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Ninth Building
"Ninth Building" is a fascinating collection of vignettes drawn from Zou Jingzhi’s experience growing up during the Cultural Revolution, first as a boy in Beijing and then as a teenager exiled to the countryside. Zou poetically captures a side of the Cultural Revolution that is less talked about—the sheer tedium and waste of young life, as well as the gallows humor that accompanies such desperate situations. Jeremy Tiang’s enthralling translation of this important work of fiction was awarded a PEN/Heim Grant.
272 pages, Paperback
First published October 1, 2010
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1961 people want to read
About the author
Zou Jingzhi
5 books6 followersZou Jingzhi (Chinese name: 邹静之) is highly regarded in China as a fiction writer, poet, essayist, screenwriter, and playwright. He is a founding member of the Chinese theatre collective Longmashe. As a screenwriter, the films he wrote for Zhang Yimou and Wong Kar Wai have been well received at film festivals across the world. His plays and operas have been performed in China as well as internationally, and his poems and essays have been very influential, going into multiple reprints.
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April 12, 2023Longlisted for Booker Prize International 2023
I tried to read this collection of vignettes about living in apartment building during the Cultural revolution but it is not for me. I do not have too much patience these days, battling a huge TBR with little time. The subject is interesting but I found myself loosing focus while reading.
I tried to read this collection of vignettes about living in apartment building during the Cultural revolution but it is not for me. I do not have too much patience these days, battling a huge TBR with little time. The subject is interesting but I found myself loosing focus while reading.
March 22, 2023
Ninth Building is Jeremy Tiang's English-language translation of 九栋 by Zou Jingzhi (邹静之), published by Honford Star Press. Honford Star is one of the heroes of the publishing world, not only turning out brilliant works like Cursed Bunny but also producing English translations of East Asian titles that might not otherwise reach a larger audience. Ninth Building is a work of first-person realist fiction set during the Cultural Revolution, a series of linked stories set first in Beijing and, in the second half of the book, the remote Northern Wilderness after banishment by the Mao regime. Readers interested in this period will find much to like. I think it is a book best understood as straightforward historical fiction, giving readers a window into a period that will soon be lost to living memory.
June 15, 2022
Billed as a novel but essentially a series of linked stories depicting an unnamed narrator’s experiences during Mao’s Cultural Revolution - starting at its inception in the mid-1960s when the narrator’s looking back at their life as a teenager in Beijing’s Ninth Building apartment block. The contents overlap with acclaimed author Zou Jingzhi’s personal experiences, frequently appearing closer to memoir than literature, despite Zou’s instructions to translator Jeremy Tiang to treat this like a work of fiction. It’s not clear if this was a creative decision or whether it’s connected to the “doculiterary” movement in Chinese writing – a method of deploying fictional elements or techniques in the presentation of factual material to evade possible censorship. Zou began work on this in the late 90s, eventually publishing his finished version in 2010, during a period marked by an outpouring of recollections from his generation of Cultural Revolution survivors. This kind of reflection on personal histories traces back to what’s been dubbed “scar literature” or “literature of the wounded” a means of dealing with and exposing the trauma of the past, although Tiang’s argued that Zou’s work approaches China’s troubled history in a far more pragmatic way.
Zou’s opening Beijing episodes are visceral and earthy but laced with moments of lyricism that recall Zou’s background as a poet - and his later work as a screenwriter. Zou provides a window onto a small, urban community quickly torn apart by Mao’s latest ideological scheme, the rooting out of suspected dissidents or so-called bourgeois individuals. A project which pitted young against old, creating hordes of savage, Red Guard lynch mobs. Zou’s narrator reconstructs the feelings of excitement and unexpected anxiety that accompanied his attempts, along with neighbourhood friends, to set up a Red Guard unit - a ragbag assembly distinguished only by their special armbands. In an unsettling variation on a coming-of-age narrative, the boys play with marbles and feast on popsicles, or experience the pangs of first love but they also join in beating and torturing elderly locals accused of “incorrect thinking.” They witness a series of brutal deaths including the suicides of members of a despairing, older generation that include parents and close relatives. It’s a time of contradictions and discontinuities: ancient superstitions mingle with half-baked notions of political purity set out in the Maoist slogans that adorn the city walls. A new vocabulary circulates sanitising or sanctioning extreme violence – even death by suicide is transformed into the rightful “self-termination” of those who don’t fit with Mao’s vision for China's future. Some stories are controlled, others have a dizzying feel, words seeming to spill out in a vivid recreation of the confusion and frenzy of the era.
The second half opens in 1969, his father’s arrested as a “reactionary” and the narrator’s uprooted, becoming one of 17 million “educated youth” who were “sent-down” under the láojiào and láogai systems to rural labour camps for “re-education” as peasants, although there were those who volunteered in response to Mao’s rallying cry, “Up to the mountains, down to the countryside, for glory.” Here the narrator’s dispatched to the Great Northern Waste – presumably the remote region commonly referred to as the Great Northern Wilderness. On arrival Zou’s narrator becomes just another of countless half-starved, flea-ridden teens, many worked to death or rapidly dying from the rampant spread of disease. Zou focuses on the tedium, the passing of time with gambling, the ruses thought up as a means of obtaining a coveted “medical discharge.” This section’s far more descriptive and autobiographical in tone then the first, and I found it less successful as fiction despite numerous, memorable episodes.
But, despite the unevenness of Zou’s work, overall I found this remarkably gripping, at its best an evocative account of a turbulent historical time and its impact on an individual, one which echoes on throughout their life. I also liked the way - unlike books like Wild Swans which read more like propaganda - Zou’s writing doesn't pander to Western expectations, either stylistically or politically. Fluidly translated here by Jeremy Tiang.
Rating: 3/3.5
Zou’s opening Beijing episodes are visceral and earthy but laced with moments of lyricism that recall Zou’s background as a poet - and his later work as a screenwriter. Zou provides a window onto a small, urban community quickly torn apart by Mao’s latest ideological scheme, the rooting out of suspected dissidents or so-called bourgeois individuals. A project which pitted young against old, creating hordes of savage, Red Guard lynch mobs. Zou’s narrator reconstructs the feelings of excitement and unexpected anxiety that accompanied his attempts, along with neighbourhood friends, to set up a Red Guard unit - a ragbag assembly distinguished only by their special armbands. In an unsettling variation on a coming-of-age narrative, the boys play with marbles and feast on popsicles, or experience the pangs of first love but they also join in beating and torturing elderly locals accused of “incorrect thinking.” They witness a series of brutal deaths including the suicides of members of a despairing, older generation that include parents and close relatives. It’s a time of contradictions and discontinuities: ancient superstitions mingle with half-baked notions of political purity set out in the Maoist slogans that adorn the city walls. A new vocabulary circulates sanitising or sanctioning extreme violence – even death by suicide is transformed into the rightful “self-termination” of those who don’t fit with Mao’s vision for China's future. Some stories are controlled, others have a dizzying feel, words seeming to spill out in a vivid recreation of the confusion and frenzy of the era.
The second half opens in 1969, his father’s arrested as a “reactionary” and the narrator’s uprooted, becoming one of 17 million “educated youth” who were “sent-down” under the láojiào and láogai systems to rural labour camps for “re-education” as peasants, although there were those who volunteered in response to Mao’s rallying cry, “Up to the mountains, down to the countryside, for glory.” Here the narrator’s dispatched to the Great Northern Waste – presumably the remote region commonly referred to as the Great Northern Wilderness. On arrival Zou’s narrator becomes just another of countless half-starved, flea-ridden teens, many worked to death or rapidly dying from the rampant spread of disease. Zou focuses on the tedium, the passing of time with gambling, the ruses thought up as a means of obtaining a coveted “medical discharge.” This section’s far more descriptive and autobiographical in tone then the first, and I found it less successful as fiction despite numerous, memorable episodes.
