{"id":2380,"date":"2009-08-27T00:01:34","date_gmt":"2009-08-27T04:01:34","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/mookseandgripes.com\/reviews\/?p=2380"},"modified":"2018-05-26T00:18:44","modified_gmt":"2018-05-26T04:18:44","slug":"jonathan-tel-the-beijing-of-possibilities","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mookseandgripes.com\/reviews\/2009\/08\/27\/jonathan-tel-the-beijing-of-possibilities\/","title":{"rendered":"Jonathan Tel: The Beijing of Possibilities<\/em>"},"content":{"rendered":"

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The Beijing of Possibilities<\/strong><\/em><\/span>
\nby Jonathan Tel (2009)<\/span>
\nOther Press (2009)<\/span>
\n208 pp<\/span><\/p>\n

[\/fusion_title][fusion_text columns=”” column_min_width=”” column_spacing=”” rule_style=”default” rule_size=”” rule_color=”” class=”” id=””]<\/p>\n

\"Jonathan[fusion_dropcap boxed=”no” boxed_radius=”” class=”” id=”” color=”#003366″]W[\/fusion_dropcap]hen I got this book in the mail I was actually turned off by the cover. However, I’d seen a couple of blurbs (probably citing one source) lining The Beijing Possibilities<\/em> with W.G. Sebald and Italo Calvino.\u00a0That is about the highest praise I can imagine, so even if it misses the mark a bit it should still be an impressive book.\u00a0I opened it up and was pleasantly surprised at how much I enjoyed the first short story “The Year of the Gorilla,” about a Gorillagram courier who stops a thief in the road and finds himself the subject of blog and media scrutiny since the incident was\u00a0caught on a cell phone camera.\u00a0The brave — or at least innocuous — action\u00a0becomes a strange symbol for anyone wanting to talk about it (reminding me of Obama killing that fly):<\/p>\n

The story was alluded to on a discussion board: “It is a shame that sticks-in-the-mud are opposing a market economy with Chinese characteristics.\u00a0The last thing we need is to have a Gorilla barge in every time we shake hands on a deal!” Which led to further criticism, as well as some support of the Gorilla for “preserving Maoist values.” An editorial in the July issue of the Beijing Financial Review<\/em> referred somewhat obscurely to “Gorillas and their ilk who shoot sparrows with a pearl” in the context of defending the opening up of the mining industry to foreign investment.<\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

I took The Beijing of Possibilities <\/em>to the exercise room and, because I didn’t want to stop reading, stayed on the exercise bike for much longer than I usually do.<\/p>\n

Let’s get my view of the Sebald \/ Calvino comparison out of the way:\u00a0The primary connection to Sebald, I’m assuming, is that throughout the book, just barely interrupting the text, there are pictures of Beijing and its inhabitants — one picture per story, to be exact.\u00a0I suppose one could stretch another connection to Sebald by saying that this book also deals with the relationship of time and place and we ghosts who move through both,\u00a0but that is not a strong theme here nor is it\u00a0done in at all the same way or to the same end.\u00a0To me, the connection to\u00a0Calvino, while still\u00a0an overstatement, is more appropriate. Tel creates a very confident voice that rolls with the story’s momentum.\u00a0Also, these stories\u00a0aren’t weighed down by reality; the comedy or absurdity (like policemen, in mid-chase,\u00a0donning dresses flung at them from a fleeing felon) work to enhance the narratives rather than detract from them. I liked it very much.\u00a0If you see more of the Sebald \/ Calvino connection, please let me know\u00a0 — as much as I admire those two writers, I’m not an expert in their craft.<\/p>\n

The Beijing of Possibilities <\/em>is a compilation of twelve short stories,\u00a0each with Beijing playing some role, though the stories themselves vary widely in\u00a0time period\u00a0and demographic.\u00a0Each story stands on its own.\u00a0There is a slight, almost metafictional thread tied around them at the end, but in a way that does not threaten the independence\u00a0and individuality of each\u00a0story.\u00a0In fact, the thread doesn’t\u00a0even force the reader to look at\u00a0a story\u00a0differently.<\/p>\n

