From the opening lines, Beijing-born author Diane Wei Liang shows the necessary skills to tell a vivid story in The Eye of Jade (2007, Picador, London, 229 pages), her first novel. As a bonus, her keen sense of humor makes the tale highly enjoyable.
Readers accompany Mei Wang, a modern Beijing woman working as a private investigator. On the opening page, they enter her office: “the fan was humming loudly, like an elderly man angry at his own impotence…. Outside, the sun shone, baking the air into a solid block of heat.” It’s enough to make anyone perspire.
In China, private detective agencies are forbidden. So Mei registered her business as an “information consultancy”. The plot thickens when a family friend asks her to find a jade antique looted from a museum amid the tumultuous Cultural Revolution. The case turns urgent: “We’d better hurry. I think we have disturbed the grass. The snakes are scared.”
The book’s London-based author visited Hong Kong on an Asian tour and spoke to Cairns Media Magazine at a Bookazine store in the Central district. “I got the idea for the plot when sitting with my children in a playground and reading about an ancient artifact in Nepal and how it tied in with the history of that country as people looked for it. I saw a similarity to many artifacts in China,” she said.
Already published in 25 countries, The Eye of Jade has zoomed to success. “I’m quite overwhelmed,” Diane said. “For a first-time novelist, it’s incredible, and I’m so grateful for the response. I have friends who struggle to get published for years and years. I don’t know what I’ve done in my previous life to deserve this, but I’m very happy that it happened.”
Next year, the author will issue Paper Butterfly, a second novel. In an earlier book, Lake With No Name, she told of being a university student at the 1989 student protests before the infamous Beijing Massacre.
She fills The Eye of Jade with unique characters, such as Mr Shao, a hair-growth-serum entrepreneur in a toupee, and Big Sister Hui, one of Mei’s college pals full of pearls of wisdom: “A four-year-old kid is like a dog. If she doesn’t get her run in the park, she bites.”
The exotic story samples the flavors of modern Beijing, where luxury autos jam the streets, but Mei’s reliable assistant, a migrant-worker male secretary, relies on a Flying Pigeon bicycle. Mei drives a two-door Mitsubishi inherited when her sister advanced to a much grander vehicle.
Readers accompany Mei to her ailing mother’s hospital room, a university reunion, a wedding and through the streets and alleys of China’s capital. Like most detectives, she asks questions, ponders the answers, conducts surveillance and trails suspects.
Deft word-play enlivens every scene: “Fruit and vegetable vendors, their goods piled high on flatbed carts, shouted out prices. A peasant woman in wide-legged trousers waved a straw fan over a heap of watermelons. The flies had returned too.”
Although Beijing has many interesting eateries, not all sound appealing: “A woman the size of a small elephant slapped a towel on the board. ‘Got you!’ she exclaimed, flicking away a dead fly with her middle finger. ‘What do you want?’ she asked Mei unsmiling.”
Sometimes Mei enters places rarely exposed to sunlight. “Beyond the kitchen lay a gambling room. Halogen tubes burned above the smoke, and the air was pungent with the sour smell of beer. The ceiling was low and the floor cold, yet no one seemed troubled. There was an atmosphere of calm, as in an opium den where the customers were on their third pipes.”
Some moments hold humor with tragic overtones. A Communist Party wedding guest boasts of supplying noisy firecrackers. “ ‘They’re our best bangers, those little bastards… I’ve got another truckload of them in the parking lot.’
‘Is it safe?’
‘What do you mean?’
‘Well, leaving a truck of explosives outside on such a dry sunny day.’
‘No problem. Got two kids sitting on them.’ ”
Beset by internal conflict, Mei struggles with many of the issues facing everyone governed by the Chinese Communist Party: “What’s legal and what’s not these days? You know what people say: ‘the Party has strategies and the people have counter-strategies’…. What’s money compared to power?... All your principles and morals, what good are they if they can’t make you happy?”
Deep resentments, as between big-city dwellers and migrant workers, simmer below the surface: “They all try to look smart when they come to a big city like Beijing, with new hairdos and new clothes that are fashionable in their own cities. But they all end up looking like animals from the zoo. I can smell the dirt in them.”
Some characters give valid advice on doing business in modern China. “You need to be sensitive to the change of wind and policy. Make sure you always watch out for people who might stab you from behind…. Make sure you have a good Guanxi network, especially in high places.”
While chasing clues, Mei learns troubling details about her family’s past. As she’s told: “Challenging the Party was not an intelligent thing to do, not during the Cultural Revolution…. There was no room for morality at the time of the Cultural Revolution. You survived at any cost. You young people don’t understand. You always act as if we were monsters.”
No doubt, The Eye of Jade marks the arrival of Diane Wei Liang as an important new storyteller.
Approval rating: 83 per cent.
For more information: www.picador.com
(June 4, 2007)
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