But, despite the unevenness of Zou’s work, overall I found this remarkably gripping, at its best an evocative account of a turbulent historical time and its impact on an individual, one which echoes on throughout their life. I also liked the way - unlike books like Wild Swans which read more like propaganda - Zou’s writing doesn't pander to Western expectations, either stylistically or politically. Fluidly translated here by Jeremy Tiang.
Rating: 3/3.5
March 28, 2023
Longlisted for the 2023 International Booker Prize
After school started again, the castor plants grew yellower day after day, and their seed pods appeared at the tip of each branch, waiting to be gathered, like high school students ready to make their mark on the world. Not one of us went to collect them. This was the fall of 1966, and most of our classmates were busy ransacking people's houses, putting up big-character posters, forming themselves into units, linking up with other students across the country, marching in the streets and the castor seeds no longer mattered.
Ninth Building (2022) is Jeremy Tiang's translation of the 2010 work 九栋 by 邹静之 (Zou Jingzhi), fiction writer, poet, essayist, screenwriter, and playwright.
Tiang was a member of the jury that chose the excellent longlist for the 2022 International Booker Prize and they are the chair of judges for the 2023 National Book Prize for Translated Literature in the US. He introduces his translation at the PEN website.
The book is published by one of my favourite presses, the small, independent Honford Star:
The author's introduction explains the origins of the work:
Ninth Building was the building I lived in as a child. It's been demolished now, and on the same plot they built a bigger, taller Ninth Building. My words only concern the previous incarnation.
Before the block disappeared, I went back to take some pictures of it. A place I spent my early years. With its vanishing, there'd be no traces left of my childhood.
In the second half of 1996, after the demolition, I began writing these words, producing a first draft of over a hundred thousand characters. I edited four of these stories into shape, and they were published in 1997, along with a few other pieces in journals. In the summer of 1999, I started editing a dozen more in fits and starts, which still left half the manuscript untouched. I originally wrote this book with the idea that by putting them on paper, these past events would re-lease their hold on me. Instead, it felt as if I'd cemented their grip. Having written them out simply made their shadowing more visible.
That's why I edited this manuscript below, then left it alone.
The novel consists of
- a lyrical present-day preface and afterword, including a number of poems;
- the introduction (part of which is above)
- and two main sections of narrative.
The first section is set in the years up to 1966, when the narrator was aged 13. In one sense this is a standard coming-of-age type tale, but set against the backdrop of the cultural revolution, and the horrors of the moment - parents of friends suddenly denounced and disgraced, often driven to suicide - intrude. The boys themselves get both attracted, and in a sense forced, into joining the revolutionary movement - the vaccination in the following a particularly neat simile:
We put on our armbands as soon as we emerged from the hutong. Our arms grew glorious, weighty. Only swinging them vigourously made them feel natural.
Swaggering, we strutted into a small eating house and ordered four portions of roast meat. We splayed the food open, pouring soy sauce and vinegar in great streams that splashed across the table. The waiter saw the mess we were creating, but didn’t dare say a word. Our arms moved stiffly, as if we’d just been vaccinated.
One memorable episode has rumours spread about the coffin of a princess having been excavated in building works in an area which included the ruins of an ancient tomb. The boys go to see it but the only thing they find is an excavator truck digging in mud. On their way back to the Ninth Building they invent a tale of what they actually saw so vivid it almost convinces themselves and as the rumours spread their own tales return to them, amplified and distorted:
We’d never expected that some people, in creating fairytales, would turn their minds to eating flesh and crunching bones. Humanity was all fetid bowels, and the collective of grown-ups, even more so.
To use two unfortunate cliches (sorry) the game of Chinese whispers leads to an Emperor's new clothes situation where everyone who visits the site confirms they saw what is not actually there, until the authorities paste a poster to the arm of the excavator truck: “Don’t be a worshipful descendant of the old feudal order”.
The second section of the novel begins in 1969, running through to 1977. Again 15 and a half, the narrator is sent with many of his fellows, "educated youths" now a term of derision, to the Great Northern Waste for re-education through poverty: Ten or twenty thousand of us dumped in the snowy plains.
There he attempts to maintain his love of music, as a violinist, while again in the midst of suffering -freezing conditions; a lack of food and often sudden and violent death from the manual labour they undertake.
I've seen death—pale, cold, and bloodless. Like the words suddenly vanishing from a book, leaving blank paper, page after page of it. Such a death would make even the sunniest day blink, exhausted. Right in front of you. A wind rises, as if blowing from your heart.
Two of the stories from this part of the novel can be found here, one of which I've abstracted below:
Old Yoo played the round horn, also known as the French horn, in the propaganda orchestra. When he followed the five-line score, his grasp of rhythm was exceptionally accurate. Old Yoo usually didn't practice very much. One time the political commissar overheard him as he was rehearsing and called the little tune he was playing “the stinking fart of the bourgeoisie.” This saddened Old Yoo. He put down his horn and asked Old Qian to teach him the erhu. He learnt to read simple notation, and to play “Waters of the Yangtze and Yellow Rivers.” The commissar listened to his rendition and commented that Old Yoo had improved.
The full name of our brigade was “Thoughts of Chairman Mao Propaganda Orchestra.” Apart from our own little concerts, we staged mostly revolutionary operas. Being short-staffed, each of our performers often took on three or four roles each. In Legend of the Red Lantern, I played a liaison officer, a spy, and one of the Japanese devils at the execution ground.
The narration itself is via a series of disconnected vignettes. As the narrator explains:
Granules are different from pearls, which have holes in them and can be strung up. If you scatter granules across the floor, you have to pick them up one by one. True memories are more granule than pearl—there's no string that links them neatly together. Granules can ferment into stories, but stories are steamed buns, white and pillowy, not granular at all. Yun-ju Temple in Beijing's Fangshan district has Buddhist relics that are said to emit light once every few centuries. They're a sort of granule too, the crystallization of what remains after burning. I've studied them up close, but they still seemed un-imaginably far away, beyond the reach of my life and imagination. Buddhist relics are left behind as a sort of essence, the result of lifelong contemplation. It took countless days and nights of food, drink, thought, scripture, shit, and so forth to produce them. These tiny things, like grains of sand, will never disappear. There's no tragedy, no romance, no politics here. They're there when you see them, gone when you don't.
Overall, I found this a fascinating work. A relatively simple story but with a distinctive, and in English literary terms, unusual backdrop and told in a distinctive style. A book I'd like to see on the shortlist.
After school started again, the castor plants grew yellower day after day, and their seed pods appeared at the tip of each branch, waiting to be gathered, like high school students ready to make their mark on the world. Not one of us went to collect them. This was the fall of 1966, and most of our classmates were busy ransacking people's houses, putting up big-character posters, forming themselves into units, linking up with other students across the country, marching in the streets and the castor seeds no longer mattered.
Ninth Building (2022) is Jeremy Tiang's translation of the 2010 work 九栋 by 邹静之 (Zou Jingzhi), fiction writer, poet, essayist, screenwriter, and playwright.
Tiang was a member of the jury that chose the excellent longlist for the 2022 International Booker Prize and they are the chair of judges for the 2023 National Book Prize for Translated Literature in the US. He introduces his translation at the PEN website.
The book is published by one of my favourite presses, the small, independent Honford Star:
Honford Star's mission is to publish exciting literature from East Asia, be it classic or contemporary. We believe there are many ground-breaking East Asian authors and books yet to be read by English-language readers, so we aim to make these works as accessible as possible. By working with talented translators and exciting local artists, we hope to see more bookshelves containing beautiful editions of East Asian literature.
The author's introduction explains the origins of the work:
Ninth Building was the building I lived in as a child. It's been demolished now, and on the same plot they built a bigger, taller Ninth Building. My words only concern the previous incarnation.
Before the block disappeared, I went back to take some pictures of it. A place I spent my early years. With its vanishing, there'd be no traces left of my childhood.
