Black Snow [Hardcover]

Liu Heng (Author), Howard Goldblatt (Translator)

Book Description

Publication Date: April 1993

Returning to Beijing after serving a three-year sentence in a prison labor camp for his involvement in a juvenile street fight, Li Huiquan takes work running a peddler's cart and becomes involved in the black market. 15,000 first printing.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Despite some fine, unnerving descriptions of violence in contemporary Bei jing, this gritty second novel by the author of Ju Dou ultimately disappoints. Recently released after a three-year detention in a labor camp, 25-year-old Li Huiquan struggles for survival and self-awareness. His peddler's cart, his painful memories and his profoundly misanthropic outlook accompany him as he mulls over his past and tries to find a future in the seedy bars near his house on Spirit Run Street. Simultaneously detesting and yearning for human contact, he becomes obsessed with Zhao Yaqiu, a lounge singer he sets up as his virtuous ideal in a dark world peopled with slippery friends and supposed enemies. However, a relationship with any human being, especially a woman, proves almost impossibly difficult for the intensely bitter Li. While his acerbic misogyny remains largely unexamined, existential questions--about the meaning of life, the definition of happiness, etc.--are endlessly and repetitively discussed, usually in cliches. Heng tends to pontificate--regrettably, since the novel's more engaging sections feature imaginative, telling details and a skillful intermingling of action and dialogue. At its best, Black Snow is a disturbing, richly alive portrait of a disillusioned young man trying to gain control over a chaotic society; at its worst, the narrative is preachy and static.
Copyright 1993 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Library Journal

Author of the novella upon which the award-winning movie Red Sorghum is based, Liu Heng is one of the new voices in Chinese literature who dares to explore the sights and sounds of Chinese lives previously barred from literary representation. In contrast to the worldly, romanticized characters and outrageously daring actions of his previous work, Liu here presents a character who dies a slow death in reform-era China. Hardly loved by anybody but his adoptive mother, the orphan Li Huiquan fights feelings of dejection during adolescence but ends up in a reform labor camp. When he is released, he is determined to live a straight life by becoming a street vendor, but he ends up being deeply disappointed by the corruption of the so-called entrepreneurs around him and the mock sophistication of the pop singer he worships. Li Huiquan decides to commit suicide only to be pummeled to death by a couple of teenage robbers. A good introduction to the emergent Chinese literature, this book is recommended for libraries that collect serious fiction.
- Cherry W. Li, Los Angeles
Copyright 1993 Reed Business Information, Inc.

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Product Details

• Hardcover
• Publisher: Atlantic Monthly Pr; 1ST edition (April 1993)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0871135302
• ISBN-13: 978-0871135308
• Product Dimensions: 8.4 x 5.5 x 1.1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 15.2 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 4.2 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (4 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,176,457 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

11 of 11 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars finest novel on contemporary China, April 5, 2000

By 

Rick (Hong Kong, China) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Black Snow (Paperback)

Little has been translated into English by Chinese writers whose novels are set in the 1990's. Liu Heng, author of the story which formed the basis for the film, Ju Dou, fills in much of that gap with Howard Goldblatt's excellent translation. A poignant, compelling novel of unrelenting realism, "Black Snow" portrays contemporary life in Beijing in stark and everyday terms. It is a masterpiece of insight into the neglected landscape of ordinary workers existing in extraordinary times. Somehow the mundane comes alive in Liu's writing. The characters are round and, therefore, believable, unlike so many we read in other novels by both exile Chinese and American writers. Nothing is predictable yet nothing is made sensational for its own sake to merely titillate the reader. My graduate students are reading it with keen interest here in Beijing and confirm its veracity. They even admit to having learned a thing or two about the lives of street peddlars in the process. The novel addresses the question of what happens when a disaffected youth attempts to redeem himself, not so much in the eyes of others, as in his own eyes. The finest novel available in English in this genre, in my opinion.

2 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars A Bleak but Overcooked Slice of Beijing Life, June 26, 2004

By 

Steve Koss (New York, NY United States) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Black Snow (Paperback)

Life in China certainly can be difficult, but the same could be said for most parts of the world. Liu Heng's 1993 novel, BLACK SNOW, presents the world of Beijing as seen through the eyes of a miscreant, a rolling pin-wielding brawler who has just been released from prison and must find a place for himself in society. The main character, Li Huiquan, finds himself incapable of connecting with anyone, neither his neighbors nor his old friends nor any of the women he meets. Liu presents Li as emotionally stunted, a hate-filled and violent child in a man's body, as lacking in human warmth and sympathy as the totalitarian system in which he lives. Li Huiquan is also a mysogynist, simultaneously desirous, terrified, and hateful of women, living his romances as fantasies, completely disconnected from the real world. In American society, Li Huiquan could have become a rapist or serial killer. In China, he remains an adult virgin, clueless about how to relate to women and unable to comprehend what motivates them.

BLACK SNOW presents occasional interesting snippets of life in China, but most of the novel is interior dialogue, heavily freighted by Huiquan's repetitive musings about loneliness and the meaning of life. Many of his observations are trite, from the "Why am I the only one who thinks life sucks?" category of philosophical insight. Readers are treated to multiple variations on the same notions, that women are vain and superficial, that men only look out for themselves, and that friends are just users who cannot be trusted.

The main character is improbably twice orphaned, and the violent ending is so contrived as to make the entire story feel overly scripted. In places, Liu's prose offers promise, and a few characters such as the neighborhood police officer Liu Baotie stand on their own, as unique and original characters. For the rest, BLACK SNOW is a small step above a Chinese Ellery Queen or Dashiel Hammett, drawing a disturbing picture of a disturbed man struggling for existence and trying not to get pulled into the underside of Beijing life.

BLACK SNOW is an interesting read for the atmosphere Liu Heng creates, even if he does overdo it. Not many Chinese novels have dealt with the reality of such marginal existences, carried out at the edge of the law, so Liu's effort is intriguing even if the quality of the work is less than stellar. Novels by Su Tong and Mo Yan, and even Wang Shuo and Ha Jin, are probably better choices for first-time readers of modern Chinese literature, and those who want to read a nonfiction version of the dark side of Chinese life are advised to look into RED DUST by Ma Jian. Nevertheless, Liu Heng is a voice that deserves to be read, with the hope that more and better will follow in the coming years.

5.0 out of 5 stars Everything was fine, September 9, 2011

By 

maddyf - See all my reviews

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: Black Snow (Paperback)

The book arrived on time and was as described: the pages were clean, the cover and spine uncreased. No complaints here!