TRUTH IS NOT AN OPTION...Beijing, sometime in the near future: a month has gone missing from official records. No one has any memory of it, and no one can care less. Except for a small circle of friends, who will stop at nothing to get to the bottom of the sinister cheerfulness and amnesia that has possessed the Chinese nation. When they kidnap a high-ranking official and force him to reveal all, what they learn - not only about their leaders, but also about their own people - stuns them to the core. It is a message that will rock the world...Terrifying methods of cunning, deception and terror are unveiled by the truth-seekers in this thriller-expose of the Communist Party's stranglehold on China today.
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"A fascinating tale of China just over the horizon" New Yorker "A thought-provoking novel about China's tomorrow, which reveals the truth about China today" -- Xinran, Author Of The Good Women Of China "The Fat Years remains valid because it is not simply a "what might happen" exercise in futurism. Its central conceit - that collective amnesia overtakes the entire country - is an all-encompassing metaphor for today's looming superpower... a triumph" Observer "A not-so-veiled satire of the Chinese government's tendency to make dates such as the Tiananmen massacre virtually disappear" Financial Times "Chan Koonchung's humorous tale reveals the distorted reality of China, where despite the supersonic development of its economy, political life is steadfastly unchanging" -- Ma Jian
About the Author
Chan Koonchung was born in Shanghai and raised in Hong Kong. He was a reporter at an English newspaper in Hong Kong before he founded the influential magazine "City" in 1976, where he was the chief editor and then publisher for 23 years. He is also a screenwriter and film producer of both Chinese and English-language films. Chan is a co-founder of the Hong Kong environmental group Green Power and was a board member of Greenpeace International from 2008 to 2011. He recently founded the NGO, Minjian International, that connects Chinese public intellectuals with their counterparts in East Asia, Southeast Asia, South Asia and Africa. His google account is often blocked. He is fluent in English. Chan now lives in Beijing.
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15 of 18 people found the following review helpful
By Panda Po
Format:Paperback
An Orwellian criticism against the current Chinese system tends to impress people more with its political posture than its analytical depth--an outspokenness well worth of such adjectives as "brave", "earnest", or "bold", but seldom "intelligent". This is however not true with Chan Koon-Chung's fascinating new novel, "The Fat Years". Though it strikes an unmistakable Orwellian note with a hue of fantasy, Chan's book remains deeply realistic and intellectually gratifying. Interwoven into the main plot (see Product Intro above) are personal stories (often traced back to more than 30 years ago when the reform led by Deng first started) of the ten or so main characters, including a politburo-level official, two princeling business tycoons, an on-line dissident with her neo-con college son and his mentors, a female social climber, a hippie globetrotter, a high-price prostitute, a former slave worker, and "I", a Taiwanese Hong Kong writer living in Beijing who has connections with intellectuals and business tycoons. Many of the political and academic characters are portrayed so close to their prototypes in real life that a well-informed Chinese reader would be able to come up with specific names in mind. Like many sympathetic analyses of Chinese society, and indeed any good analysis of whatever, the book builds a strong case for its opponent, if there is an opponent at all, by setting into dilemma the choice between a "fake paradise" (that is, a strong authoritarian state) and a "good hell" (that is, a would-be democracy) in the mouth of "I", and with the candid revelation by He Dong-Sheng, the hijacked politburo-level official, who earnestly believes that the authoritarian methods are justified through the end they've brought--a miraculous enlargement of Chinese domestic market in the event of a 2011 US financial meltdown to make China the No.1 economy, and China's final reconciliation with Japan to create a lucrative West-Pacific trade-zone. An outcome this "fat" may seem a bit exaggerated, but it helps to bring the underlying arguments and counter-arguments clearer and sharper, arguments which do circulate among business, political, and intellectual circles in China.