In the second half of 1996, after the demolition, I began writing these words, producing a first draft of over a hundred thousand characters. I edited four of these stories into shape, and they were published in 1997, along with a few other pieces in journals. In the summer of 1999, I started editing a dozen more in fits and starts, which still left half the manuscript untouched. I originally wrote this book with the idea that by putting them on paper, these past events would re-lease their hold on me. Instead, it felt as if I'd cemented their grip. Having written them out simply made their shadowing more visible.
That's why I edited this manuscript below, then left it alone.
The novel consists of
- a lyrical present-day preface and afterword, including a number of poems;
- the introduction (part of which is above)
- and two main sections of narrative.
The first section is set in the years up to 1966, when the narrator was aged 13. In one sense this is a standard coming-of-age type tale, but set against the backdrop of the cultural revolution, and the horrors of the moment - parents of friends suddenly denounced and disgraced, often driven to suicide - intrude. The boys themselves get both attracted, and in a sense forced, into joining the revolutionary movement - the vaccination in the following a particularly neat simile:
We put on our armbands as soon as we emerged from the hutong. Our arms grew glorious, weighty. Only swinging them vigourously made them feel natural.
Swaggering, we strutted into a small eating house and ordered four portions of roast meat. We splayed the food open, pouring soy sauce and vinegar in great streams that splashed across the table. The waiter saw the mess we were creating, but didn’t dare say a word. Our arms moved stiffly, as if we’d just been vaccinated.
One memorable episode has rumours spread about the coffin of a princess having been excavated in building works in an area which included the ruins of an ancient tomb. The boys go to see it but the only thing they find is an excavator truck digging in mud. On their way back to the Ninth Building they invent a tale of what they actually saw so vivid it almost convinces themselves and as the rumours spread their own tales return to them, amplified and distorted:
We’d never expected that some people, in creating fairytales, would turn their minds to eating flesh and crunching bones. Humanity was all fetid bowels, and the collective of grown-ups, even more so.
To use two unfortunate cliches (sorry) the game of Chinese whispers leads to an Emperor's new clothes situation where everyone who visits the site confirms they saw what is not actually there, until the authorities paste a poster to the arm of the excavator truck: “Don’t be a worshipful descendant of the old feudal order”.
The second section of the novel begins in 1969, running through to 1977. Again 15 and a half, the narrator is sent with many of his fellows, "educated youths" now a term of derision, to the Great Northern Waste for re-education through poverty: Ten or twenty thousand of us dumped in the snowy plains.
There he attempts to maintain his love of music, as a violinist, while again in the midst of suffering -freezing conditions; a lack of food and often sudden and violent death from the manual labour they undertake.
I've seen death—pale, cold, and bloodless. Like the words suddenly vanishing from a book, leaving blank paper, page after page of it. Such a death would make even the sunniest day blink, exhausted. Right in front of you. A wind rises, as if blowing from your heart.
Two of the stories from this part of the novel can be found here, one of which I've abstracted below:
Old Yoo played the round horn, also known as the French horn, in the propaganda orchestra. When he followed the five-line score, his grasp of rhythm was exceptionally accurate. Old Yoo usually didn't practice very much. One time the political commissar overheard him as he was rehearsing and called the little tune he was playing “the stinking fart of the bourgeoisie.” This saddened Old Yoo. He put down his horn and asked Old Qian to teach him the erhu. He learnt to read simple notation, and to play “Waters of the Yangtze and Yellow Rivers.” The commissar listened to his rendition and commented that Old Yoo had improved.
The full name of our brigade was “Thoughts of Chairman Mao Propaganda Orchestra.” Apart from our own little concerts, we staged mostly revolutionary operas. Being short-staffed, each of our performers often took on three or four roles each. In Legend of the Red Lantern, I played a liaison officer, a spy, and one of the Japanese devils at the execution ground.
The narration itself is via a series of disconnected vignettes. As the narrator explains:
Granules are different from pearls, which have holes in them and can be strung up. If you scatter granules across the floor, you have to pick them up one by one. True memories are more granule than pearl—there's no string that links them neatly together. Granules can ferment into stories, but stories are steamed buns, white and pillowy, not granular at all. Yun-ju Temple in Beijing's Fangshan district has Buddhist relics that are said to emit light once every few centuries. They're a sort of granule too, the crystallization of what remains after burning. I've studied them up close, but they still seemed un-imaginably far away, beyond the reach of my life and imagination. Buddhist relics are left behind as a sort of essence, the result of lifelong contemplation. It took countless days and nights of food, drink, thought, scripture, shit, and so forth to produce them. These tiny things, like grains of sand, will never disappear. There's no tragedy, no romance, no politics here. They're there when you see them, gone when you don't.
Overall, I found this a fascinating work. A relatively simple story but with a distinctive, and in English literary terms, unusual backdrop and told in a distinctive style. A book I'd like to see on the shortlist.
April 5, 2023
A Chinese man looks back on growing up in Beijing and being sent to the barren North for labor during the Cultural Revolution.
I don't tend to get along too well with books described as a 'series of vignettes' - there is little propulsion and the individual pieces can feel like a random selection of anecdotes.
That was also the case with Ninth Building.
The first part is a lot about growing up in Beijing in the 60s, and I can imagine this feels like a trip down memory lane for Chinese readers.
In the second part the narrator is sent off to the 'Great Northern Waste' as part of a programme to let city youth get used to manual labor.
I felt distant from the narrator as he hardly becomes personal and just tells you about the games he used to play, the pranks and the hard work.
But still an interesting read on a period I know too little about (and still feel there is much more to learn).
I don't tend to get along too well with books described as a 'series of vignettes' - there is little propulsion and the individual pieces can feel like a random selection of anecdotes.
That was also the case with Ninth Building.
The first part is a lot about growing up in Beijing in the 60s, and I can imagine this feels like a trip down memory lane for Chinese readers.
In the second part the narrator is sent off to the 'Great Northern Waste' as part of a programme to let city youth get used to manual labor.
I felt distant from the narrator as he hardly becomes personal and just tells you about the games he used to play, the pranks and the hard work.
But still an interesting read on a period I know too little about (and still feel there is much more to learn).
April 19, 2023
Wildly uneven. But the parts that rocked really rocked.
June 19, 2023
75th book of 2023.
3.5. Going into Ninth Building felt like those books that are well-written, thoughtful, but ultimately missing some key ingredient. In a way, by the end, it was; but also it struck a slightly higher chord than I was expecting, particularly the first half. Jingzhi has written a novel-memoir on growing up during the Cultural Revolution in China. The book is comprised of vignettes, most no more than a handful of pages, drawing characters, places and emotions. The images that return to me are forged love letters, turtle shapes, chicken blood, crumbling paint, taking photographs without any film... All these images are from the beautifully written first half. The second half loses some of its magic, but still kept me engaged. Jingzhi's prose is never maudlin, though writing about childhood is no doubt one of the hardest things to do escaping this. Here are some paragraphs I liked, though I noted down many more.
3.5. Going into Ninth Building felt like those books that are well-written, thoughtful, but ultimately missing some key ingredient. In a way, by the end, it was; but also it struck a slightly higher chord than I was expecting, particularly the first half. Jingzhi has written a novel-memoir on growing up during the Cultural Revolution in China. The book is comprised of vignettes, most no more than a handful of pages, drawing characters, places and emotions. The images that return to me are forged love letters, turtle shapes, chicken blood, crumbling paint, taking photographs without any film... All these images are from the beautifully written first half. The second half loses some of its magic, but still kept me engaged. Jingzhi's prose is never maudlin, though writing about childhood is no doubt one of the hardest things to do escaping this. Here are some paragraphs I liked, though I noted down many more.
This is the shutter, this is the lens, this is the viewfinder, horizontal or vertical. If you want to load more film, pull this lever to open it up. It's black inside, and if you don't click the shutter it remains black always, black as night, you know, like the expression "endless night." Like your tomb after you're dead. The shutter lets in an instant of light—ka-tscha!—and an image blossoms on the film, a person or a tree. Photographs are shadows left behind by grave robbers.
