Red Dust : A Path Through China

Rating:
Summary: A sobering portrait of the China visitors do not get to see
Review: "In a flash, Bao Yu [a character in the Chinese classic A Dream of Red Mansions] saw through the red dust of illusion. He discarded his worldly ties and set off in search of enlightenment."

In 1983, Ma Jian left Beijing to wander through China's rural countryside. For three years he drifted through the bleak Western provinces, the rich Southeastern part of China and through Tibet. He was 30 years old at the time. He intended "Red Dust" to be an account of his finding himself in the loneliness of the journey. It turned out to be the story of his disillusionment not only with Buddhism but also with the ideas he held about the advantages of the simple life. In the end he finds that he wants to give up his solitary wandering and needs "to live in big cities that have hospitals, bookshops and women."

"Red Dust", published only in 2001, is a starkly realistic portrait of rural China at the beginning of the economic liberalization initiated by Deng Xiaoping in 1979. No Westerner would have been able to describe the life of the common people in the impoverished inner provinces of China as precisely and straightforward as Ma Jian. It is a world that is invisible to Western visitors, even if they speak Mandarin. In that sense, "Red Dust" is not required reading for the average traveler in China. But I highly recommend it to anyone interested in the "hidden" life that the majority of the Chinese really live.

"Red Dust" stands out for its unflinching realism and its intimacy with everyday life in China, just as Mark Salzman's "Iron and Silk" (1986) stands out for its sense of humor, Simon Winchester's "The River at the Centre of the World" (1996) for its knowledge and entertaining anecdotes, and Peter Hessler's "River Town" (2001) for its lyrical descriptions of the landscape and its endearing sympathy with the Chinese people.

Rating:
Summary: A sobering portrait of the China visitors do not get to see
Review: "In a flash, Bao Yu [a character in the Chinese classic A Dream of Red Mansions] saw through the red dust of illusion. He discarded his worldly ties and set off in search of enlightenment."

In 1983, Ma Jian left Beijing to wander through China's rural countryside. For three years he drifted through the bleak Western provinces, the rich Southeastern part of China and through Tibet. He was 30 years old at the time. He intended "Red Dust" to be an account of his finding himself in the loneliness of the journey. It turned out to be the story of his disillusionment not only with Buddhism but also with the ideas he held about the advantages of the simple life. In the end he finds that he wants to give up his solitary wandering and needs "to live in big cities that have hospitals, bookshops and women."

"Red Dust", published only in 2001, is a starkly realistic portrait of rural China at the beginning of the economic liberalization initiated by Deng Xiaoping in 1979. No Westerner would have been able to describe the life of the common people in the impoverished inner provinces of China as precisely and straightforward as Ma Jian. It is a world that is invisible to Western visitors, even if they speak Mandarin. In that sense, "Red Dust" is not required reading for the average traveler in China. But I highly recommend it to anyone interested in the "hidden" life that the majority of the Chinese really live.

"Red Dust" stands out for its unflinching realism and its intimacy with everyday life in China, just as Mark Salzman's "Iron and Silk" (1986) stands out for its sense of humor, Simon Winchester's "The River at the Centre of the World" (1996) for its knowledge and entertaining anecdotes, and Peter Hessler's "River Town" (2001) for its lyrical descriptions of the landscape and its endearing sympathy with the Chinese people.

Rating:
Summary: "Soul Mountain" Lite
Review: I finished "Red Dust" with mixed feelings: it is not a great book, but it is not bad either. It is interesting, but not profound. It is decently written, but carelessly organized.

What makes "Red Dust" valuable is that is a frank, laid-back portrait of "The Real China" (wince) in the early 1980s, a time (unlike now) when few people were writing down such basic observations as this book contains. These observations are not profound, and they ring hollow only when the try to be, but much that is profound can be gleaned from the mundane. A family's eating habits, how easily people can be duped because it is what they want to believe...these are the substance of life, and all the more so in a place where life is so tenuous as in China's interior.

