has an excellent reputation as a nanny and has no trouble finding work in the households of the dual-income folks. In effect, it’s Nainai who hires them. She will not take a job, or will quit one, if she doesn’t like the husband or the wife, or if she doesn’t like the way they live as a family. She'll quit if the kids are spoiled, or if the kids or her employers treat her disrespectfully. So we get inside the lives of these up-and-coming families almost as much as the poor ones.

In addition to learning about the experiences of Fu Ping, we get more detailed backgrounds on Nainai, the apartment handyman, and a girl that Fu Ping befriends. This girlfriend is a bit slow and hangs out with upper-class girls who treat her more as a servant than as a friend. There’s actually a lot going on when you consider this is less than a 120-page book.



The Chinese female author (b. 1954) is a prolific writer of novels and short stories. She has lived almost all of her life in Shanghai but her knowledge of rural areas comes from her experiences when she (and her parents) were sent to agricultural labor camps for eight years during Mao’s Cultural Revolution. I have also read her novel Baotown, set in one of these labor camps.

Photo of Shanghai in the 1950s from everydaylifeinmaoschina.org
The author from scmp.com

Revised 10/14/23

[Marchpane · Rating 3 out of 5]

Fu Ping is a fascinating look at daily life in mid-20th century Shanghai. It focuses on the poorer underclasses, mostly recent arrivals from the countryside working either as domestic help or eking out a living any way they can in the city’s shantytowns.

Although this is not a long book, the story is a sprawling one, following numerous characters who are loosely connected in a Six Degrees of Separation way to the titular Fu Ping. Fu Ping herself is a country girl, orphaned and taken in by relatives and about to enter into an arranged marriage. She travels to Shanghai for a lengthy visit with the adoptive grandmother of her intended husband.

Fu Ping is prickly, taciturn, stubborn, stoic and infuriatingly passive at times. Due to her low status, she has few options available to her, but she finds small ways to rebel. Through her bewildered eyes, we see the bustling, chaotic working-class areas of Shanghai. Whether or not Fu Ping will follow through on her marriage is the only real plot driver, but it is never a strong focus as the novel meanders and circles around, introducing us to more denizens of the city.

For the most part I enjoyed this immersion into the Shanghai of 50 years ago, but there were times when the narrative became a bit muddled. We’re also not given access to Fu Ping’s interior thoughts which makes it difficult to really connect to this silent, glowering girl. It’s a sociological, ‘slice-of-life’ novel, concerned with domestic matters rather than political ones; the upheaval sweeping China during this time period (roughly 1940s to 1960s) seems to hardly affect the ‘small folk’. All of this gives Fu Ping something of the flavour of a 19th century novel, one that keeps the reader at a slight emotional distance. 3 stars.

[Elyse Walters · Rating 2 out of 5]

I can’t recommend this because the translation is very distracting- numbers with every sentence.

It’s too bad - too - because I think the topic is interesting-

A book I ‘do’ recommend highly is Mao’s Last Dancer, by Li Cunxin
It’s an INCREDIBLE moving story!!

But this one needs a serious translation make over.

[Josh Friedlander · Rating 3 out of 5]

A touching novel about a country orphan (Fu Ping) sent to live in the city with the her prospective husband's "Nainai" (grandmother), who treats her with austere but genuine affection. Through her we see other aspects of quickly modernising Shanghai during the seismic decade of the Cultural Revolution, from the wealthy families of Huaihai Road to the Yangtze boatmen collecting garbage in their scows (is there something Dickensian in this? Maybe I'm thinking of Gaffer Hexam's more macabre trade in Our Mutual Friend?) In this the book forms something of a sequel to Wang's previous work The Song of Everlasting Sorrow, set in the narrow longtangs that filled the city after WWII. Wang, the children of writers who grew up on Huaihai Road, was sent the other way as a child, exiled to the countryside as part of Mao's Up to the Mountains and Down to the Countryside Movement. The individual characters faded away quickly as I listened, but the book's chromatic palette - pounding, sudden rainstorms, roasting duck, the unspoken kinship of people from the same village - will stay with me longer.