For me, life was the only thing, all I had to cling to, and I worried it would snap off someday, like the dictionary definition of death: the loss of life. I was responsible to life alone, and time outside of this didn't exist. For a while, I lost the word "eternity," because everything was now, today was today, but tomorrow hadn't agreed it would definitely come, and the tomorrow of my imagination wasn't real anyway. I was afraid of death, and never considered I had a responsibility towards it too. Not the way religious people mean, thinking death is when our lives get inspected. What I feared was death itself, believing it to be the end of everything, so the life I l'd experienced would be insignificant when weighed against death [...] A person has a right to death because he's lived. If you can prove you've lived, then you've earned the right to die.
November 4, 2022
'To this day, I don't understand how someone could be so hungry as to not feel pain. The steamed bun was like his life—he clutched it so tight, you'd have thought it would vanish if he'd let it go. Perhaps in that moment he wasn't thinking about life or death, and his world contained nothing but that steamed bun. Right then, was it death or hunger that felt more real, more urgent, more significant?'
A deliberately tedious look into a man from Beijing sent to the countryside during the Cultural Revolution. I loved the writing in the Introduction especially, but it's all nicely written (and translated beautifully).
I feel the book is supposed to feel exasperatingly boring, and it did at points, but it was bleak and poignant. Zou doesn't sugarcoat anything, not the deaths, the hate crimes, or the stupidity of some of his own actions. Fair warning that a minimal knowledge of the Cultural Revolution and what led to that may be needed to understand what is going on.
'Other people are always borrowing me. My wife says, "It's sunny today, come to the mall with me—I want to buy socks." Yes, dear. Then I have to leave myself at home for three hours, to await my return.'
A deliberately tedious look into a man from Beijing sent to the countryside during the Cultural Revolution. I loved the writing in the Introduction especially, but it's all nicely written (and translated beautifully).
I feel the book is supposed to feel exasperatingly boring, and it did at points, but it was bleak and poignant. Zou doesn't sugarcoat anything, not the deaths, the hate crimes, or the stupidity of some of his own actions. Fair warning that a minimal knowledge of the Cultural Revolution and what led to that may be needed to understand what is going on.
'Other people are always borrowing me. My wife says, "It's sunny today, come to the mall with me—I want to buy socks." Yes, dear. Then I have to leave myself at home for three hours, to await my return.'
April 12, 2023
This excellent collection of short stories, many no more than a few pages long, capture the long years of the Cultural Revolution in China from the perspective of those who were adolescents and young adults during this time. Central to these tales is tedium of life in the city as tensions and distrust among neighbours is rising and then in the vast northern regions where young “educated” men and women were sent for “re-education through poverty.” Amid these harsh conditions, Zou Jingzhi finds humour, hope and tragedy. Drawing on his imagination and his own experience, a period of recent Chinese history to life through these vignettes and tales. His poetic sensibility comes through as does a sense of his own budding literary inclination during these difficult years.
A longer review can be found here: https://roughghosts.com/2023/04/12/a-...
A longer review can be found here: https://roughghosts.com/2023/04/12/a-...
May 1, 2023
This collection of loosely connected vignettes is beautifully written, with a mournful, detached tone. I especially liked the first half, related through the eyes of childhood.
The grown-ups called these things "mosaics" but it felt a bit pretentious when I did that. Instead, we called them "magnets," using our own language to protect ourselves. For instance, we called our school bags "shit shovels," Old Sun the doorman was "Old Pipe," and banknotes were "leaves." Police officers were "landmines." When these nouns popped out of our mouths, our world felt different to the one the grown-ups lived in, and this sensation was the pillar that propped up our universe, enabling us to live sincerely and passionately.Many of the stories explore language at least as much as they explore experience--almost exclusively painful experiences that also contain an element of aesthetic redemption. As I read, Primo Levi's memoir Moments of Reprieve: A Memoir of Auschwitz came to mind. However, the repetitive nature of many of the stories coupled with the detatched tone of the narration detracted from this book's overall impact. Ninth Building was oblique but also quite lovely.
The hourglass has been turned over, and yesterday's sand comes rushing back, the same sand, every last grain. One's passing days are like an hourglass, not "like a flowing river," as the sage says, slipping by never to return. Time repeats itself. Today and yesterday, this year and last year, not one grain of sand that goes by is unfamiliar to you.....Everyone has a vast book in their heart, its beginning very far away. The wise do not read it out. You, mundane and hollow, spend your savings. You see light seeping from the tangible sand, and the empty space grows larger and larger.
February 11, 2023
"Youth is a concept whose meaning isn't easy to grasp. You might as well try to wrap your mind around every era, every event. The word doesn't really evoke any special memories for me. Perhaps I'll have to wait till the age when every other sentence begins with "back then" before I truly understand it"
Ninth Building (written in Chinese by Zou Jingzhi and translated into English by Jeremy Tiang) is a collection of vignettes reflecting Zou's experience growing up during the Cultural Revolution in 1966. Ninth Building is divided into 2 parts. In Part 1 (Ninth Building), Zou recounts his childhood in Beijing during the start of the Cultural Revolution and his views, feelings, and emotions regarding the Revolution from the perspective of a child. In Part 2 (Grains of Sand in the Wind), where his family was cast out of Beijing, and Zou (now an adolescent) recounts his experience in the rural area during the "Down to the Countryside Movement" (in which "Educated Youths" in urban areas were sent to live and work in rural areas to be re-educated by the peasantry and to better understand the role of manual agricultural labor in Chinese society).
As Ninth Building mainly consists of Zou's personal experience during the dark period of China, Ninth Building reads more like non-fiction but written in a meta-fiction form. There is no clear plot or character development or narrative structure but Zou's prose is spectacular. Each vignette reflects the moments or memories which are important to Zou. They are either Zou's encounter with his childhood friends during the Cultural Revolution, their friendship and special bond, Zou's views on the oppressive and bleak state during the Cultural Revolution when he was a child, his encounter with other "Educated Youths" in the rural area, the hardships that he went through during the "Down to the Countryside Movement", the deaths that he encountered, several incidents that brought him grief and sorrow. Ninth Building is not the usual depiction of the Mao regime and the Cultural Revolution as it was told through the lens of an "Educated Youth" with his personal touch and flavor to it. While it seems to fall within the realm of non-fiction, the vignettes were written so poetically and beautifully by Zou. It started off with an impressive Introduction where Zou stated that he seems detached from his past life: "Dreaming, waking, sunrise, time to get up. The person in the dream was a bit different to the person I am now, but I think it was me. I try to go back but can't"; "But the childhood cannot be shared. Her secret parts must remain eternally secret. Even if you try to recall it with your whole heart and mind, you'd find it hard to go back in". And in the Afterward, Zou beautifully ties up his past memories and experience with his present self, which he held dearly in a faraway space in his heart: "The past and the future are unreachable"; "Everyone has a vast book in their heart, it's beginning very far away. The wise do not read it out. You, mundane and hollow, spend your savings. You see light seeping from the tangible sand, and the empty space grows larger and larger". A beautiful collection brilliantly translated by Jeremy Tiang and a strong 4.3/5 star read to me!
Ninth Building (written in Chinese by Zou Jingzhi and translated into English by Jeremy Tiang) is a collection of vignettes reflecting Zou's experience growing up during the Cultural Revolution in 1966. Ninth Building is divided into 2 parts. In Part 1 (Ninth Building), Zou recounts his childhood in Beijing during the start of the Cultural Revolution and his views, feelings, and emotions regarding the Revolution from the perspective of a child. In Part 2 (Grains of Sand in the Wind), where his family was cast out of Beijing, and Zou (now an adolescent) recounts his experience in the rural area during the "Down to the Countryside Movement" (in which "Educated Youths" in urban areas were sent to live and work in rural areas to be re-educated by the peasantry and to better understand the role of manual agricultural labor in Chinese society).
