Ma Bole

by Xiao Hong

Ma Bole is one of the representative novels written by Xiao Hong. Ma Bole, the hero of the novel, is a bystander and extra man of the times. He is weak, selfish, suspicious and mediocre. He is a grumbler and thinker rather than a doer. He asks for money from his parents and wife but never thinks about making some. Once he had a quarrel with his father because he was asking for money from him. He decided to write something to make his own bread but never pick up a pen. One day, he climbed up a train to run for his life, leaving his wife, child and luggage behind. He even could find something happy when being reduced as a refugee. Xiao Hong shapes the man without any national consciousness in way of sarcasm.

Genres: China, Fiction, Novels, 20th Century, Asia

264 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1940

About the author

Xiao Hong or Hsiao Hung (2 June 1911 – 22 January 1942) was a Chinese writer. Her given name was Zhang Naiying (張廼瑩); she also used the pen name Qiao Yin.

(from Wikipedia)

Name in Chinese: 萧红

Librarian Note: There is more than one author in the Goodreads database with this name. See Xiao Hong for the others.

Reviews

[MJ Nicholls · Rating 3 out of 5]

A curious “collaboration” between author and translator, Ma Bo’le’s Second Life is the final novel from Xiao Hong—a prolific female writer who croaked at 30—an incomplete manuscript that the translator Howard Goldblatt has completed from chapter nine onwards. Open Letter, with their usual flair for mouthwatering comparisons, has likened this novel to Bouvard and Pécuchet, and others have evoked similar novels feat. wartime bumblers (see Hasek or Heller), although the novel is more in the line of classic Chinese storytelling (laconic descriptions, realist, light humour). The novel follows the titular bumbler, an aimless father and husband with rich parents who stumbles around Chongqing and Shanghai and elsewhere, involving himself in various schemes, such as starting a publishing house, until the Japanese encroach and Bo’le’s bumblingness has more serious consequences. Goldblatt succeeds in blurring the line between Hong’s original and his own compositions, but the novel meanders somewhat from set-piece to set-piece, and ennui sets in towards the final stretch. An episodic, involving tale, and appreciative honks required for Hong’s witty encapsulation of the period.

[Heronimo Gieronymus · Rating 5 out of 5]

