![\"running-through-beijing-500-web\"](\"http:\/\/www.chinesepen.org\/english\/files\/2014\/05\/running-through-beijing-500-web.jpg\")
<\/a>May 14, 2014 | by bloglarb<\/p>\nBy Megan Shank<\/p>\n
Step out of the Beijing airport, and taste the tang in the air. For the remainder of your time in the capital, it will linger, metallic, on the back of your tongue. Is it burning plastic? Coal? The sweat of migrant workers who have come to chase dreams and money? The boozy breath of corrupt officials? The hot asphalt poured for wide boulevards? The lingering dust of razed neighborhoods, a powdery earthen scent that haunts like an odiferous<\/p>\n
ghost? Pop music blares. Repairmen bike through neighborhoods with megaphones advertising their services. Garlic hits food vendors\u2019 woks with a sizzle. Amateur opera singers warble in the park. Buses belch fumes. Modern subway doors swoosh open, people smoosh together. Old men with t-shirts rolled up over their bellies sit on stools in alleyways and chat. Young lovers wearing matching outfits interlace fingers and stroll in shopping malls. More than a million smokers could be lighting their cigarettes at any given moment. With enough of a spark, it almost feels like the atmosphere could burst into flames and smolder.<\/p>\n
Xu Zechen\u2019s slim 2008 novel Running Through Beijing, recently translated into an English version published by Two Lines Press (2014), transported me back to that city and all its colorful inhabitants. The novel captures the taste and tension of Beijing better than any I\u2019ve ever read. I felt the grit from Beijing\u2019s frequent sandstorms sting my eyes. I savored on my tongue again the spicy mutton of a hotpot joint. Readers will internalize the restlessness and loneliness of young strivers. And Eric Abrahamsen\u2019s translation is so deft, it\u2019s hard to remember that it wasn\u2019t originally written in English. He especially executes slang-filled dialogue with pizzazz.<\/p>\n
We meet the raffish Dunhuang on the day he\u2019s released from prison. With the rest of his crew still in jail for selling fake IDs and only a few bucks in his pocket, Dunhuang wanders the streets smoking cigarettes and ducking dirt devils. His only mission is to get back on his feet \u2013 and, later, to find a young woman named Qibao for his still imprisoned comrade Bao Ding. Unfortunately, Dunhuang only recognizes the young woman by her ample backside, so he begins a butt tour of Beijing. Xu\u2019s description of this mission seems a lewd wink at what Tolstoy wrote about happy families being all alike: \u201cThe majority of asses are unappetizing\u2026The unpleasant ones were each unpleasant in their own way, but the nice looking ones were all similar.\u201d<\/p>\n
Dunhuang befriends Xiaorong, a young woman selling DVDs. She is also a transplant but, unlike Dunhuang, has a clearer vision of what she wants for her long-term future: a family and a place of her own back home. The two quickly develop a personal and professional connection \u2013 they shack up and Dunhuang begins selling Xiaorong\u2019s DVDs, particularly the highly profitable porn \u2013 but other relationships and a crackdown on the illegal DVD market complicate their simple bond, as do several unfolding mysteries of identity.<\/p>\n
Dunhuang \u2013 whose father randomly chose his name from a newspaper article about the discovery of caves with fantastic Buddhist art \u2013 hustles to survive. The book\u2019s title references the German film, Run Lola Run, which makes a cameo. But no matter how fast Dunhuang sprints to deliver DVDs, he doesn\u2019t have much control over the direction of his life. It\u2019s almost as if he were just one speck of dust among countless others blowing, drifting, settling and resettling around Beijing. He meets a diversity of characters along the way. Some seem real to the point of vulgarity; others feel like people from a half-remembered dream. Everyone craves diversion.<\/p>\n
Still, Dunhuang experiences a subtle transformation: he gains a new appreciation for art films and increased acumen for business psychology. He\u2019s a highly likable character, and we root for him as he searches for Qibao, negotiates with shifty landlords, navigates his relationship with Xiaorong, and runs into other DVD hawkers who carry children as a defense mechanism against police detainment.<\/p>\n
Articles about the Chinese economic boom dominate the newspapers, but Running Through Beijing sheds light on often overlooked underworld sites and transactions \u2013 on the karaoke bars that are fronts for brothels, on the counterfeit industry \u2013 and demonstrates how the Chinese success story doesn\u2019t extend itself to all players, no matter how great their sacrifices.<\/p>\n
The first three-fourths of the book are stronger than its final pages, and its conclusion feels both too tidy and too melodramatic. The author also suddenly abandons Dunhuang for a time to follow Bao Ding, which is jarring. But the writing throughout has great verve and humor. Some lines made me laugh out loud, especially Dunhuang\u2019s ability with insults, calling people cabbage heads, for instance, or saying one woman is \u201ctoo ugly to argue with.\u201d<\/p>\n
During one storm in the book, 300,000 tons of dust descends on Beijing and cakes everything with a yellow film. Much of it comes from Beijing\u2019s construction of buildings and roads. The quest for development and connection has rendered unclear conditions and created an alien landscape. Dunhuang scratches his cell phone number in the sand, along with \u201cDVDs,\u201d and waits.<\/p>\n
Megan Shank co-edits the Asia Section of the LARB.<\/p>\n
From The LARB<\/p>\n
A Trip Back to Beijing \u2014 Courtesy of Xu Zechen and Eric Abrahamsen<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n