But two aspects of "Red Dust", the account of Ma Jian's three years spent as a Chinese drifter, curdle the incisiveness of his insights. Despite having taken Buddhist vows, and considering himself on something of a pilgrimage for enlightenment, Ma is a rather self-important person, at least as a narrator. Many of the stories he encounters would have told better if he had been able to observe, sometimes, from the sidelines, rather than making it always about him him him. Understandable human trait, but dangerous in literature. A related flaw is the bitterness with which he filters all occurances. China never has - and probably never will be - a place to inspire bounding optimism, but persistant negativity makes a book just unpleasant to read.

The beginning chapters document Ma's life as an artist and bohemian type in Beijing, and are both tedious and hilarious. Tediously impressed with themselves for bucking convention, for viciously trying to out-artsy each other, and then praising their own genious, but hilariously true to the type of the Chinese avant-garde, especially in the words, not deeds, climate of Beijing. The crowd is eerily familiar.

It is no accident that "Red Dust's" cover bears a plug from "Soul Mountain" author Gao Xingjian, but Ma replicates the Nobel winner's formula so closely that I wonder whether Gao really meant it, or was pleased by the compliment of imitation. Both books are tales of fleeing Beijing for the romanticized countryside in the oppressively political environment of the 1980s. But Gao's book is so much more etherial and important, Ma fares badly in comparison. Ma Jian's writing is merely the Red Dust in the wind from Gao's Soul Mountain.

Rating:
Summary: "Soul Mountain" Lite
Review: I finished "Red Dust" with mixed feelings: it is not a great book, but it is not bad either. It is interesting, but not profound. It is decently written, but carelessly organized.

What makes "Red Dust" valuable is that is a frank, laid-back portrait of "The Real China" (wince) in the early 1980s, a time (unlike now) when few people were writing down such basic observations as this book contains. These observations are not profound, and they ring hollow only when the try to be, but much that is profound can be gleaned from the mundane. A family's eating habits, how easily people can be duped because it is what they want to believe...these are the substance of life, and all the more so in a place where life is so tenuous as in China's interior.

But two aspects of "Red Dust", the account of Ma Jian's three years spent as a Chinese drifter, curdle the incisiveness of his insights. Despite having taken Buddhist vows, and considering himself on something of a pilgrimage for enlightenment, Ma is a rather self-important person, at least as a narrator. Many of the stories he encounters would have told better if he had been able to observe, sometimes, from the sidelines, rather than making it always about him him him. Understandable human trait, but dangerous in literature. A related flaw is the bitterness with which he filters all occurances. China never has - and probably never will be - a place to inspire bounding optimism, but persistant negativity makes a book just unpleasant to read.

The beginning chapters document Ma's life as an artist and bohemian type in Beijing, and are both tedious and hilarious. Tediously impressed with themselves for bucking convention, for viciously trying to out-artsy each other, and then praising their own genious, but hilariously true to the type of the Chinese avant-garde, especially in the words, not deeds, climate of Beijing. The crowd is eerily familiar.

It is no accident that "Red Dust's" cover bears a plug from "Soul Mountain" author Gao Xingjian, but Ma replicates the Nobel winner's formula so closely that I wonder whether Gao really meant it, or was pleased by the compliment of imitation. Both books are tales of fleeing Beijing for the romanticized countryside in the oppressively political environment of the 1980s. But Gao's book is so much more etherial and important, Ma fares badly in comparison. Ma Jian's writing is merely the Red Dust in the wind from Gao's Soul Mountain.

Rating:
Summary: An existential self-portrait
Review: The author is a native Chinese artist, which makes it hard to understand his prose as he shifts from the present, past, and dreams with many people talking. But after you get through his own primal needs, back-pack and shoes, food & cigarettes, and sex, alcohol & drugs, then your mental filter is set to read the story. Just read every other paragraph and you won't dwell on the insignificant. This book is unusual in that it is written by a native 30 yr Chinese who is on an extended tour starting in 1982 (p17); quite the opposite of a tourist book written by a round-eye.

His writing is really a rambling diary of his bumbling, dirt-cheap, 3-year vagabond tour around China, crashing on and bumming off of friends of other literary or journalist's friends. He is part writer / journalist, part photographer, part poet, part painter, but can't do anything very well (p42), other than shagging women in the same boat. Other women are quite wary of him. One laughs wryly, "The quickest way to commit suicide is to marry an artist (p215)."

