Fortress Besieged [Paperback]

Zhongshu Qian (Author), Jeanne Kelly (Author), Nathan K. Mao (Author), Jonathan Spence (Foreword)

Book Description

Series: New Directions Classic | Publication Date: February 2004

The greatest Chinese novel of the twentieth century, Fortress Besieged is a classic of world literature, a masterpiece of parodic fiction that plays with Western literary traditions, philosophy, and middle-class Chinese society in the Republican era.

Set on the eve of the Sino-Japanese War, our hapless hero Fang Hung-chien (á la Emma Bovary), with no particular goal in life and with a bogus degree from a fake American university in hand, returns home to Shanghai. On the French liner home, he meets two Chinese beauties, Miss Su and Miss Pao. Qian writes, "With Miss Pao it wasn't a matter of heart or soul. She hadn't any change of heart, since she didn't have a heart." In a sort of painful comedy, Fang obtains a teaching post at a newly established university where the effete pseudo-intellectuals he encounters in academia become the butt of Qian's merciless satire. Soon Fang is trapped into a marriage of Nabokovian proportions of distress and absurdity. Recalling Fielding's Tom Jones in its farcical litany of misadventures and Flaubert's "style indirect libre," Fortress Besieged is its own unique feast of delights.

Editorial Reviews

Review

An insightful and entertaining work...gains resonance from its large and momentous backdrop of China in transition. (The New York Review of Books, Pankaj Mishra)

About the Author

Qian Zhongshu (Ch'ien Chung-shu, 1910-1998) was born into a literary family in Wuxi, Jiangsu province. Possibly the last in a line of Chinese thinkers that began with Confucius, he spent two years at Oxford, majoring in English and learning Latin and modern European languages. During the Cultural Revolution he was sent to a re-education camp with his wife, Yang Jiang. By 1974 he was presumed dead, but he later reappeared at a sinological conference in Italy. Qian wrote some of the most important texts on classical Chinese poetry and literature, essays, short stories, a second incomplete novel that was lost in the mail, and edited various groundbreaking anthologies.

Jonathan D. Spence is Sterling Professor of History at Yale University, where he has taught for thirty years. He has been awarded MacArthur and Guggenheim Fellowships, and the Los Angeles Times Book Award. The Search for Modern China won the Lionel Gelber Award and the Kiriyama Book Prize.

Product Details

• Paperback: 416 pages
• Publisher: New Directions (February 2004)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0811215520
• ISBN-13: 978-0811215527
• Product Dimensions: 8.8 x 6.1 x 0.9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.1 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.6 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (7 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #350,155 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
  • #63 in Books > Literature & Fiction > World Literature > Chinese

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

17 of 22 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A review by a Chinese reader, June 21, 2005

By 

Zhe Hu (IIT, Chicago) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Fortress Besieged (Paperback)

I read the Chinese (original) version by Qian Zhongshu many times, but not the English translation yet. So I would be more than willing to rate the book a 5 star, it's not a review about the English version of it.

Neither my Chinese nor English language skill could be adaquate to comment on the translation of such a masterpiece in Chinese modern literature though.

So I will just say this: while reading this book, if you suddenly start laughing till tears come out, then, I guess, you really come to understand large part of the Chinese people, as well as the society.

It won't be easy for foreign readers, you need some background, history, etc to reach that stage. But if your interest in Chinese people goes beyond "cheap labour that flood WalMart with competing products", this book opens a path towards the heart of those (our) people and their (our) society. Not a quick and easy path, but a lasting one.