In this vein, it is worth highlighting that the novel provides a rare glimpse into the psychology of the so-called "Chinese Straussians". (Evan Osnos in The New Yorker and more recently Mark Lilla in New Republic have coverage on the issue.) I take it as the most intriguing part of the novel. This is when "I" encounter Wei Guo, a "neo-con" college kid who can't wait to tell "me" his political ambition and his plan to work in the--in his view "romantic"--Party Propaganda Ministry. "What is spiritual is romantic," explains Wei Guo to "me", "the Propaganda Ministry controls people's mind and excites their spirits, therefore it is romantic to work for the Propaganda Ministry." Like his definition of "the romantic", Wei Guo's political ambition is not without a theorized Weltanschauung of "the political", however adolescent and misconceived it indeed is. This world view, Wei Guo reveals, has been instilled in him by his college mentors who initiated him into the so-called "SS reading group" in which seminal works of two German political thinkers, Leo Strauss and Carl Schmitt, are fervently discussed within a cohort of young scholars, business tycoons, Party officials, army generals, and state-own think-tanks members. Deeming themselves to be intellectual elites whose ultimate task is to educate the powerful, Wei Guo's mentors join the Party line in rejecting liberalism together with all its implications. Their "d'accord" with the status quo, however, stops just there. The main problem they find with the Party policy, according to Wei Guo, is that it highlights universal love, not hate. But without enemy and hate, explains Wei Guo, there's no possibility for a nation to have any spirit, and a nation cannot be great, or simply cannot be, without its enemy in antenna and its spirited part on duty. In real life, this apparently Schmitt'ean anthropology is coupled with a Straussian dose of a-historical interpretation and rhetorical elevation (referred to by Wei Guo in an apt metaphor as the "Zauberflöte" which attracts fledgling grad students in the Humanities) of Graeco-Roman classics on the one hand, and Confucian classics on the other. Thus in the novel, Wei Guo confesses, or rather brags, that his initiation into the reading group was facilitated by his informing against a college professor as "black-painting traditional Classics" because the teacher dared to question in class the veracity of "Gong Yang Exegesis", an allegorical and a-historical Confucian interpretive tradition favoured by the Neo-cons. This far, the story sounds pretty much like what's really going on in Chinese academia, what happens next, however, seems more of a fantasy, but as a payoff, also more interesting. At the end of Mr. He's revelation, he curiously mentions a group of "terrorists" who mounted a thwarted attack on a state-secret chemical factory. The factory was at the time producing a kind of "feel-good" drug to be put into public water-supply to make people "high" and less attentive to their daily grievances. These terrorists were students from leading universities in Beijing who belonged, says He, to a "fascist" group, and they knew of the factory through their partisans who had penetrated into high positions in the Party. Their objective, explains He to the perplexed simple-minded rights-activists who hijacked him, was to render people more aggressive by cutting off their supply of dosed happiness. They were diametrically opposed to the government's policy of reconciling with Japan, among others, says He, and their initiative in doing all these was nothing more than their will to power.
Unlike his ambivalent attitude towards most characters in the novel whatever political positions they maintain, the author's dislike of Wei Guo is all but manifest. However disquieting Mr. He's revelation sounds to a sensible person, there's still something charming in his intelligence, consistency, and his passionate way of story-telling, which all but reminds one of Dostoyevsky's Ivan Karamazov. In Wei Guo, however, we find someone who consistently mistakes the romantic for the political; whose position oscillates between conflicting poles: he's even ready to inform against his dissident mother disregarding his outspoken allegiance to the Confucian "Tradition", according to which it is a taboo to disrespect one's teachers, let alone parents. Should Wei Guo remind one of anything "Dostoyevsky", it would be Pyotr Verkhovensky among "The Devils".
As it is easy for people in the West to miss the point of Chan and see in him yet another bold dissident counting down the collapse of the Communist Party, it is also tempting to underrate the likes of Wei Guo simply as stereotype neo-rights, fascists, nationalists, etc. without understanding a deeper fact--according to the Chinese Straussians, it is precisely the West's moralizing stance towards the Chinese as if they were un-cultured barbarians that confirms the presence of "the political". If it is allowed for the West to criticize China purely out of its need to construct its self-consciousness, they reason, it is also right for the Chinese to wage an "ideological counterattack". Indeed, the historically traumatized Chinese ego pumped up by recent patriotic education needs a lot more to satisfy than a merely defensive post-colonialism. The Neo-cons may be mistken if they really take ideologies as causes rather than effects of some underlying mechanism, but their mistake is not without a reason. Things with a persisting reason, be they Neo-conservatism, or Chinese political system, tend not to disappear overnight, and people have to either live with it or start questioning the underlying causes and initiatives and see what they can do about them. Chan's new novel is such a questioning effort, for the west, and more importantly, for the Chinese themselves.
