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Beijing Coma
by Ma Jian
Reviewed by Robert H. Abel
While in some ways a tedious and exasperating novel, Beijing Coma is in many more ways amazing, engrossing and -- in the final analysis -- important.
Dai Wei has been slammed into a coma by a gunshot wound to the head in Tiananmen Square on June 4th 1989. His main in the demonstrations had been "chief of security", tasked with protecting key student leaders and especially their broadcasting center.
Because no one dares to take on the treatment of a dissident who, once he regains consciousness, will most likely be thrown in jail, Dai is abandoned to the care of his mother and the occasional people she can hire to help. This intimate contact allows us to get to know the mother better than the other characters -- and there are many -- and the arc of her attitudes from devoted communist party supporter to Buddhist, to Falon Da Fa adherent to bitter anti-communist is one of the novel's unifying threads. She is torn between wanting her son to break out of his coma and wishing he would die, not only to end his own suffering, but to free her to a "normal" life.
Dai's recollections have to do with his family, his romances (three major ones), and, to the largest extent, his involvement in the 1989 student protests, strands which are, as you would expect in a novel, intertwined. Dai's grandfather had been stripped of the factory he owned and hounded into suicide and his father had been branded a "rightist" during the Cultural Revolution and driven crazy. Dai himself, therefore, has inherited a "bad family" label and his joining the student democracy movement has as much to do with personal as with political reasons.
Dai's portrait of the student leaders and the power struggles among the various university factions is sometimes exasperatingly detailed and it certainly destroys much of the glamour associated with the movement. This is unquestionably revealing stuff, a true insider's look at the dynamics of, and tensions within the leadership. We also see through Dai's eyes that the Communist Party's tensions of its own between reformers such as Hu Yaobang and Zhao Ziyang and the hard-liners Deng Xiao-ping and the era's most hated man in China, Li Peng.
The drama and tragedy of the events of June 4th pretty much carry their own historical weight here, though Ma's description of the final moments on the square as the tanks arrive is truly hair-raising. For readers who followed the events at the time, the novel's student leaders such as Bai Ling and Ke Xi will conjure images of Chai Ling and Wu'er Kai Xi, but readers without the background familiarity with the events at that time may find the characterization a bit shallow. The action is otherwise both fast and detailed -- a lot was happening and happening all at once! No wonder the student leaders were mainly exhausted.
The other major portion of the novel takes place in the present, in the various rooms where Dai lies, attended by his mother who is only rarely off-scene. He is moved occasionally, at least once every year before June 4 so that his mother will have no access to foreign journalists. But he is also moved because the neighborhoods -- hutongs -- where he and his family have lived are being systematically destroyed to make way for 2008 Olympic venues. In fact, the novel ends with such a razing.
A lot, surprisingly, takes place in the confines of Dai's bedroom -- a foul-smelling and cluttered little theatre in its way. I was reminded of Ivan Turgenev's Diary of a Superfluous Man when Dai becomes friends with a sparrow which hovers over him like a spirit. He has visitors from his past with revealing details of his friends in jail and in exile; his mother has friends also who visit when they dare; the occasional nurse or aide comes by with news of the outside world. There is even a pair of sexual episodes. Some bizarre humor, bordering on the satirical, occurs when Dai's mother has visitors who believe in the power of a daily glass of urine to promote health. On the strength of that belief, Dai's mother does a brisk business with the little that Dai, in his state, can produce.
Beijing Coma is a huge enterprise, but if at times it seems rambling or obsessed with certain details, it also takes shape little by little, sometimes vigorously, even shockingly, so. I suppose it will be debated whether the novel achieves a convincing metaphor for the state of the Chinese democracy movement, or China itself. Does it end on an absurd spark of optimism -- sardonically -- or a genuine glimmer of hope? Ma Jian has plumbed history to create this historically important and well-timed work. But perhaps it is only the future which can reveal how the ending shall be properly understood.
