Lost Souls Adrift in a Materialistic River

Profile of Chinese author Murong Xuecun, whose novel Leave Me Alone was recently translated into English for the first time and published in Australia.

This article was originally published in the Sydney Morning Herald, May 16-17, 2009. A pdf of the SMH article can be found at the bottom of the page.

“This society is like a dirty river,” Chinese novelist Murong Xuecun says, his words tumbling out in a rapid-fire stream. “The river holds all kinds of people and all kinds of behaviour. Some can melt into the river, others can’t.”

Murong’s dark world view has informed a string of Chinese bestsellers and made him the enfant terrible of the country’s often staid literary scene. With the publication of Leave Me Alone – A Novel of Chengdu in English this month, Australians have their first chance to dip into Murong’s hard-boiled style.

For all the seediness of his fictional world, the 35-year-old exudes an unexpectedly boyish charm in the flesh. But as he sips his third coffee in the past-midnight surrounds of a deserted Shanghai bar, it’s clear that beneath his good humour lies an edgy restiveness.

“I get bored really easily,” he admits, his cigarette burning down to a long ash as he speaks. “Normally I don’t stay in one place for more than two years. After graduating from university in Beijing, I moved to Sichuan’s capital Chengdu for love. I had a girlfriend and a decent, well-paid job in a cosmetics company. But I could already foresee my life at 50. I’d still be in Chengdu, doing the same things, with every day exactly the same. I couldn’t bear it.”

By 2000 Murong had quit his relationship and moved to the southern industrial city of Shenzhen. Two years later, inspired by the proliferation of web-based literature in China, he posted Leave Me Alone as a series on-line and became an overnight sensation.

“Before the internet, publishing in China was governed by people with really unique tastes,” Murong comments wryly. “My first book was huge because at that time there was no urban literature – not a single book describing a real city. In fact when my work was first posted on-line the mainstream didn’t even recognise it as literature. It often appeared on porn websites.”

In contrast to the rural tales favoured by official publishers, Leave Me Alone provided a brutally honest portrait of contemporary Chinese urban life – replete with greed, corruption and emotionless sex. It struck an instant chord with China’s young middle class, eventually attracting an estimated five million readers. A print version was quickly published and is thought to have sold over a million copies – although exact sales figures are notoriously unreliable in China.

Murong’s story centres on Chen Zhong, a young sales manager for a motor oil company in Chengdu. Chen’s working life is a battlefield of backstabbing politics, his personal life a bitter mess. As his youthful dreams dissipate in Chengdu’s polluted, humid air, he descends into a nocturnal world of illicit deals, casual sex and all-night gambling sessions, fuelled by ever-mounting debt.

It’s difficult to appreciate how startling Murong’s harsh vision is in China, where the media pumps out a constant barrage of mindlessly positive stories about economic growth and saccharine praise of political leaders. Unsurprisingly, the writer’s frank descriptions of corruption and random fornication have provoked considerable ire.

“At the time Leave Me Alone was first published, the party secretary of Chengdu organised a meeting of people in the arts to criticise the novel,” Murong recalls with a smile. “At the time I had no experience with this kind of thing and really thought it was a serious issue.”

He’s since grown a thicker skin. “When Leave Me Alone was published in print they deleted over 10,000 words and changed the fate of some of my characters. What can I do?” he asks rhetorically, throwing his arms open. “My new story, Dancing Through Red Dust had 20,000 words cut out, and I had to rewrite the ending three times!”

“Sensitive content is pre-emptively deleted by the publisher,” he continues. “Because if they don’t the book may be banned outright, and the editor may get into trouble.” He leans forward with a knowing grin. “But since 2002 Leave Me Alone has been republished many times. With each new version I have added some of the deleted content, until the full text is now available in China. In any case, it was always available on-line.”

Despite penning a further three novels since Leave Me Alone, Murong remains a proud outsider in China’s literary world, and refuses to join the country’s state-run writers’ association. “They never give writers any help, teach them anything, or even protect their rights. I really think it’s a ridiculous organisation.”

While he has only contempt for China’s literary institutions, Murong’s passion for reading is evident in the broad range of influences he cites, from US crime novelist Lawrence Block to German poet Hölderlin. “I love poems more than novels, and read poetry for half an hour every day before I start writing.”

Cinema has also played a big part in Murong’s approach; he singles out Sergio Leone’s Once Upon a Time in America for special praise. “A Chinese reader commented my writing is very visual – I zoom in for close-ups just like a camera.”

It’s the directness of his prose, along with his unflinching focus on the empty promises of China’s newfound materialism that allows Murong’s work to resonate across cultures. “This lack of meaning in people’s lives is all over the world,” he says, gesturing at the shadowy Shanghai street outside.

“The more people have, the more empty their lives. They buy a big house, expensive cars and have all kinds of lovers. But they have nothing spiritual or philosophical in their lives. In this sense, the meaning of life has disappeared.”

If Leave Me Alone evokes a common malaise, Murong is too smart to pretend he has answers – all his work offers is the cold comfort of mutual confusion in the face of modern life.

Murong is a guest at the Sydney Writers’ Festival.

www.swf.org.au

Thanks to Hua Rong for her assistance interviewing Murong.

Leave Me Alone – A Novel of Chengdu will be published by Allen & Unwin at $23.99.

Murong Xuecun, author of Leave Me Alone – A Novel of Chengdu,

recently translated into English for the first time and published in Australia.