The first lines in the brief preface (which turns out to be very much a part of the book and not simply a preface) are fun as they introduce, particularly to readers like me who don’t know much about Beijing, the world this book will inhabit:<\/p>\n

Beijing is the center of the universe. Ask anybody who lives there.\u00a0“The true Beijinger secretly believes that people living anywhere else have to be, in some sense, kidding.”<\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

This center of the universe is also the site of a highly volatile juxtapostion\u00a0of two seemingly disparate worlds. Old Beijing, with its heritage (and its Communism), is merging with a newer cosmopolitan \/ capitalistic new Beijing. One of my favorite visions of this is in the story “The Unofficial History of the Embroidered Couch”:\u00a0“A delectably shimmery lightweight bra, combining traditional elegance with the latest hi-tech lift.” This also happened to be one of my favorite stories.\u00a0In it a lonely modern-day Beijinger who writes copy for advertisements (hence, the description of the bra) contacts a dating service who, through the wonders of modern technology, hooks him up with a princess from the Ming Dynasty.\u00a0They communicate via text messaging.\u00a0Unsurprisingly hilarious, this story is surprisingly touching and complex.<\/p>\n

Another of my favorite stories is “The Three Lives of Little Yu.” It begins like this:<\/p>\n

A married couple without an heir, what are they but living ghosts?\u00a0They had tried for five years already without success.\u00a0So they decided to buy a child.\u00a0A boy would be beyond their means, but a girl — in those years, in that district of Hebei Province, people were practically giving them away.<\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

This sentence might sound a bit didactic, as if Tel were trying to showcase some idiosyncrasies of a foreign culture rather than create a story, but that’s not true. In fact, Tel does an excellent job creating this foreign culture without making it look like he’s teaching us and without making it look like that foreign culture is being recreated here for our amusement, as if this book were a window at a zoo.\u00a0This particular story is very sad and very touching, and it does<\/em>do an excellent job relating this culture to us while showing us how that culture is conflicted with itself.\u00a0 In this story a couple purchases a baby girl in 1959.\u00a0Her name is Yu.\u00a0Sadly, Yu dies, leaving only her name written in a tablet as she was learning how to write. The couple is determined to find her again. In 1965 they buy another baby girl, another Yu.\u00a0Her character has changed, but they do not doubt their little Yu has come back to them.\u00a0Tragically, again Yu perishes.\u00a0Finally, in the summer of 1984, the couple\u00a0took of for Beijing to find Yu again:\u00a0“. . . most likely she’d be reincarnated into comfort and wealth this time.\u00a0And the place to find happiness in modern China (they knew this from radio and indoctrination sessions) was no longer, as it had been for millennia, a peaceful village in the countryside.\u00a0Now it was the city.\u00a0And the greatest city in the world is Beijing.”\u00a0This story is one of the best in the book, a wonderful example of Tel’s comedic observations (“In the corridor, people were walking to the toilet with a heightened sense of purpose.”) and touching intimacy.<\/p>\n

There were some slower and less successful parts in the book.\u00a0I liked the stranger stories, particularly the ones dealing with provincial life confronting Beijing, but\u00a0I wasn’t as big a fan of some of the middle stories about sometimes wealthier people making do in Beijing.\u00a0They felt too similar to any number of short stories about individuals adapting to or failing to adapt to\u00a0changes an ultra modern world, and to me they felt less original. Probably only three or four of the stories didn’t succeed for me, and that was probably because the stories surrounding them were so original and well done. Had I allowed more time to pass between stories (I basically read this book cover to cover in a day), it might have been different.\u00a0There were several more stories that worked very well, and for these the entire book is worth reading.<\/p>\n

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