--
Robert H. Abel is a USA-based writer who writes frequently on subjects related to China. He has published three novels (including Riding a Tiger) and three collections of stories.
by Ma Jian
Reviewed by Robert H. Abel
While in some ways a tedious and exasperating novel, Beijing Coma is in many more ways amazing, engrossing and -- in the final analysis -- important.
Dai Wei has been slammed into a coma by a gunshot wound to the head in Tiananmen Square on June 4th 1989. His main in the demonstrations had been "chief of security", tasked with protecting key student leaders and especially their broadcasting center.
Because no one dares to take on the treatment of a dissident who, once he regains consciousness, will most likely be thrown in jail, Dai is abandoned to the care of his mother and the occasional people she can hire to help. This intimate contact allows us to get to know the mother better than the other characters -- and there are many -- and the arc of her attitudes from devoted communist party supporter to Buddhist, to Falon Da Fa adherent to bitter anti-communist is one of the novel's unifying threads. She is torn between wanting her son to break out of his coma and wishing he would die, not only to end his own suffering, but to free her to a "normal" life.
Dai's recollections have to do with his family, his romances (three major ones), and, to the largest extent, his involvement in the 1989 student protests, strands which are, as you would expect in a novel, intertwined. Dai's grandfather had been stripped of the factory he owned and hounded into suicide and his father had been branded a "rightist" during the Cultural Revolution and driven crazy. Dai himself, therefore, has inherited a "bad family" label and his joining the student democracy movement has as much to do with personal as with political reasons.
Dai's portrait of the student leaders and the power struggles among the various university factions is sometimes exasperatingly detailed and it certainly destroys much of the glamour associated with the movement. This is unquestionably revealing stuff, a true insider's look at the dynamics of, and tensions within the leadership. We also see through Dai's eyes that the Communist Party's tensions of its own between reformers such as Hu Yaobang and Zhao Ziyang and the hard-liners Deng Xiao-ping and the era's most hated man in China, Li Peng.
The drama and tragedy of the events of June 4th pretty much carry their own historical weight here, though Ma's description of the final moments on the square as the tanks arrive is truly hair-raising. For readers who followed the events at the time, the novel's student leaders such as Bai Ling and Ke Xi will conjure images of Chai Ling and Wu'er Kai Xi, but readers without the background familiarity with the events at that time may find the characterization a bit shallow. The action is otherwise both fast and detailed -- a lot was happening and happening all at once! No wonder the student leaders were mainly exhausted.
The other major portion of the novel takes place in the present, in the various rooms where Dai lies, attended by his mother who is only rarely off-scene. He is moved occasionally, at least once every year before June 4 so that his mother will have no access to foreign journalists. But he is also moved because the neighborhoods -- hutongs -- where he and his family have lived are being systematically destroyed to make way for 2008 Olympic venues. In fact, the novel ends with such a razing.
A lot, surprisingly, takes place in the confines of Dai's bedroom -- a foul-smelling and cluttered little theatre in its way. I was reminded of Ivan Turgenev's Diary of a Superfluous Man when Dai becomes friends with a sparrow which hovers over him like a spirit. He has visitors from his past with revealing details of his friends in jail and in exile; his mother has friends also who visit when they dare; the occasional nurse or aide comes by with news of the outside world. There is even a pair of sexual episodes. Some bizarre humor, bordering on the satirical, occurs when Dai's mother has visitors who believe in the power of a daily glass of urine to promote health. On the strength of that belief, Dai's mother does a brisk business with the little that Dai, in his state, can produce.
Beijing Coma is a huge enterprise, but if at times it seems rambling or obsessed with certain details, it also takes shape little by little, sometimes vigorously, even shockingly, so. I suppose it will be debated whether the novel achieves a convincing metaphor for the state of the Chinese democracy movement, or China itself. Does it end on an absurd spark of optimism -- sardonically -- or a genuine glimmer of hope? Ma Jian has plumbed history to create this historically important and well-timed work. But perhaps it is only the future which can reveal how the ending shall be properly understood.
--
Robert H. Abel is a USA-based writer who writes frequently on subjects related to China. He has published three novels (including Riding a Tiger) and three collections of stories.
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