Michael Schaub of NPR reviews The Fat Years
2012-01-20 11:25阅读：
'The Fat Years': China's
Brave New World
by Michael
Schaub
National Public Radio,
USA
January 12,
2012
Toward the end of Aldous
Huxley's 1932 classic Brave
New World, the character
John the Savage tries to explain why he's rejecting the artificial
utopia that the world has become. Pretty much everyone on the
planet is drugged, complacent and happy — but for John, that's the
problem. 'I don't want comfort,' he says. 'I want real danger, I
want freedom ... I'm claiming the right to be
unhappy.'
Things don't turn out well for
John, of course. Huxley was famous for his humanist p
hilosophy, but he seemed skeptical that most people would be
willing to sacrifice their creature comforts and shallow thrills
for real freedom. It's a question that has divided philosophers and
writers for years. As Chan Koonchung puts it in his smart,
incendiary new novel, The Fat
Years: 'Between a good
hell and a counterfeit paradise, which one will people
choose?'
The Fat Years
takes place in 2013, two years after
the collapse of the global economy. Only China has emerged from the
meltdown unscathed, and its people are indisputably happy, filled
with a national pride the country has never seen before. Author and
journalist Lao Chen is among the content — he's perfectly satisfied
getting his daily tea at (now Chinese-owned) Starbucks, strolling
aimlessly through the streets of Beijing.
When two of Lao's friends tell
him about an entire month in 2011 that's gone missing, he doesn't
know what to make of it. While he initially finds it difficult to
believe that the 30 days between the international economic
collapse and the start of the new Chinese Golden Age have been
erased from the public memory, he begins to find the evidence
impossible to ignore. He and his friends go in search of the
missing month, and what they find out is terrifying and unthinkable
— but, sadly, undeniable.
Chan Koonchung is a novelist,
journalist and screenwriter. He has published more than a dozen
Chinese-language books, and is the founder and former chief editor
and publisher of City magazine.
Chan Koonchung is a novelist,
journalist and screenwriter. He has published more than a dozen
Chinese-language books, and is the founder and former chief editor
and publisher of City magazine.
Dystopian novels get their
power from their originality and plausibility — nobody needs to
read another by-the-numbers retread of Nineteen Eighty-Four, and if a story is completely unbelievable it loses
whatever sense of urgency it might have had. Although
The Fat Years
clearly owes a debt to
Brave New
World, Chan's characters
are infinitely more believable, and drawn with a real sense of
sympathy and understanding — something Huxley's archetypes famously
lacked.
As for plausibility,
The Fat Years
is almost too believable — given the
widespread censorship and totalitarianism in modern China, there's
nothing in the novel that strains the reader's credulity. (Perhaps
needless to say, Chan's novel has been banned in China, although
reports suggest that it's easily available through underground
publishers and booksellers.)
Although The Fat Years could be read, by a Western audience, as nothing more
than a cynical parable about contemporary Chinese government, it
would largely miss the point. Chan's book is an urgent clarion call
for people in every country to treasure their individuality, and to
reject leaders who promise temporary happiness in exchange for
total freedom. The government in Brave New World discouraged emotion and self-expression with the slogan 'When
the individual feels, the community reels.' In other words: Smile.
You're being watched.
