Friday short fiction #3: China Reflected
Jeremy Snell Old Uyghur Man 2009
In 2008 The Guardian launched a relay of four short stories by British and Chinese writers, collectively known as 'China Reflected', about how China and Britain perceive each other.
Hari Kunzru, 'Fellow Traveller' (THE GUARDIAN, 25 AUGUST 2008)
Beware highly politicised talking pandas. Sharp and good fun.
Zhu Wen, 'Collecting' (THE GUARDIAN, 22 SEPTEMBER 2008)
What is it with the British obsession with history and plundering ancient foreign artifacts?
Bernardine Evaristo, 'A Matter of Timing' (THE GUARDIAN, 20 OCTOBER 2008)
If you read just one of these four make it this, a cynical piece of politically disillusioned science fiction.
Yan Lianke, 'England and My Clan' (THE GUARDIAN, 22 MARCH 2010)
Revisiting Britain's nineteenth century asset-stripping of China, and its present-day legacy found in one Chinese family. Well observed and sensitive.
Favourite short story of the week: a re-read, and unfortunately not online, Suzanne Edgar's 'A Proposed Marriage', in Amnesty, a 1993 fund-raising anthology of short stories from Australia, for Amnesty International. This one is about Swami, an Indian worker at a Fijian beach resort, who dreams of emigrating to Australia but is shut out of the lives of the Australian guests. It has an angry ending, but it's the kind that makes you think uncomfortably of the huge disparities of wealth between workers and guests in such a place, and the frustrations of thwarted aspirations. This story has stayed with me for eighteen years because of the perspective it provided on the lives of others.