As Ninth Building mainly consists of Zou's personal experience during the dark period of China, Ninth Building reads more like non-fiction but written in a meta-fiction form. There is no clear plot or character development or narrative structure but Zou's prose is spectacular. Each vignette reflects the moments or memories which are important to Zou. They are either Zou's encounter with his childhood friends during the Cultural Revolution, their friendship and special bond, Zou's views on the oppressive and bleak state during the Cultural Revolution when he was a child, his encounter with other "Educated Youths" in the rural area, the hardships that he went through during the "Down to the Countryside Movement", the deaths that he encountered, several incidents that brought him grief and sorrow. Ninth Building is not the usual depiction of the Mao regime and the Cultural Revolution as it was told through the lens of an "Educated Youth" with his personal touch and flavor to it. While it seems to fall within the realm of non-fiction, the vignettes were written so poetically and beautifully by Zou. It started off with an impressive Introduction where Zou stated that he seems detached from his past life: "Dreaming, waking, sunrise, time to get up. The person in the dream was a bit different to the person I am now, but I think it was me. I try to go back but can't"; "But the childhood cannot be shared. Her secret parts must remain eternally secret. Even if you try to recall it with your whole heart and mind, you'd find it hard to go back in". And in the Afterward, Zou beautifully ties up his past memories and experience with his present self, which he held dearly in a faraway space in his heart: "The past and the future are unreachable"; "Everyone has a vast book in their heart, it's beginning very far away. The wise do not read it out. You, mundane and hollow, spend your savings. You see light seeping from the tangible sand, and the empty space grows larger and larger". A beautiful collection brilliantly translated by Jeremy Tiang and a strong 4.3/5 star read to me!
April 12, 2023
I felt like this started off really strong, I loved the foreward and the first part 'Ninth Building' where it was talking about the Chinese cultural revolution as it had a sort of dystopia vibe to it. It was like a bunch of short stories all set in an apartment block and it was really weird and loads of people were dying and acting strange and I just loved the vibe.
In the second part of the book it moved away from this and focused on farming and loads of other weird stuff I didn't have an interest in. The atmosphere completely disappeared and every single story felt exactly the same. It was rounded off with a selection of poems by the author which I found a really strange addition to the collection.
All in all really mixed feelings about it and so giving it three stars. It could have been great if it carried on in the same vein as it did at the beginning but it really lost me.
In the second part of the book it moved away from this and focused on farming and loads of other weird stuff I didn't have an interest in. The atmosphere completely disappeared and every single story felt exactly the same. It was rounded off with a selection of poems by the author which I found a really strange addition to the collection.
All in all really mixed feelings about it and so giving it three stars. It could have been great if it carried on in the same vein as it did at the beginning but it really lost me.
April 1, 2023
[3.5]
July 10, 2025
Absolutely loved this, one of my favorite reads of 2025 so far. Wish it had been shortlisted for the international booker in 2023.
The writing in this is phenomenal, so deftly and elegantly rendered. The first part was probably better for me as it used a bit more variety in form (like some stream of consciousness, or diary entries, etc), but the second part brilliantly portrayed life in the "great northern waste." So many beautiful turns of phrase - if you want a slow, reflective literary memoir on a man's experience through the Chinese cultural revolution, this is a revelation and speaks so much to human endurance and perseverance.
The writing in this is phenomenal, so deftly and elegantly rendered. The first part was probably better for me as it used a bit more variety in form (like some stream of consciousness, or diary entries, etc), but the second part brilliantly portrayed life in the "great northern waste." So many beautiful turns of phrase - if you want a slow, reflective literary memoir on a man's experience through the Chinese cultural revolution, this is a revelation and speaks so much to human endurance and perseverance.
December 11, 2023
作家写 九栋被拆除了 童年的痕迹也抹除了。我想我明白 小时候的家拆了 小时候度过很多个傍晚的公园拆了 中学的校园搬了 连校服都改版了 我的童年也是消失的。
每个时代有每个时代的叙事。很多人吐槽五十年代的人永远在写文革和下乡 吐槽垮掉的一代不停回味战争和迫害。大约我们永远轻飘飘地看待历史。可能我们也很难避开疫情 我也总提到故乡。那些故事不是书里轻盈的虚构。
听说作家是个颇有名气的剧作家。前半段写文革时期机关大院的故事 读着有一种天真的恶 懵懂的残忍。后半段写北大荒下乡的故事 像是惩罚与赎罪。活过那些岁月 写戏剧的人性和矛盾甚至不需要卓绝的想象力 透过笔端回到记忆的地方就好了吗？
前面都读得轻松 最后一篇因为门德尔松令我忍不住哭出来。听着帕格尼尼奥伊斯特赫和海菲兹的故事长大 在北大荒依旧拉练习曲 那里无处安放琴 也无处安放琴声。做粗活的手不再灵活 为了门E先拉练习曲 被人听到后盖章说他是资本主义酒吧里的臭调调 然后去拉样板戏。这到底是什么样的精神掠夺。从那天起他放弃了拉琴 也让开始写字 因为文字是无声的 不会被人偷听。我的心都碎了。
见惯了生死 允许人的异化和尊严的湮灭的事存在的世界 和在那样的岁月里活下来的人 还能有良知吗？可以的。文字是良知 音乐是良知。心里奏响的不会被剥夺。
每个时代有每个时代的叙事。很多人吐槽五十年代的人永远在写文革和下乡 吐槽垮掉的一代不停回味战争和迫害。大约我们永远轻飘飘地看待历史。可能我们也很难避开疫情 我也总提到故乡。那些故事不是书里轻盈的虚构。
听说作家是个颇有名气的剧作家。前半段写文革时期机关大院的故事 读着有一种天真的恶 懵懂的残忍。后半段写北大荒下乡的故事 像是惩罚与赎罪。活过那些岁月 写戏剧的人性和矛盾甚至不需要卓绝的想象力 透过笔端回到记忆的地方就好了吗？
前面都读得轻松 最后一篇因为门德尔松令我忍不住哭出来。听着帕格尼尼奥伊斯特赫和海菲兹的故事长大 在北大荒依旧拉练习曲 那里无处安放琴 也无处安放琴声。做粗活的手不再灵活 为了门E先拉练习曲 被人听到后盖章说他是资本主义酒吧里的臭调调 然后去拉样板戏。这到底是什么样的精神掠夺。从那天起他放弃了拉琴 也让开始写字 因为文字是无声的 不会被人偷听。我的心都碎了。
见惯了生死 允许人的异化和尊严的湮灭的事存在的世界 和在那样的岁月里活下来的人 还能有良知吗？可以的。文字是良知 音乐是良知。心里奏响的不会被剥夺。
April 14, 2023
2.5⭐️ rounded up
The first half of this collection started off so strong. I loved the weird atmosphere of all the kids living in the apartment building and the strange things they got up to and believed in. Some of my favourite stories being Specimens, Fang Yong’s Chicken, Chicken Blood, and a Tube Of Toothpaste.
The second half is focused on the ‘Great Northern Waste’ where a big group of people were working some form of labour/farming job. The stories set here were significantly duller, less creative, and generally lacked the captivating unsettling atmosphere of the first half of the collection.
The first half of this collection started off so strong. I loved the weird atmosphere of all the kids living in the apartment building and the strange things they got up to and believed in. Some of my favourite stories being Specimens, Fang Yong’s Chicken, Chicken Blood, and a Tube Of Toothpaste.
The second half is focused on the ‘Great Northern Waste’ where a big group of people were working some form of labour/farming job. The stories set here were significantly duller, less creative, and generally lacked the captivating unsettling atmosphere of the first half of the collection.
April 5, 2023
Have you ever met a person that told you exactly what they would be like, you go along with them anyway, and then are disappointed because they’re exactly how they said they would be? That’s what this book did to me. It told me it would be detached and about boredom and tedium and yet I still got annoyed with all the boredom and tedium.
