A Private Life

by Chen Ran, John Howard-Gibbon (Translator)

From one of China's most celebrated contemporary novelists comes this riveting tale of a young woman's emotional and sexual awakening. Set in the turbulent decades of the Cultural Revolution and the Tian'anmen Square incident, "A Private Life" exposes the complex and fantastical inner life of a young woman growing up during a time of intense social and political upheaval.

At the age of twenty-six, Ni Niuniu has come to accept pain and loss. She has suffered the death of her mother and a close friend and neighbor, Mrs. Ho. She has long been estranged from her tyrannical father, while her boyfriend -- a brilliant and handsome poet named Yin Nan -- was forced to flee the country. She has survived a disturbing affair with a former teacher, a mental breakdown that left her in a mental institution for two years, and a stray bullet that tore through the flesh of her left leg. Now living in complete seclusion, Niuniu shuns a world that seems incapable of accepting her and instead spends her days wandering in vivid, dreamlike reveries where her fractured recollections and wild fantasies merge with her inescapable feelings of melancholy and loneliness. Yet this eccentric young woman -- caught between the disappearing traditions of the past and a modernizing Beijing, a flood of memories and an unknowable future, her chosen solitude and her irrepressible longing -- discovers strength and independence through writing, which transforms her flight from the hypocrisy of urban life into a journey of self-realization and rebirth.

First published in 1996 to widespread critical acclaim, Ran Chen's controversial debut novel is a lyrical meditation on memory, sexuality, femininity, and the often arbitrary distinctions between madness and sanity, alienation and belonging, nature and society. As Chen leads the reader deep into the psyche of Ni Niuniu -- into her innermost secrets and sexual desires -- the borders separating narrator and protagonist, writer and subject dissolve, exposing the shared aspects of human existence that transcend geographical and cultural differences.

Genres: Fiction, China, Queer, Chinese Literature, Historical Fiction, LGBT, Literature

256 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 1996

About the author

Chen Ran (Chinese: 陈染; pinyin: Chén Rǎn) is a Chinese avant-garde writer. Most of her works appeared in the 1990s and often deal with Chinese feminism.

Chen Ran was born in Beijing in April, 1962. Her parents divorced when she was in high school and she since then lived with her mother. As a child she studied music, but when she was 18 her interests turned to literature.

Chen Ran studied Chinese language and literature in Beijing Normal University from 1982 to 1986 and graduated when she was 23. She remained with the university as a teacher after graduation for the next four and a half years. She also lectured as an exchange scholar at various foreign universities including Melbourne University in Australia, the University of Berlin in Germany, and London, Oxford, and Edinburgh universities in the UK. Between 1987 and 1989, she published a series of surrealistic short stories with strong philosophical undertones.

She now lives and writes in Beijing. She has published several short story collections and is a member of the Chinese Writers Association. She has won number of prizes, such as the first Contemporary China Female Writer's Award.

(from Wikipedia)

Reviews

[Tony · Rating 3 out of 5]

(This review may include some spoilers, if that matters.)

This starts off, as so often, with the adolescent female protagonist awash in a slough of alienation:

. . . all through school I was like a newcomer. Never able to become part of the group, I had to learn to bear the feelings of rejection by strangers. But the other girls, with their hair done in braids or cut short, joined in the fun without any problems. For them, the school was their playground and their heaven, but not for me.

Things perk up when she goes through a sexual awakening, although the sex is awkward, to say the least. The first is with a disgusting older male teacher, a "get it over with" kind of event. There are mostly inchoate (I think) fumblings with the widow Ho. And then there is a "pity" kind of sex with a younger boy, who has to scamper out of China. It's hard to write sex; to-wit: I took hold of him, and gently guided that lost and hungry lamb into the sweet pasture of its yearning. . . .

Then there are a series of tragic events, to include the lost lamb, which causes a kind of breakdown. Another to-wit: I hurried into the bathroom to go to the toilet. When I pulled the chain, there was a strange voice mingled with the rush of water: "thusspakezarathustra! thusspakezarathustra!"

When I first got this book and looked at the front cover - the half foot with painted toenails peeking out of the water in the bathtub - I assumed that was some marketing gimmickry and would not actually be written into the story. But, oh, it's definitely written into the story. For better or worse.

Baaaa.