[Jite · Rating 2 out of 5]

1.5 Stars
This is a book I struggled with. It’s not that it’s a difficult read, I just struggled to understand what it was supposed to be. Part anthropological document, part character sketch, it’s hard to understand exactly what this work of fiction was trying to achieve. It’s more a series of in-depth neighborhood descriptions and historical context descriptions and sketches of lower socioeconomic status stock characters from Shanghai’s post-Civil War. Where it did succeed, is that I learned quite a bit about the experience and environment of rural migrants to Shanghai in the mid 20th century. So, I’d say as a supplement to an academic course, this is probably not bad.

The title character Fu Ping, is a young woman who is brought to the city by her prospective mother-in-law (Nainai), to prepare Fu Ping, for marrying her adopted son. A somewhat wooden character whose psyche and motivations aren’t quite clear, Fu Ping has zero interest in marrying Nainai’s adopted son or anyone for that matter. What does she want? We never quite know. If I was to hazard a guess, I would say maybe “belonging” but then she’s such a flat and unsympathetic character, that if that’s the case, she’s a self-saboteur.

My main issue with this novel is I think the voice in which it’s written. From the author’s note at the beginning, you sense a sort of condescending, top-down approach, a hierarchical way of looking at lower income people who migrated from rural areas to populate the slums of Shanghai in the mid 20th century. All the characters in this novel are presented like a series of one-dimensional sketches, given flaws, but they’re all presented as being somewhat naive, good eggs without any capacity for true villainy. The result of this is that in the same breath that the author describes someone as being a bad guy, the person is giving a redeeming counter quality. So, you end up with characters who are simultaneously oblivious and sharply observant, simultaneously stubborn and agreeable, placid and bad tempered. And it’s like which is it??! Furthermore, there’s not enough of a plot involving these characters for you as a reader to make your own judgements as to the personalities of the characters.

I think this could be an interesting read for someone whose main goal is academic for example, maybe using literature to get some sort of anecdotal narrative insight into the culture and environment of Shanghai slums in the mid 20th century. There is a lot to learn here about that setting and this book presents a series of observations that I suppose are fictionalized and that’s why this is being called a novel. As a novel however, this didn’t really work for me. It is very much a character-based book but then the characters felt very flat and ambiguous and the plot didn’t feel cohesive or strong. This also contains extensive descriptions of the environment in Shanghai slums in the era that could be extremely interesting to an academic reader or history buff but may be less so to the casual reader. Because this book was translated from the original Chinese, I’m not sure to what extent my issues with the language in this book are related to the original words and intentions of the author or which are related to translation or even to my own failings of not understanding the cultural context of the language and syntax. However, this is not my first book translated from Chinese- I tend to enjoy Far East Asian historical fiction which is why I was excited to read this and am pretty disappointed that it didn’t work for me.

I got an advanced reading copy of this book from Columbia University Press through Net Galley in exchange for an honest review!

[Rob · Rating 3 out of 5]

A charming portrait into daily life in China during the years following the Revolution which is perhaps surprising in how low key the action is and how relatively unaffected the lives of ordinary people were. That will, I’m sure, have changed with the onset of the Great Leap Forward and the Cultural Revolution, but for now, people seemed to go about their daily business. It’s especially atmospheric when discussing life on the scows of the harbour area in Shanghai while the complex processes of internal migration are also well described. That said, the narrative is somewhat pedestrian at times and this isn’t one for those who like crash-bang-wallop action.

[.🍃. thecursed_Reader · Rating 3 out of 5]

I read this book three years ago and I remember that nostalgic feeling of watching a cdrama with melancholic aura

[Juli Rahel · Rating 4 out of 5]

Literature is a unique way of giving you an insight into other people's lives. The advice to 'write what you know' may seem trite at this point, but I have always loved the opportunity it has given me to get to understand the world better this way. Thanks to Columbia University Press and NetGalley for providing me with a copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.

