Hell yeah! This was great modern Chinese literature. I Love Dollars is a book of short novellas and a couple of short stories. Wen's characters live in the new dollar-driven China being bounced around through random chance encounters and events while seeking pleasure and kicking aside the decaying rubbish of the Maoist repression era. His characters are cynical, not too endearing, and generally have a 'fuck all' attitude but will bend down and pet the puppy just enough to elicit a bit of sympathy for their plight. Wen's voice is unique; a loosely punctuated first-person narrative in which speech runs on within sentences of descriptive prose. Wen wrote these novellas during the beginning of China's economic liberalization where anything could be set on paper that would sell and make money; anything that didn't touch on politics. As Deng Xiaoping said, It doesn't matter whether a cat is black or white, so long as it catches mice, it's a good cat.
'I Love Dollars is probably the weakest story in this collection. A Hospital Night, A Boat Crossing, Wheels and Pounds, Ounces, Meat are the best of the book.
From the beginning of Pounds, Ounces, Meat:
On the bridge by the old Drum Tower I was stopped by a shabby individual, clearly someone who'd wandered in from out of town, with a black bag tucked under his arm and an unnerving gleam in his eyes. He told me my physiognomy was most unusual; he simply had to tell my fortune, he wouldn't charge a cent. The plastic on top of the bridge had melted tackily in the sun: crossing felt like walking over spat-out chewing gum, or smoker's phlegm, or snot, or semen, or fresh dog shit. I include these comparisons purely to illuminate, not disgust, you understand. If I were to suggest you imagine it was raw meat underfoot, now that, I admit, would be nauseating. Fuck off, I told him as impatiently as I could manage.
Briefly, all too briefly, the man was transfixed by shock, too transfixed to manage any kind of response, till I'd reached the end of the bridge's elevation and was about to set off down the steps on the other side. Good luck's coming your way this year! He screeched vengefully at me across the asphalt. About fucking time, I muttered to myself as I descended. When I was halfway down, I happened to look up and see a girl with a healthily tanned face coming toward me up the steps, carrying a black parasol and a copy of I Love Dollars. My heart began to pound. I wasn't sure, at that moment, whether this counted as my good luck or not. In subsequent weeks and months, I often thought back over this scene, about this girl and that book, about how she kept the latter pressed beguilingly up against her chest, blinding me to its obvious flatness.