China High: My Fast Times in the 010: A Beijing Memoir
Reviewed by Nick Frisch
Posted April 7, 2009
After a plethora of over hyped titles—such as Beijing Doll, Shanghai Baby, and Candy—which promised to give the inside scoop on modern China’s drugged out, oversexed, freewheeling underside, readers would justly be skeptical toward a book called China High.
And after so many fresh-off-the-boat journalists with little knowledge of Chinese culture or language and less originality, readers might look askance at yet another book proffering insights into the contradictions of China’s modernization and key concepts like “face” and “guanxi (connections).”
So, great news: China High delivers in a single punch what others promise but don’t provide. Also, it’s frequently funny, immensely readable, and despite an occasional moral sensibility, not preachy in the least. And did I mention the author spent two weeks in a Chinese jail for smoking opium-laced hashish?
ZZ is the author’s nom de plume, and before he became a swaggering connoisseur of Beijing’s motorcycles, dope and girls, he was but a humble Communist Party brat transplanted to America as a tender teenager, along with his ambitious and well-connected parents. His smarts led him to a college scholarship and college parties, followed by a law degree. High school and college left ZZ fluent in the virtues, vices and viewpoints of American society. And finally, his disciplinarian father and traditional-minded mother kept him rooted in the Chinese language and culture that defined his first dozen years.
The result of ZZ’s quasi-dual life is not only an extraordinarily qualified legal professional, but someone able to navigate in two cultures and pass as a full-fledged member of either. This is a rare skill, rarer still in a licensed lawyer willing to write candidly (albeit anonymously) about purchasing hookers and dope, interrogations with Chinese police, illegal motorcycle importation, his contempt for the common man, faking an entire legal office, starring in a TV racing documentary, and his washboard abs. That he comes off, in the end, as reasonably likeable is perhaps the greatest miracle of all—unless, again, you’re counting the fact that the book is good.
Look beyond flippant, clever, but occasionally rocky prose sprinkled with refrains like “for Mao’s sake,” and “holier-than-Mao”: China High’s main appeal is its density and use of detail. The history behind the card game dou di zhu, or “struggle against landlords,” might make a reverent full-length “local color” story for a visiting journalist armed with overpriced interpreters and a few China books on his reading list; but ZZ is able to condense its significance into a paragraph or two and move right along. Zodiacs, steamed bread, a Nokia cellphone, green tea, fancy cigarettes, beggars, unshowered country lads, porn DVDs, parking lots, mistresses, fatherly beatings, motherly nurturing, Levi 501 jeans, kung pao chicken and more all populate the narrative as naturally as they would life in modern Beijing, but each tells a story bigger than itself. The resulting portrait of modern urban China is extremely thorough, rich and natural.
Fired from his Beijing law office for running a food delivery business on the side, ZZ sets out as a free-lance lawyer. One passage, set in a fake office, describes an elaborate legal charade whose final gambit involves a threat to expose a state-owned firm’s misdeeds in the pages of the South China Morning Post: “To protect its one-party rule from subversive forces instigated by its own minions who live on graft, the Chinese government is now lynching scapegoats with increasing frequency in order to appease an angry public.” Pithy. Of the miscreant company vice president across the desk in his staged office, ZZ muses: “no one wants to be the chicken that is killed to warn a hundred monkeys.”
In driving his points home to an Anglophone audience, ZZ’s points of reference (mostly Americanisms) work well: the five-second rule for dropped food, “breakfast of champions,” making fun of Margaret Thatcher’s looks, a fellow inmate nicknamed Chiwarzenneger. Meanwhile, Chinese expressions—“cao ta ma de,” “niubi,” “shabi,” “pai ma pi,” “yuanfen,” “ge-men’er” and of course “guanxi”—are employed matter-of-factly as an everyday Chinese person might do. The foreign correspondent’s mystical cliché treatment is mercifully absent.
But despite its hubbub, China High doesn’t feel too cluttered: There is room for thoughtful and intelligent digressions on concepts of freedom, legal rights, Chinese identity, the traumas of previous generations and the universe of opportunities and challenges facing younger Chinese. A passage of prison nostalgia, recalling the sweet glutinous rice dumplings ZZ’s late mother would make during Spring Festival, is positively touching.
Besides ZZ’s attention to detail and methodical plotting, China High is set apart by the author’s complete lack of literary aspirations. The man can write well, organize ideas and even conjure a few laughs and heartfelt moments; but with a post at a Shanghai law firm and a new married life, he has none of the needs, insecurities, ambitions or hype that distort nearly every other author’s efforts in China’s now-hot literary circles. There was a good story to tell, and he told it; no need for back scratching, cultivating a writerly identity, becoming an enfant terrible or any other antics that characterize many of China’s professional writers. That alone is an enormously refreshing change from the hype-driven world of Chinese literature.
Nick Frisch free-lance journalist who has lived in Beijing, Hong Kong and Taipei.