[Stephen Durrant · Rating 4 out of 5]

I have sometimes complained of the Chinese novel's continuing obsession with recent political history--the war against Japan, the Great Leap Forward, the Cultural Revolution, Tian'an men, etc. Such traumas should of course engage novelists, but all these novels of the horror of this event and the horror of that event begin to blend together so that one longs for something radically different. Chen Ran's "A Private Life" satisfied that longing, at least for this reader. One can of course dismiss "A Private Life" as a typical 1990s individualist and perhaps even escapist response to the cultural and political life of the previous decades, but this novel has a genuinely intimate, troubled and for me affecting voice that ponders sexual awakening, both homo- and hetero-erotic, the problem of relationships with parents, and most importantly the search for a secure and stable female identity (a search which largely fails in this case) in the changing world of contemporary China. I could not help, as I read this novel, to think of the current French woman writer Annie Ernaux, who has garnered the praise and attention of feminist readers worldwide and whom I think is similar to but surely no better than Chen Ran. "A Private Life" is an important work from China that deserves a wider audience.

[nora · Rating 2 out of 5]

Boring! Weird!!! Also the simile per sentence ratio was ABSURD

[Johan · Rating 4 out of 5]

Heartfelt and deeply personal. A strong story of a girl growing up and discovering what pushes men and women apart, and what pulls them together, about identity, and loss.

[César Ojeda · Rating 3 out of 5]

La novela sigue la adolescencia y juventud de su protagonista, Niuniu, quien lucha por cimentar una identidad lúcida pero inestable. A lo largo de la historia, Niuniu se enfrenta a diversos hombres que marcan su vida, como su padre, un profesor que abusa de ella, un psiquiatra y un amante que la abandona. En contraste, busca afecto y consuelo en figuras femeninas como su abuela, su madre y la viuda He.
La narrativa de Chen Ran es vanguardista y de una habilidad impresionante, adentrándose en las fronteras de lo singular y lo plural, lo privado y lo público. La obra está impregnada de símbolos como el crepúsculo, el color gris, el espejo y la lluvia, que refuerzan la dualidad y la complejidad de la experiencia humana. Además, la novela entrelaza la historia personal de Niuniu con el contexto político de China, abarcando desde la Revolución Cultural hasta los sucesos de la Plaza de Tiananmen.
"Vida privada" explora temas como el deseo, la sexualidad femenina, la identidad, el abuso y la búsqueda de significado en un mundo en constante cambio. Es una novela introspectiva y, en cierto grado, autobiográfica, que ofrece una visión profunda y a menudo cruda de la condición humana y de las múltiples caras del individuo. Su impacto radica en su audacia para abordar temas tabú y en su estilo narrativo único que la consolidó como una obra clave en la literatura china de finales del siglo XX.

[Sisy · Rating 4 out of 5]

Highly introspective, Kafka from a post revolutionary Chinese perspective. Normally, I feel iffy about this type of postmodernist intellectual spew, but I enjoyed A Private Life, even if it were for class.

[Luke · Rating 4 out of 5]

3.5/5

On one occasion, in a second-year survey examination, I think, in answer to the question, "Would you say that you deeply love politics?" my response was, "Only if it is permissible to lie," which netted me a long talking to by the school authorities.

It's been a minute since I read something of this sort: experimental, trauma, mental illness, woman. Add in queer and the eye of the storm of Tiananmen Square, and you have a tale that could've gone much longer on thematic inertia alone. Thank goodness it didn't, as while most of this narrative engaged me in unexpectedly extraordinary ways, there were also a handful of moments when I had to step back from my immediate perceptions and acknowledge how much more easily I would be able to deal with this if it benefited more from the arbiters of (Anglo) status quo: Woolf & Frame & Lispector, to name a few. It was what kept me afloat past prepubescent (pedophilic) encounters with multiple sexes and into the realm of truly touching scenes of social and sexual reclamation, a fiercely individual track wending its way through the torn connections and drowned mentalscapes of China in the last decades of the 20th c.

I'm not surprised the piece has been saddled with the term 'controversial', as it would garner more than its fair share in the US today. It also doesn't surprise me how well regarded it is on both sides of the Atlantic but certain select groups. I may not be capable of instinctively cleaving to it (part of it is lack of cultural habitus, another part is the transitioning, euphoric as the latter is), but Ran Chen captures so many vibrant leaping off points between exquisitely epigraphed chapters that I'm glad the queer drew me in so that I could discover everything else. In a word, then, this is difficult. But it's a reminder that I still retain enough cross cultural awareness to read through this not entirely in love, but certainly holistically sympathetic, which hasn't happened in some time. So, if you're in the mood for something boundary breaking and aren't scared by the likes of Beijing Coma, you may discover something here rather extraordinary. Just mind the trigger warnings, please.

