Abstract
As an integral aspect of the human condition, trash is a mirror of civilization and a symptom of culture. The history of Chinese literature has produced a huge number of writings on trash and trash pickers. Focusing on the contemporary Chinese writer Jia Pingwa’s Happy Dreams, this paper studies how the writer created in the life of the protagonist Happy Liu and his fellow trash pickers a demonstration of the heterogeneity in China’s urbanization, and how the life of Happy Liu in the novel exemplifies the liminality of the Chinese urban space. With the representation of this liminality of almost-in-the-city, the novel presents the readers with a different topography of urbanization in China, one that maps the shadowed existence of trash pickers like Happy Liu as “wasted lives” and invisible zeros in the grand narrative of modernization. This paper also analyzes how the protagonists turn to aesthetic practices to find value for their existence and how trash as the uncanny has the potential to explain important shifts in contemporary China, ranging from economy politics to environmental issues because value forms are not only representations of social relations but also channels that help maintain systems of power and hierarchy.
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Notes
In Rubbish! The archaeology of garbage, William Rathje and Cullen Murphy distinguish “garbage,” “trash,” “refuse,” and “rubbish.” For Rathje and Murphy, Trash refers to “dry” discards-newspapers, boxes, cans, and so on. Garbage refers technically to “wet” discards-food remains, yard waste, and offal. Refuse is an inclusive term for both the wet discards and the dry. Rubbish is even more inclusive: if refers to all refuse plus construction and demolition debris (1992, p. 9). This paper chooses “trash” rather than other similar terms on the grounds that what trash pickers pick up in the city, as represented in the novel, is mainly dry discards, and it is also the word the English translation of the novel uses.
Brian Haman in Asian Review of Books praises its “Rabelaisian-like humor and colorful tableaus of migrant workers with their diverse personalities, aspirations, and shortcomings.” There are also readings of the novel from the angle of the image of peasants in the city (Deming Xu), the conflicts between city life and country life (Lasheng Jiang), and the spiritual dilemma of the protagonist (Xiaolan Yang ), etc.
Jia Pingwa (1952-) was born in Danfeng county of Shanxi Province, the capital of which being Xi’an, the city where many stories in his writing happen, including Happy Dreams. As one of the most celebrated writers in China, Jia Pingwa has published 15 novels and numerous collections of short stories and essays. He was awarded the most prestigious literary award in China, the Mao Dun Literary Prize (an official and most renowned literary award in China) in 2007 with his work Shanxi Opera (“Qin Qiang” in Chinese). The French translation of The Ruined City (“Fei Du” in Chinese) won the Prix Femina Etranger award in France.
“Ganmo” means dried steamed bread that the trash pickers carry as food. It is dried because dried food lasts longer.
Qin Qiang Opera refers to a local opera in Shan Xi province sung in the local dialect.
Of course, selective waste collection and recycling may just make their life harder, since much less reusable or valuable items can be picked. Yet this is another issue that is not in the realm of the current paper’s area of study.
The Chinese pronunciation of the name of Happy’s love interest Meng Yichun is the same as “dream of her to be pure,” which in some ways signifies that Happy’s love for her can only be a dream because she is not the type of pure woman as Happy likes to think her to be. Instead, she is an underground prostitute (working in a brothel covered as a hair saloon) and sleeps with Wei Da to make money.
In the English translation of Happy Dreams, the xiao is simply translated by Nicky Harman as “flute” most of the time, except when it appears in italicized form as Xiao and is explained as a flute which you hold vertically (5). In actuality however, xiao and flute are two different kinds of musical instruments. On page 20 of the English version of the book, Happy Liu mentioned he is the only person in the village who can play the Xiao, while lots of people could play the fiddle. In the source text it is the Erhu, which is a two-stringed bowed vertical fiddle, also called Southern Fiddle and also known as the Chinese violin or a Chinese two-stringed fiddle. Both Xiao and Erhu are traditional Chinese musical instruments and Erhu is more popular than Xiao.
As the Chinese idiom Ye Luo Gui Gen (falling leaves settle on their roots, meaning to end one’s days on one’s native soil) has it, it is traditional practice to bury one’s bones in one’s hometown. That is why after Wufu dies, Happy Liu tries to carry his dead body home, as that is the last thing and a very important one for him to do for his friend.
For the importance of the integrity of the body in several religious and other discourses cf. (Hajdu 2020, pp. 82-85)
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This paper is sponsored by Zhejiang Province’s Leading Talent in Social Sciences Breeding Program (Project Number 21YJRC13ZD).
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Zhou, M. The culture and politics of the trash and the trash pickers in Jia Pingwa’s Happy Dreams. Neohelicon 48, 639–653 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11059-021-00601-1
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11059-021-00601-1