This novel is in two parts told through vignettes. The first takes place in Beijing at the beginning of the Cultural Revolution. We mostly see kids doing weird kids things while creating their own Red Guard unit, spying on neighbors, and almost growing bored with the dead bodies around them. A lot of the time it was hard to pin down if it was the same narrator throughout the first part and how much time had passed between stories. The Cultural Revolution is mostly in the periphery, Mao nor any other official is named, but there are some scenes that are extreme and directly impact the narrator. The writing is simple fitting the child narrator, but once in a while a poetic line would leak through that created a bit of whiplash. There is some humor, but it’s so dry or black that it might go over your head. There are even what seem like editor or translator notes left behind which weirdly never happen again.
The second part begins as the narrator is sent to the ‘great northern waste’. He spends eight years (until he’s 25) toiling the fields, enduring the freezing cold, and going hungry with other ‘reeducated youths’. They mostly gamble, find ways to sneak back home, and try to get a medical diagnosis that will send them home. Here we get more fourth wall breaking with comments from the narrator looking back decades later. We’re still surrounded by death, but here it’s looked at straight on, leaving its mark on the narrator.
This is a simple recounting of one person’s experience. There is never any questioning or critical thought to what happened. It just was.
While I appreciate the intent, the two parts never came together for me; creating a disjointed and tedious reading experience for me.
This novel is in two parts told through vignettes. The first takes place in Beijing at the beginning of the Cultural Revolution. We mostly see kids doing weird kids things while creating their own Red Guard unit, spying on neighbors, and almost growing bored with the dead bodies around them. A lot of the time it was hard to pin down if it was the same narrator throughout the first part and how much time had passed between stories. The Cultural Revolution is mostly in the periphery, Mao nor any other official is named, but there are some scenes that are extreme and directly impact the narrator. The writing is simple fitting the child narrator, but once in a while a poetic line would leak through that created a bit of whiplash. There is some humor, but it’s so dry or black that it might go over your head. There are even what seem like editor or translator notes left behind which weirdly never happen again.
The second part begins as the narrator is sent to the ‘great northern waste’. He spends eight years (until he’s 25) toiling the fields, enduring the freezing cold, and going hungry with other ‘reeducated youths’. They mostly gamble, find ways to sneak back home, and try to get a medical diagnosis that will send them home. Here we get more fourth wall breaking with comments from the narrator looking back decades later. We’re still surrounded by death, but here it’s looked at straight on, leaving its mark on the narrator.
This is a simple recounting of one person’s experience. There is never any questioning or critical thought to what happened. It just was.
While I appreciate the intent, the two parts never came together for me; creating a disjointed and tedious reading experience for me.
May 4, 2023
Zou Jingzhi brings together short fiction, fragments of memory, nuggets of daily conversation, and a selection of poetry, crafting fictive memoir/memoiristic fiction to accurately encapsulate the tedium and horror of the Cultural Revolution as experienced by children and "educated" teens. The first half of this was wonderfully grotesque in its uncanny mundanity, and the second half incessantly bored me with shimmers of transcendence. Would recommend even though I don't adore.
April 21, 2023
the only enjoyable part of this book was the 26-word poem about a starfish at the very end
February 4, 2025
4/5 - this is a greatly insightful look into the violence and tedium that was the Cultural Revolution - an event that is defined by contradictions at its core. Personal perspectives from this time are hard to come by, but this is a good one. Loved Jeremy Tiang's translation, too - I felt the poetry that the Chinese original was celebrated for flow through in English very effectively.
November 30, 2024
Not my style or speed, but I did enjoy it for the most part
January 15, 2024
This easy but melancholic read is a memoir from a Chinese writer who limits his scope to the years of the country’s Cultural Revolution. Zou was in the sixth grade when the era began and a full-grown adult by the end, but as the author ascends from childhood to adulthood, we see very little that could be interpreted as normal maturation. When Zou was 17, his father was put on trial for subversion, and Zou was banished to a re-education camp in the “Great Northern Waste” to scythe wheat, “carry sacks” and eke out an existence in the bleakest of circumstances. Zou’s narrative follows the timeline of his own experiences, starting with his behavior as a poor, semi-feral violin-playing prepubescent in a densely-populated area, “petite bourgeois” and scrounging for popsicle money, to his stunted existence as a young adult, resigned and cynical, banished to smoking and gambling and pulling practical jokes in the monotony of the hinterlands. But there are almost no recurring characters in the story, besides Zou, and even Zou’s own story is disjoint – most stories are about what happens around him as he’s given new circumstances. Instead, hundreds of characters are given brief mention in vignettes ranging from just a couple of paragraphs to several pages in length. Early in the book, the author writes, “Apart from my mortal body, I carry around a compilation of shadows, leaving one behind everywhere I go.” This book seems to be exactly that – a compilation of shadows. It seems the right approach for a man who had so little development or stability and few confidantes in his formative years.
In combination, these shadows combine to paint a vivid portrayal of the monumental tragedy that was this era in Chinese history, breaking or killing hundreds of thousands of people. We get glimpses of what was lost along the way. Some stories are tragicomedy, others are just tragic.
When I selected a prolapsed lumbar disc as my fake illness, I took care to memorize all the literature. I knew back to front what tests would be carried out and the symptoms I should exhibit.
Right after the performance, the political commissar held a meeting that lasted through the night. He said Old Yoo had let out an “anti-revolutionary belch.” After this, Old Yoo gave up the round horn.
He was whipping the old lady. Small children circled them, watching, shouting, “Defeat the landlord curs!”
Sharpie said he’d died at four in the morning, or maybe three. He went easily, like a piece of ice melting while you weren’t paying attention.
Zou ties together these vignettes with sporadic and poetic glimpses into his own psyche. “I’d unwrap a candy, lick it once, wrap it up again, then unwrap it for another lick later. A single candy thus led to lingering pleasure. It was savored.” These emotions are interwoven beautifully and seamlessly into the storytelling.
You brought your violin along to the Great Northern Waste. These vast plains required a sturdy pair of hands, you couldn’t possibly speak to poverty-stricken farmers about hands or Paganini. You tilled the land in the summer, harvested the wheat in the autumn, spread frozen manure in the winter. When your fingers pressed the strings, the sounds they produced weren’t as solid as before. They no longer obeyed you.
In combination, these shadows combine to paint a vivid portrayal of the monumental tragedy that was this era in Chinese history, breaking or killing hundreds of thousands of people. We get glimpses of what was lost along the way. Some stories are tragicomedy, others are just tragic.
When I selected a prolapsed lumbar disc as my fake illness, I took care to memorize all the literature. I knew back to front what tests would be carried out and the symptoms I should exhibit.
Right after the performance, the political commissar held a meeting that lasted through the night. He said Old Yoo had let out an “anti-revolutionary belch.” After this, Old Yoo gave up the round horn.
He was whipping the old lady. Small children circled them, watching, shouting, “Defeat the landlord curs!”
Sharpie said he’d died at four in the morning, or maybe three. He went easily, like a piece of ice melting while you weren’t paying attention.
Zou ties together these vignettes with sporadic and poetic glimpses into his own psyche. “I’d unwrap a candy, lick it once, wrap it up again, then unwrap it for another lick later. A single candy thus led to lingering pleasure. It was savored.” These emotions are interwoven beautifully and seamlessly into the storytelling.
You brought your violin along to the Great Northern Waste. These vast plains required a sturdy pair of hands, you couldn’t possibly speak to poverty-stricken farmers about hands or Paganini. You tilled the land in the summer, harvested the wheat in the autumn, spread frozen manure in the winter. When your fingers pressed the strings, the sounds they produced weren’t as solid as before. They no longer obeyed you.
April 19, 2023
Китай, 1966 — 1977 годы, период «Культурной революции». Та принимает рассказчика школьником и отпускает на свободу 25-летним мужчиной. Этапы большого пути: «образованная молодежь» и ее перевоспитание бедностью; многолетняя ссылка в глухую провинцию; тупой, бесцельный труд на просторах Великой северной пустоши.
