Siang Lu imagines a comic dystopia in this labyrinthine new novel

2 days ago 2

By Owen Richardson

July 5, 2024 — 4.10pm

FICTION
Ghost Cities
Siang Lu, UQP, $32.99

“But what if, aft each this, it is conscionable a atrocious novel,” is the punctuation from Gabriel Garcia Marquez’s woman that Siang Lu has utilized arsenic an epigraph to Ghost Cities. What’s the “it”, though? Life, the full shebang? Or the caller the scholar is holding successful their hands? Both, maybe? The enactment does sounds similar a tip-off.

Ghost Cities surely has its atrocious aspects, of a benignant that tin lone look intentional. The shamelessness of the opening gambit, for instance. When we archetypal conscionable Xiang Li, helium is being fired from his occupation arsenic an interpreter astatine the Chinese Consulate successful Sydney due to the fact that they person discovered helium doesn’t talk Chinese. “The important mistake. Interviewed you successful English. Forgot to trial your Chinese!” the termination email says. Okayeeeeee...

Soon afterwards, courtesy of a analyzable ruse involving a mislaid wallet (a telephone telephone would person done conscionable arsenic well), Xiang finds himself successful the orbit of infamous movie manager Baby Bao, intent connected utilizing Xiang’s newfound net notoriety for his ain ends. (“Let maine archer you, I can’t basal it erstwhile radical accidental my films are filled with method faults, arsenic if I overlooked these things.” ) So by the extremity of the archetypal act, Xiang, Bao, and Bao’s translator, Yuan, who really knows Chinese – the Highly Qualified Woman to Xiang’s #BadChinese Man – are each successful 1 of the shade cities of the title.

Ghost cities are 1 of those things Westerners deliberation they cognize astir China: immense lodging projects, devoid of inhabitants and built to support the economical stats steadfast and due to the fact that of the valorisation of existent property wealthiness and besides due to the fact that aren’t the Chinese conscionable truthful strange, really? The phenomenon, it seems, has been overmuch exaggerated, and the excesses arsenic overmuch successful the regard of the Western beholder.

In immoderate case, Lu’s shade metropolis doesn’t deficiency for inhabitants due to the fact that it is Baby Bao’s shade city, a immense movie acceptable wherever everyone is some a national going astir their concern and an actor. (Yuan gets a occupation with the Department of Verisimilitude, making definite no-one leaves their scripts astir oregon is seen practising lines.)

Although this whitethorn perchance not beryllium the astir archetypal idea, it has been fixed caller currency somewhat by the ubiquity of CCTV and smartphone cameras and the connection “performative”, not to notation the happening fake news. Now much than ever beingness is imitating The Truman Show much than anyone, isolated from the incorrect kinds of people, truly wants. And determination is different rotation to it. One taxable of Ghost Cities, arsenic it was of Lu’s archetypal book, The Whitewash, a satire connected Asian practice successful Hollywood, is contention and performance, contention arsenic performance. “Not lone is helium not #BadChinese, helium is simply a atrocious actor!” cries a quality astatine 1 climactic moment.

Some readers whitethorn besides deliberation of the real-life fakery of Ilya Khrzhanovskiy’s DAU Project, a immense movie acceptable / installation / anthropological experimentation wherever the participants each lived arsenic if successful Stalinist Russia and were liable to beryllium filmed astatine immoderate time. Like Khrzhanovskiy, oregon so immoderate fig of much illustrious names, Bao is the movie manager arsenic megalomaniac.

The synopsis for 1 of his movies reads “But wait! Here comes a subplot acceptable successful past China! But hold again! These 2 competing storylines look to person thing successful communal but their ain poetic resonance, ah, but you the avid filmgoer, the understander of tropes, person been primed to expect their neat intersection ...”

So too, the caller successful which Bao plays his part. Running alongside the modern satirical crippled astir this movie manager arsenic small emperor, mirroring and parodying it, is simply a fabulous communicative of an past full-size – XXL, alternatively – emperor, his concubines and eunuchs and attempts to flight assassination. Here, too, are works of creation that incorporate deliberate imperfections, proliferating simulacra – banquets wherever the duck and pork and everything other each crook retired to beryllium tofu, a workplace wherever each the vegetables are made of stone, buildings designed a la Speer’s Berlin, with 1 oculus connected their aboriginal ruins. There are twins and labyrinths and emperor impersonators, an underground situation – six circles of hell, depicted successful a section told wholly successful verse – that mimics the satellite above.

Still, the modern time comic-dystopia plot, witty though it tin beryllium – Lu’s prose is escaped of method faults, deliberate oregon different – does travel to look alternatively bladed and sketchy compared to the Borges/Calvino trappings of the emperor and his doubles, which by opposition are luxuriant and ever diverting. Could this besides beryllium intentional? Another labyrinth, for the reader.

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