His father, once a respected Neo-Confucian scholar, is brutally treated by the Red Guards during the Cultural Revolution of the 1960’s and 1970’s. His father was seen as an “unreformed bourgeois intellect” and endures multiple “revolutionary mass criticisms” before being assigned work as a janitor. His father is described as a “black monster” and Chen as a “black puppy”.
In the frenzy of the modern witch hunt, his father is denounced by other patients while he is in hospital. Chen helps save him by writing a “confession” for his father. As a result:
It was the first time he gained confidence in himself, in writing of all things, which might enable him to sway those people otherwise above and beyond him.
In real life Wikipedia reports:
Qiu's father came home at times with bruises from being attacked at work. Then his father suffered an acute retinal detachment and was hospitalized. In order to be eligible for eye surgery, his father had to write a confession of guilt for his capitalist bourgeois sins; but it was not deemed sufficiently repentant. So the teenage Qiu re-wrote it, using melodramatic language and framing his father's capitalist sins as no accident. It seemed to work, as soon after his father received his surgery. Ironically, Qiu says, "The Red Guard’s approval of my father’s confession gave me some confidence in my writing".
In the present Webcops, having found a “like emoji” next to a poem online that is considered critical of the Party, are investigating the netizen who inserted the emoji. While poetry interpretation is an important part of Chen’s life he is not considered reliable enough to investigate. (His superiors are accurate in that assessment.) I had not realized “thoughtcrime” was a real criminal offence in China.
The offending netizen is a resident of Red Dust Lane. It is a street near where Chen grew up and the area where he solved some early cases as a cop. Those successes aided his rise within the police.
As a young teenager, Chen was known for reading translations of Sherlock Holmes at a Red Dust bookstore “without buying a single copy”.
Once done Middle School he is saved from being assigned to work in the countryside by bronchitis. As a “waiting-for-recovery” youth he has little to do in Shanghai. In the Bund Park, a chance meeting, inspires him to study English with a lovely young woman and a forcibly retired English teacher. He proves gifted in learning languages.
As a teenager Qiu was also saved from the countryside by bronchitis and started studying English after seeing people studying English in the park. He gained a B.A. in English from the East China Normal University and an M.A. in English Literature at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences.
In the book, daily summer study by Chen of T.S. Eliot at the Beijing Library leads to a relationship with Ling, a lovely young librarian, who is also a university graduate.
Qiu, gets a grant to study T.S. Eliot in St. Louis, Missouri. Later he translates some of Eliot’s poems, such as The Wasteland, into Chinese.
Back in the book, Chan is startled to find out Ling’s father is a “rising” member of the Politburo.
As always with his relationships Chen dithers. He could gain great advantages in life from a relationship with Ling. Yet he reflects those opportunities would come because of her efforts, not his own. He does not spend enough time realizing that connections are important the world over. Within China they are vital.
After graduating Chen is given a “state assigned” job. The English graduate is designated a cop. The assignment is slightly less arbitrary than it appears. With the end of the Cultural Revolution, China is to be reformed and intellectuals are considered important. To the authorities appointing him:
As a college graduate, Chen was supposed to infuse new blood into the police system, …”
The second post will have more on Chen’s life, less about Qiu’s life and more about Chen as a young investigator.
This is really interesting, Bill. Tracing both Qiu's and Chen's pasts are not just tragic stories in their ways, they're also a really powerful look at the way that individuals deal with the realities of the societies they live in at the time. And what a way to become aware of the strength of one's own writing!
ReplyDeleteMargot: Thanks for the comment. My life has been so much simpler than the lives of Qiu and Chen. Qiu is but one year younger than myself. I can hardly imagine as a teenager writing a "confession" for my father to save him. I feel very fortunate to have grown up in Canada.
Delete