Foreign Devil [Hardcover]

Wang Ping (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: September 1, 1996

Foreign Devil is a Red Azalea with more guts, grit, heart, and soul.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Wang Ping's praised first collection of interlocked short stories, American Visa, featured a heroine, Seaweed, whose background resembled that of the protagonist of this strong and provocative?and obviously equally autobiographical?novel. Like Seaweed, Ni Bing grows up during the Cultural Revolution and its equally horrifying aftermath, as the daughter of a naval officer and a harsh, abusive mother who uses her as a virtual slave for household chores. Like Seaweed, Ni Bing is determined to escape her family and to acquire a college education. Given nicknames like "foreign devil" and "little ghost," she endures hardships and privations both in her family home, on a fishing island off the Chinese coast, and in a rural "reeducation" village. From the time she is five years old, Ni Bing is plagued by her knowledge that there is a secret surrounding her birth. Her hard life in the village of Ma Ao, where she lives from the ages of 15 to 22, exposes her to the repressive Communist Party machinery. As her comrades are victimized by the cruelty and injustice of the campaign to eradicate enemies of the state, Ni Bing practices self-preservation and learns to hide her anguish. As she exists on an emotional tightrope of fear and anxiety, it is perhaps inevitable that she will lose her virginity to a married man who makes her feel needed. Meanwhile, the mystery of her identity and of her parents' volatile behavior?both send her mixed signals of hatred and love?continues to weigh on her mind until, finally, knowledge sets her free. While Wang portrays Ni Bing's emotional torment with moving insight, she sometimes tries the reader's patience with awkward flashbacks. But the scenes depicting the brutality of China's repressive society are as searing as those in Anchee Min's Red Azalea, and Ping writes with compelling candor about an authoritative regime where the experiences of victim and torturer are often interchangeable.
Copyright 1996 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Library Journal

Shanghai-born Wang Ping's first novel relies on a first-person narrator, like her short story collection American Visa (Coffee House Pr., 1994). Here, Ni Bing details her 12-year struggle to earn a college degree in China and study abroad. Reminiscent of critical, nonfictional accounts like Heng Liang's Son of the Revolution (LJ 2/15/83), the novel presents China at its worst. Even without focusing on arduous interactions with the "Party," Ni Bing's story would be a wonderful narrative, showing as it does her indomitable spirit in the face of abusive treatment from her family and male companion. A few transitions between past and present are abrupt and momentarily confusing but do not detract from the novel's intensity. For literary collections.?Faye A. Chadwell, Univ. of Oregon, Eugene # #+
Copyright 1996 Reed Business Information, Inc.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Hardcover: 280 pages
• Publisher: Coffee House Press; 1St Edition edition (September 1, 1996)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1566890489
• ISBN-13: 978-1566890489
• Product Dimensions: 9.3 x 6.3 x 1.1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.4 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #872,238 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Bleak oppression and indomitable will, June 2, 2004

By 

Lynn Harnett (Marathon, FL USA) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)    (TOP 500 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Foreign Devil (Hardcover)

Wang Ping's autobiographical first novel paints a searing, oppressive portrait of life in China, yet the narrator's indomitable will energizes the story, making the tone more driving than bleak.

Ni Bing's story opens with a graphic, but entirely unerotic depiction of the loss of her virginity to her married lover and mentor, Yan. Bing is a recent graduate of and new teacher at the Hangzhou Teacher's School, and Yan is helping her prepare for college entrance exams. With this longed-for goal in sight, she risks everything for their dangerous and unfulfilling relationship.

Haunted by a mystery about her birth which surfaces in bloody nightmares, Bing has felt alienated all her life. Flashbacks portray a lonely childhood during the Cultural Revolution, a virtual slave to a harsh but beautiful mother who was once "criticized" herself.

At 15 she escaped her family to plant rice in a rural reeducation village. The Party used her to denounce an inoffensive landowner's son, and Bing, shamed, worked even harder, rising long before sun-up to read.

The gripping beauty of the novel lies in Wang's depictions of physical labor and the Kafkaesque whirlpool of political danger. So vivid are Wang's images that the reader can feel the yoke of the coal cart on Bing's shoulders, the fear aroused by her paternal grandmother's mysterious rage, the cold dread of the interrogation, the slippery texture of rice gruel and fatty pork.

Walking in the rice fields: "My feet sank deep into the ooze of the mud and the droppings of cows, pigs, chickens. The fermented manure felt warm and comforting to my wounds." Her first hamburger: "I took a bite and almost threw up from the bloody grease oozing out of the ground beef."

Less successful is her relationship with Yan, an unappetizing and hysterically possessive man. Although Bing speaks of love, the reader feels only repugnance. She has used Yan as others have used her but she never seems to recognize this, even after she has surpassed him.

Wang, who has lived in New York since 1985 and is the author of a short story collection, "American Visa," has produced a gritty novel of survival, touched with the drama of family dynamics.

5.0 out of 5 stars From China to America, June 23, 2001

By A Customer

This review is from: Foreign Devil (Hardcover)

Wang Ping's novel was hard to put down. This novel describes a young girl from China and her difficult and at times life threatening life in China.The main charcter Ni Bing describes what she is willing to do in order to have an education and a life different from her family in China. She eventually is able to journey to America. After reading "Foreign Devil" I wanted to read another novel about Ni Bing.I still want to read more in order to see what happens to Ni Bing once in America. Wang Ping enables one to feel the life this young woman led.