Words Without Borders The World Through the Eyes of Writers an Anthology

MA JIAN A sign painted on the wall of the hospital cafeteria reads: PRACTICE REVOLUTIONARY HUMANISM. But the hospital won't care for those who can't pay for care; it leaves them begging at its gates. The crowds gawk, but don't intervene. Parents of those in need of help are helpless. What's left? Ma Jian is impossible to classify. He writes politically, but he isn't a political writer. He employs surrealism without being a surrealist. Is he a comic nihilist? A tragic comedian? Ferocious? Generous? All and none, he explodes any title you might try to apply to him. Except, perhaps, for "revolutionary humanist." This story about a hospital is a hospital. A good, humane hospital, a revolutionary hospital that doesn't look like anything that came before it. But its characters aren't its patients. Its readers are. Where are you running to? Characters in this story are running to different places--some to their pasts, some to their futures. Some are running to ideas of themselves, some to ideas that don't include people. Readers are always running toward the same place when they open a book. We're trying to get to a greater understanding of ourselves. Books have no burden to entertain. Television and film and music are entertaining enough. Books don't need to be political or surreal or comic or tragic. They need to help us understand ourselves. Everything else a book does is incidental to that. Writers are all running, too. They're running to meet their readers. --JONATHAN SAFRAN FOER WHERE ARE YOU RUNNING TO? "Where are you running to?" shouts Zhao Chunyu, chairwoman of the local neighborhood committee, as she stands in the entrance to the staff accommodation block. She's wearing cotton trousers and a tracksuit top that's faded to the color of old bricks. Her freshly washed hair, which was cut by her husband, Old Liu, and that's just been washed, is fluffing out in all directions, making her round face look even larger and her narrow eyes even smaller. At the moment, however, these small eyes are popping with rage; her arms are tightly folded across her chest, and a smell of raw celery is escaping from her mouth. A few minutes ago, she was chopping up vegetables for dinner. Old Liu walked in and, without washing his hands, broke off a stick of celery to have with his beer. Chunyu popped a piece into her mouth as well, and as they munched away, their son, Kai, leaped from his stool and rushed out of the door. Chunyu moved the bowl of celery onto the piano, out of Old Liu's reach, then followed her son downstairs. "Where are you running to?" she shouts again. "I don't want to play 'Pleading Child.' I hate slow pieces!" "Well you can play 'Perfectly Contented' instead!" "No, I won't play anything by Schumann! I refuse!" "All right then. Tonight you can practice Chopin's Revolutionary Etude for a couple of hours. It's very fast, and it has that passage you like so much where the left hand plays in octaves." "No, I won't play it! I won't!" Kai is shouting so loudly everyone in the block can hear. One wouldn't expect a ten-year-old child to be capable of producing such a noise. "Come back here!" As Chunyu jumps down the two concrete steps below the entrance, Kai grabs on to a small willow tree that's just been planted, swings around in a half circle, then shoots off like a bullet down a small alleyway. Chunyu hesitates for a while. Above her, she can hear her neighbor Old Jia saying to Old Zun, who lives on the third floor, "If Kai doesn't get into music school this time, he's had it. Next year he'll be too old." "He's always playing the same pieces," Old Zun replies. "I know them by heart." Then he shouts down to Chunyu, "Your piano's sounding terrible these daysMason, Alane Salierno is the author of 'Words Without Borders The World Through the Eyes of Writers an Anthology', published 2007 under ISBN 9781400079759 and ISBN 1400079756.