По внешним признакам «Ninth Building» можно отнести к так называемой «литературе шрамов» — возникшему в конце 1970-х в Китае художественному течению, осмыслявшему события Культурной революции». При этом, Цоу Цзиньжи показательно избегает декларативной критики режима Великого кормчего. Возраст рассказчика и автора совпадает, сам Цоу тоже испытал на себе революционную перековку; не боясь сильно ошибиться, можно считать, что перед нами книга его воспоминаний («Ninth Building» это не цельный роман, а сборник виньеток и набросков) — воспоминаний о юности, которая была вынужденно растрачена впустую и потому ценна любыми мелочами. Сам же текст написан, как будто, под легкой анестезией — возможно, временная дистанция если не притупила остроту переживаний, то примирила с потерями. Впрочем, есть еще одна тема, пронизывающая всю книгу, и это тема смерти. Оглядываясь назад, рассказчик лишний раз отдает себе отчет в том, что странным образом остался жив, и ему остается только принять это со смирением.
Прочитано по причине: International Booker Prize longlist (2023)
По внешним признакам «Ninth Building» можно отнести к так называемой «литературе шрамов» — возникшему в конце 1970-х в Китае художественному течению, осмыслявшему события Культурной революции». При этом, Цоу Цзиньжи показательно избегает декларативной критики режима Великого кормчего. Возраст рассказчика и автора совпадает, сам Цоу тоже испытал на себе революционную перековку; не боясь сильно ошибиться, можно считать, что перед нами книга его воспоминаний («Ninth Building» это не цельный роман, а сборник виньеток и набросков) — воспоминаний о юности, которая была вынужденно растрачена впустую и потому ценна любыми мелочами. Сам же текст написан, как будто, под легкой анестезией — возможно, временная дистанция если не притупила остроту переживаний, то примирила с потерями. Впрочем, есть еще одна тема, пронизывающая всю книгу, и это тема смерти. Оглядываясь назад, рассказчик лишний раз отдает себе отчет в том, что странным образом остался жив, и ему остается только принять это со смирением.
Just before I left, we caught a wild chicken in the snow. It had a broken wing and we kept it in a bamboo basket. Remember that? Feathers like satin, cool to the touch. We hugged it and tried to feed it steamed buns, but it refused, like a hero going on hunger strike. After I'd left, the rest of you ate the chicken. Such a beautiful bird, devoured by you. When I came back for my luggage, I saw a chunk of ice with brilliantly-colored chicken feathers frozen in it, suspended amidst filth, a vision of fallen splendor. I like images like this, whether of people or objects, that convey the reality of cruelty. Seeing a good thing ruined is forceful, carving it into your existence like a knife blade.
Прочитано по причине: International Booker Prize longlist (2023)
July 28, 2024
Vignettes of growing up during the Cultural Revolution, first as a child in Beijing, then as a youth exiled to the countryside.
I really enjoyed this one - the vignette style made it easy to dip in and out of (in a good way). Told in two parts (well, three, including the poetry at the end, which I’m not sure rendered all that well in translation), it quietly grew on me, and I would have loved to see it on the International Booker shortlist (alas).
Our narrator is a child in the first part, and the vignettes reflect the way children often see and recount things without really fully understanding them, often with a matter-of-fact ghoulish curiosity about what (but not why) is happening. A minimum basic knowledge of the Cultural Revolution is very helpful (even if it’s just reading the Wikipedia page), particularly around the encouragement of denunciations and the forcible mass movement of young people to the countryside. The second part is more considered - the narrator is now a teen/young adult and is clearly more cognisant (and critical) of what is happening around and to him.
The two parts work together well and create a strong overall novel, and I loved seeing the maturation in the narrator’s thought. The Cultural Revolution is usually presented in terms of horrifying statistics about the vast numbers of people who were affected, but Zou distills it into an individual experience, and it’s impossible not to consider the psychological havoc that must have been wreaked on those who lived through that time, particularly children and teenagers.
The writing is very matter-of-fact and blunt throughout, perfectly suiting the brutality of the time - life was cheap and expendable in the eyes of the Party - but the gallows humour around the sheer absurdity of some situations or Party directives provided unexpected (and greatly appreciated) moments of levity.
A powerful story of the wasted lives, desperation and daily tedium of the Cultural Revolution - told in vignettes, it quietly grew on me and I highly recommend it.
Read
April 7, 2023Ninth Building by Zou Jingzhi (and translated into English by Jeremy Tiang) is a collection of stories, little snippets, about life during the Cultural Revolution in China. Hard stories, sometimes horrific stories, all told with the same calm demeanour. It's this calmness that creates a distant comedy of things. What you are reading is mostly grim but ironically, seeing has a large chunk of the book takes place in the northern wastes, it blossoms into charming and often funny tales.
The book begins with life at the Ninth Building. The revolution is in the air and things are changing. Tension and trauma is everywhere and yet it is normalised. This is just what happens now. The perspective shifts between characters as odd little side stories happen. Things then take on a singular focus as our narrator (seemingly Zou Jingzhi's own experiences) is sent off, as an educated youth, to the Northern Wastes to do manual labour in an environment of nothing but hardship brought on by a staggering inexperience. We experience the standout moments in this part of the narrator's life. Tales of the people he knew, the life that he led and the efforts he and others would go to just to escape in some fashion for the limbo he'd found himself in. The last section is a small collection of poems.
I rather enjoyed this book even if I feel like I should be more horrified than I was by it. A whole country sleep walking into some idealised nonsense dream should maybe illicit a stronger emotion than a shrug. But the way the book expresses itself is infectious. You come down with the same thing they all did. You accept it and soldier on. I suppose, as a reader, that's only natural. You could just stop reading but I'm not sure how that would fight against the revolution so many years after.
I wasn't sure what I was getting from this. It was bought on a whim. Turns out some whims are good whims.
The book begins with life at the Ninth Building. The revolution is in the air and things are changing. Tension and trauma is everywhere and yet it is normalised. This is just what happens now. The perspective shifts between characters as odd little side stories happen. Things then take on a singular focus as our narrator (seemingly Zou Jingzhi's own experiences) is sent off, as an educated youth, to the Northern Wastes to do manual labour in an environment of nothing but hardship brought on by a staggering inexperience. We experience the standout moments in this part of the narrator's life. Tales of the people he knew, the life that he led and the efforts he and others would go to just to escape in some fashion for the limbo he'd found himself in. The last section is a small collection of poems.
I rather enjoyed this book even if I feel like I should be more horrified than I was by it. A whole country sleep walking into some idealised nonsense dream should maybe illicit a stronger emotion than a shrug. But the way the book expresses itself is infectious. You come down with the same thing they all did. You accept it and soldier on. I suppose, as a reader, that's only natural. You could just stop reading but I'm not sure how that would fight against the revolution so many years after.
I wasn't sure what I was getting from this. It was bought on a whim. Turns out some whims are good whims.
April 25, 2023
Longlisted for the International Booker Prize 2023
In Ninth Building, Zou Jingzhi weaves an intricate tapestry of vignettes inspired by his own experiences during the Cultural Revolution, painting a vivid portrait of life during that tumultuous period. Divided into two parts, the book first delves into the narrator's childhood in a Beijing apartment complex, before transitioning to his teenage years as an "educated youth" exiled to the countryside.
While Ninth Building adopts an unconventional narrative structure that presents a mosaic of memories rather than a linear storyline, some readers may find this format challenging to engage with. However, those who approach the book as a companionable storyteller sharing fragmented tales from the Cultural Revolution may gradually come to appreciate the unique perspective it offers.
Zou's candid and poignant writing lends authenticity to each vignette, evoking a sense of nostalgia and empathy. The first part of the book offers a unique child's perspective of the complex and often confusing events during the Cultural Revolution. This innocent viewpoint provides a refreshing contrast to the more mature and introspective voice that emerges in the second part of the book, as the narrator grapples with the harsh realities of life in the countryside.