In this vein, it is worth highlighting that the novel provides a rare glimpse into the psychology of the so-called "Chinese Straussians". (Evan Osnos in The New Yorker and more recently Mark Lilla in New Republic have coverage on the issue.) I take it as the most intriguing part of the novel. This is when "I" encounter Wei Guo, a "neo-con" college kid who can't wait to tell "me" his political ambition and his plan to work in the--in his view "romantic"--Party Propaganda Ministry. "What is spiritual is romantic," explains Wei Guo to "me", "the Propaganda Ministry controls people's mind and excites their spirits, therefore it is romantic to work for the Propaganda Ministry." Like his definition of "the romantic", Wei Guo's political ambition is not without a theorized Weltanschauung of "the political", however adolescent and misconceived it indeed is. This world view, Wei Guo reveals, has been instilled in him by his college mentors who initiated him into the so-called "SS reading group" in which seminal works of two German political thinkers, Leo Strauss and Carl Schmitt, are fervently discussed within a cohort of young scholars, business tycoons, Party officials, army generals, and state-own think-tanks members. Deeming themselves to be intellectual elites whose ultimate task is to educate the powerful, Wei Guo's mentors join the Party line in rejecting liberalism together with all its implications. Their "d'accord" with the status quo, however, stops just there. The main problem they find with the Party policy, according to Wei Guo, is that it highlights universal love, not hate. But without enemy and hate, explains Wei Guo, there's no possibility for a nation to have any spirit, and a nation cannot be great, or simply cannot be, without its enemy in antenna and its spirited part on duty. In real life, this apparently Schmitt'ean anthropology is coupled with a Straussian dose of a-historical interpretation and rhetorical elevation (referred to by Wei Guo in an apt metaphor as the "Zauberflöte" which attracts fledgling grad students in the Humanities) of Graeco-Roman classics on the one hand, and Confucian classics on the other. Thus in the novel, Wei Guo confesses, or rather brags, that his initiation into the reading group was facilitated by his informing against a college professor as "black-painting traditional Classics" because the teacher dared to question in class the veracity of "Gong Yang Exegesis", an allegorical and a-historical Confucian interpretive tradition favoured by the Neo-cons. This far, the story sounds pretty much like what's really going on in Chinese academia, what happens next, however, seems more of a fantasy, but as a payoff, also more interesting. At the end of Mr. He's revelation, he curiously mentions a group of "terrorists" who mounted a thwarted attack on a state-secret chemical factory. The factory was at the time producing a kind of "feel-good" drug to be put into public water-supply to make people "high" and less attentive to their daily grievances. These terrorists were students from leading universities in Beijing who belonged, says He, to a "fascist" group, and they knew of the factory through their partisans who had penetrated into high positions in the Party. Their objective, explains He to the perplexed simple-minded rights-activists who hijacked him, was to render people more aggressive by cutting off their supply of dosed happiness. They were diametrically opposed to the government's policy of reconciling with Japan, among others, says He, and their initiative in doing all these was nothing more than their will to power.
Unlike his ambivalent attitude towards most characters in the novel whatever political positions they maintain, the author's dislike of Wei Guo is all but manifest. However disquieting Mr. He's revelation sounds to a sensible person, there's still something charming in his intelligence, consistency, and his passionate way of story-telling, which all but reminds one of Dostoyevsky's Ivan Karamazov. In Wei Guo, however, we find someone who consistently mistakes the romantic for the political; whose position oscillates between conflicting poles: he's even ready to inform against his dissident mother disregarding his outspoken allegiance to the Confucian "Tradition", according to which it is a taboo to disrespect one's teachers, let alone parents. Should Wei Guo remind one of anything "Dostoyevsky", it would be Pyotr Verkhovensky among "The Devils".