Fu Ping is a meandering novel. Technically it is about a young girl, Fu Ping, who is brought to visit Nainai in Shanghai, so the latter can test whether she'd be a suitable bride for her adopted grandson. But Fu Ping does not just focus on Fu Ping or Nainai. Instead it becomes a larger exploration of the lives of working class women in Shanghai in the '60s. In a way, Fu Ping feels more like an assorted group of character sketches. This is what felt truest to me, the asides on each of the people Fu Ping meets while visiting Nainai. Most of these characters are women and many are from outside Shanghai, having traveled to the city to work there as housekeepers and nannies. They send money home to support families in the smaller villages outside the city, but their lives are now very far removed from these villages. We don't get to see everything about these women, which means they remain somehow incomplete, but this almost adds to the feeling that you're moving through the city itself slowly and steadily. You only get the faintest of glimpses at the full lives being lived.

Wang Anyi creates a vivid portrait of a vibrant city, as well as complicated portraits of complicaed people. Fu Ping, for example, is not your everyday main character. She is incredibly passive, recalcitrant and stoic. She is thrust into an environment she has no power in. Anyi doesn't show us much of Fu ping's internal life, but does follow her as she moves through Shanghai. Although it is not directly stated, Anyi hints at how this quiet attitude is Fu Ping's way of observing and learning, while it is also the end result of never truly having a voice. At times it can seem as if Fu Ping is more of a historical record, capturing what live was like in Shanghai during the mid-20th century, without infusing a true plot. And yet I felt very gripped, emotionally, by the story of Fu Ping and the lives of those around her. Howard Goldblatt does a wonderful job at translating and capturing the details of Anyi's narrative. Not everyone will appreciate the translation choice of adding line numbers, but it didn't distract me.

For full review: https://universeinwords.blogspot.com/...

[Annie · Rating 3 out of 5]

So many works of historical fiction revolve around the limited roles women had for, well, most of recorded history. In fiction, we see women break through these limits to find careers or true love or adventure, etc In Wang Anyi’s Fu Ping (translated by Howard Goldblatt), we are presented with a similar scenario. The titular character, Fu Ping, has traveled to Shanghai from her village after sort of making a deal to marry a young man. She doesn’t particularly want to marry him. She doesn’t particularly want to marry anyone. She would, as the Scrivener said, “prefer not to.”

Read the rest of my review at A Bookish Type. I received a free copy of this book from the publisher via NetGalley, for review consideration.

[Emi Yoshida · Rating 3 out of 5]

Essentially many stories about Fu Ping, an orphaned servant woman from Yangzhou in Northeast China. Much about her confusing relationship with another servant woman named Nainai, from Shanghai. There are many many characters related to and acquainted with Fu Ping and Nainai detailed, and while many of them are interesting and even funny, I found myself frustrated as I was trying my best to keep them all ordered in mind for an eventual point in the plot (which never came) where all would be revealed and explained and come together neatly.

I would suggest some family org charts to simplify reading. Or just read this as if they're separate essays and don't invest yourself heavily in trying to keep everybody sorted. Fu Ping offers an intriguing look into several aspects of Chinese cultural history including dating, arranged marriage, social castes, and servitude.

[Rebecca H.]

Fu Ping is a fascinating look at what life was like for working-class women in Shanghai in the mid-20th century. Fu Ping is a young woman from the countryside who comes to Shanghai to stay with Nainai, whose grandson she has agreed to marry. But Fu Ping is less agreeable than Nainai expects, and she refuses to talk about her future plans and even whether she will marry the grandson at all. Nainai—and no one else, for that matter—doesn’t know quite what to make of her. The novel is digressive, full of stories about Nainai’s friends and neighbors, Fu Ping’s family members, and various other people in their circles. The plot is very simple, but the book is really most interested in capturing what daily life was like, especially for women and children. It’s about their struggles to find work, put food on the table, and find ways to improve their difficult lives. It’s an invaluable look at a world shaped by tradition but subject to changes brought by city life and shifting political structures.

https://bookriot.com/2019/08/18/augus...

[Greg · Rating 3 out of 5]

* I would like to thank NetGalley and the publisher for the opportunity to review this book. *

Fu Ping is an orphaned village girl who has been promised in marriage to a young man she has never met. She travels to Shanghai to be with the boy's grandmother. As she is immersed in the big city and meets people from walks of life she has never encountered, Fu Ping grows to be more independent and assertive, casting doubt on the plans for her future.