His travels start from Beijing, west via train to the deserts of Qinghai, south to Chendu and east via the Yangtze river, then north to Xi'an and further to the Genghis ruins on the desolate Shaanxi steppes along the Yellow river. South through Sichuan and east to Qingdao his birthplace, south along the coast to Shanghai, Canton, Hainan, inland to the Yunnan minority regions, Golden Triangle, and finally Tibet. Certainly a long trek, some with humanity and much in solitary. The situations that he gets himself into can be interesting otherwise it's daily page filler. Sort of a DIY manual on how to hitch for a ride, how to sleep with a roof overhead, and how to sponge a cup of tea or meal off of dolting peasants.

Sometimes he tries amusing scams to earn some spending money, such as, becoming a street barber in Qinghai (p107), selling pot cleanser for tooth polish in Shaanxi (p199), and help setup a Yunnan minority peoples exhibition in Canton (p208) which of course is a desperate flop, as the Cantonese are much too busy making money to come.

There is a map of his travels on the inside F&B covers (HC), and there are 8 detailed map / drawings heading the chapters. There are no pictures in his book, even though he carries a camera through his trip. He carries the camera mainly to impress his credentials as a journalist (p272) to the local authorities, at least enough to get a meal and an overnight bed.

He spends some time in Chendu, to recharge, party with the local literati, and witness the new economy in western China. He talks to new graduate staffers that are slowly mutating into the cynics like himself (p141). Fleeing his shadow he continues his journey to sacred Buddhist sites (p156) and visits an infamous prison at Chongqing. He sees the posted executions list, which ironically reminds him of witnessing an execution who turns out to be of a former lover of his ex-wife (p160).

Once more, yearning for cleansing deprivation, he hikes north to Xi'an and the Yellow river of Inner Mongolia to visit the ageless ruins of past civilizations. Once more penniless, he drops in with the local literati, including a film studio and dance troupe, all local closet dissidents, and earns money as a magazine illustrator for a spell. He sees a museum of 2,300 stone tablets that chronicles classical Chinese history and philosophy (p170) and interviews recovering opium addicts in a state sanitarium (p177).

He visiting his parents, siblings, and birthplace in Qingdao (p205) by the Yellow Sea and he remembers his childhood and how he was a selfless disciple of Chmn Mao. Somehow he has mutated into a rebellious ne'er-do-well with a 7 year itch, who divorced his wife, child, and leaves a mistress who jilted him, to travel throughout China before escaping to the West probably under the guise of political persecution. He keeps in contact with everybody by letters and asks respondents to send them to his next friend-in-the-trade.

Of the redeeming factors for this effort is that you visit areas that no round-eye tourist would ever see or visit, let alone talk about. At the start in order to purge his bad thoughts of Chinese socialism, he walks across the Gobi Desert to see the buried ruins the Grotto of 10K Buddhas (p76). He endures a 1 week long dust storm, then suicidally sets out again, and nearly dies from thirst, crawls into a swollen salt lake; he almost becomes a relic as a tenderfoot walking the desert. Much later, he takes a bus into the Yunnan minority region jungles and learns about reusable burial grounds. He crawls through the jungle, sleeps in trees, and passes by aboriginal huts whose inhabitants are just afraid of him as he of they (p266). When he needs to cross a river in the rain, he finds a raft and single-handedly makes it across within an inch of his life (p276), then he has to climb out of the river gorge before nightfall...makes it to a village and is interrogated and house-arrested. He escapes and continues his journey to Tibet.

In Tibet, he tries to get close to Buddhism, visits with a Han who has exiled himself there and who has learned Tibetan. Now his sidekick, he tries to learn the ways of the monk, attends a sky burial (warning: very gross p311), makes a preposterous attempt at Mt Everest, and finally he drops as a hospital case of diarrhea & dehydration. Denouncing his vagrant life and exhausted from his trek and misery, finally cleansed and survived the privations of his spiritual pilgrimage (p 105), he returns to civilization.

Definitely a modern Chinese Don Quixote, Don Juan, and Dissident Don, he finally finds himself and tells us after recovering for 15 yrs in Hong Kong and London. He says that having money is the key to freedom (p105), yet having money is a quick route to Spiritual Pollution (p223). If you are looking for an existential view of China, then this book is for you, which I read at a local library.