Open Letter is a remarkable little publishing company affiliated with the University of Rochester and dedicated to providing North American readers with English translations of significant works of inexcusably neglected international literature. I have previously read Open Letter editions of two very fine works by Chinese avant-garde master Can Xue as well as one each by Guðbergur Bergsson and Guillermo Saccomanno. I expect to dig further into the catalogue in due time, especially having now encountered their extremely unique edition of Xiao Hong’s MA BO’LE’S SECOND LIFE, an edition whose translator, Howard Goldblatt, has done far more than merely produce an English language version of the extant work. Xiao Hong, you see, had originally intended to produce a Ma Bo’le trilogy. The first part was published as a book during her lifetime, the second part serially in a publication, and the third part was never written at all, Xiao having died in Hong Kong at the age of thirty during the ongoing Japanese invasion-occupation of China. Howard Goldblatt has not only translated the first two parts of the trilogy, but has taken it upon himself to write the third and to provide fictional bookends, set in 1984, in which a representative from a Historical Society provides the manuscript of the novel MA BO’LE’S SECOND LIFE to Ma Bo’le’s eldest son David, a character in the novel itself—set as that novel is in the late 1930s and early 1940s—and by 1984 a popular English-language storyteller for Hong Kong Radio. Any reader of this edition who has done cursory research will be aware that Xiao Hong died in 1942 and so will be aware that somebody else had to have written these bookends. I assumed that they were written by Mr. Goldblatt himself and expected the Afterword he provided for the edition to further elucidate matters. It was not until I did complete the novel and proceeded to the Afterword, appropriately entitled “Author/Translator/Author,” that I came to discover that the bookends hardly constitute the full extent of the liberties taken by Howard Goldblatt, though in retrospect I recall that it did strike me as curious that late in the novel events were occurring that would have to be close to contemporaneous with Xiao Hong’s death (if not its aftermath). I had not done any real investigation into the Open Letter edition of MA BO’LE’S SECOND LIFE, and the write-up on the back does not in any way hint at the fact that this edition is the product of the efforts of two authors separated by many decades. That the final third of the book was written by the translator did not become known to me until I read the Afterword. Some readers are certain to have misgivings about Goldblatt’s having written a third or more of this book and as regards what almost appears to be a conscious withholding of this fact until the last possible minute by the publisher (although I certainly could have made myself aware of this curious business if I had done more investigating before reading the book itself). Upon reflection, I do not personally have much in the way of quibble. Aside from being a committed fan and Xiao Hong scholar with more than four decades of work behind him speaking to his dedication, Goldblatt has translated most of her major works and also served as her biographer. He has dedicated something close to the better part of a lifetime to Xiao’s life and work. There can be no denying that he comes to this project as a devout supplicant engaged in a labour of love. One might argue that the fact that Xiao’s final novel (the two parts she herself wrote) itself is playful, satirical, and in fact practically pernicious, almost invites the kind of mischief her admiring translator has allowed himself to carry out as a final and ultimate homage. That we are not properly illuminated as to the split authorship of the Open Letter edition of MA BO’LE’S SECOND LIFE until we get to the Afterword does not alter the fact that seeds have been planted for the observant reader, especially in the opening bit of business wherein the representative from the Historical Society tells Ma Bo’le’s son David that the manuscript about his family that she would like him to read appears to have been written by two authors. There can be no doubt that the overall tactic deployed here would have to be deemed objectionable if the final third of the the book were of poor quality or excessively out of keeping with what had preceded it. Happily, I do not believe this to be the case. I think it also to his credit that Howard Goldblatt does not attempt to write as Xiao Hong, rather thinking of himself unreservedly as an “Other” who has entered the picture ultimately to stand on his own two legs. Open Letter prides itself as a publisher dealing in literature in translation, and in this case they have stepped up admirably and provided a platform for a translator who has undertaken a kind of remarkable and highly unconventional literary synthesis serving as the culmination of a life’s work spent dedicated to a master he has proven he reveres beyond measure. I will discuss Howard Goldblatt’s contribution to the narrative proper a little later, toward the end of this review, but would like at this point to deal a bit with the novel itself, beginning with those parts of it written by Xiao. The back of the Open Letters calls the book “a philosophical comedy” and compares it to Flaubert’s BOUVARD AND PÉCUCHET. I have not read that particular Flaubert—his final and never-completed novel as was MA BO’LE Xiao’s—though based on what I know of it I can see how there might be a certain consonance. The novel that MA BO’LE’S SECOND LIFE most immediately evokes for me is CANDIDE, and with it the legacy of Voltaire more generally (a legacy that certainly informs BOUVARD AND PÉCUCHET). If Xiao Hong has indeed written a “philosophical comedy,” I think it works more directly as a pretty scathing social comedy, CANDIDE itself certainly having been both those things. Ma Bo’le himself is something of a Candide figure, forced into picaresque adventures by historical circumstances, namely the Japanese invasion of China. Ma Bo’le is indolent and cowardly, but he can also be crafty. His motto: “In every situation a man must look for the nearest exit.” He has grown up in the Northern city of Qingdao son to a somewhat overbearing father who has converted to Christianity and loves all things Western. It is because of the head of the family’s ardent Christian faith but middling comprehension of both the bible and the English language that Ma Bo’le has two sons named David and Joseph, plus a daughter named, uh, Jacob. Ma Bo’le himself does not have much interest in Christianity or the West. He certainly despises the Japanese. He often thinks of himself as a patriot and pretends to possess high-minded ideals, but he can be dyspeptic and surly, and very frequently mutters or exclaims “Bloody Chinese!” when somebody or something irks him. MA BO’LE’S SECOND LIFE was written at a time when patriotic and vehemently anti-Japanese novels were de rigueur, and its repeated suggestion that patriotic and nationalistic sentiments tend to be fatuous and hypocritical was at the time deemed something close to seditious. The trick that Xiao ultimately pulls off is that she makes Ma Bo’le an extremely likeable bundle of character defects. He is above all selfish, distracted, and prone to self-pity (born of a comic tendency to catastrophize). At first he seems like a total deadbeat as a family man. He is financially dependent on both his father and wife, but has a tendency to run off