The Chinese Republic period (1912 – 1949) was undoubtedly a high point for modern Chinese literature. The country was growing amidst unprecedented upheavals; it was a time of dissent, new thinking, and, in literary terms, there was a widespread attempt to identify China for what it was and carve out a path for what it could be. The sheer number of great literary minds was staggering: Lu Xun (鲁迅), Lao She (老舍), Lin Yutang (林语堂), Mao Dun (茅盾), and Hu Shi (胡适), to name but a few. Arguably, the greatest novel from the period—and there were many—came at its tail end, Fortress Besieged (《围城》) by Qian Zhongshu (钱钟书), claimed by some to be the greatest Chinese novel of the 20th century.
Qian wrote the book over a two-year period from 1944 to 1946 in Shanghai, when it was under Japanese occupation, difficult times indeed. It was a time when Qian “worried about the world and was sad about life,” but the book itself is by no means bellicose. It would be easy to see the “fortress besieged” as a metaphor for what Shanghai, indeed China, was going through at the time, but even though war serves as a backdrop to the story, fundamentally, the book is a social, not a political one. The siege in question is in fact a domestic conflict, as encapsulated in the French proverb that opens the book: “Marriage is like a fortress besieged, those who are outside want to get in, and those on the inside want to get out.” The novel is, in part, a scabrous and melancholy dissection of marriage as an institution, but other layers have kept scholars busy for decades.
In his introduction, Qian writes: “In this book I intend to write about a certain segment of society and a certain type of people in modern China.” Qian’s range of allusions, touch for languages, and understanding of Western thought was dense, and having studied at Oxford University as well as the Sorbonne, Qian was well-suited to write a novel that placed Chinese characters and their feelings within an international context. The plot follows the travails of Pooterish everyman Fang Hung-chien, who wasted his time studying abroad and ends up buying a fake diploma from an Irishman before heading back to China in the hope of impressing his family and, eventually, finding a wife. Qian’s knowledge of the Western literary canon is evident, though never heavily so, and the book at times reads like a comedy of manners equal to works from Wilde, Waugh, or Wodehouse. His characterization is playful and almost Dickensian at times. Regarding Miss Po, one of the protagonist’s potential love interests, he writes:
Some called her a charcuterie—a shop selling cooked meats—because only such a shop would have so much warm-colored flesh on public display. Others called her ‘Truth’, since it was said that ‘the truth is naked’. But Miss Pao at least wore a few clothes, so they revised her name to ‘Partial Truth’.
Though capturing a section of the “modern China” of the 1930s perfectly, Qian also seems to have skewered much of China today in perhaps unintended satire. Qian aims any number of people, behaviors, and institutions, which will have you (nearly 70 years later) raising eyebrows in scandalous assent: mediocre single women who are obscenely picky in their choice of men; tiresome matchmaking sessions arranged by overzealous parents; Chinese men insisting upon using clumsy English phrases and, of course, their English name (Jimmy Zhang); or simply those curvy women who show (way) too much flesh. Qian’s pen is light, never taking itself too seriously, always scurrilously moving for laughs.
Another thing that boldly shines through is that China’s relationship with the West was just as awkward then as it is today. Acutely aware of the ambiguities in the relationship, it’s something with which Qian constantly toys. There’s the obsessing over Western products (American cod liver oil tablets, German vitamins, French handbags), not to mention some defiantly exuberant generalizations throughout: the French are “famous for the clarity of their thought and lucidity of their prose, yet in whatever they do, they never fail to bring chaos, filth, and hubbub,” whereas the Irish are all “irresponsibility, quick wit, and poverty.” Comments that touch on the nature of the West’s relationship with China are never heavy-handed; instead, they are invariably wry, with Qian’s tongue firmly in cheek. When it comes to buying the fake diploma, Fang actually manages to swindle the Irishman who tries to swindle him:
The Irish was so enraged that he cursed without stop, got drunk, and red-eyed and sought to pick a fight with any Chinese he could find. The incident may well mark China’s sole victory over the foreigners since she began to have foreign relations or signed her first treaty of commerce.
It doesn’t stop there either. On the steam of his fake degree, Fang is invited to give a speech at a university. It’s a disaster of Lucky Jim proportions, where he proudly says the West’s only long-lasting influences on Chinese culture were opium and syphilis.
Education comes under Qian’s boot too. Today, there are many Chinese students, though by no means all, who want a foreign degree—not for the education and what the learning implies—simply to have the certificate itself, and they are willing to get it through any means. The problems of today grew out of those of the past:
Fang Hung-chien finally realized the importance of a foreign diploma. The diploma it seemed would function the same as Adam and Eve’s fig-leaf. It could hide a person’s shame and wrap up his disgrace. This tiny square of paper could cover his shallowness, ignorance and stupidity. Without it, it was as if he was spiritually stark naked and had nothing to bundle up in.
Degree holders and academics are held up as boorish and phony throughout. Fang himself is of mediocre ability, yet always ambitious and boastful; in essence, he is delightfully delusional, again, there is usually a touch of truth in his delusions, not to mention humor, as with his justification for buying the fake diploma in the first place:
But remember Fang had been a philosophy major, and to a philosophy major lying and cheating were not always immoral…Since both his father and father-in-law hoped he would become a Ph.D. how could he a son and son-in-law dare disappoint them?… Every dutiful son and worthy son-in-law should seek to please his elders by bringing glory to the family.
A scathing satire, a comedy of manners, and even a love story, both of its time and ahead of its time, the book somehow feels Chinese and foreign at the same time, and therein lies the power of Qian’s prose. The novel constantly mocks middle-class snobbery (the type found the world over), and deftly makes subtle digs about identity, women, marriage, and education, so even when the book ends on a slightly melancholy note, the reader feels gratified and enthralled. The only real sadness is that Qian’s high-water mark came in 1947, not a great year to start an artistic career in China, and he never wrote another novel again. But it matters not; this one, enough, should safeguard his place in Chinese literary history.
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