Bei Tong

This book started its life as a web novel and it had a fan-fictiony feel to it. Not that it isn't an original story with original characters, but it has an immediate viscerally to it that feels familiar to the fanfic reading I have been doing lately. The narrator starts out DEEPLY UNLIKEABLE, but what I love about this novel is that it felt like a slow unfolding of all the social and cultural forces that shaped him to be the way that he is, as a gay man in a place and time where that is viewed as deeply shameful, and as he slowly digs his way out of (some) of them.

It isn't just that he's gay, of course. But as a businessman, there is a pressure to perform success in a certain way -- throwing money around and strings of superficial relationships. As a son he expected to marry, have children, and support his extended family. There is no framework or model he can relate to to understand his attraction to men, and how that could play out in an honest, sustainable way.

Which is not to excuse him of all the shitty choices he makes over and over again. Just to acknowledge the difficulty of choosing better when you have to invent that path on your own.

As a web novel there are inducements to titillation and emotionally manipulative writing, but this story was/is a sensation not just because it is provocative, but because the author embraces the contradictions and complications of each character.… (mere)

This book just did not live up to my expectations at all.

I wanted to like it so much more than I did because it's such an important book. Beijing Comrades is a book about two gay men set in China in the late 80's to early 90's. It details important cultural events like the student protests of Tianamen Square in 1989. Yeah, those protests.

It was never officially published in China but was instead published in New York on an underground Chinese LGBT website. So it's important and singular in its make up.

... and I didn't like it.

Because the author was so focused on the two characters, it felt so much like a fan fiction. And I have nothing against fan fiction, believe me, I write it myself, but I was really thrown by the style of it and how the plot points seemed to just be dropped in there whenever there was a lull in the story. Not only that, but the author barely writes anything other than their relationship -- there's a few mentions to the weather and the writing holds such promise, but other than that...?

Handong, the main protagonist and narrator, is a selfish, arrogant, utter prick who wants what he wants and is upset when he doesn't get precisely what he wants. I hated his voice, I hated him and I rolled my eyes into the back of my head when he complained about something.

He's such a fuckboy. I know so much of his character is built on internalised homophobia but that doesn't make him have to be an asshole all the time.

Lan Yu was the only good person or aspect of this book. I loved him. He is a precious cinnamon roll. He will remain in my heart forever. And I was really frustrated that the author was able to craft such a well-written character and make Handong so awful and shallow and vapid, not only in his character but in his writing as well?

I wish I'd loved this. I'm putting it at 2 stars for Lan Yu for now, but I might downgrade it to 1 star.

On the plus side, I've discovered more queer Chinese authors and I'm really, really excited to sink my teeth into those.… (mere)

I'm very conflicted over this novel. On one hand, novels (or any media, to be honest) that focuses on gay men is rare enough in the West, let alone East Asia, let alone China (witness the still ongoing Chinese government censorship of LGBT themed web dramas just this year). So books like these are important, and I wanted dearly to love it. But, I also don't believe in grading works of art on a curve based on what they are about or who wrote them. Thus, my dilemma.

The central problem is that the plot is completely cliché in every way. Rich, heartless playboy has intense sexual attraction to poor, working class boy. Said poor working class boy awakens love in said heartless playboy, changing him forever. Switch "boy" for "girl," and we've all seen this plot a thousand times. Therein lies my problem: the newness of a Chinese novel dealing with a gay relationship like this is the central pull, now the plot itself. About the only really interesting component of the story is when it directly deals with the unique Confucianism v homosexuality, and Chinese class distinction issues. Everything else is run-of-the-mill.

The ending is especially disappointing, with an abrupt, unearned tragic ending that manages to let the novel avoid having to deal with how a long-term same-sex, different-class relationship would work in China.

Still, even if it makes me a hypocrite, I don't regret reading the novel, for the very fact that these kinds of East Asian novels simply aren't widely available enough in the West. I just hope the next one to get a release like this is better.… (mere)