Yu Hua’s Boy in the Twilight
Boy in the Twilight: Stories of the Hidden China by Yu Hua
As a little girl, I grew up on fables such as “The Tortoise and the Hare,” “The Ant and the Grasshopper,” “The Dog and His Reflection,” and most notably, since I was a terrific liar, “The Boy Who Cried Wolf.” At that age, though, I didn’t quite get irony or really, the lessons of these tales, so when grownups would ask if I understood the story, I always answered very easily: Yeah. Just don’t go screaming about wolves all the time or the other people in town won’t like you and wouldn’t help you out. Then a day later, I’d make up some truly unbelievable story, the grownups would ask “don’t you remember what happened to the boy who cried wolf?,” and I’d be like, yeah of course I do, but what does that have to do with a crow flying in the house and knocking over the lamp?
In a way, Chinese author Yu Hua’s latest collection of stories, Boy in the Twilight, has a feel similar to a collection of Aesop’s fables. Hua’s stories are full of irony, and although way too violent and full of adulterers for any wise parent to read to impressionable children, these tales give the impression that there is something to be learned at hand.
Take the title story, “Boy in the Twilight,” for instance. It starts off simple: A merchant catches a young boy stealing a single apple from his fruit stand, makes the boy spit it out and to teach him to never steal again, forces the child to shout out to every passerby that he is a thief. But the story doesn’t end with the young boy’s contrition or evidence that he has learned his lesson – instead, it ends with a look into the merchant’s life at home, empty and alone after losing his son to the river and his wife to another man.
Or, take the story “Appendix.” A doctor tells his young sons about a British surgeon that when stranded on his own, performs his own appendectomy in order to survive and brags about how their old man would be able to perform such a feat as well, only to eat his own words later when his own appendix bursts and the sons bring him a mirror and tools to do the job himself rather than getting another doctor at this crucial moment.
There are eleven more of these tales in Boy in the Twilight, including a story about an awkward young businessman using his new standings to woo two women at once (undoubtedly making up for lost time), matching tales of a cheating wife and a cheating husband who are both found out and bested by their faithful spouses, and the story of an ungrateful son sipping away on his parent’s hard-earned wages.
Being a Chinese author (actually the first one ever to win the James Joyce Award in 2002), Hua’s stories often stand apart with a touch of cultural differences from the typical American short story. For many of the stories, it’s difficult to tell if Hua is writing about the China he experienced growing up during the Cultural Revolution of the 1960’s, the China he knows today, or some nation caught in between the two places. Stories drift between small, dirt road laden villages to crowded apartment complexes set next to factories. Many stories reflect the realities of a nation undergoing rapid changes, such as the story of the young businessman in “Sweltering Summer,” newly rich, and dating two girls who are both slaves to the latest trends in fashion, devotees of English magazines devoid of a single Chinese character.
Life seems somehow less precious, more of a temporary commodity, in Hua’s stories. Characters see themselves less as protagonists bound for great things than simple men and women carrying on as best as they know how. Violence, even between friends exchanging bruises, is a muted tragedy. Animals, even dogs, aren’t precious.
There’s much to be taken away from Hua’s work, whether his stories truly have a moral or some sort of lesson in them or not. Perhaps what he is offering is nothing less than insight into the extremes of warmth, tragedy, pleasure and pain found in his version of the nation. Perhaps the takeaway is nothing more than 13 tales of irony, of characters’ highest and lowest points and how they carry on afterwards. If so, Boy in the Twilight is still a remarkable, wisening read.
