Six Chapters from My Life “Downunder”
Six Chapters from My Life “Downunder”
By Yang Jiang
Translated by Howard Goldblatt
1983
41 pages
ISBN 962-201-299-X
Yang Jiang's Six Chapters from My Life “Downunder” is a work of remarkable sophistication which, in its subtle, almost allegorical style, stands as powerful testimony to the insanity of the Cultural Revolution. Read carefully, it takes on added significance with implications for the entire revolutionary process. The author has chosen to describe life in a cadre school by recounting relatively insignificant and commonplace events. Unlike the “wounded” (shanghen) literature of the post-1977 years the Gang of Four is never mentioned in “Downunder.” Jiang Qing is alluded to, but only obliquely when the author refers to a nearby locale called Tiger Mountain, the home of a vicious dog—calling to mind one of Jiang Qing’s model operas, Taking Tiger Mountain by Strategy. Lin Biao is referred to by name when his death is mentioned, virtually without comment (unless the use of the slangy phrase 格兒庇着凉—“kick the bucket”—can be considered a comment). With the leading culprits of China’s “holocaust” thus removed, one could hardly be faulted for looking at the system and at the whole of recent Chinese history for the basic causes of the Cultural Revolution.
Six Chapters from My Life “Downunder” is originally included in Renditions no. 16.
Table of Contents
Table of Contents
Translator’s Introduction — 6
Foreword by Qian Zhongshu — 9
Chapter One: Farewell: Departing for “Downunder” — 10
Chapter Two: Labor: Digging a Well — 15
Chapter Three: Leisure: Tending a Vegetable Plot — 20
Chapter Four: Quickie: A Loving Companion — 26
Chapter Five: Adventure: While All Ends Well — 32
Chapter Six: Wronged: But Home—At Last — 39
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AUTHOR(s)
Yang Jiang 楊絳 (or Yang Chiang, pen name of Yang Chi-k’ang 楊季康, 1911–2016) was born in 1911. Along with her husband Qian Zhongshu (Ch’ien Chung-shu 錢鍾書), she early established her name as a writer. She has translated Gil Blas from the French and Don Quixote from the Spanish.
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TRANSLATOR(s)
Howard Goldblatt has translated a number of literary works from China and Taiwan, including the novels of Mo Yan, 2012 laureate of the Nobel Prize for Literature. A Guggenheim fellow and awardee of several literary prizes and grants, he lives in Colorado with his wife and frequent co-translator Sylvia Lin.