FICTION
HOME REMEDIES
By Xuan Juliana Wang
Hogarth/Paperback/225 pages/ $27.95/Books Kinokuniya/4 stars
Chinese-American author Xuan Juliana Wang debuts with a collection of 12 short stories about second-generation Chinese immigrants in the West and contemporary Chinese youth in rapidly urbanising provinces in China, and offers a refreshing take on a side of Chinese society not often discussed in contemporary English writing.
With empathy, warmth and nuance, Wang examines the existential anxieties confronting China's millennial generation - one that has grown up in an increasingly globalised world with McDonald's, American TV shows like Friends (1994-2004) and the pomp and pageantry of the 2008 Beijing Olympics cast into its collective memory.
Across the nation, acts of everyday rebellion are being committed, with this generation's values straining against those held by their parents, who had grown up in the years of the Cultural Revolution. This tension is deftly drawn out by Wang in the book and accounts for much of its intrigue and appeal.
In the standout Days Of Being Mild, for instance, Wang captures the delicious nonchalance of the bei piao - a term coined to describe the twenty-somethings who drift aimlessly to the northern capital.
Her caustic sense of humour shines through in her characters, who are unapologetic about their lack of direction.
In the story, a protagonist declares: "We've read Kerouac in translation. We are marginally employed and falling behind on our filial-piety payments, but we are cool. Who is going to tell us otherwise?"
Wang takes particular interest in documenting the social conditions of the upper-middle and affluent class of China, which has mushroomed in numbers in the wake of China's double-digit growth that started in the 2000s.
Such sudden wealth, she seems to suggest, mires some individuals in moral dilemmas. In For Our Children And For Ourselves, for example, a wealthy tuhao (nouveau riche) owner of a factory dangles a tempting carrot to a reliable country boy under her employ: he will inherit her wealth and settle down in the United States, under one condition - that he marries her daughter, who has Down Syndrome.
In Fuerdai To The Max, she juxtaposes the careless cruelty of the "fuerdai" - second-generation rich - with the alienation and loyalty that a group of fuerdai friends experience in the US, where they fit in materially yet remain on the fringes of society.
There is also the tragicomedic The Strawberry Years, where a Chinese expatriate living in New York helps out a livestreaming star, a fellow countryman. She becomes so enamoured with his bohemian apartment and lifestyle that she ends up staying put, slowly squeezing him out of the picture and beaming her new life out to her digital fans in China.
If one has to quibble, some stories are less tightly plotted than the others, which could make the collection feel somewhat meandering. But Wang's imagination and originality easily make up for that.
If you like this, read: Under Red Skies: Three Generations Of Life, Loss, And Hope In China by Karoline Kan (2019 edition, Hachette Books, $41.34, Books Kinokuniya), a memoir that offers a personal look at how China is trying to reconcile its troubled past with its new role as a world superpower.