The great strength of this novel is how vividly Wang Anyi describes life in the back alleys and shanty towns of Shanghai. As Fu Ping encounters the unfamiliar, the reader is also taken to places and lifestyles that have mostly passed into history. I was particularly impressed with her accounts of the lives of the river folk, and of the impact of the annual flood of the river, which reminded me in some ways of Bleak House and Our Mutual Friend.

[Mandy · Rating 2 out of 5]

As a novel, this one just didn’t work for me. As a slice of social history, however, it did, as it gives a vivid and atmospheric portrait of daily life in mid-20th century Shanghai amongst the poorer working people and recent immigrants from the countryside. It focuses on a young inexperienced village girl, Fu Ping, who is invited by Nainai to come to the city as a potential bride for Nainai’s adopted grandson. Inevitably things don’t go according to plan and the sprawling narrative becomes a series of vignettes and episodes, some of which are interesting but none of which move the narrative forward in any meaningful way. The main problem for me was that I couldn’t relate to Fu Ping herself, primarily because we don’t get to share her inner thoughts. We are always on the outside looking in and she never becomes a fully-fledged character. An interesting, but not a particularly engaging or compelling read.

[Nanabookworm · Rating 4 out of 5]

讀完天香接著讀富萍，很明顯看得出兩者的相似和差異。天香主題先行，像天香園的繡畫那樣精美絕倫，但要支撐如此龐大又遙遠的晚明浮世繪，王安憶只能用一段又一段的說明文，恨不得把在圖書館的資料搜集全都塞進去。當然天香是好看的，無論是當作介紹晚明南方閨秀文化的傳承，還是學紅樓夢的世情故事，還有那些以一雙巧手支撐起申家的美人群像，王安憶的針法雖然笨拙，但也的確是滿腔柔情和一片錦心。

富萍當然比天香生動自然多了，其實王安憶最不能替代的就是寫她自己經歷的年代和社會，她的女性角色都是很倔強我行我素，但又不是那種真的和大環境起衝突要付出沈重代價的悲壯固執，而是一種在日常中在有限選擇裡忠於自己的感覺，最終回歸平凡的日子的獨立。嚴格來說富萍根本不是主角，只是借她來到上海這件事作為引子，從而繪出一副60年代上海弄堂和蘇州河畔的低下階層的眾生相。王安憶果然在自己的舒適區寫作，就能達到一種以極度囉嗦細節來塑造捕捉環境氣氛的驚人細膩。前半部集中在以奶奶為首的保姆女性群體，她們以職業技能和操守為傲，這種屬於舊時代的職業神奇地融入了後49到66前的新社會，於是弄堂這個小社區裡的人情世故和曖昧算計都在呂鳳仙、奶奶和戚師父的婚外情體現得活靈活現。戴金耳環的奶奶也許是王安憶寫得最接近張愛玲的人物，但王安憶還是溫和心軟，奶奶有心機也有算計，但她畢竟是個好人，這就很不張愛玲。

中間富萍因為過年的問題而跑去蘇州河畔的舅舅家，於是敘事無論是人物還是空間也又拓展到更寬的天地，船上人家的族群，比奶奶她們更直接骯髒的體力勞動，但同時流動的河流和廣闊的天際線，都暗示著一種更自由的生活模式。富萍最後選擇了一個比她更落魄的殘疾丈夫，其實富萍的歸宿和蕙蘭一模一樣，自己選了一戶落魄但相處自在的婆家，雖然大家閨秀的惠蘭有本事把家傳刺繡發揚光大開班授業，不識字的富萍只能默默糊紙盒，但王安憶最後都借用了蓮花的意象去賦予她們一種生命盛開的光彩。大雨中富萍一家被舅父家的小孩接到船上在蘇州河上漂浮，小說結束在富萍即將誕下新生命的暗示，但同時大雨也隱喻即將降臨的十年浩劫。王安憶沒有再寫下去，也不必再寫下去，但深知歷史進情的讀者卻不會擔心她筆下的角色的遭遇，雖然受苦但都會活下去，不是那種很悲壯屈辱的活法，而是一種面對苦難時都很堅韌平靜的活法。