to Shanghai solo, having done so twice in the past (before the novel begins). At one point he went to Shanghai to start a publishing company, which he did, but failed to publish even a single book. When he is on his own or not: his tendency is to loaf. He has a tendency to nurse major ambitions only to rapidly waffle. Early on: “One thing led to another, and soon he began buying writing paper, having made up his mind to become a writer in the service of a resistance movement, in the event that one actually appeared someday.” This of course comes to naught. Later, when his family has fled as refugees first to Shanghai and then to Nanjing and finally to Wuchang, he fancies that he might make a little career of selling baozi buns. Or, better yet, how about getting into sandal repair? “A few days later, he decided to become a tailor. After that it was a taxi driver, then a paperboy, and finally a performer in a Chinese-opera troupe. But all his plans went a-glimmering, and he soon reverted back to his old habit of sitting at home and brooding.” His tendency to self-pity is itself represented as a form of spiritual indolence. “To his way of thinking, illness wasn’t a catastrophe; the true catastrophe in a man’s life was the intrusion of sorrow, for that was impervious to reason and can lead only to despair.” This is, of course, hardly strictly true, but a convenient way of assessing matters if you are intent on indulging in moribund slothfulness. Xiao has a great deal of fun with her shiftless hero, and it is because she so clearly enjoys him that he is not hard for the reader to love. He can be very amusing indeed. Take as an example his conjecturing that since sweat is just water, wiping himself off with a towel after perspiring heavily ought to be more or less the equivalent of taking a bath. There is a droll passage following a request for money from a friend, promptly rejected, at a time before the arrival of Ma Bol’le’s wife and children in Shanghai, when both men are pretty broke: “As soon as he saw Chen out the door, he rushed over to pick up his trousers and carefully counted the coins in his pocket. He knew there was little buying power in those few bits of metal, but they were, after all, money. They only presented a problem in their scarcity; he could be a rich man if he had enough of them.” Uh, yes, indeed, I suppose he could. The two-thirds written by Xiao Hong in this edition presented to us by Open Letter follow Ma Bo’le to Shanghai, find his wife and children joining him there, then follows the quartet as they flee. There is comedy, travail, and adventure. There is the chaotic bustle of Nanjing station. There is the ominous Song River Bridge, about which Ma Bo’le has had sinister premonitions and where daughter Jacob does indeed have a close call. The feckless Ma Bo’le very often gets his way just by virtue of stubborn intransigence, eventually convincing his wife that the family ought to head to Hankou even though she has been arguing in favour of another course of action. They only end up staying in Hankou for a couple of days before moving across the river to Wuchang, its twin city. In his Afterword, Howard Goldblatt states that Xiao Hong only wrote the parts of the novel as it currently exists leading up to the family’s decision to move on from Wuchang. In retrospect, it is clear that the chapter that quite directly begins by stating that it takes place in September of 1938 is where our second author takes command of the craft. Here we find the family heading west on the Yangtze River, “only days after Hankou fell to the Japanese.” They are heading for Chongqing, the new centre of government. The novel does begin to shift in tone at this point. It becomes noticeably less satirical in nature. The family discovers an ad hoc Christian church and connects there with people from Qingdao. News from home is bad and only gets worse. Ma Bo’le befriends some Japanese dissidents, in spite of his deep-seated anti-Japanese prejudices, and studies Esperanto under the tutorship of a Japanese woman. Joseph, the younger of the two sons, previously outrageously pugnacious and prone to fisticuffs, becomes chastened in the aftermath of a frightening ordeal, only to subsequently cling closely to his father. Ma Bo’le and Joseph eventually move on the Hong Kong ahead of the family, Ma Bo’le having been offered the first legitimate job of his life, helping refugees in the British enclave, on account of his family’s connections to the Christians in Chongqing. A general shift from satire to pathos characterizes the final section of the book, that written by the translator, and this ultimately reaches its apotheosis in Hong Kong. The first two sections of the book, those written by Xiao herself, more or less mirrored her own trajectory early in the war, covering the same basic territory. Goldblatt takes this and runs with it, taking the novel first to Chongqing and then to Hong Kong, following as such in Xiao’s actual footsteps. In the Afterword, Goldblatt even informs us that an unnamed writer who appears on the periphery of the Hong Kong section is intended to be Xiao. If we have already said that Ma Bo’le is a bundle of defects whom we nonetheless love, this becomes the basis for the credible transformation he undergoes in Goldblatt’s hands. This shift from satire to pathos is to a large extent about creating space for redemption. Without elaborating too much, not wishing to spoil things unnecessarily, the true success of Goldblatt’s sleight-of-hand in this respect is attested to be the extremely powerful final paragraph to the narrative proper. Simply put: he sticks the landing marvellously. As far as the redemptive element here is concerned, one literary precedent insists itself on my reading of this two-author version of MA BO’LE’S SECOND LIFE, namely THE PICKWICK PAPERS, the first major work by Charles Dickens and a novel originally published in serialization. Samuel Pickwick, the protagonist of Dickens’ masterpiece, begins as a comic foil, himself a bundle of defects, a swell-headed fool running his mouth beyond the means of his wits, only to become a figure of considerable gravitas in the late going, as though the author of the novel had come to love him after so much time, effort, and proximity. Something analogous happens to Ma Bo’le in the hands of Howard Goldblatt. Xiao Hong’s protagonist was already lovable in his way, to be sure. It seems certain to me that Howard Goldblatt’s wanting to do right by Ma Bo’le, to show him rising to the occasion under considerable duress, is in part analogous with the labour of love that his work here already constitutes to begin with. This story of war becomes a story about how mounting adversity can have a tendency to bring to the surface of the man that which me mind be inclined to commend. It becomes a novel about a fortitude that may have seemed absent but which asserts itself when the chips are down. That being said, the final bit of business, wherein we find David, Ma Bo’le’s eldest son, reflecting upon the manuscript for the novel in the aftermath of having himself read it in late 1984, operates in a more troubling, more sober, and more expansive register. Yes, it shows us, the adversity of war may provide the individual an opportunity to demonstrate what he, she, or what-have-you is ultimately made of. Mostly what war does, however, is damage. This damage reverberates. It possesses its own insidious legacy. Xiao Hong herself never came out the other side of it, taken from the world as she was in 1942, amidst the chaos and collapse.