Time is an artist. I am a stone rubbing: the lineaments of a range of peaks, of the caves of a grotto. Before I came into this world, the picture was already complete. As I slowly proceed along the watercourse of this segment of time, I discover my place in it. I see that the picture itself is a piece of history, a depiction of the life of all women.

[Pau · Rating 5 out of 5]

A dreamlike — and although at times whimsical — gut wrenching look at modern China.

[Ulrika · Rating 3 out of 5]

Det var spännande att läsa en roman som utspelar sig i Kina, att få skärvor av en annan kultur återberättade. Dessutom är det bla 1989 som skildras och i bakgrunden finns politiska protester och engagerade studenter. Men först och främst är det en drabbande bok om en kvinna som råkat ut för en rad händelser som leder henne till ett psykiskt sammanbrott. Det är alltså en bok om ett privatliv. Jag tyckte det var särskilt drabbande att läsa om personer i huvudpersonens närhet som utnyttjade henne sexuellt. Sexualitet är ett genomgående tema i boken, liksom ensamhet. Jag tyckte bäst om första halvan av boken, den som handlar om Ni Niunius barndom. Andra halvan är lite repetitiv.

[Elin · Rating 5 out of 5]

Tyckte mycket om den här boken! En ung kvinna lever ett ensamt och isolerat liv där hon använder skrivandet för att bearbeta hennes minnen. Hon berättar om sin uppväxt, sin familj och relationer till vänner och älskare. Hon beskriver förtryck och sexuella övergrepp med de känslor som finns i henne i stunden. Situationen i Kina nämns i förbifarten som en bakgrund men detta är en inre resa och därför annorlunda än de böcker jag läst från detta land förut. Jag blev tagen av boken och älskade hennes sätt att skriva. Slutet var öppet och vackert formulerat.

[Ximena Gonzalez · Rating 3 out of 5]

Me dejó una sensación agridulce. Creo que más negativa que positiva. Creo que está escrita la segunda mitad para que no se entienda, precisamente por el trastorno de la protagonista. Pero simplemente es confuso.

[Mi · Rating 4 out of 5]

Read for CHIN 245

[CeeCee]

For the readers that live
for "millennial girl sadness"

[Eli · Rating 5 out of 5]

Beautifully written and introspective. I cannot put to words quite how I feel about this book. Not in any way which will do it justice.

[yew · Rating 3 out of 5]

не ознакомленым с политической историей Китая может показаться перегруженной, непонятной и даже скучной. однако это приятное чтиво. рекомендую не растягивать процесс и прочитать залпом.

[Isa Björkman · Rating 2 out of 5]

2,5⭐️
Bra i början, lite tråkig i mitten, bra slut!

[Sam · Rating 2 out of 5]

The book, A Private Life by Ran Chen is a coming-of-age book that follows the life of Ni Niuniu. It explores Ni Niuniu self-discovery of her own emotions and identity through internal monologues in an almost diary-like writing style. This book was set during a time of intense social and political conflict within society in China. Ni Niuniu may be seen as a reflection of what people are going through, especially women as Ran Chen was an author who often deals with Chinese feminism.

Ni Niuniu has gone through many pains and suffering early in her childhood. She had lost her mother and close friend, Mrs. Ho; and her boyfriend, Yin Nan had left the country. Through all these losses, she had learned to cope with her emotions an almost dreamlike state. She would often dream or have hallucinations of her relationships with people and sometimes things. There would be times where she would dream or hallucinate about Mrs. Ho and their relationship. It will usually start off with Mrs. Ho and her, but then there will be times where Mrs. Ho would distort into another being with evidence of Mrs. Ho still present. Knowing China around the late 1900s is still conservative, it can be assumed that Ni has picked up on the social norms, either consciously or subconsciously, and internalized those norms which resulted to her repressed thoughts and feelings.

This book was interesting, however, I cannot say that I loved it. It was interesting because the language and style used made it different compared to the style of those in most YA books or even general adults. At times it felt as if I was reading someone else's interpretations of their dreams.

[Rima · Rating 3 out of 5]

It was quite nice find. Novel is written by one of Chinese contemporary novelists. It isn't oriental novel. It is slightly erotical, emotional journey in to womanhood. It could be any women in any country. Forget all shades of gray and similar crap. In "A Private Life" we can read about life and dreams, and thoughts of a real woman.

[Y · Rating 2 out of 5]

http://glass-icarus.dreamwidth.org/21...

[Alya · Rating 3 out of 5]

3.5

[Dana · Rating 4 out of 5]

O carte care merita o editură mai bună.