Shifu, You'll Do Anything For a Laugh

this volume, you will have a good picture of what I've tried to do in my shorter fiction.
    “Shifu, You'll Do Anything for a Laugh” is my latest story (it has recently been filmed by China's preeminent director, Zhang Yimou, under the title Happy Days) . While at first it may appear to deal primarily with the “downsizing” problem facing today's Chinese workers, in line with the Chinese saying, “Alcoholism is not really about alcohol,” there is more to the story than meets the eye. What I also want to show is how young couples in love are forced to sneak around to share their love. “Abandoned Child,” written in the mid-1980s, concerns one of contemporary Chinese society's thorniest problems — enforced family planning in a pervasive climate of valuing boys over girls. Decades of governmental efforts in implementing a one-child policy have produced impressive results in China's urban centers, where the long-held concept of “boys are better than girls” has undergone a change. But in the countryside, families with more than one child are still the norm, and the general disdain for baby girls is as prevalent as ever. Unchecked population growth remains China's most serious predicament, and a host of social problems emanating from the one-child policy are already beginning to appear.
    “Man and Beast,” also written in the 1980s, continues the family saga of Red Sorghum and describes how, under extraordinary circumstances, the last shreds of humanity can give rise to a blaze of glory. Toward the end of the 1980s I wrote “Love Story,” a tale of puppy love. Set in the ten years of the disastrous Cultural Revolution, when hundreds of thousands of young men and women were sent from the cities up to the mountains and down to the countryside, the story tells of a young country boy who falls in love with a city girl much older than he, an uncommon turn of events. But it is precisely this feature that allows me to explore the concepts of sadness and beauty.
    “The Cure,” “Iron Child,” and “Soaring” are all part of a series of short pieces I wrote during the early 1990s. “The Cure” is a tale of cannibalism and cruelty, and “Iron Child” and “Soaring” can be read as fables. Finally, there is “Shen Garden,” one of my last stories of the twentieth century. What I want to show here is how a middle-aged man turns his back on the love of an earlier time and eventually compromises with reality. In today's society, many Chinese men who have achieved success, even fame, live hypocritical lives. Deep down, their existence is little more than a pile of ruins.
    As I have said, I am a writer with no theoretical training; but I possess a fertile imagination, thanks in part to China's popular traditions, which I am intent on continuing. I may be ignorant of high-flown literary concepts, but I do know how to spin a bewitching tale, something I learned as a child from my grandfather, my grandmother, and a variety of village storytellers. Critics who base their views of literature on scientific theories of one sort or another don't think much of me. But let's see them write a story that captures a reader's imagination.
    M.Y.
    Beijing, 2001

Translator's Note
    The term shifu is a generic and generally respectful term for skilled workers and the like; widely used, it has, in a sense, replaced other terms, such as “comrade.”It is common in China to use kinship or professional forms of address in preference to given names.
    The Shen Garden in the story of that title, which was located in the southern city of Shaoxing over a millennium ago, is famous as a metaphor for encounters between once married couples. It is where the Southern Song poet Lu You is said to have met Tang Wan, whom his parents had forced him to divorce.
    “The Cure” (literally, “effective medicine”) is an updated version of the famous story “Medicine” by Lu Xun (1881— 1936), twentieth-century China's most renowned literary figure. In the earlier story, a child is treated for consumption with the blood of a beheaded revolutionary, but dies nonetheless; it too is a caustic satire on contemporary society and politics.
    The translator thanks the editor of the Hong Kong magazine Renditions for her editorial suggestions on the story “Soaring” and for permission to reprint. “The Cure” appeared in slightly modified form in my anthology Chairman Mao Would Not Be Amused (Grove Press, 1995). As always, my thanks to