[v · Rating 3 out of 5]

Xiao Hong was a promising new writer in the progressive literary movement of 1930s China before her tragically early death in Japanese-occupied Hong Kong. She left behind an incomplete novel under serialization, Ma Bo'le, and Howard Goldblatt (a preeminent American translator of Chinese fiction who is responsible for English-language editions of a few of Xiao's other books, now out of print, I believe) writes in his afterword that he's long wanted to bring this book to new readers -- but how? Few details survive of where Xiao planned to take the novel, let alone any drafts of the missing final chapters. Goldblatt decided to complete the novel on his own and he's given it a frame story about a rediscovered manuscript coming into the hands of Ma' descendants in the 1980s. This is a fascinating project and Goldblatt's reflections on this "collaboration" add a lot to the volume.

The story follows Ma Bo'le, the feckless eldest son of the Ma family. His father built a successful business in Qingdao which Bo'le, his wife and three kids, and his brother and mother live off of, but Bo'le is totally uninterested in developing his inheritance or himself; instead, he flits from one inept scheme to the next without ever really trying. Each time he fails and becomes afraid, he only wants to escape. So, when the Marco Polo Bridge incident of 1937 occurs, he's thrilled at the chance to become a wartime refugee. He goes off alone to Shanghai and lives in completely elective squalor for a full month before the Japanese even attack, and after prevailing upon his wife and kids to join him, he prevaricates even more and joins the crowds trying to flee the city just before it falls...

Ma Bo'le has no personal or social direction and he stands for little but confusion: his father is a zealous Christian convert who believes in the superiority of everything Western, but Bo'le, not elevating Westernism or Christianity, nevertheless looks with contempt on what he calls (in English) the "bloody Chinese." He lives comfortably or in poverty according to his own neuroses; he frets over the impending doom of his fellow man until he's actually under threat, and then he's only concerned with saving his own skin. Clearly, this is a satirical premise, so it's worth attempting to be a little more specific about the object of Xiao's satire. Elite Chinese intellectual life in the 1910s massively contributed to the political revolution that ended the last imperial dynasty, but the competing currents of thought inspired by liberalism, socialism, and Confucianism left major rifts in understandings of the destiny of Chinese society with respect to the West and Japan. Politically, the liberals and nationalists had irreparably split with the leftists by 1930; then, a cascade of events in the next several years would bring on a civil war and the nightmare of the Sino-Japanese War. Progressive literary works of the time such as those by Lu Xun jumped into the fray of these questions, but by 1938, someone like Ma Bo'le, I think, represents for Xiao Hong an intellectual class more focused on its own conflicting philosophies than on the dire situation the nation as a whole was being plunged into.

It's no stretch to call Ma Bo'le's Second Life an uneven work. There are the obvious facts of its composition, but I think Xiao also made a pretty huge change in direction after the first five chapters -- for the better, by far. That early material is dry, undetailed sketch-work and I wouldn't blame anyone for abandoning the book by page 50. Once Xiao really gets into the mind and of Ma Bo'le, though, she creates a timelessly maddening and endearing character. The oddball adventures in the Shanghai hotel, the journey up the Yangtze in the rusty steamboat, the aborted affair with Miss Wang -- all classic stuff. So while this is doubtless not the best work Xiao wrote, it's a charming introduction.