As it is easy for people in the West to miss the point of Chan and see in him yet another bold dissident counting down the collapse of the Communist Party, it is also tempting to underrate the likes of Wei Guo simply as stereotype neo-rights, fascists, nationalists, etc. without understanding a deeper fact--according to the Chinese Straussians, it is precisely the West's moralizing stance towards the Chinese as if they were un-cultured barbarians that confirms the presence of "the political". If it is allowed for the West to criticize China purely out of its need to construct its self-consciousness, they reason, it is also right for the Chinese to wage an "ideological counterattack". Indeed, the historically traumatized Chinese ego pumped up by recent patriotic education needs a lot more to satisfy than a merely defensive post-colonialism. The Neo-cons may be mistken if they really take ideologies as causes rather than effects of some underlying mechanism, but their mistake is not without a reason. Things with a persisting reason, be they Neo-conservatism, or Chinese political system, tend not to disappear overnight, and people have to either live with it or start questioning the underlying causes and initiatives and see what they can do about them. Chan's new novel is such a questioning effort, for the west, and more importantly, for the Chinese themselves.
5 of 5 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
The Fat Years is a strong political statement thinly disguised as a work of fiction. It is no great surprise that no publisher in China dared to publish it. The plot concerns the loss of a month, or to be more exact 28 days, between the time of the global economic crisis and the commencement of the ascendency of China or their 'Age of Prosperity'. Almost everyone in China believes that these events were concurrent rather than a month apart during which time there was a Government sponsored crackdown. Additionally this amnesia is accompanied by a general feeling of euphoria in the population or a constant 'high lite' as one of the players describes it.
The story is gradually developed, mainly from the point of view of the main character, Old Chen, but also other significant participants, at least two of whom, Zhang Dou and Fang Caodi can remember the missing month and are determined to prove that it existed and solve the mystery surrounding it. Although the book is set in the future there is a lot of looking back at previous significant events in China such as Tiananmen Square and the Cultural Revolution, most of which show the Communist regime in a very poor light.
Towards the end there is a lengthy detailed analysis which looks at China on the world stage from the economic, socio political, and international relations points of view, and which is both insightful and logical. Part of this analysis concerns events which have already taken place and these events are extrapolated into the future and are taken to their logical conclusion which is broadly that China is looking for a strong position of influence on the world stage and particularly within South East Asia, but is seeking co-existence rather than domination.
The basic plot concerning the missing month is an interesting angle. However, many readers will find the detailed analysis at the end rather dry, and in parts difficult to follow unless they have some basic understanding of and interest in the economic and sociological principles involved. Interestingly the basis of the plot which is the missing month and the general feeling of euphoria which has catapulted China to the top of the international happiness league is almost dealt with as an afterthought.
So to summarise, I thought this was an interesting if rather short book, which gives a real insight into China past, present and future, and certainly does not pull its punches in making political points which will greatly offend the current rulers. The main questions explored, without any real conclusions being reached are, on a state level, do the ends justify the means and on a more personal level, as Little Xi puts it, what should one choose between a good hell or a fake paradise ie an awful reality or an pleasant illusion. However, this book is not for everyone and certainly not the easiest read, particularly towards the end.
The story is gradually developed, mainly from the point of view of the main character, Old Chen, but also other significant participants, at least two of whom, Zhang Dou and Fang Caodi can remember the missing month and are determined to prove that it existed and solve the mystery surrounding it. Although the book is set in the future there is a lot of looking back at previous significant events in China such as Tiananmen Square and the Cultural Revolution, most of which show the Communist regime in a very poor light.
Towards the end there is a lengthy detailed analysis which looks at China on the world stage from the economic, socio political, and international relations points of view, and which is both insightful and logical. Part of this analysis concerns events which have already taken place and these events are extrapolated into the future and are taken to their logical conclusion which is broadly that China is looking for a strong position of influence on the world stage and particularly within South East Asia, but is seeking co-existence rather than domination.
The basic plot concerning the missing month is an interesting angle. However, many readers will find the detailed analysis at the end rather dry, and in parts difficult to follow unless they have some basic understanding of and interest in the economic and sociological principles involved. Interestingly the basis of the plot which is the missing month and the general feeling of euphoria which has catapulted China to the top of the international happiness league is almost dealt with as an afterthought.