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Miscommunication and the Logic of Chance, October 19, 2008

By 

Giant Panda (Washington, DC) - See all my reviews

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: Fortress Besieged (Paperback)

This breathtaking novel about China in the 1930s during the Japanese occupation is characterized by miscommunication. At least in love, everyone in this novel misunderstands others, leading to serious failure in relationships. Another characteristic is how trivial things - the products of chance - end up having immense consequences and becoming pivotal events. Things like the arguments between husband and wife, the books about Communism, etc. all translate into major changes. Critics attribute this to the main character - Hung Chien's lack of drive and his willingness to let events take control of him, but aren't we all? Few are made of steel. Isn't it human nature to have bad moods, to give up sometimes, or to go with the flow? We end up in situations no one could have predicted, and nothing really matters. Further it is not like we can stand in the face of circumstances no matter what. Sometimes events are beyond our control - nothing can change them.
His criticism of the academic world is very funny - surely extends beyond the borders of 1930s China. So are his criticism of social ills. Indeed I see many parallels between his time and our culture under Israeli occupation: the degree from the "West" becoming a mark of status, the photo in the newspaper upon return of the student from abroad, or people going to the West to study their own language and literature.
I suspect the fact that Hung Chien's being torn between two cultures contributed much to his passivity. He couldn't decide clearly what he wanted from life. With new eyes, he saw many things he didn't like about his culture, but he couldn't accept the Western model in full either. His expectations became different from that others [parents, wife, colleagues] had in store for him.

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Famous Chinese novel and a lot of similes., December 18, 2005

By 

komyathy (U.S.A. & elsewhere traveling) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)   

This review is from: Fortress Besieged (Paperback)

Fortress Besieged
by Zhongshu Qian
Facing a precarious looking rattan footbridge without railings & "afraid he'd only make a mess out of it if he tried to help her" all Fang Hung-chien "could do was smile ruefully" at the young lady---whom he'd earlier characterized behind her back as "a delicate little Shanghai girl"---and say "that leaves just us two cowards." To which she countered: "Mr. Fang, are you scared? I am not. Would you like me to go in front. If you follow me you won't have to look at the void below and you won't have the feeling that the bridge is endless. This way you would have more confidence." (Aside: try re-reading the above after substituting the word "life" in lieu of "the bridge.") Once the pair were safely across Mr. Fang's pal Chou Hsin-mei smilingly asked of the lady (whom I'm not going to name for your benefit) "were you leading him from the front or was he looking after you from behind?" Good question. And this is what this book is about, such questions on the subject of courtship---but not relating to any and all Chinese. No, this novel by a Chinese intellectual---whose first names can be translated as "book-lover"---primarily concerns & satirizes the foibles and pretensions of other intellectuals; particularly Chinese students who have journeyed abroad seeking foreign degrees.

The story thus conveniently commences aboard a steamship making its way back to China, peopled by a number of Chinese students (among them Fang Hung-chien) returning from Europe. The year is 1937 and the characters' lives are set amidst a backdrop of European hegemony and increasing Japanese aggression vis-a-vis China. For the author Chinese students who go abroad to study are more often mere pretenders, hollow intellectuals, trying to surmount some sort of self-perceived Chinese inferiority complex. Needless to say, such folk in this book do not fare well when it comes to having successful relationships. Chou Hsin-mei comes out of it better than most in the end, but only after experiencing much turmoil over a number of years, having presumably married (we aren't actually told) a "simple honest country girl"---his earlier declared goal upon his having been jilted by "a city-girl with a college degree." Likewise, we aren't told much about how other rather prominent characters' choices turn out for them in the end either. Only Fang's degree of happiness enjoyed is elaborated on to the extent that one may draw conclusions on the subject of marriage; and whether it's cracked up to be all that some imagine it to be. P.S & word to the wise: Fang's character writing to a woman in the novel cautiously admits that "I can only use cliches which have been worked to death for thousands of years to express my feelings." For my taste, the author's writing style parallels this comment far too closely. If you are annoyed by an over usage of similes then "Fortress Besieged" (what the author likens a marriage to be akin) is going to grate on your nerves at times. On but several pages I found just these similes utilized by the author: Something was..."like finding a pack of cigarettes when one craves opium;" ..."like rice-flour noodles without elasticity;"..."like a balloon released by a child;"..."like the last few notes that float in the air after the music has ceased;"..."like a phantom of early dawn"... The author, for no apparent purpose, also liberally employs English idioms, scattered words and phrases---not surprising that he himself taught English (and studied in Europe, I might add), but it is more than a touch ironic when juxtaposed with his thesis that "returned students from abroad suffer from enlarged egos." (P.P.S. I came across and read this book while in China myself.) Cheers!