[Lisa · Rating 3 out of 5]

Shanghai in the early years of the cultural revolution is the most fleshed-out character in this novel. I liked that and learned a lot about working-class women trying to earn a living in the city after having migrated from small villages. The setting was tangible to me. I was less impressed with the novel as narrative, however. It is really a series of vignettes loosely connected with the protagonist. She was a teenager promised to marry a young man she did not want to marry. She was shy but explored new experiences in the city that hadn’t been possible in her village. The chapters almost stood alone with completely new characters being introduced in one chapter never to return later. This style was not interesting to me other than to get a sense of the place.

[Morgan · Rating 4 out of 5]

I requested Fu Ping, because I love reading novels focused on Asian history / Asian culture. This particular translation had numbers down the side which was somewhat distracting. That said, the narrative was so authentic. I appreciated the insight the story gave into the lives of women in the early days of the People’s Republic. It reads similarly to a collection of short stories, but I found each story equally intriguing. I gave this book 3.5/5 stars. Thank you to Netgalley for the advanced reader’s copy.

[Anthony · Rating 4 out of 5]

This novel was all about detailed descriptions and painstaking characterization. For a translation, it was rendered quite elegantly and made for excellent reading. The plot, is the sole reason I did not award this book a full five stars. There was something missing from the story that just left me a tad disappointed when I reached the conclusion of the novel. I won’t go into detail— you can decide for yourself. That apart, I’d highly recommend this book to those of you enjoy real literary craft and style.

[Avid · Rating 3 out of 5]

I found the book had many insights, including elements which in some ways reflect my own life.
It paints a vivid picture of the sorts of decisions people faced in China and Shanghai in that era. When reading, I found some of the story elements a bit like wading through mud and seemingly a bit off topic but in the end they were woven back together. The key element I feel is a tale of women who dare and indeed prefer to forge their own path in life, even if it is one which others may consider sub par.

[Morgan · Rating 4 out of 5]

I requested Fu Ping, because I love reading novels focused on Asian history / Asian culture. This particular translation had numbers down the side which was somewhat distracting. That said, the narrative was so authentic. I appreciated the insight the story gave into the lives of women in the early days of the People’s Republic. It reads similarly to a collection of short stories, but I found each story equally intriguing. Thank you to Netgalley for the advanced reader’s copy.

[Laura Fincher · Rating 3 out of 5]

Fu Ping tells the story of a young woman who makes the transition from a life in rural China to a much larger city during her teen years. The novel focuses on many characters that all interact with Fu Ping herself, describing their lives in mini vignettes. This book would be great for those that are interested in Chinese fiction and who want to learn more about China.

[Sonia Almeida Dias (Peixinho de Prata) · Rating 4 out of 5]

I really enjoyed this book with Fu Ping, Nainai, and other strong characters from China on the early XXth century. It gave a lot of insight about history and culture from another country, while at the same with an entertaining and heart warming story.

Recommend it to all who love to read good books with a solid historical background.

[Lsmedley · Rating 5 out of 5]

My new favourite book!

[Desiree · Rating 3 out of 5]

I didn't have any idea what to expect from this book because I didn't know the author and I'm not familiar with Chinese literature.
I was attracted by the short description of the book.

Positive points about the book are that it gives some insight about living conditions of of lower-class women in Shanghai and the bourgeois families they work for. I liked the descriptions of the people living in the street where Fu Ping lives and the story's about her visit to her family. At the same time I think this is also a weak point of the book, because there is no real story line in the book, it is more of a simple collection of story's.

What annoyed me is that the character of Fu Ping stays very flat, I didn't get any real feeling what moved her and because off that it hard to feel sympathy for this character.

I want to thank Netgaley for providing met with an ARC of this book.
I give the author and the benefit of the doubt because maybe my ignorance of Chinese culture and society contributed to my sense of detachment from the characters so 3 starts.