…and why I hate Chinese men
Quote1: Though her top was unbuttoned low, it wasn’t doing her any favors, as somehow she’d failed to grow any breasts during puberty; maybe she just forgot and it was too late by the time she remembered. Women like this always made me sad; even now I could almost feel the tears itching the back of my throat.
Yep, and men like this makes me want to hurl chickens, except it wouldn’t be very nice.. to the chickens. Ah-my-god, and the greater tragedy is, these are the best parts to Zhu Wen’s short story “I Love Dollars.” Is it the shock value? Sheer hypocrisy (yes this passage does make me sputter: and U GOT DICK?!?!?!)? Plain patheticness? Absolute flippancy? This is the second time when a piece of writing has frustrated me to the point where I disliked its author. The first time this happened, I think I was sneered at by said author for being judgmental. Maybe this makes me a closet feminist. Maybe I’m mixing the iPOV as more autobiographical than it should be. Maybe I simply don’t enjoy this type of rebel world-weary boy writing - American, Chinese, or Arabian. It’s a voice that appeals to you with its hard edges, forces your attention with said “edge,” commands your sympathy with “he’s so hard he must be soft inside,” until the very end when you’ve realized you’ve just been reading the clever ramblings of a loser. No, not a troubadour philosopher, decipherer of social ills or political poet, just… sad. That’s my overall impression of “I Love Dollars,” a sad case of helplessness, maybe a case (um, IMPOTENCE-physically spiritually meta-fucking-physically) shared by most Chinese men, and maybe therefore appropriate.
See now we’re going a little nuts. But I’m not going to be man-hater right now. It might come out wrong and I generalize too much. So I’m going to leave you with another fannnntastic quote.
Quote2: That woman back there, he said to me, totally serious, as we left, the one with no breasts, she really wasn’t a prostitute. How can you be so sure? I said. She was a bit like Xiao Qing, he said. She was still a child. So what if she’s like Xiao Qing? Don’t you think your daughter could turn herself into a pretty passable prostitute? Oldest profession in the world—older than any of our traditions. If my beautiful little sister stepped outside the school gates and onto the streets, as long as she enjoyed her work, I wouldn’t mind at all. In fact, it has a good ring to it: my sister the prostitute. I could introduce all my friends, get their spare cash together, give them a good time, and make her rich at the same time. And if she stayed a good, loyal sister, she’d get her colleagues to go and see her brother in their spare time, at a whopping discount, or if they’re really decent, for free. Fantastic.
I guess my problem with this story is that its literary value really doesn’t make up for its deficiency in social value. The author doesn’t earn his bastard rights. He wanders and meanders, and in the end kicks stones when you want to throw bricks at him. Understand that I’m glad that this is written as to expose the LACK in Chinese men and perhaps the Chinese spirit (also understand the Chinese spirit is an ancient, unwieldy, complex, and vast thing-I’m just riggin’ on a fraction). Understand that I hate that this is written because it’s true. Maybe it’s a problem of story-arc, because you desperately want a resolution, a higher state of mind, but in the end, everything stays stagnant, and life goes on, such is life.
Of course, the anti-feminist in me recommends you read it once, and relish in the woman-hating, the greed, the flaws of menkind that reflects mankind, because sometimes it’s just better to say it out loud than feigning civility.
×A note on the translation: somehow the Chinese version reads more like a screenplay and the English version more like literature. What gives?