Peacock Cries [Paperback]

Hong Ying (Author), Mark Smith (Translator)

Book Description

Publication Date: June 1, 2004

Hong Ying surpasses her previous novel, K: The Art of Love, with a novel of heightened political and sexual -tension set around the Three Gorges Dam on the Yangtze River. The largest construction project in the history of China, the dam opens in June 2004. Its controversial -reservoir will cut the famous Gorge to one third of its height and submerge the whole area, the cradle of Chinese civilization for three millennia.

When Beijing scientist Liu goes to visit her husband, the director of the dam project, she discovers he is being unfaithful and flees to her hometown. Taking refuge with her Auntie Chen, Liu is told by Chen how her mother gave birth to her in the midst of political turmoil and how both mother and daughter nearly died for lack of help. Chen’s own son, Yueming, was born at the same time as Liu and is now a painter and key figure in a local cult bent on sabotaging the dam’s construction. Finding themselves drawn together, Liu and Yueming realize they are a reincarnation of the prostitute Red Lotus and a Buddhist priest, whose affair led to their vilification and whose naked crucifixion is described in graphic sexual detail. With the souls of Red Lotus and the priest cementing the couple’s attachment, Liu’s decision to join Yueming in protesting against the dam means she must ultimately face imprisonment.

Peacock Cries boldly tackles the subjects of rein-carnation and spiritual quest in the face of economic development.

Hong Ying was born in Chingqing in 1962 into a sailor’s family. She was the sixth child in a family of eight and endured great poverty and hunger as a child during the Great Famine and the Cultural Revolution.

Editorial Reviews

Review

Recommended for most collections. -- New York Library Journal, December 2004

About the Author

Hong Ying was born in Chingqing in 1962 into a boat sailor's family. She was the sixth child in a family of eight, and endured great poverty and hunger as a child during the Great Famine and the Cultural Revolution.

Product Details

• Paperback: 250 pages
• Publisher: Marion Boyars Publishers Ltd (June 1, 2004)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0714531006
• ISBN-13: 978-0714531007
• Product Dimensions: 7.8 x 5.1 x 0.9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 8.5 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 3.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,989,581 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars A Good Story Ruined by Simply Dreadful Translation, August 10, 2005

By 

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

This review is from: Peacock Cries (Paperback)

Hong Ying's most recent novel, PEACOCK CRIES AT THE THREE GORGES, centers around Liu, a successful bioengineering researcher in Beijing who returns to her home county of Liang where her husband, Li, is the project manager for the infamous Three Gorges Dam. Counterposed against their highly educated professional lives are those of the townspeople, undereducated and barely surviving the vicissitudes of life and the complications of resettlement due to the expected rise in the water level of the Yangtze River when the dam is finished. Liu meets her mother's former best friend, Auntie Chen, and Chen's son, Yueming, who was born almost simultaneously with Liu herself. Over the course of just a few days, Liu learns the truth about her family heritage and how she benefited from her father's ruthless political opportunism. She learns as well how similar her husband Li is to her father, and she resolves her own dissatisfactions with life in a swirl of Buddhist mysticism and reincarnation that contrast sharply with her scientific training and her husband's ultrarational engineering background.

PEACOCK CRIES may well be a masterly work in Chinese. Regretably, the translation provided for Marion Boyars by Mark Smith and Henry Zhao, and the associated editing, fail at a simply astonishing level of ineptitude. These two individuals have managed single-handedly to reduce Ms. Hong's writing to wordy and badly written prose that suffers by comparison to the contents of most high school literary annuals. Having previously read Ms. Hong's SUMMER OF BETRAYAL and DAUGHTER OF THE RIVER, I feel confident the problem lies elsewhere than with the author. Everyone involved in publishing this dreadful English edition owes Ms. Hong a profound apology, after which ritual hari-kari might be an appropriate penitence for such a shameful performance.

Lest these criticisms seem exaggerated, consider the following few excerpts and examples from among the hundreds I could have chosen (CAPS mine):

-- On one side [of the main street] was a large and well-designed new park THAT WAS full of greenery. One [sic] the other side was A SERIES OF TALL, SHINY buildings...
-- She...found the humidity OF THE AIR...particularly soporific.
-- ...she'd been working in the fields since childhood SO SHE HAD GROWN UP TO BE VERY STRONG.
-- It had suddenly begun to POUR WITH RAIN...
-- IT WAS AS THOUGH IT WERE pouring out of a tap.
-- Maybe he was being so cautious BECAUSE HE WAS SO ANXIOUS BY THE FACT THAT Liu was from Beijing.
-- ...there was a quick PITTER-PATTER SOUND continually BATTERING against the glass OF THE WINDOW. [Pitter-patters batter a window?]
-- ...she felt an impulse to LOOK round....but no one was LOOKING in her direction. They...LOOKED like businessmen...impressive-LOOKING people....She felt very unremarkable-LOOKING...she didn't know how to make herself LOOK as good as they did. [all in just one paragraph!]

Beyond the horrifyingly weak prose lies an equally appalling deficiency in editing. Again, consider a few examples:

-- They...looked like businessmen or technical ENGINEER...
-- ...she couldn't BARE anything with a pattern on it.
-- There was LIGHTENING and heavy thunder...
-- ...ten different parts of his body had been wounded, but HAD never had the wound been very serious...
-- As it turned IT out it was lucky...
-- Early the next day...she was AWOKEN by a terrible din...
-- He...stroked her head gently, so different from the COURSE gruff old veteran she was used to.
-- ...HALF WAY up the mountain.
-- ...a small hole was cut in chest of each bear...
-- ...he would never LOOSE his temper...
-- ...penury forced her become a courtesan.
-- ...beyond the Hall of SHAKYAMUNI... [should be Sakyamuni]
-- She walked TOWARDS the bed...

Strunk & White's THE ELEMENTS OF STYLE is clearly not enough here. Better that Messrs. Smith and Zhao should just stop doing translations altogether.

Despite the audaciously poor rendition of Hong Ying's work by Messrs. Smith and Zhao, the strength of her writing still manages to break through. Her characters are memorable and her storytelling is graphic, at times gripping or sympathetic, occasionally humorous (as when Liu meets a Hong Kong businessman who is prepared to invest $200 million with her if she can help him clone rhinoceroses for the aphrodisiac properties of their horns). Readers interested in today's China and the bitter fruits of modernity resulting from massive infrastructure projects imposed on the lives of helpless peasants will be as fascinated by the story in PEACOCK CRIES AT THE THREE GORGES as they will be appalled by the poor quality of the translation. Four stars to the author, zero to her hapless translators.