This is the second of Jia Pingwa’s novels that I have read, the other being Broken Wings. Both came to me as ARCs from the publisher Sinoist Books/Alain Charles Asia, for which I thank them. As I was approaching the end of The Mountain Whisperer, I was fortunate to be able to join an online event organised by Sinoist Books in which both the author and the translator of this English edition (Christopher Payne), along with other presenters, talked about Jia’s work in general and this book specifically. Some of what I have included below is based on notes I made during that event.

This review is not so much about the contents of the book, but more about some of the things I learned about as I read it and during the event I attended. I hope these will give a flavour of what Jia is doing in this book and maybe encourage a few people to take a look.

The Sinoist Books event was titled “Jia Pingwa: Master Storyteller of Rural China” and it’s certainly true that the two of his books that I have read have used rural China as a setting to reflect on wider issues. During the event I attended, Jia said ”Only by understanding its rural countryside can we truly understand China”.

The Mountain Whisperer is told via four tales. In an introductory section we meet the titular Mountain Whisperer. This is an anglicised term for a funeral singer whose job is to attend funerals and sing for the dead. As the funeral singer lies dying in a cave, he relates four stories that cover four major periods in 20th century Chinese history. The website paper-republic.org summarises it like this:

"A historical allegory told through the framework of dying funeral singer, …, Jia Pingwa weaves together four tragedies of the 20th century China: revolution, landlord classicide, Great Leap, and economic reform. While each promised new opportunities and a dramatic break with the past, particularly for those on the bottom rung of the social ladder, each ended up victimizing a new group while empowering another."

Different parts of the book are prefaced by nine excerpts from ”Pathways Through the Mountains and Seas”. This is a collection of legends about different mountain ranges in which the different mountains in a range are listed along with their characteristics (minerals, fabulous animals, flora etc.). The way this reference book lists one mountain after another inspired Jia, he says, to write about one village after another. At chinadaily.com.cn, I read ”Chinese Writers' Association critic Li Jingze says the unique structure demonstrates Jia's understanding of the relationships among history, literature and memory. There is an interesting article here about this last point: https://www.worldliteraturetoday.org/2018/january/memory-literature-and-revised-history-conversation-jia-pingwa-min-yang.

One of the most interesting things that Jia said during the event I attended was ”When viewed from the macro, the form of the novel develops in sync with developments in Chinese literature”. I don’t know enough about the history of Chinese literature to comment fully on that. For me, the differences between the four parts felt rather subtle and I am not sure whether something of this idea has maybe been lost in the translation. That said, the different sections do have different feels to them. I found the third tale, for example, quite difficult to maintain focus and I think this is because this section seems to suddenly include a lot of characters to keep track of whereas the other sections are more focused on smaller groups.

That said, the book as a whole does a great job of presenting a perspective on the last 100 years of Chinese history. If this is something that interests you (it does me), it is a fascinating book to read (although be prepared for some fairly gory death scenes!). The focus might be rural communities, but it doesn’t take much reading between the lines to see what is happening in the wider culture in each time period. And it has a bizarrely prescient ending!