So to summarise, I thought this was an interesting if rather short book, which gives a real insight into China past, present and future, and certainly does not pull its punches in making political points which will greatly offend the current rulers. The main questions explored, without any real conclusions being reached are, on a state level, do the ends justify the means and on a more personal level, as Little Xi puts it, what should one choose between a good hell or a fake paradise ie an awful reality or an pleasant illusion. However, this book is not for everyone and certainly not the easiest read, particularly towards the end.
5 of 5 people found the following review helpful
3.0 out of 5 stars
Brilliant portrayal of current China, but spoiled by the cop-out at the end.
August 14, 2011
By Ronald P. Ng
Format:Paperback|Amazon Verified Purchase
The book started brilliantly, with Master Chen, the main protagonist in the novel, meeting up with various characters, whose lives intertwined with one another. There are also many thought provoking ideas.
"..between a good hell and a counterfeit paradise, which one will people choose?";
" ...under a one-party dictatorship, when the ruling party wants to avoid trouble, it will try to make the people everywhere feel the paternalistic solicitude of the Party-state government. Today China is in a period when the Party wants to avoid trouble. Only the core interest of the Communist Party's fundamental one-party rule must bot waver, however flexible its manoeuvres or moderate its methods."
Through the lives of the various characters in the book, one could get a real feel of life in China today. The theme running through the book are the questions in the minds of Master Chan, Fang Caodi, and Little Xi, "Why is everybody so happy?" and "Why everybody seemed to have lost the memory of a particular period of time, 28 days to be exact, in China?"
The analysis of the way China is going about its business towards the end, as articulated by He Dongsheng, a high-ranking government official, was brilliant. But then the cop-out came and I was really disappointed by it. Without revealing what transpired, the reason for the happiness the Chinese felt was explained, and it was disappointing. It wasn't necessary to invoke that reason. That China's improving economic situation, that China's rising importance in the world thereby giving her citizens a sense of their importance, the illusion of living in a counterfeit paradise, all these could account for the rising "happiness" among the Chinese people without having to invoke the reason as given in the story.
In all, the book is a good read, and the analysis towards the end of China as articulated by He Dongsheng is worth the money spent on buying the book
"..between a good hell and a counterfeit paradise, which one will people choose?";
" ...under a one-party dictatorship, when the ruling party wants to avoid trouble, it will try to make the people everywhere feel the paternalistic solicitude of the Party-state government. Today China is in a period when the Party wants to avoid trouble. Only the core interest of the Communist Party's fundamental one-party rule must bot waver, however flexible its manoeuvres or moderate its methods."
Through the lives of the various characters in the book, one could get a real feel of life in China today. The theme running through the book are the questions in the minds of Master Chan, Fang Caodi, and Little Xi, "Why is everybody so happy?" and "Why everybody seemed to have lost the memory of a particular period of time, 28 days to be exact, in China?"
The analysis of the way China is going about its business towards the end, as articulated by He Dongsheng, a high-ranking government official, was brilliant. But then the cop-out came and I was really disappointed by it. Without revealing what transpired, the reason for the happiness the Chinese felt was explained, and it was disappointing. It wasn't necessary to invoke that reason. That China's improving economic situation, that China's rising importance in the world thereby giving her citizens a sense of their importance, the illusion of living in a counterfeit paradise, all these could account for the rising "happiness" among the Chinese people without having to invoke the reason as given in the story.
In all, the book is a good read, and the analysis towards the end of China as articulated by He Dongsheng is worth the money spent on buying the book
Most Recent Customer Reviews
5.0 out of 5 stars
An absolute China must read!
Chan Koonchung's tale of China today is, sadly, spot on, highly readable and engaging. No one with an interest in China can afford to skip it.
Published 10 months ago by Mette Holm
4.0 out of 5 stars
"Truth is not an option!" - That is the tag line.
So if truth is not an option what is left? Well the easy answer is lies or fiction and the latter is what this claims to be. Read more
Published 12 months ago by Tommy D
3.0 out of 5 stars
Sadly just a one joke book
As insightful as `The Fat Years' is, it's unfortunately a one joke book without a satisfactory punchline. Read more
Published 17 months ago by Lewis Cannon
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