Although some vignettes may not captivate readers as much as others, standout stories such as "Pictures," "I Love Xi Xiaomei," and "Misfire" serve as compelling examples of Zou's storytelling prowess. These tales, steeped in the gallows humor that often accompanies desperate situations, demonstrate Zou's ability to poetically capture the tedium, waste, and resilience of youth amidst the chaos of the Cultural Revolution.
Overall, Ninth Building is an engaging and thought-provoking read that provides a rare glimpse into a lesser-discussed aspect of the Cultural Revolution. While the book's disconnected structure may not suit everyone's taste, those who approach it with an open mind will find it to be a rewarding journey through a critical period in Chinese history.
In Ninth Building, Zou Jingzhi weaves an intricate tapestry of vignettes inspired by his own experiences during the Cultural Revolution, painting a vivid portrait of life during that tumultuous period. Divided into two parts, the book first delves into the narrator's childhood in a Beijing apartment complex, before transitioning to his teenage years as an "educated youth" exiled to the countryside.
While Ninth Building adopts an unconventional narrative structure that presents a mosaic of memories rather than a linear storyline, some readers may find this format challenging to engage with. However, those who approach the book as a companionable storyteller sharing fragmented tales from the Cultural Revolution may gradually come to appreciate the unique perspective it offers.
"A scarred wall has life to it, and an unmarked one, a bright white wall, has none."
Zou's candid and poignant writing lends authenticity to each vignette, evoking a sense of nostalgia and empathy. The first part of the book offers a unique child's perspective of the complex and often confusing events during the Cultural Revolution. This innocent viewpoint provides a refreshing contrast to the more mature and introspective voice that emerges in the second part of the book, as the narrator grapples with the harsh realities of life in the countryside.
Although some vignettes may not captivate readers as much as others, standout stories such as "Pictures," "I Love Xi Xiaomei," and "Misfire" serve as compelling examples of Zou's storytelling prowess. These tales, steeped in the gallows humor that often accompanies desperate situations, demonstrate Zou's ability to poetically capture the tedium, waste, and resilience of youth amidst the chaos of the Cultural Revolution.
Overall, Ninth Building is an engaging and thought-provoking read that provides a rare glimpse into a lesser-discussed aspect of the Cultural Revolution. While the book's disconnected structure may not suit everyone's taste, those who approach it with an open mind will find it to be a rewarding journey through a critical period in Chinese history.
August 8, 2023
In the adult world it is hard to remind yourself of the beauty of childhood, of the seeming nonsense which to those young and still innocent makes up life, the randomness that can spawn a serious tradition or game which makes sense to you and your friends.
This book does so well at encapsulating that. From the playful mocking of a knife sharpener, to the mystical enhancement of an underwhelming event to make it a legend. It's warm, a childhood from an adults perspective, well, warm until it's not. Sprinkled in are the inklings of revolution, a cultural one, the severity of which is of course lost upon a mere child who only interprets what he sees literally. The first half, though in itself quite joyous, shows very blaring hints of what is to come, and soon, like in the narrators life, any ideas of childhood are whisked away. They are replaced by impossible hardship, of anecdotes both inspiring and terrifying, flexing the strength of human will and the beautiful cruelty yet comradery that is needed to survive.
I think it is important to know about the Cultural Revolution before reading this book. Many probably do, but still. This is the story of one person's perspective, and, with context it is far more incredible. Knowing of the turmoil, the way which the country was shaken and its children dispersed, is useful to understand the severity of the upheaval. Wild swans, The three daughters of China, would recommend. Is what I'm saying.
This book does so well at encapsulating that. From the playful mocking of a knife sharpener, to the mystical enhancement of an underwhelming event to make it a legend. It's warm, a childhood from an adults perspective, well, warm until it's not. Sprinkled in are the inklings of revolution, a cultural one, the severity of which is of course lost upon a mere child who only interprets what he sees literally. The first half, though in itself quite joyous, shows very blaring hints of what is to come, and soon, like in the narrators life, any ideas of childhood are whisked away. They are replaced by impossible hardship, of anecdotes both inspiring and terrifying, flexing the strength of human will and the beautiful cruelty yet comradery that is needed to survive.
I think it is important to know about the Cultural Revolution before reading this book. Many probably do, but still. This is the story of one person's perspective, and, with context it is far more incredible. Knowing of the turmoil, the way which the country was shaken and its children dispersed, is useful to understand the severity of the upheaval. Wild swans, The three daughters of China, would recommend. Is what I'm saying.
January 20, 2024
Zou Jingzhi grew up among the great upheaval of the Cultural Revolution in Beijing and in Ninth Building, he returns first to his childhood in a series of vignettes capturing moments in this seismic transformation of Chinese society. As a child, he does not fully grasp the importance of these events nor their brutality, lamenting for the rooster he raised whose blood was extracted for injections or going with friends to explore a recently-uncovered ancient tomb. There is a sense of naïveté and innocence surrounding these events, the young Zou is just an observer.
In the second part, an older Zou is sent to the northeast of China as an “educated youth” to toil in the countryside and draw closer to the peasants who are the foundation of the Revolution. Here he is better able to understand the pointlessness of the suffering around him, facing the deaths of his friends and fellow youths with a reserved and almost apathetic nature. This series of stories has some of the more moving scenes as Zou recounts the death of a young woman from dysentery because of the lack of adequate plumbing or the death of an agricultural worker in an accident.
As a glimpse back to an almost-forgotten age in Chinese history, these stories capture the mood and the times in a series of photoshoots, memories that the author and Chinese society are still struggling to come to terms with.
In the second part, an older Zou is sent to the northeast of China as an “educated youth” to toil in the countryside and draw closer to the peasants who are the foundation of the Revolution. Here he is better able to understand the pointlessness of the suffering around him, facing the deaths of his friends and fellow youths with a reserved and almost apathetic nature. This series of stories has some of the more moving scenes as Zou recounts the death of a young woman from dysentery because of the lack of adequate plumbing or the death of an agricultural worker in an accident.
As a glimpse back to an almost-forgotten age in Chinese history, these stories capture the mood and the times in a series of photoshoots, memories that the author and Chinese society are still struggling to come to terms with.
April 30, 2023
When I was in my teens I read Jung Chang’s book, Wild Swans. which documented three generations of women growing up in China, from the days to the last emperor, Puyi to Mao Zedong’s reign and beyond. Ninth Building is a grittier version of Wild Swans ‘Communist China’ section.
Each chapter starts off innocently focusing on a ordinary happening but then things develop and take an unexpected turn into the macabre, which serve as a commentary on Mao Zedong’s China, The first half is about the titular Ninth Building, which is an apartment block, while the second half is about the authors travels with an orchestra and the various eccentric characters and mishaps which occur. Sometimes the stories have a shock factor, other times they are darkly funny. By the end the reader gets a picture of what China was like during Mao Zedong’s cultural uprising: a place where there is great suffering, a disregard for human life and a general paranoia created by the state.
Although enjoy is not a word I would use to describe Ninth Building, I can say that this was an interesting book which helped me get a sharper perspective of a country I know practically nothing about.
Each chapter starts off innocently focusing on a ordinary happening but then things develop and take an unexpected turn into the macabre, which serve as a commentary on Mao Zedong’s China, The first half is about the titular Ninth Building, which is an apartment block, while the second half is about the authors travels with an orchestra and the various eccentric characters and mishaps which occur. Sometimes the stories have a shock factor, other times they are darkly funny. By the end the reader gets a picture of what China was like during Mao Zedong’s cultural uprising: a place where there is great suffering, a disregard for human life and a general paranoia created by the state.
Although enjoy is not a word I would use to describe Ninth Building, I can say that this was an interesting book which helped me get a sharper perspective of a country I know practically nothing about.
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