Candy
Copyright ©
2003
by Shen Wang
Translation copyright ©
2003
by Andrea Lingenfelter Reading group guide copyright ©
2003
by Mian Mian and Little, Brown and Company (Inc.)
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without permission in writing from the publisher, except by a reviewer who may quote brief passages in a review.
First English-Language Edition
Little Brown & Co.
Hachette Book Group
237 Park Avenue
New York, NY 10017
Visit our Web site at
www.HachetteBookGroupUSA.com
.
First eBook Edition: April
2000
The Little Brown & Co. name and logo is a trademark of Hachette book Group
The characters and events in this book are fictitious. Any similarity to real persons, living or dead, is coincidental and not intended by the author.
ISBN
978-0-316-05553-6
Contents
“Mian Mian’s realm is one of wretched love affairs, hard drugs, promiscuous sex, and suicide. Her work is revolutionary for the People’s Republic, and her own tale is one of personal liberation, excess, and redemption.”
—
GARY JONES,
Sydney Morning Herald Magazine
AN INTERNATIONAL LITERARY SENSATION —now available for the first time in English translation—Candy is a harrowing tale of risk and desire, the story of a young Chinese woman forging a life for herself in a world seemingly devoid of guidelines.
Hong, who narrates the novel, drops out of high school and runs away at age seventeen to the frontier city of Shenzen. She falls into a relationship with a young musician, and together they dive into a cruel netherworld of alcohol, drugs, and excess, a life that fails to satisfy Hong’s craving for an authentic self, and for a love that will define her.
Mian Mian’s fresh, strident, and brutally honest voice illuminates the anguish of an entire generation. This startling novel is a blast of sex, drugs, and rock ’n’ roll that opens up to us a modern China we’ve never seen before.
NEW IN PAPERBACK * GREAT FOR READING GROUPS
BROWNSVILLE
Stories by Oscar Casares
“A fine debut. . . . Probing underneath the surface of Tex-Mex culture, Casares’s stories, with their wisecracking, temperamental, obsessive middle-aged men and their dramas straight from neighborhood gossip, are in the direct line of descent from Mark Twain and Ring Lardner.”
—
Publishers Weekly
“Oscar Casares does for Brownsville, Texas, what Eudora Welty did for Jackson, Mississippi.”
—TIM GAUTREAUX,
author of Welding with Children
SUPER FLAT TIMES
Stories by Matthew Derby
“Imagine
The Matrix,
but funny, or a neurotic
Metropolis,
and you might get some sense of what this weird, beautifully written book, made by someone who has watched far too much television, does to your brain.”
— NEAL POLLACK,
author of The Neal Pollack Anthology of American Literature
“A vital and astonishing writer. . . . Matthew Derby stages a brilliant wagon circle around everything dull and earthbound in American fiction.”
— BEN MARCUS,
author of Notable American Women
Available wherever books are sold
NEW IN PAPERBACK * GREAT FOR READING GROUPS
HOUSE OF WOMEN
A novel by Lynn Freed
“Irresistible. . . . An unusual and unusually satisfying novel.”
—KATHRYN HARRISON,
New York Times Book Review
“
House of Women
is surprising and inevitable, often in the same sentence. It illuminates and, at the same time, deepens the human mystery. I don’t ask for more from a book.”
—MICHAEL CUNNINGHAM,
author of The Hours
THE DRINK AND DREAM TEAHOUSE
A novel by Justin Hill
“Justin Hill knows China inside out. Every sentence is filled with knowledge, affection, and a poignant sense of loss.”
—CAROLYN SEE,
Washington Post
“Hill understands, like Tolstoy, that human nature cannot change along with the times. . . . This is a book of exoticisms, intoxicated by the human landscape of the Far East, a place of firecrackers and lotus roots. . . . A first novel filled with sensual delight.”
— EDWARD STERN,
Independent on Sunday
Available wherever books are sold
NEW IN PAPERBACK * GREAT FOR READING GROUPS
THE BLACK VEIL
A memoir by Rick Moody
“Compulsively readable. . . . A profound meditation on madness, shame, and history. . . . One of the finest memoirs in recent years.”
—JEFFERY SMITH,
Washington Post Book World
“Ferociously intelligent, emotionally unsparing. . . . Verbal invention capers and sparkles on every page.”
—DAVID KIPEN,
San Francisco Chronicle
SIMPLE RECIPES
Stories by Madeleine Thien
“
Simple Recipes
introduces a writer of precocious poise. . . . The austere grace and polished assurance of Thien’s prose are remarkable. . . . The trajectories of Thien’s stories are unpredictable; though her characters dream of following simple recipes, they are themselves undeniably original creations.”
—JANICE P. NIMURA,
New York Times Book Review
“This is surely the debut of a splendid writer. I am astonished by the clarity and ease of the writing, and a kind of emotional purity.”
— ALICE MUNRO
Available wherever books are sold
FOR ALL OF THOSE FRIENDS WHO HAVE VANISHED WITHOUT A TRACE
I created my own sweetheart, watching him move closer and closer to me. His undying fragility is his undying sweetness and beauty. This book represents some of the tears I couldn’t cry, some of the terror behind my smiling eyes. This book exists because one morning as the sun was coming up I told myself that I had to swallow up all of the fear and garbage around me, and once it was inside me I had to transform it all into candy. Because I know you will be able to love me for it.