All in all, it had been an eventful day, though little had been accomplished. Before going to bed he said:
"Manual labor is the source of man's greatest fortune."
With that non sequitur he thumped himself on the chest, stretched lazily, and fell asleep. His wife did not have the slightest idea what he was talking about.

[Lori · Rating 4 out of 5]

Ma Bole's Second Life was left unfinished at the time of Hong's death in 1942. Translator Howard Goldblatt completed it (from chapter nine onward) based partially on events and figures from Hong's own life such as her associations with exiled Japanese dissidents. He gradually shifts the tone from the darkly comedic bumblings of a loser and his annoying family on the run from a military invasion to a tragic tale of trauma and dissolution. Goldblatt also introduces the framing device of an anonymous manuscript, evidently composed by two different authors, discovered in the 1980s much to the surprise of Bole's son David, who has no idea who could have written about his family. This helps tie the two halves together and account for the at times piecemeal nature of the story. Well worth a read.

[Dale Edmonds · Rating 5 out of 5]

I was surprised how much I enjoyed this. The translation is indeed more like a collaboration given it's an unfinished work, and it works. I don't want to give away any of the events because the way his life meanders and twists, but there were moments I wanted to beat Ma Bol'le over the head and other times I wanted to sit next to him and just sigh in sympathy. The comparison to Catch-22's Yoassarian is apt, there's that same absurd bleak dry humour and the shared background of war, but it's not a war novel. It's one man and his life struggling towards and away from his family.

You'll either very much like it as I did - not a passionate novel, but full of hash funny moments and tiny sharp sketches. The room without windows, the baoizi buns, the broken nose bandage, rickshaw man on the ground at the gate, the little girl beaten on the train - all these details piling up so quickly and spinning off in new directions. Or you'll find it a confusing dull mess of a novel that starts and ends abruptly. It's not a book that softens anything for the reader and there's no structure or meaning - just life. Bitter, strange and with occasional moments of joy.

[Sean · Rating 3 out of 5]

The editor/translator "finished" the book. That is the editor wrote the last third; twenty or so years after. When the outcome of the war was determined.

And you can tell an abrupt turn around of the protagonist Ma Bo'le from narcissistic wastrel to caring and empathetic; and the transformation of his rogue pugilistic son into a docile creature.

What I liked was Xiao Hong's portrayal of Chinese life during the Japanese invasion. The editor could not know what it was like, but felt compelled to finish it.

[SK · Rating 4 out of 5]

Satire done so well. New author unlocked for me, she died so young and had such an interesting adventure filled life, leaving me wanting to know more about her.
You hate the character but you know it's not just one human; written so expertly that you can't stop reading further, just to see how he's going to react to what's happening.
Features the Japanese invasion of Shanghai, the troubles and the upheaval of masses. Brilliantly written.

[Shawn Mooney (Shawn Breathes Books)]

Dull and poorly written (translated?). Bailed after 30 pages.

[Kat · Rating 4 out of 5]

蕭紅的諷刺幽默辛辣，可是底色卻還是溫厚的。前半部的馬伯樂就是個殷實商戶家庭中不受寵的巨嬰，欺軟怕硬，無所事事只會空想和空講，常抱悲觀逃避的態度。前面部分讀著讓人感覺又好笑又好氣。到後來逃難在危機中，自私如他到底還是顧念妻兒的。蕭紅寫這個人物雖然極盡諷刺，逃難這段卻多了些許溫情的描寫，尤其是寫到馬伯樂小女兒雅格的地方。（她和多個朋友的孩子關係都很好，對孩子的觀察自然也會細緻。想來她對送人的女兒的感情多少也投射到小雅格身上了。）而馬伯樂在危難中與孩子的互動也為他加了一些分。其實他不過是當時社會中的一種普通人典型，而這類人在現代社會也仍然存在。蕭紅對人性複雜性的洞察力和共情力是讓她的人物立體的關鍵。蕭紅自述對自己筆下的人物，常常會寫著寫著就覺得他們「比自己高」。正因如此，雖然蕭紅的諷刺尖銳卻不會刻薄，也沒有俯視的傲慢。
這部書本該是沿著蕭紅自己逃難路線而走向，可惜成為蕭紅未能完成的「半部紅樓」。她臨終自嘆「不甘心」，對讀者來說又何嘗不是大遺憾。