Most of the action in
Candy
is divided between the author’s native Shanghai and the enterprising boomtown of Shenzhen, in Guangdong Province. While Mian Mian mentions Shanghai by name, she refers to Shenzhen only as “the South.” Once little more than a farming and fishing village on the train line linking Hong Kong and Guangzhou, Shenzhen began its radical transformation in
1980
, when Deng Xiaoping, then China’s premier, proclaimed it a Special Economic Zone (SEZ). Created as a response to the economic stagnation of the Maoist era, the SEZs were integral to Deng’s economic reforms. In contrast to the central planning and state-controlled enterprises that characterized the rest of China, the SEZs were set aside as free of state control. The relaxation of state control and the relative freedom soon created a frontier mentality, and many forms of vice and corruption came to flourish alongside more legitimate private enterprise. Prostitution, drugs, and organized crime, which had been suppressed to a remarkable degree in post-
1949
China, thrived in laissez-faire Shenzhen. At the same time, the influx of investment from Hong Kong, Taiwan, and the West was accompanied by a flood of cultural influences.
The personal and economic freedom represented by Shenzhen was extremely attractive to many young people all over China, and Mian Mian’s protagonist, Hong, is no exception. In the rest of China, job seekers waited to be assigned a job by the government, which had the right to send people anywhere in the country. Often, people ended up in jobs hundreds of miles away from their hometowns, but they had little choice in the matter. Qualifications counted for something, but a recent high school or college graduate’s display of devotion to the Communist Party was often also a key factor in securing a desirable assignment. In running away to the SEZ to try to make their own way, Hong and others like her were dropping out of this overly constraining system.
What may be remarkable to readers familiar with the last half century of Chinese history is how small a role the Communist Party plays in the lives of the characters who people Mian Mian’s book. The omission is telling. The world portrayed in
Candy
is just one more reflection of what Orville Schell, in his lively and insightful book
Mandate of Heaven,
refers to as China’s “gray” culture, one devoid of the “redness” that characterized the Communist culture of the first four decades of the People’s Republic. “Gray” culture is apolitical on the surface but fascinated with gangsters and other outlaws. Its cynicism, irony, and seeming disengagement from politics have a great deal to say about Chinese society today. Whether it amounts to a loss of hope for political change in China or a subtle but effective form of subversion remains to be seen.
A note on currency: The Chinese currency is called the
yuan.
(There are roughly
8.25
yuan
to the U.S. dollar.) There are ten
mao
(or
jiao
) to each
yuan,
and ten
fen
to each
mao.
A note on language: Mandarin is the official language of the People’s Republic of China. It is used in broadcasting, schools, and other official settings. However, in private life many people are more comfortable using the native dialect of their home region, such as Shanghainese or Cantonese.
First, I must give heartfelt thanks to my father and mother. My father is my hero. What’s more, he never stopped saying: “She’s a good kid—she just loses her way every now and then.” My mother has this to say: “I am grateful to God for giving me this child. What she writes is so beautiful.”
I also wish to thank my agent William Clark for helping me bring this book into print. I haven’t been to America, but he has made me long to see it. My editors at Little, Brown, Judy Clain and Claire Smith, have been enthusiastic about publishing this book from the start, and I am deeply grateful to them.
Thanks to all my friends, as well. Thank you, Caspar, Tina Liu, Coco Zhao. All of you have given me the strength to love this world and have taught me that darkness always ends in light.
Thanks also to Jim Morrison, Radiohead, and PJ Harvey. Their music has brought its deeply loving caresses into my life.
And last but not least, I wish to thank “my poor George.” He is the King, and my best friend. I can never be hurt again by any kind of love.
A big thank-you to William Clark, who called me out of the blue one day and brought me into this wonderful project. From start to finish, he was always there when I needed him. Thank you to our wonderful and indefatigable editors at Little, Brown, Judy Clain and Claire Smith.
Thanks to Josh Salesin for the list of effects, and to all of the friends and friends of friends who gave me pointers on everything from raves in China to medical info. Thanks to my readers, Davi Grossman and Chris Sanford. Your comments on the early drafts of this translation were invaluable.
I wish to express my gratitude to the late Jeri Wadhams, who gave me my first opportunity to read Chinese literature and pointed me down the path I have taken. And I will always be grateful for the generosity and dedication of Mrs. Ping Hu, who taught me the Chinese language, and Dr. William Tay, who inspired me to explore the complexity of modern China.
Lastly, I give my undying love and gratitude to my family—to my husband, David, whose patience and gentle nature sustain me even in stressful times, and my children, Oona, Isaiah, and Eleni, who fill my life with their sweetness, their love, and their brimming imaginations.
Why did my father always have to push me in front of the Mona Lisa? And why did he always make me listen to classical music? I suppose it was just my fate, for want of a better word. I was twenty-seven years old before I finally got the courage to ask my father these questions—up until then, I couldn’t even bring myself to utter the woman’s name, I was so terrified of her.
My father answered that Chopin was good music. So when I was bawling my head off, he would shut me in a room all by myself and have me listen to Chopin. In those days none of our neighbors had a record player or a television the way we did. What’s more, many of them were forced to subsist on the vegetable scraps they scrounged at the market, since meat, cloth, oil, and other basics were still being rationed. My father thought that as a member of the only “intellectual,” or educated, family in our entire apartment building, I should feel fortunate.